Sun Jin Moon
January 13, 2018
The Heart to Heart Session
YAYAM Leadership Retreat, IPEC, Las Vegas
During the YAYAM Leadership Retreat Winter 2018 (January 12-14) Sun Jin Nim, accompanied by her husband In Sup Nim, guided young people in a Heart-to-Heart session at IPEC in Las Vegas on January 13, 2018. She read from True Father's autobiography and then lovingly answered questions from the audience. Late in the program she guided them in a meditation for the revival of their spirits, and concluded by giving special gifts to some lucky members of the audience.
As with previous occasions, Sun Jin Nim sought to connect very personally with each audience member's heart and to help them understand True Mother's work for the global providence and her love for the members worldwide.
Hoon Dok Hae: Leaving Behind a Legacy of Love (p.226 – p.231, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen)
"A true life is a life in which we abandon our private desires and live for the public good. This is a truth taught by all major religious leaders past and present, East and West, whether it be Jesus, Buddha, or the Prophet Mohammed.
It is a truth that is so widely known that, sadly, it seems to have been devalued. The passage of time or changes in the world cannot diminish the value of this truth. This is because the essence of human life never changes, even in the midst of rapid change all around the world.
The teacher with whom we have the closest relationship is our heart. Our heart is more precious to us than our closest friends and even more precious than our parents. So, as we live our lives, we need periodically to ask our hearts, "Am I living a good life now?" Anyone can hear his heart speaking to him.
If he comes to the realization that his heart is his master, he "polishes" his heart and maintains a close relationship with his heart throughout his life. If a person hears the sound of his heart tearfully sobbing, then he needs to stop immediately whatever he is doing. Anything that makes the heart suffer will ruin him. Anything that makes the heart sad will eventually make the person fall into sadness.
For a person to polish his heart to the point that it becomes as clear as crystal, he absolutely must spend time in direct conversation with his heart in an environment where he is away from the world and alone with his heart. It will be a time of intense loneliness, but the moment that we become close to our hearts is the time of prayer and meditation.
It is a time when we can take ownership over our hearts. When we isolate ourselves from the noise around us and allow our thoughts to settle, we can see into the deepest parts of our hearts. It will take a lot of time and effort to go all the way down to where the heart has settled. It will not happen in a day. Just as love is not for our own sake, so happiness and peace are not for ourselves. Just as love can never exist without a partner, happiness and peace cannot exist without a partner. All these can exist only in the context of a relationship with a partner.
Nothing can be accomplished if we love alone. We cannot be happy alone or speak of peace alone. Since a partner is what enables us to have happiness and peace, the partner is more important than we are.
Think about a mother carrying a baby on her back, sitting at an entrance to the subway, selling homemade snacks to the people passing by. To be at that spot in time for the morning rush hour, she will have spent the whole night preparing the snacks and put her fussing child on her back to come to the station.
People passing by might say, "Oh, you could get along well if only you didn't have that child to care for," but it is for the sake of the child that the mother lives her life. The child on her back is the mother's lifeline.
Today people can expect to live about eighty years. Eighty years of joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, and all the other emotions mixed together may seem like a long time. But if we take away the private time that a person spends sleeping, working, and eating, and then the time we spend talking, laughing, and having fun with family members and friends, attending weddings and funerals, and time spent lying sick in bed, only about seven years will remain. A person may live eighty years but only spend about seven years living for the public good. Life is like a rubber band. The same seven years, given to two different people, can either be spent as seven years or as seventy.
Time, by itself, is empty. We need to put things in it. The same is true about a person's life. Everyone wants to live his life with a comfortable place to sleep and good things to eat. Eating and sleeping, however, are simply ways of letting time slip by.
In the moment that a person has lived out his life and his body is laid to rest in the ground, all wealth and glory become nothing more than a bubble and disappear at once. Only the seven years that he lived for the public good will remain and be remembered by posterity. Those seven years are the trace that is left in the world of a life that lasted eighty years.
We do not come into this world, or depart from it, of our own accord. We have no ability to make choices with regard to our fate. We are born, though we did not choose to be born. We live, though we did not choose to live. We die, though we do not choose to die. We have no authority over these aspects of our lives, so how can we boast that we are somehow better than others? We cannot be born by our own wish, possess things that will forever be our own, or avoid death.
So any boasting on our part would only be pathetic. Even if we rise to a position higher than others, the honor is only temporary. Even if we gather more possessions than others, we must leave them all behind at the gates of death. Money, honor, and knowledge all low away from us in time, and all disappear with the passing years. No matter how noble and great a person might be, his is nothing more than a pitiable life that will end the moment he loses hold of his lifeline.
Human beings have always struggled to understand who we are and why we must live. We must realize that, just as we were not born of our own accord, so also we are not meant to live our lives for our own sakes. So the answer to the question of how we should live our lives is simple.
We were born of love, so we must live by traveling the path of love. Our lives were created by receiving the boundless love of our parents, so we must live our entire lives repaying that love. In the course of our lives, this is the only value we can choose on our own. The success or failure of our lives depends on how much love we are able to pack into those eighty years that are given to us.
At some point, everyone will shed his physical body like old clothing and die. In Korean, "to return" is a common expression for dying. To return means to go back to where we came from, that is, to go back to our fundamental roots. Everything in the universe moves in cycles. The white snow that collects on the mountains will melt and flow down the slopes, first forming streams and then a river, and eventually go into the ocean.
The water that flows into the ocean will absorb the heat of the sun's rays, become water vapor, go back up into the sky, and prepare to become either snowflakes or drops of rain. To return to our original place in this way is what we call death. Then, where do we human beings return to when we die? Body and heart come together to bring about human life, and death is the act of shedding the body. So we go to the place from which the heart came.
We cannot talk about life without also talking about death. We must accurately understand what death is, even if we do so only to understand the purpose of life. The type of life that has true value can be understood only by the person who finds himself in a difficult situation when death appears imminent and he cries out to Heaven in desperation, pleading to be allowed to live even just one more day. If our days are as precious as this, how should we live them? What are the things we must accomplish before we cross over the boundary line of death?
The most important is not to commit sin and live a life that is without shadows. There is much religious and philosophical debate over what constitutes sin, but what is clear is that we should not engage in acts that give pause to our conscience. When we do things that give us a guilty conscience, it always leaves a shadow in our heart.
The next most important thing is to resolve to do significantly more work than others have done. All of our lives are limited, whether that limit is sixty years, seventy years, or some other time period.
Depending on how we use that time, we can live a life that is two or three times more abundant than others. If you cut your time into segments and then live each segment in a meaningful way, your life will be truly precious.
Live your life with an attitude of devotion and diligence, telling yourself, for example, that you will plant two or three trees in the time it takes others to plant one. Do not live for yourself. You must live not for yourself but for others; not for your family but for your neighbors; not for your own country but for the world. All sin in the world comes about when the individual is put first. Individual desires and ambitions harm a person's neighbors and ruin the society at large.
Everything in the world will eventually pass. The parents we love, the husband or wife we love, and the children we love will all pass away. All that remains with us at the end of our lives is death. When a person dies, only his legacy remains. Please consider for a moment what you can do to show that you lived a life of value. The possessions and social position you have accumulated during your life will pass away from you. Once you cross the river of death, such things will have no meaning.
Because we were born in love and lived our lives in love, love is also the only thing that remains with us when we are in our graves. We receive our lives in love, live by sharing love, and return into the midst of love. It is important that we live our lives in a way that we can leave a legacy of love behind us."
Meditation
Brothers and sisters, I would now like to lead you in a meditation which will strengthen your mind and heart to meet life's challenges. We are going to fill you with peaceful gentle kindness, True Love and God's divine unconditional love and light energy. I call this the Crown of glory meditation. Aju!
Please find a comfortable seated position. Let your sit bones deeply take root into your seat. From the base of your spine feel a lengthening of the spine up towards the crown of your head. Gently close your eyes, and feel a glorious golden ray of divine light shine and illuminate your crown.
From the center of this illuminated crown feel the light lift you up higher, lengthening your spine. You are Heavenly Parent's divine true child. Feel this loving warm light raise you up and lift you away from any tension or anything that weighs you down. Notice the body let go and release itself from things that pull it down.
Relax your shoulders away from your ears; lengthen the neck, relax the jaw; let go of tension. Feel your head become weightless and balanced at the top of the neck. From your grounded seat, feel yourself grow beautifully tall, up toward this light at the crown. Stay here for a moment to bask in this divine energy
In this tall balanced, seated position, take a moment to notice your breath. At its natural pace, is it short, long, choppy, even fast paced, labored, light or deep? Whatever it is, just take this moment to notice your breath. Your breath is the mirror of the mind.
When we are sad, stressed, nervous or angry, it shortens and tightens. When we are happy, loving, calm and relaxed, it lengthens and deepens. When we feel hatred, our breath shortens, our life force shortens. When we love, our breath extends and our life force extends.
Breathing in, inhale life, oxygen, peace, and love. Exhale and let go of all that no longer serves your life. Inhale, welcome life, the divine gift of air and let it fuel a greater flame in your divine light. Exhale, letting go and giving gratitude for all the life force that has been given.
Let your breath bring in abundant blessings and gifts of life from the universe, and exhale joy and gratitude. In the simple act of taking notice of your breathing, you can feel eternally loved and nourished. Breathing is give and take action with the divine. Notice how in each and every moment God is serving you, filling your lungs, giving you blessings and this precious life; in return we offer gratitude, joy, and love.
Breathing at your natural pace think of a loved one. Imagine this loved one, being or thing. Visualize it. How does this being make you feel? What are the things it does that bring you joy? Replay those joyful loving moments in your mind. Take the time to notice how they make you feel in your heart.
Hold that image and feeling; let it deeply nourish your heart. Feel that loving energy fill your being. Feel your heart open and bask in this love. As you share love, feel it grow and multiply even greater. Feel that deep heartistic connection, that loving union, that complete freedom, happiness, and harmony in the embrace of loved ones.
Feel the complete give and take of boundless love, forever filling you with abundant joy. Stay here for a moment and let this loving vision deeply take root in your heart and mind. Feel the completeness and total oneness, harmony and joy of this union. This is Cheoon Il Guk. When we are one.
Now think of someone or thing that is neutral to you. It might be the mailman, or a person serving you coffee; just anyone in your daily life who you may pass by casually and have no deep connection with. Focus on that neutral person and imagine that same loving feeling for this person as you would have for your loved one.
Visualize sending or treating this neutral person with the same openness and loving joy that you share with your loved one. Imagine smiling, saying kind words, offering a helping hand, a handshake or a big hug. Notice the change in that neutral person as you love them. Visualize their response, as they respond in kind, smiling back, saying thank you or some kind words, connecting on a higher level of love, and hugging you back.
Take the time to notice how this divine love in you can elevate any relationship. Notice a confidence and a joyful return that comes with opening your heart and loving all your neighbors. Your love has the power to change the world. You are no longer separate from others. By choosing to love, you bring all beings together in God's divine love. You are CIG. We are all one.
Now imagine someone or something you don't like, that may have caused you pain, suffering, heartache, loss, betrayal, fear, anger, hate, or who you do not respect. If you have no one or nothing that comes to mind, we all know the archangel. So try to visualize your archangel whoever or whatever it is.
You may notice around this difficult being, your heart feels like its shrinking away or clenching into a fist. You may notice your breath shorten or tighten or you may labor to breathe. Remember your breath is the mirror of the mind.
So, I want you now to imagine this enemy as a loved one. Do not let someone's darkness extinguish or diminish the light of God's love in you. Use the power of the divine breath of life in you. You choose to breath in deeply and allow life and love to flourish, and let go of all fears and things that no longer serve you. Allow your mind to focus on those feelings for your loved one.
Feel the deep love, openness, eternal divine light and goodness flow from your heart to this enemy. Notice how the image of this enemy changes, as you share deep compassion, care, kindness, higher consciousness and divine love. Visualize the shift in your heart as it opens and loves your enemy as your loved one.
Notice how this difficult person you hug, hugs you back. Feel your heart open freely in this embrace. Feel the healing and forgiveness, replace all loss and darkness. And see a golden light of love at both of your heart centers grow and warm each other in this embrace.
Notice the difference one heart, your heart, can make when it chooses love over hate. Notice your breath and your being glow even brighter and deeper as you invite God's light and love completely into your heart and you share it with the world. You are CIG. We are all one.
Take a moment to feel this loving victory. Feel the divine light energy that is in your heart carry and give life to each living being and the whole of creation. When we all live as one united family under God, there can be no darkness.
Notice the ray of light at the crown of your head illuminate brighter and flow all over your being in a blanket of love, joy, fulfillment and everlasting peace. You are the Crown of glory. What you focus on becomes your reality. CIG is alive in you. You are victorious! We are all one. Aju.
Gently opening the eyes. Feel God's love and True Parents' love fill your heart with unconditional love and infinite peace. Turn to your neighbor and share a glorious hug with each other and offer a deep Kamsahamnida. Salanghamnida. Namaste.
Conclusion: Practice True Love
How do you feel? Loved, powerful, energized, and victorious! Yes! You should! This is the power of True Love and True Parents' and Heavenly Parent's teaching.
Please practice this and Hoon Dok Hae every day. These are the pillars of light and wisdom that will allow you to overcome any obstacle! Aju!
Thank you all for your lifetime of love, care, dedication, and sincere effort for Heavenly Parent and True Parents.
May Heavenly Parent and True Parents bless all your precious families forever!
Any, may your time here in True Parents homeland be productive, inspiring and empowering, so that you return to your mission countries revitalized and energized. Remember you are CIG and we are all one! Aju.
Can we as one family under god and True Parents all give 3 victorious cheers of sungli, sungli, sungli! Thank you very much…Namaste.
