In the previous article, we’d examined the very first sentence about the First Great Blessing in the Divine Principle:

The key to God’s first blessing is the perfection of individual character.…
• Exposition of the Divine Principle, p. 38

This time, we’ll move down a few sentences in the same paragraph:

…In order for an individual to perfect his character, he must form a four position foundation within himself whereby his mind and body become one… with God as their center. • Exposition of the Divine Principle, p. 38

The Perfection of Individual Character

As I’ve mentioned previously, mind-body unity is something that I’d striven for through yoga in my college years. After college I struggled to discipline myself especially through working outside in all seasons year after year. Then when I was around 30, I tried through the martial arts. Finally, in that much more controlled environment, I could make some limited but measurable headway — I earned a black belt.

But still, I felt that mind-body unity was a state that I could achieve only during intense moments in the training hall, when I’d lose myself in practice.

Mind and Body Centered on the Heart of God

It was only years later — especially after marriage — that I began to reconsider those moments in my life when I could become so lost in doing something that I forgot who and where I was, because I was so immersed in the moment. Because of the meditation practice that’s part of martial arts, I finally began recognizing many of those other moments as being Zen-like. Eventually, I realized that those experiences are commonly referred to as “being in the Zone”.

When I reexamined my life from that perspective, I recognized that I had slipped into the state mind-body unity more often than I realized — it wasn’t as terribly elusive as I’d thought. So that by now, I’ve come to believe that this elevated state approaches the kind of mind-body unity that the First Great Blessing describes. The one very important difference is that the Principle adds a phrase: “…with God as (the) center.” The paragraph goes on to explain that people who achieve the first blessing “…experience the Heart of God as if it were their own.”

Building on that idea, Unification Thought points out that:

“…in order for spirit mind and physical mind to become united, heart must be the center of their give and receive action. 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. …an education of heart turns out to be an education for the perfection of the individual. (It) refers to the education necessary to nurture children … to become persons who love all people and all things in the same way that God loves all people and all things. In order for children to become such people, it is necessary to guide them in experiencing God’s heart. • New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 250

It thus became clear to me that the difference between being “in the Zone” and the mind and body unity of the First Great Blessing was the full engagement of the heart with God. Unification Thought makes it clear that the most powerful uniter of a person’s body with their mind is their heart.

As I considered this, it became clear that what I love and care about above all other things is what most effectively brings mind and body together. It’s more effective than understanding something through my intellect, or stern self-discipline through my will. Anyone who’s been in love knows that physical inconvenience or discomfort can be ignored when we’re doing something for someone we love. We can endure cold, miss meals, miss sleep — as long as whatever difficulty we’re facing is for the sake of someone we love.

Experiencing the Heart of God as My Own

What the Principle says — what Father and Mother Moon have been trying to teach us — is that, if one can come to love God above all, then mind and body fall naturally into unity. I think that this is why Jesus was able to go through all that he did: not because of acute intellectual understanding or iron-willed self-discipline, but because of his profound filial love for his God. I understand that being in this state of heart is what the First Great Blessing is. My challenge then has become to get into the Zone — but with God as my center — when I do the things that naturally put me in the Zone. In my case, that’s been music or qigong. I used to get in the zone through martial arts, but now it’s through marital arts (i.e., the many different things I do with my wife).

There’s another thing in the paragraph describing the First Great Blessing. It’s this:

Such individuals… experience the Heart of God as if it were their own. Hence, they understand His Will and live fully attuned to it. …Sharing all the feelings of God as their own, they would never commit any sinful acts that would cause God grief. This means they would never fall. • Exposition of the Divine Principle, p. 38

I’ve come to think this is the very core of the first blessing: being in touch with the heart of God. Actually, in the very first pages of the Divine Principle, it’s written:

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, p. 8

Divine Principle from a Unification Thought perspective

As quoted earlier in the Unification Thought Theory of Education, an education of heart is key to achieving the First Great Blessing. The theory goes on to explain that there are three hearts of God to know: the heart of hope/expectation that God felt at the creation; the heart of grief/sorrow that God felt at the human fall; and the heart of pain/suffering that God felt during the course of the history of restoration.

That explanation transformed my relationship with the Divine Principle book. Because it then was revealed to me as not only a massive compilation of remarkable insights into the Bible and history, but underlying all that is an epic narrative of God’s Heart: Looking at it that way, I’ve come to feel that the book is my parents explaining to me the exquisite universe they had painstakingly designed out of infinite love for their children; then the anguished explanation of what went wrong, of the cataclysmic tragedy that destroyed all hopes and dreams; and then finally, the explanation of this shattered parent’s entire life afterwards, trying to pick up the pieces and somehow recover the family that was lost.

Years ago, Unification Thought made this perspective very clear to me, and over time, I find that my understanding of God’s Heart has indeed been transformed. What had once seemed impossibly beyond the reach of human comprehension has now become vivid and clear. And with the growing understanding of God’s heart that is revealed in the Divine Principle and other teachings of Father and Mother Moon, through some decades of effort, I see that it is continually and increasingly possible to live life in deference to that Heart, not because I must, but because I yearn to. ❦