In the previous article, we’d touched on the Universal Prime Force. In the Exposition of the Divine Principle textbook, the topics that follow are the Three Objects Purpose and the Four Position Foundation, and then the section closes. The next major section addresses the Purpose of Creation.

But for this article, I’d like to take a slight detour from following the exact sequence of the Divine Principle textbook: rather than moving on to the Three Objects Purpose or the Four Position Foundation, I’d like to skip slightly ahead and write about one part of the Purpose of Creation. The reason for this is that I’ve just taught a seminar that was subtitled “God’s Heart in the Divine Principle” and I wanted to reference that while the experience is still fresh in my mind.

Heart of God

So then, about “Heart”: the notion of Heart (roughly translated from shimjung, in Korean) runs throughout all of Father and Mother Moon’s teaching and thought. That’s because Heart is the most fundamental attribute of the Divine Character that both God and human beings possess. Unification Thought defines heart as “the inner, irrepressible impulse to love infinitely”, and as the primary attribute of Divine Character. It’s at the very root of what makes us tick: it causes us to think the things we think, dream the things we dream, say the things we say, do the things we do, prioritize the things we pursue. Ultimately, what we love the most is what we live and die for. So what our heart fixes on is the first concern of Father and Mother Moon, because that will determine everything about us and the way we live our life. That love becomes the “why” of everything in our life; that love becomes the central focus of our mind-body unity.

Father and Mother Moon then are concerned that our first love – the very first love in my heart – is, quite simply, God. That love is the key to mind-body unity, otherwise called God’s “First Blessing” (Gen. 1:28). The Divine Principle explains:

The key to God’s first blessing is the perfection of individual character. An individual’s mind and body… become one… with God as their center. Such individuals… experience the Heart of God as if it were their own. Hence, they understand His Will and live fully attuned to it. … Accordingly, when people realize God’s first blessing, they become God’s beloved who inspire Him with joy. – DP, p. 35

The critical question then becomes how can we possibly understand something as mysterious and immense as the Heart of God? We have inherited the entrenched traditional notion that knowledge of this divine dimension is unattainable; that it is inaccessible and infinitely beyond human comprehension. However, Unification Thought addresses this clearly by explaining:

…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. – NEUT, p. 250

In fact, the Divine Principle mentions this very briefly in its Preface:

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. – DP, p. 8

The point is that the heart of God is expressed in these 3 ways in the Divine Principle’s chapters on the Principle of Creation, the Human Fall, and all the chapters in Part II (the Principles of Restoration and all restoration history). And what this means is that the Divine Principle provides us an incredible overview into the Heart of God. Realizing this, my personal relationship with the Divine Principle was transformed.

Deeper With God

I no longer saw the Principle as only a textbook of essential principles and profound revelations, but more fundamentally, I saw it as the account of one person’s hopes and dreams, the one cataclysmic disaster that shattered their world, and then their entire life of picking up the broken, scattered pieces after that devastating tragedy. That’s what the Divine Principle has become to me: it’s far and away the greatest epic saga in the universe – much grander and greater than the Illiad and the Odessey, the Mahabarata, Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, et. al. It’s the great-great-grandmother of them all,  encompassing all the courage, treachery, heroism, betrayal, romance, loyalty, tragedy, joy, warfare, honor, greed, virtue and every human, divine, angelic and demonic behavior, emotion, sin, and accomplishment that could ever be.

And most important of all, knowing it is the key to my understanding of God’s heart. It moves my heart and provides the anchor point – my “North Star” – for the unity of my mind and my body. So it’s become the main key of my approach towards the First Great Blessing: as my heart can become God’s, then my mind and body, my marriage and family, and even my creativity and stewardship over the things of this world can follow.

– “may the Word of God, in my heart resound.”