Good morning!
Another week has
passed.
For most of us a
couple of thousand things happened last week. I
guess we have to prepare ourselves for the next
level.
Let me ask you a
question: Do you have more good memories or do you
have more bad memories when you look back on your
life? (Good.) I guess it’s up to you right? (A
small boy sitting next to his mother on the front
row says "bad memories" and the room is filled with
laughter.) You’re just a kid, man, I don’t
think you’ve lived yet. (Hyo-Jin-nim is amused.)
Okay, at least you’ve got an opinion and you’re
honest. The laughter finally dies down.
I guess that
memories are the building blocks of the thing that
we call intelligence. If you look at the animal
kingdom, memory is a survival mechanism. It’s very,
very important. Animals have a greater acute sense
than we do because they have to survive based on
that. Memory is very important. Right from birth
they have to learn how to survive to catch prey and
find food sources, navigate from point "A" to point
"B," all that depends on memory and their life
depends on it.
For us, too,
memory is very important because that’s pretty much
how we build our lives. If you don’t have many good
memories, I guess that you have to build them to
find it somehow.
So are there some
things that we can rely on to help us achieve that
end? Yes, according to the promise from heaven we
have the greatest capacity in terms of storing
memory, a capacity beyond just the building blocks
of intelligence. There are all sorts of diverse
applications of the intellectual capacities that we
have to do the things that we want to do beyond what
you see in the animal kingdom. So how would you
create a good memory if you don’t have many? That’s
why imagination is very important and creativity is
very important. Because everything that you want to
do after you have reached a certain stage where you
have a basic building block of creating your greater
self, because you have learned, you have memorized
how to speak. You know how to read, how to write,
how to do basic things. What you need to do is…
You have to plan.
You have to plan your future. You have to envision
yourself ten years from now. Let’s say you’re a
twelve-year-old kid or barely a teenager, middle
school, whatever. You have to envision yourself ten
years from now, twenty years from now.
It hasn’t happened
yet. You don’t have it in your memory, but you can
store those mental images that you’re creating about
yourself. It might not be true at the moment in
physical form because it hasn’t been manifested yet
however, that image that you see of yourself perhaps
one day, if you do the right thing, if you are
persistent and you do what it takes to get there and
keep at it, perhaps the image of you that you have
stored in your head when you’re a sixth-grader, ten
years from now, twenty years from now, thirty years
from now, will come true.
All the stuff we
store, I guess we store it mostly for some reason,
but some things we don’t even think about it, we
just store it. And some times it just comes up.
Sometimes it can be helpful, but if you are not
careful it can also harm you. Because most likely if
you store certain things that you are not fully in
control of you are going to create something not
nice.
Now let’s say that
you have to love somebody. You have to love your
parents. You can’t hate your parents. You have to
love your siblings. You can’t hate your siblings.
You’re going to be with them forever. There are many
things that make a relationship work and sometimes
you have to work at it. And it’s not one way; it’s
always both ways. And there are things that can
sometimes get in the way of building a greater
relationship. How do you go about achieving a
greater relationship when certain images or certain
memories always get in the way?
There are so many
people who I do not know personally out there
walking around on this planet. If I make judgment
based on one casual image that I perceive in a
moment then that would not be good.
So it is with my
siblings. The only memory I have of intimacy with
them is Heung Jin. We shared the same room until I
reached my teenage years. Other than that there is
too much age gap, so I don’t know these kids except
when they were very young. That’s the only memories
that I have of them.
What I see now, in
my mind I’m concerned to put it nicely. Still I have
to make that choice of holding on to that. And I do
have that capacity to make greater memories, even if
it is not happening now, even if it is not real now.
It can happen tomorrow. And I guess that’s where
religion comes in. It talks about faith and it tries
to teach you the importance of faith.
How can you
achieve faith when obviously you can’t project
yourself into the future? You try to make yourself
happy. I’m happy now, but if you go out and look at
the world, it makes you angry. You get depressed. No
matter how you try to make yourself happy you just
want to hold on to your happiness. You pretty much
have to do that and start blocking out all other
things.
I like to see
greatness in people that I care about. What you see
outside should be the same as what is inside.
Sometimes because you care about somebody, you do
care, it should matter to you. Sometimes, yes,
you do get emotional about it. Why? Because it’s not
right, it’s not going anywhere like that. It’s not
like war that we’re fighting with bullets and guns.
It’s competition. Success depends on the quality of
how you achieve it-self. It’s not that simple.
Murder and mayhem might be simpler than loving
competition.
I still remember
all sorts of stuff that Father used to talk about,
the kind of images of fantasy that he drew in my
head with His words. I still hold on to those images
because I don’t think they’re bad. I’m not going to
say because I’m getting too old for this, and I’m
more practical than that. It isn’t going to happen
in my lifetime. I should hold on to it. Why? Because
it looks nice; let me just start with that. If that
can happen, the world will really look nice.
How do you get
there? We have a lot of really good people doing a
lot of good things all the time. It’s kind of
unfortunate that the number kind of stays at a
certain level. It really doesn’t fluctuate too much.
A lot of people come for all sorts of different
reasons and I guess it’s important that we start to
branch out on that level because its very difficult
to find quality help. Right?
Those people do
make that kind of association / connection because
they think we’re successful; we’re somebody. We’re
great in this and that however we commercialize
ourselves. I don’t know how true in essence it is,
through all the propaganda that we make. It is
serious stuff, just making propaganda, especially in
a free society, because the absolute ruler in a free
society is the masses. The presidents and all the
politicians are just managers. The masses can get
rid of them if they don’t like them. Most people
like to stay away from politics because they’re busy
taking care of their own business.
How can we trust
all the people that we connect with, especially the
politicians? Even if there is a genuine person who
wants to get into politics to make laws that help
society and benefit people, their power is limited.
In the end you have to get permission from the
masses. So pretty much people do what ever freedom
allows and the easiest way to live free is to think
about yourself, focus on yourself. "I don’t want to
get involved in all this stuff other than what I
have to deal with in my own life. How can I change
this world?"
And when you want
to change, you have to try. You can’t just think
about it. That’s a losers’ way. What’s the opposite?
I guess that’s the winner’s way. You have to DO what
you think is right. If you’re going to change the
world, you have to start changing the world trying
to build that relationship that is important.
Ultimately you have to bridge the gap between
humanity and God and True Parents.
It has to start,
genuinely from the persons that think that is the
way. If everybody thinks that is the way, that’s
what everybody has to do, no exceptions. It’s
difficult. It is difficult. It is difficult to try
to get more… more… more… Sometimes you don’t know
what more is.
I don’t get
anything out of this. I don’t get anything out of
this other than making memories, right? Some of the
faces I don’t think I can ever erase because I see
you every week. (Laughter) I don’t think I can erase
it out of my memory. (Laughter) I don’t whether
that’s good or bad. (A lot of laughter)
It’s those things
that I think that matter in changing the world. You
have to think that that kind of stuff is important.
Just like everybody else, not what’s just important
to you. There are more people like you than there
are the privileged people in the world. You have to
have the right attitude.
Last week I had
stayed up all night talking to someone and I was a
little out of whack. I wanted to call Janine and ask
her to have someone else pitch in for me, but since
I was awake, I came. Anyway, what you see is
what you get. I’m trying.
All those
fantasies that I have, all those dreams that I have,
I want to hold on to them. I think it’s good. I
think I’m going to keep them in my memory as long as
I’m here. Sometimes you need to dream.
And everything that you see is good sometimes.
But if we’re going to win, everybody has to be real.
I have one more
week. Next week I’ll be here but after that I’ll be
gone for about two months.
Take care of
yourself. I’ll be here next week. Okay.
