Brothers and Sisters

Because we believed that premature sexual relations led to the fall of man, discouraging sexual attraction and abstaining from relations before marriage was an essential part of our lifestyle. In contrast to the sexualized culture in which we lived, we were encouraged to think of all men as our brothers and all women as our sisters. So instead of looking at men or women as sexual objects or competitors, we saw each other as members of our own family.  We even referred to each other "brothers" and "sisters" as well.

This was actually a huge relief to me. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, I was sick of the sexual looks and pressure I had always felt from men. Also, I was tired of worrying about the way I looked, always wondering if I was attractive enough, was wearing the right clothes, if I was too fat, etc. Now I could relax around guys and relate to them just as I had related to my own two physical brothers.

Another huge relief related to this was that my relationship to food began to change. From about age 12, I had been constantly worried about my weight, thinking that I was too fat. I had developed the destructive habits of secretly starving myself and binging, and cycling back and forth between the two. At that time there was not the kind of awareness that there is now about eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. I think that had I ever heard about bulimia and the method of vomiting to expel digested food from the body, I would have eagerly taken on that practice. Fortunately, I never did. Anyway, after joining the church I gradually got over my eating disorder when I stopped worrying about how I looked to others, especially to men.

Relationships between "brothers" and "sisters" were very strict in order to discourage sexual attraction and relationships from developing. We slept in separate rooms, sat on different sides of a room during meetings, and when traveling together sat in different rows in the vans. When a man needed to meet alone with a woman, the door to the meeting room was always left open. We dressed very conservatively as well with the women wearing skirts and tops, and the men wearing slacks and shirts with ties. We women kept our hairstyles short and simple and the men's hair was cut short as well.

Although we adhered to these rules, occasionally relationships would form and these couples usually ended up leaving the church. What helped the rest of us hang in there was hope for the future. We knew that if we kept our purity then eventually we would be married at the appointed time. At that time in the church, Rev. Moon personally matched all of the couples. Most of us were completely fine with this because we had faith in his spirituality and wisdom to select the right mate for us. Also, we knew about the tract record of the secular world where people chose their own mates. Half of these marriages ended up in divorce. In my own family, my mother was on her third marriage. In another blog I will talk about the matching process and the wedding, known as the "Blessing." I have now been happily married to my matched husband for 32 years.

During the period of time before getting married we were encouraged to work on our own spiritual development and relationship with God. The "Fall" took place because of immaturity, so we were told to work on ourselves first so that when we finally were together with our mate, our relationship would be based on a strong relationship with God.

Rev. Moon said that the quickest way to grow spiritually was to learn to love and to practice loving and serving others. Because God loves all humanity, our challenge was to become like Him by loving all types of people including those who were difficult to love. He said that our model was Jesus, who went to the point of even sacrificing his life for his enemies out of love. Rev. Moon said that if we learned to love others like God does, then we would be much more able to love our spouse and children unconditionally later. This made a lot of sense to me because so many people go into marriage hoping to get something from the other person instead of wanting to give. And then when the spouse doesn't fulfill their expectations, they become disillusioned and end up getting divorce. But if we all could become givers of unconditional love, there could never be any divorce.

In my next blog I will talk about our education and activities we did in order to develop that kind of unconditional love.

Weekend Blog

I started a full-time internship today. I'll have to wait until the weekends to do the blog for at least the next 4 months, until the internship is over.  So I'll write again this coming weekend.

Collective Consciousness

For any of you who are familiar with Jungian psychology, you may know that Jung talked about the "collective consciousness."  He said that we have a conscious mind, an unconscious mind and the collective conscious. The conscious and unconscious minds are based on our personal experiences. But the collective conscious is different in that it has no basis in personal experience and yet is shared by all people.  It consists of a common set of beliefs and ideas we all share that are called "archetypes." These beliefs are very familiar to all of us and we recognize them over and over again in stories and fables. An example of an archetype is the wise old man. Think Merlin the magician or Obi One Kenobi. We see this pattern of the wise old man in many tales.

I realized that the story of the Fall of Man also consists of very familiar archetypes. One is the  "Damsel in Distress," where the villain tries to take the fair maiden for himself. He is always older, more powerful, and wiser and more cunning. She is young, beautiful and innocent. It always requires a young hero to save her from the villain, whom she falls in love with and then lives happily ever after with.  Examples that immediately come to my mind are the Phantom of the Opera, the Princess Bride and even cartoons such as Popeye. (My favorite example as a child was Mighty Mouse who always saved his girlfriend from the evil cat before being run through the sawmill.) Many times the hero is humble with no wealth, as in the Princess Bride. In contrast, the evil prince is rich and powerful. But what the hero's got going for him is his pure heart.

In the Principle, we see the same pattern. Lucifer was older and wiser than both Adam and Eve. He was also very powerful, having been God's right hand for eons. He wanted Eve for himself, attracted by her youthful beauty as well as hoping to maintain and consolidate his power. In contrast, Adam was innocent and young, not yet possessing the wisdom he needed to understand his place in God's kingdom and Lucifer's evil intentions. He was meant to become Eve's true love at the appropriate time and then to live with her happily ever after. However, unlike the stories above, this one did not have a happy ending. Instead of saving Eve from Lucifer's evil clutches, he was brought down by her and fell under the domination of Lucifer as well.

Another archetype in this story is the good person who becomes evil, or the "Fall from Grace." Think of Darth Vader from Star Wars. Originally his destiny was to become the greatest Jedi, fighting on the side of goodness. But he succumbs to the "dark force," losing his position and instead becoming a powerful leader of the dark side. Likewise, Lucifer was God's most beloved servant. But he feared that he was losing God's love. But rather than continuing to trust God, he gave into his insecurities and turned away from God. However, had he remained faithful, he would have received even more love from God through fulfilling his responsibility to care for and raise up Adam and Eve. Think of a parent with an older and a younger child. When the older child is jealous and hurts the younger one, the parent feels pain. But when the older one cares for the younger one, the parent's love for the older child becomes even greater.

Last but not least is the archetype of the Lost Eden. We see this over and over in stories about utopias and lost paradises. This is because deep in our hearts we all know that this world is not the true world we are meant to be living in and the true life we were meant to live.

So somewhere way back in our collective conscious, we recognize the truths in this story because it's part of our collective history. But as I said earlier, when I first heard the Fall of Man, it completely went over my head. It was hard for me to believe in angels, in Adam and Eve, and in God. Even so, I had to admit that this explanation of the Fall made a lot more sense than the idea of a literal fruit being the cause of the downfall of the entire world.

Next time I will talk about life in the church and how the ideas from the Principle influenced the lifestyle of members.

For more information, watch the video "The Fall of Man" at: 
http://www.reverendsunmyungmoon.org/rev_moon_teaching.html