True Family Values |
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Joong Hyun Pak and Andrew Wilson |
Chapter 7 - The Culture Of Heart In The New Millennium [Part 1]
7. Our family pledges to perfect a world based on the culture of heart, which is rooted in the original lineage, by centering on true love.
The seventh and concluding pledge reveals the essence of the ideal world, the kingdom of God on earth. Poets and visionaries of every age have dreamed of a world where love rules triumphant, where people are no longer oppressed by laws and authorities which trample on love. That world is our destiny. It is becoming a reality as true families increase and build a structure of love over the earth. In the future, the true love nurtured in families will be the dominant force guiding all aspects of culture. We call this culture the shimjong culture, or the culture of heart.
Today we live in a culture which exalts love-of a sort-and dreams romantic dreams of fulfillment through love. We glorify sexual love and its liberation from the restrictive morals of traditional religion. The mass media celebrates free sex and casual affairs as the normal way of life. Billions of dollars are being made by unscrupulous salesmen and their corporate sponsors who use sexual fantasies to sell every sort of product, from soft drinks to automobiles. This is a grievous sin ravaging the world. The loose sexual mores foisted upon us by contemporary culture destroy the family and damage people's ability to love in the true sense. The power of the dominant media culture enslaves us to our lower natures and gives power to the Beast who ever tempts us with smooth words to destroy ourselves.
As will be discussed below, this trend in popular culture does not simply reflect a general decline in moral standards. A great number of people regard free sexual expression as good in itself. They disparage chastity as old-fashioned and restrictive of their freedom. They believe they are right in their values, even while they appear loose and unprincipled to the more religious among us. The media merely reflects the values of this group. We cannot simply condemn them as sinners. Rather, we must understand the origin of this trend of thinking and properly critique it.
Today's moral climate and its justification is a legacy of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, founded upon of the ideology of the New Left. It is a step-child of Communism, equally as materialistic and sharing many similar traits. Just as a full rebuttal of communism requires an understanding of three issues-to recognize the appeal of Communism, to properly critique its errors, and to offer a superior counterproposal-a similar critique and counterproposal is needed to overcome the siren song of the sexual revolution.
The dream of a culture of love arises from the original nature of human beings. God created us to value love above all else. However, it can only be realized through a spiritual teaching that explains how love functions in the fulfillment of the purpose of life. The true culture of heart will be established upon the ethic of sexual purity. It is rooted in the original lineage founded upon the Blessing. Within the Four Position Foundation of a blessed family, sexual love is the sacred occasion when God's love meets human love to create a new child of God. The culture of heart will encourage purity and respect for the sanctity of love, and guard it as a sacred trust. We want our children to grow up in such a culture. Wherever possible, we should join with like-minded people to build a new, spiritual culture which can support and celebrate true love.
The Centrality of Heart
Emotion is the most fundamental among the three faculties of the human mind. Joy-emotional satisfaction-is the purpose of creation. God's motivation for creating the universe sprang from an emotional desire, namely to gain joy through loving an object partner. We call this emotional impulse shimjong, or heart. Human beings likewise are motivated by the emotional desire of heart. When we seek our fortune, it is for the emotional satisfaction which wealth brings. Whatever people do: strive for fame, knowledge, power, or inner truth, we pursue these activities for the emotional satisfaction they bring us. The intellect functions to guide our actions for the sake of reaching our chosen goal which brings emotional satisfaction. The will functions to give focus, direction, intensity and perseverance necessary to achieve our purposes, which give us emotional satisfaction when fulfilled.
We must distinguish surface emotions from heart. We experience many emotions in the context of relationships with others: anger, joy, remorse, pensiveness, anxiety, elation, etc. Heart, on the other hand, is the emotional core of our being. Surface emotions may be feigned, but the heart remains always true to itself. Take, for example, an ambitious woman who seeks out a millionaire and seduces him with many expressions of joy and elation. Yet, deep in her heart, she is not in love with him but with his money. Should his business fail and he fall on hard times, she will leave him. The desire of the heart is that deep, driving desire that underlies all that we do. It gives the basic orientation to all our actions and determines the person we ultimately become. On this point there is a verse from the Upanishads:
As his desire, such is his resolve; as his resolve, such the action he performs; what action he performs, that he procures for himself. -Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5
This verse has been interpreted by some to mean that the deep desire of the heart, expressed through the actions of our life, generates the karma which we take into future lives. Swedenborg taught that whether one's heart is altruistic or self-centered becomes the main determinant of one's place in the spirit world. A life of true love is rooted in a true heart.
God's heart is defined as the emotional impulse to obtain joy through lover It is an irrepressible emotional impulse welling up from within God that seeks an object partner with whom to share love and thereby obtain joy. God created human beings in His image and likeness that they might become His beloved objects. Thus, it is our original nature to interact with others in love. We naturally respond in faith and love to God, our subject partner. Moreover, we seek a human counterpart to love and reciprocate with beauty: that is our spouse. The seed of God's heart is implanted deep within every human being. On the foundation of the heart we share with God, God has the potential to dwell with us and perfect His ideal in us.
God's heart is irrepressible. It calls forth a life of unbounded love, living for the sake of others. The pure impulse to love exists prior to and irrespective of whether or not our partner loves us in return. The heart hopes for the stimulation of joy which comes when love is returned, grieves when its love is betrayed, and perseveres through the pain to love even when love seems futile. As St. Paul said, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Cor. 13:7)
Nevertheless, the hearts of fallen people have been corrupted and wander far from God's heart. More accessible and less damaged than our heart is a second quality of the divine nature: our conscience. Although not as deep as heart, the conscience orients us towards goodness and the pursuit of truth. It has led people to religion and knowledge of God. But knowledge of truth can only go so far. Upon a highly developed conscience, the heart can begin to sprout. Rev. Moon says, "If you unburden and liberate your mind completely, your conscience will automatically connect with the true love of God. If we compare the size of the conscience to that of love, we will see that the size of love is greater."Z In other words, once our conscience becomes enlightened with God's truth, we can enter the realm of God's love which will enliven our heart. Religions which teach the truth of God lead a person on the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, but a person "cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven if he is not linked to the love of God- 3 and becomes one with Him in heart.
The hope of God is to rejoice together with humankind in the kingdom of God. God's heart finds its complete fulfillment when human beings achieve their true purpose: embodying the image of God, sharing love and beauty with God, and multiplying into families, societies, nations and a world which moves in harmony and unity according to the mind of God. Every individual human being who stimulates God with joy has a heart which resonates in tune with God's heart. He lives in oneness with God, for "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." (1 John 4:16) The world which moves in unity with the purpose of God's heart stimulates God with eternal joy and delight. (Isa. 62:4) Such a world may well be called the culture of heart.
Civilization's Fundamental Contradiction
Culture is the collective expression of human consciousness through creative and social activities. Since God created human beings with heart as the core element, it is natural for people to desire a culture conforming to their nature, having heart as the central element. All the creative activities of culture should be rooted in the desires of the heart. Nevertheless, no civilization in human history has been a culture of heart. This is because in reality the human heart is wayward and corrupt, more often inclined to selfishness and greed. The human Fall corrupted the human heart with the elements of selfishness, resentment and deceit. Were society to allow people to express their wayward hearts unchecked, we would be living by the law of the jungle. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes well described human life in this fallen state of nature: "nasty, brutish and short," a "war of all against all." For Hobbes, the first principle of civilization was that human beings be constrained by laws and institutions which would reign in their passions for the sake of the social good.
Every civilization in human history has placed a fence around the human heart, subordinating its desires to something universal and unchanging. Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations controlled the population by subordinating human beings to the service of the gods, who required the people to serve the whole-the gods' estate-by constructing great public works projects to irrigate the land and glorify Heaven. In biblical Israel, the fence around desire was the Law as decreed in the Ten Commandments and other provisions of the covenant at Mount Sinai. The ancient Greeks erected a great civilization by ennobling the faculty of reason as plumbed by philosophy. Reason occupied a place higher than emotion because it is unchanging and can he the basis for universal norms. Roman civilization gave preeminence to the law. Medieval civilization subordinated human desires to the aspirations of faith. In the history of China over the last 2500 years we see a running debate between two regulatory principles: the Legalists advocated social unity imposed by force of arms and by law as laid down by the Emperor, while Confucianism regulated society based upon a universal ethical teaching. When America's Founding Fathers established a free society, they expected it to function well only as long as its citizens exercised moral restraint according to the ethical teachings of religion. They regarded the prospering of America's churches as essential to the preservation of freedom.
Each of the great civilizations was built upon a solid pillar, be it law, ethics, faith or reason, which could channel human aspirations to a public purpose. As long as these pillars stood firm, holding in check the selfish impulses of the human heart, the civilization stood firm. Nevertheless, since heart is the core of human nature, it cannot be contained forever. Sooner or later, the wayward impulses of the heart would corrupt the society, subverting the pillars of law, ethics, faith or reason upon which the society was based. Hence, no great civilization has been lasting. Each has gone through its periods of youth, maturity and decline. Each began with the youthful enthusiasm of a new-found ideal. Each matured to produce great achievements in art, literature, philosophy, science or religion. Each then declined, its values subverted by decadence and corruption. The Roman Empire fell when corrupt officials misused its vaunted legal system for personal gain and a life of decadence undermined public morals. Today, America likewise is beset by corruption and decadence as its founding Christian spirit grows dim. Our precious freedoms are no longer a call to sacrifice and an opportunity for responsible public service. Rather, they have become a celebration of self-seeking and licentious lifestyles.
Nevertheless, God created us with heart as the central motivating element in our lives. We are meant to live in a culture where the heart can be freely expressed and its achievements glorified. God never intended the contradiction between our essential nature and the civilizations we create. It only arose as a result of the human Fall, which rendered the human heart self-seeking and corrupt. This contradiction will cease to exist only when our hearts become pure and true.
The Sexual Revolution
Today we live in a transitional period when few reliable guideposts exist to show us the way. The old pillar of Christianity, undergirding two thousand years of Western culture, appears to be crumbling.
As our spiritual sensitivity heightens, we sense the possibilities of a new age with spiritual fulfillment beyond imagining. Beyond the stale rules of conventional religion and morality, we sense the possibility of a world governed by love. How will this world come about?
For many people, the sexual revolution is the answer. It offers a vision is of a world in which people find fulfillment in total sexual freedom. It views the main obstacle to human fulfillment as the morality of traditional religion, which makes people feel guilty about engaging in free sex and destroys the joy which sex should bring. Overthrow religion and traditional morality, and humanity will finally be able to enjoy their full potential for love and the pleasures of the senses. Here is a powerful vision of a sensate culture of love designed to mislead humankind in search of true love and the culture of heart. Young people who become sexually active before marriage and "swingers" who enjoy extra-marital affairs do not believe they do anything wrong. On the contrary, they celebrate the rightness of their actions as liberation from a misguided past when traditional morality fettered human expression. In their thinking, obeying religion's oppressive rules only prevents them from attaining the fullness of joy.
People have rarely been so confused and misinformed about love. From childhood we are led to believe the romantic myth that we can find lasting happiness through loving that special someone. One would think that if that special relationship falls apart, the disappointed lovers would reflect deeply on the nature of true love to understand where they went wrong. Nevertheless, many people continue undaunted, going from partner to partner in search of "good sex" which they think will make their life worthwhile. Some look to sex as therapy, even as salvation from all their troubles. Having embraced the ideology of the sexual revolution, they believe that they are on the correct path to find love.
According to the Divine Principle,
The era when the paths of these good and evil sovereignties intersect is the Last Days. This is also the time when Adam and Eve's fall from the top of the growth stage will be restored through indemnity. All people in this era will suffer through great ideological confusion, much as the first human ancestors at the point of their temptation were utterly confused as to whom they should obey and what should guide their actions. -Eschatology 4.3
In the Last lays, the seed which was sown in the Garden of Eden is being reaped on the world scale. Eve fell through illicit love with two male figures (the Archangel and Adam). Thus, today in America, it is hard to find virtuous eighteen-year-old women who are still virgins and have not slept with several men. Had the Christian world received Christ at the Second Advent in 1945, America and the world would have been protected from this plague of rampant casual sex. Once Christianity rejected him it began to decline, opening the way for Satan to invade Western society in this manner.
We are thus not surprised to find that today's world is afflicted by a strong delusion concerning love. Neither should we be surprised to learn that behind this delusion is the influence of an ideological step-child to the communist ideology. The ideology of the sexual revolution was developed by the New Left in the 1960s. Even though there is nothing overtly political about it, it shares the same utopian and anti-religious character as communism, holding forth a vision of a world of human fulfillment which will be realized once people have broken free of the fetters of religion and morality. It is worth examining in some detail.
First, like communism, the sexual revolution is materialistic. It holds that love has no essential spiritual value other than what can be expressed in the physical act of sex. Therefore, when the sex goes bad, the time has come to end the relationship. Young people are told they should live together before marriage in order to ascertain that their partner is sexually compatible. Sex with multiple partners and wife-swapping can be exciting and adventurous. If while achieving these heights of physical pleasure there should be any unwanted feelings of guilt or remorse, they can be rationalized as a psychological remnant of our conditioning by the old morality. In other words, in the pursuit of physical pleasure people suppress the spiritual and internal aspect of relationships.
Second, the ideology of the sexual revolution is atheistic and hostile to religion. Since religion serves as the main prop to traditional morality, it must be overthrown if the sexual revolution is to achieve its fullest expression. From this standpoint, it is easy to ridicule religious belief, especially morality. Once human fulfillment is cast in terms of love, religion is at a severe disadvantage. Aren't the rules of morality oppressive, preventing us from freely expressing our emotional desire for sexual love? Even religion itself has been invaded by this viewpoint as people call for married priests and urge openness for homosexual marriages. Beyond giving the commandment "do not eat the fruit," people need a logical explanation of why honoring the moral law restricting sexual freedom should lead to a better and more fulfilling life than what free sex can offer.
Third, like communism, the ideology of the sexual revolution is based on dialectics. In this case it is not a Hegelian dialectic of history, bur rather a dialectical theory of human nature rooted in the psychology of Sigmund Freud. Freud taught that the motivating power behind human behavior was the sexual impulse, which he called the libido or id. The libido motivates all human actions and is the source of vitality and joy. Opposing and fettering the libido is another psychological force which contains all the rules and restraints of morality and culture, internalized in the superego. Managing this tension between the libido and the superego is the ego, which we express in our conscious life. However, when the fetters of the superego oppress the libido excessively, repressed libido is driven into the subconscious mind, where it can have unpleasant influences on mental health. This results in neurosis.
Freud's dialectical psychology can be likened to Hegel's dialectical view of society in accepting the need for both poles of the dialectic to stay in balance. Freud argued for a proper, if painful balance in The Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). If human beings have excessive libido, they will become anti-social and animalistic. Civilization depends upon the superego to repress anti-social behavior and channel our sexual energy into productive activities, a process called sublimation. Nevertheless, civilization comes with a price. The same superego which promotes civilized behavior also leads to neurosis and other mental disorders. Therefore, Freud had an ambivalent view of religion. Freud was an atheist. He saw religion as an illusory belief system which nevertheless had some utility for the maintenance of civilization. Where often overly oppressive, religion should be critiqued by psychology.
Freud's psychology then developed into right and left wings, just as Hegel's philosophy. On the right, Carl Jung recognized the importance of religion in mental health and gave spirituality a more positive and creative role than that which was attributed to it by Freud's theory of the superego. On the left, Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse sharpened the dialectical conflict between the libido and superego. Just as Marx called for revolution to overcome oppressive production relations (e.g. capitalism) in order to liberate the productive forces (e.g. the proletariat), the New Left called for a sexual revolution to overcome the oppressive superego and liberate the sexual impulse.
Many people know Wilhelm Reich as a talented and unconventional healer who was unjustly persecuted by the FDA and who pioneered aspects of New Age mind-body medicine. However, it was his theory of the orgasm that led him into the sexual-political movement which combined radical left-wing politics with advocacy of sexual freedom. In The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Reich argued that in a healthy human being there is a constant circulation of bio-energy. At the moment of orgasm this circulation reaches its peak, stimulating health and well-being. Failure to dissipate pent-up sexual energy by frequent orgasm could lead to neurosis and disease. Frequent good sex can improve our physical and mental health.
Herbert Marcuse used Reich's theories to propound the view that the healthy human being is a sexual being free of all inhibitions. In Eros and Civilization (1955), he turned the Marxist theory of social revolution into a theory of sexual revolution, calling for the liberation of the sexual impulse and the complete overthrow of moral restraints. The sexual revolution will bring with it the overthrow of the "system," the establishment power structure which depends on conventional morality to keep the people in line. In the ideal society of sexually liberated people, social and political relations would be totally free. Marcuse thus brought the ideology of the sexual revolution to its completion.
The sexual revolution took root in universities throughout the United States in the 1960s. The New Left made it a centerpiece in its strategy to oppose the Vietnam War. Opposed to the war and disillusioned with the "system" that pursued it, college students took to the sexual revolution not merely as self-indulgence, but as a righteous statement of personal protest. The counterculture of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll flowered with the Hippie movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From its beginnings, the sexual revolution has gloried in its cultural expressions in music and the performing arts.
At its root, the sexual revolution is a protest against traditional religion and morality. Even though the political issues passed away years ago, the culture of sexual freedom remains strong and has spread around the world. Wherever young people gain a measure of affluence and the opportunity to free themselves of traditional lifestyles, they begin to chafe at the restrictions imposed by traditional culture and religion. They are attracted to the ideology of the sexual revolution with its promise of freedom and personal fulfillment without the obligations of traditional morality. Celebrated in the movies, stimulated by advertising and sung to the drum-beat of rock and roll music, the sexual revolution resonates with the original mind's desire for a culture of true love. Yet its promises are illusory.
The contemporary ideology of sexual freedom advocates the overthrow all established religion and morality in the name of this new world of freedom. This is the brave new world of free love, with love understood in the materialistic sense as sexual fulfillment. Since the goal of God's providence is a culture of heart, we have here another instance of the false preceding the true. Just as communism ran rampant during the forty years of the True Parents' wilderness course, now this step-child of communism has spread over the world on the wings of a media culture emanating from America. Like communism before it, this deviant ideology cannot be effectively countered except by the deep understanding of truth.
Sexual Purity
To overcome the attraction of the sexual revolution, young people today must find the answers to the fundamental questions about love. What is true love? What is the role of love in realizing the purpose of life? Why is the family important for cultivating true love? How can I expand my capacity to give and receive love in order to prepare for marriage? Why should sexual love be safeguarded for only one partner? How can sexual love be the doorway to the most sublime, true love? We should point the way to a higher vision of human fulfillment which can eclipse the shallow promise of sexual liberation. When true love is practiced by individuals and families, a new culture will emerge: the culture of heart.
What is true love? As we studied above, true love exists in the three-dimensional union of human love with the love of God, the Source of love. True love is living for the sake of others, taking after the nature of divine love which is to give unconditionally. True love does not use others to seek its own pleasure, but gives service and benefit to others for their sakes, receiving joy when they respond in kind. It is a high, pure, divine emotion with no hint of self-seeking. This should be the quality of our sexual love: it should express true love.
However, as anyone who has a sensitive conscience will tell you, most sex is not like that. Too often the heart to use one's partner as a means for self-gratification or to seek self-affirmation taints the sexual union. This is because the hearts of the lovers are immature. They have no connection with a higher center-God-but only seek to benefit themselves. They are still at the stage of seeking love rather than giving love. That is, they are not ready as spiritual-emotional beings to unite their bodies in love. All creation and action begins from the mind. Therefore, the true act of love begins from the soul and then is expressed in the union of the flesh. It is only because the sexual revolution knows nothing of true love that it can make the mistake of equating love with sex.
Conjugal love between husband and wife is meant to be a moment of cosmic oneness. When the absolute love of God infuses the conjugal union, Rev. Moon calls this "absolute sex." Absolute sex is pure, faithful and true. The love of God, the Source of love, descends vertically and meets the horizontal love between husband and wife. God, whose nature is the unity of dual characteristics, beholds His complete image when husband and wife become one in love. At that moment God is stimulated to feel incredible joy and the universe dances in oneness. Out of that moment begins a new life, as the husband and wife procreate a new image of themselves and a new image of God. They participate in the wondrous mystery of God's creation. This fulfills the purpose for which God created human beings.
Compared to the centrality of true love, everything else we do is of secondary importance. Yet in today's society, where relationships easily come and go, love has lost much of its value. People naturally value what they have to work hardest to obtain, and today we spend our whole lives preparing and working for a career and economic success. Is it not paradoxical that the Hippie generation of the 1960s which loosed all sexual inhibitions and celebrated free love above all else became the Yuppies of the 1970s and 1980s who ruthlessly pursued economic success at the expense of all else?
To achieve the purpose of life, we must cultivate our character. A doctor or a computer programmer learns his trade in school. However, there are no schools to teach how to become a true person, except the family. The sexual revolution denies the value of the family. If love is basically sex, then it does not need to be learned. Our biological instincts teach us all we need to know. In fact, free sex has ravaged the family. The unprecedented rise in the number of divorces and single mothers is primarily due to the loss of sexual morality brought about by the ideology of the sexual revolution. When parents divorce and put their children through its trauma, they completely negate the function of the family as a school of love. Their children learn to mistrust love, a lesson which they never should be taught.
Before we marry, our hearts have to grow in their capacity to give and receive love. This takes place in the classroom of the family. When difficulties and struggles arise in the family, these should be taken as lessons to be learned. The serious student does not allow an occasional grade of C or F to dissuade him from his study; instead he works harder to master the difficult subjects. The school of love presents some demanding lessons. Only after mastering them can we graduate to the next stage.
In particular, as was discussed in connection with the second pledge, we should cultivate the root of love in God and the trunk of love in a life of responsibility and service to the whole. This is the vertical axis of love, through which our love is connected and imbued with the love of God. On that foundation our love for other people grows. Furthermore, the human body grows in stages from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood. As we discussed in connection with the third pledge, our spiritual personality develops its capacity to love according to the proper season, beginning with children's love, then fraternal love, conjugal love and finally parental love. Conjugal love between husband and wife requires a foundation of children's love and fraternal love. Failure to develop these areas will lead to problems in married life. For this reason, it is recommended that young people preparing for the Blessing first receive spiritual training through church activities. Through cultivating faith they can deepen their relationship to God. Through serving others they can learn the ways of filial piety, patriotism and saintliness. By relating with the church elders as their spiritual parents and with peers as their spiritual brothers and sisters, young people can learn the traditions of pure, God-centered children's love and fraternal love. These are all invaluable assets for a successful marriage.
Why is conjugal love exclusive and meant only for one person? Of the four types of love: children's love, fraternal love, conjugal love and parental love, only conjugal love is exclusive. If a child loves other people's parents, no one thinks anything is amiss; he is praised as a broad-minded child. If a person loves his friends more even than his own brother, his brother need not feel betrayed or slighted; it is also good and praiseworthy to have many friends. If a father loves other people's children more than his own children, people regard him as exceptionally open-hearted and public minded. These types of love are by nature inclusive. On the other hand, no child feels comfortable to discover that his father loves another woman and keeps it secret from his mother. No wife can feel at ease in front of her husband's mistress. These would be violations of love. Conjugal love is meant for one partner exclusively. Traditional moral teachings developed to protect the realm of conjugal love. Its regulation is a central ethical concern.
If love is to flourish, a clear distinction between the four types of love must be made, and sexual love limited to the conjugal realm. Look at how destructive sex can be when it invades the other spheres. When confused with parental love it leads to incest. When confused with fraternal love and friendship it encourages extramarital affairs and all manner of jealousy. When unfulfilled child's love is expressed in conjugal relationships it undermines marriage and creates unhealthy relationships, including homosexuality. On the other hand, when sexual morality is strictly observed, children can grow up without fear of sexual abuse and people can relate to their friends without jealousy or fear of betrayal. Love according to the God-given plan is like driving a car according to the rules of the road. By staying within the lines, we have the freedom to go fast and far. If we cross the lines, the car will crash.
The sacredness of conjugal love provides another reason why it should be guarded for one partner only. Scripture teaches that a human being is the temple of God. (1 Con 3:16) For a husband and wife living in true love, at no time is God more strongly present than in the act of marriage. God is love. (i John 4:8) It stands to reason that the place where God resides is the place where love is consummated. The sexual organ is like the Holy of Holies of our body. It is the most private place and is always kept covered. In the Temple in Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies was the innermost sanctum, where the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Ten Commandments were kept. No one was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies except for the high priest, and only once a year for the rite of the Day of Atonement. The priests took special care to protect this holy place as God's residence. Other parts of the human body are visible to all; for instance, the face. They represent the outer precincts of the Temple, including the altar of sacrifice.
Ezekiel records that when the priesthood became corrupt and placed idols inside the Temple's sacred precincts, God could no longer abide there and left the Temple. That meant that the Temple's protection was taken away, and it was laid bare to destruction by the Babylonians. Anyone who takes seriously the sacred character of love will likewise maintain the purity of his holy temple. The holy place of love must never be defiled. The husband gives the key to his holy place to only one person: his wife. The wife gives the key to her holy place to only one person: her husband. If anyone enters that place, it would be defiled. God could no longer abide there. Even if the husband and wife resumed their sexual love, it would no longer be the same. Without a serious effort at repentance and penance to repair the damage, it could no longer be true love.
Conjugal love in marriage can be the doorway to the most sublime, true love. The Blessing in particular opens the door for God to abide in the love between husband and wife. Love flows through lineage. God intended to grace Adam and Eve's marriage with true love, and they would have propagated it to all subsequent generations. Instead, since the Fall, Satan's love has infected all marriages, flowing from parents to children generation after generation. The world lacked True Parents, and marriages lacked a firm connection to God's lineage. There can be no true love disconnected from God, the Source of love. Today with the advent of the True Parents, marriages can be rooted in the original lineage. This lifts them up to the realm of the sacred. The Blessing sanctifies conjugal love and turns what might have been a horizontal union of two into a trinity of God, husband and wife united as one.
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