Rearing Monarchs #30:

Approaching the First Blessing
Unification Thoughts, November 2023

Welcome, and pleasant Autumn, if you have that season where you are. For this month, we'll be following-up last month’s article, which was on The Value of the Word. In case you’ve been with us a long while, it might remind you of the eighth article in this series. There, what Unification Thought calls the “Three Hearts of God” was introduced. That’s such a core concept to this entire series that we’ll revisit it this month, from a different angle.

An Education of Heart

An education which enables an individual to grow to the point where he/she resembles God’s perfection is an education of heart. To resemble God’s perfection…refers to the state in which one’s spirit mind and physical mind…engage in give and receive action centering on heart…. In order for the heart to become the center of the human spirit mind and physical mind, it is necessary for human beings to experience God’s heart and be united with it. …Accordingly, an education of heart turns out to be an education for the perfection of the individual.

• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 250

The most essential takeaway here is that learning about the Heart of God is a child’s entrance towards fulfilling their first blessing. As we’ve previously mentioned, the most powerful thing that brings a person’s mind and body together is not their intellect nor their will, but whatever or whomever is dearest to their heart. I think that’s a central concern, shared by the greatest holy persons and spiritual teachers. So the Theory of Education explains:

…In order for children to become such people, it is necessary to guide them in experiencing God’s heart. Then, how do children come to experience God’s heart? The first step is for them to have a clear understanding of God’s heart. …God’s heart has been expressed in three ways during the process of creation and the dispensation of restoration. These three forms of God’s heart are His heart of hope, His heart of sorrow, and His heart of pain.

• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 250

The hearts within the Divine Principle

That critical “first step” mentioned above passage brought this one from the Introduction of the Divine Principle to the forefront of my attention:

Can we ever grasp the Heart of God? The new expression of truth should be able to reveal the Heart of God: His heart of joy at the time of creation; the broken heart He felt when humankind, His children whom He could not abandon, rebelled against Him; and His heart of striving to save them throughout the long course of history.

• Exposition of the Divine Principle, Introduction, p. 8

Unification Thought explains that these three hearts correspond respectively to the Principle of Creation, the Human Fall, and the History of Restoration. It then focuses on revealing the powerful emotional narrative underlying these sections, through which a child can begin to understand the Heart of God. It was that realization that transformed my own relationship with the Divine Principle. I’d previously shared a memorable personal experience about that here.

Taking it deeper

To look into this topic from a different angle, I’d like to share some materials that were created twelve and more years ago, for use in the Divine Principle module of the GPA¹. This was a new module which ran 21 days out of each of the nine months of the GPA year (i.e. nine times per year). Its purpose was to enable GPA graduates to understand at least a few core ideas of the Divine Principle, so that they’d not be caught flat-footed if their friends happened to ask them what they believed. So we studied and practiced how to explain the ideas briefly but clearly, in casual situations like coffee houses, sketching figures on a paper napkin. When done well, they might interest their friend in hearing more detailed talks, given by an experienced teacher of the Divine Principle.

A genuinely beneficial side-effect was that, through study, effort and prayer, they’d face the reality that they couldn’t actually explain core Divine Principle ideas—they’d realize that the common objection “I know the Divine Principle; I’ve been hearing it every summer for my whole life!” wasn’t quite the case. Instead, to their general consternation, they’d usually stumble and fail in their first attempts to express their knowledge. But after this important humbling experience, through repetition of prayer and study, prayer and outlining, and prayer and practicing, they’d come to understand and appreciate ideas in the Divine Principle much more than they previously had. For many of the young people, this was an epiphany, and so it was very inspiring for our education staff.

But the Divine Principle isn’t easy reading and so materials were curated which would give them more understanding and especially insight into the emotion behind the three main parts of the Divine Principle (i.e, Creation, Fall, and Restoration History). These readings were coordinated to the Divine Principle topic of the day and were read together after morning exercise and just before breakfast. So they were relatively short readings, which set the internal tone of the day’s study.

Using these additional readings, we’ll be looking a bit more deeply into these three hearts, and we’ll start with the first one: God’s Heart of Hope.

But before we do that, it’s important to note that there is apparently a “fourth heart” as well, which is extremely relevant for creating and building in the post-Foundation Day, CIG Settlement Era. Around the time the Divine Principle was first published, Father Moon had also explained this:

You have to know the heart of God before creation, His heart during the process of creation, and His grieving heart after the Fall. You have to understand the sorrowful heart with which He has been leading human history toward restoration, and His heart of hope for a new world after restoration is completed. (14-174, 1964.10.03)

• Cheon Seong Gyeong, p. 53

But since that’s not mentioned directly in the Divine Principle, we’ll leave it for later. For now, let’s stick with the “three hearts” as mentioned in the Introduction of the Divine Principle, which were highlighted by the Theory of Education in Unification Thought.

If I may, I wish to first ask something extra of you: In the GPA Divine Principle module, as we’d begin each day with a reading session, we’d precede each one with a short prayer, rather than jumping straight into it. That’s because we needed to step into the best frame of mind, to be as spiritually perceptive and as emotionally receptive as we could. It wouldn’t hurt for us to likewise pause for a moment and do just that small thing.

And now we can proceed to the material by clicking on this link.

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