Good morning. Let’s talk about love. What do you want to love? [Hyo Jin waits for an answer]
Say Something! [Laughter] What do you want to love? [God] You want to love God, what else? [Everybody] I guess this is the kind of answer you’d expect in a religious setting, right? What about people who are not religious? What do you think that they want to love? Money, fame, power, beauty? And so I guess we all have our definition of love. It depends on a kind of tribal reality. The particulars are obviously stressed.
That’s the kind of the basic difference that makes it difficult at times to unite everybody because a lot of us all around the world are based on that kind of reality, tribal reality. What we value as love, the concept of it, varies. So while everybody knows love is good, the value of love differs. There is obviously a potential for conflict, and that difference makes it difficult at times. But certain things are fundamental regardless of how you may like a particular thing, desire a particular thing. One could translate that desire as the definition of love.
Certain particulars are universal. And any time you talk about unity, we have to understand, if it exists, what that particular is. Otherwise we have no grounds for unification. There is no foundation. There is no basis. So that recognition, if there is such a thing, should be the grounds in which we plant the seed. Otherwise it won’t happen.
When you talk about love, whom do you want to love? What kind of people do you want to love? Beyond the kind of material thing that we like to love, if there is a type of people you want to love? What type of people can we think about universally and have a kind of mutual understanding in the basis of whom you want to love? There has to be some kind of quality there.
It’s very difficult to unite something unless you have that understanding, unless you want to love something. When you try to show love to your children, first of all there has to be a basis on which they can understand and they can reciprocate with you. That becomes the cause of understanding or realizing love. What is that?
You can start with giving, right? What kind of giving? Based on the level of understanding and maturity, that is the first thing that teaches us of the concept of love.
It might start with the frivolous things for children because they’re still immature. Their maturation level is relatively low, however it starts with giving. Giving what? It varies. But the concept of giving is the basis of learning about love or making love, the realization of love.
So what do you want to give? When you talk about the concept of giving what is actually happening? If that is the cause, what is the effect? When you give something to somebody, hopefully you give because you want that person to what? To become better, right? And that completion of cause and effect, action and reaction, makes you realize love. And it has to be better, to make you better in the end.
When you give certain things to children, that giving or that understanding, feeling better might be temporary because you’re giving candy or what not. You make them feel better. They’re sad and all of a sudden you give them candy and they feel better. It might be very short in terms of duration. However through that little child, by the action of giving, something has turned in their little moment of life, in their head, something better.
So when we mature to the point of understanding eternity or start to ponder or try to understand God, obviously the value of giving or the quality of giving, the stuff that you want to receive takes on a value or takes on a meaning that is equal to that pursuit. Right? You want to learn about eternity. You want to learn about God. Then the giving, the something that makes you better should possess that kind of eternal quality.
So it changes as we mature. And as we mature to the fullest adulthood, so we can start to understand those things, the things of value in terms of making you better takes on those definitions because it must. That is what’s valuable in giving.
You talk about unconditional giving, but the funny thing is that even unconditional giving has conditions. Why? It has to make you better in the eyes of God. It has to make you a better person who can co-relate and co-exist with God for eternity. You can’t just unconditionally give money to terrorist so that they can kill people. That’s not unconditional giving,
Even forgiveness too, there is no such thing as unconditional forgiveness. It has to have meaning, purpose. If it has a purpose, it has a condition. How can you forgive somebody if he doesn’t have in his heart the wrong that he has committed? What is the purpose? There is no purpose then. There is no meaning. It has to have conditions. Even in giving someone unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness, it has conditions because it must serve a purpose. The purpose of goodness right? Eternal goodness. Otherwise there’s no meaning. They’ll do it again and again and again right?
What is the purpose of forgiving wrong if it’s going to be done over and over and over again? It has no purpose. We want to love people who make us better, right? That’s the kind of love that we want, right? Someone who can help you to be better. Because when you receive that kind of love, you know it’s meaningful to you as much as to the person who gives it away. And that’s the kind of meaningful thing, and that’s the kind of people you want to love in the end, for a long time, the longer the better right? [Yes] And that’s not easy. Who said it was easy right? [Laughter]
Anything that is meaningful, anything that is worthwhile holding onto forever is challenging, will be difficult to achieve, but it can be done. If God can endure all sorts of misery and pain, that we’ve … in our life time. If God’s allowing us to understand and make that happen, then He will assist us in every which way. That’s a pretty good deal isn’t it? [Laughter] And it can be done if we understand the value of love and how it’s done, and if we take responsibility to try to be the kind of people for people around you. People around us want to truly love you, it can be done. That’s the grass-root thing. You know what I’m saying? [Yes] It will grow. That stuff, if it grows that way, it will last, because it will take root first and it will grow. And I believe everybody can do that, be valuable to someone else, because you can give to someone else something of value and make someone else better, hopefully better than you.
Now that is the Ideal World. That’s how you build it. If there is a way, that’s the way. You can do it. You might get addicted to it. Who knows? Certain personality types gravitate to those things much quicker than the other people you know? So it varies, but it can be done. The more people like that we have, the better for our movement. Okay?
Take care you guys.