Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Many have expressed recently the interest in meditation and I was inspired by our brother Jin Li for his passion to share this content. It includes Father’s words on meditation as well as other resources. Please take a look! Thank you Jin Li!

Books:

1) The Power is Within You by Louise Hay

2) The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

3) Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza

 

Meditations:

1) Vipassana meditation (Jin Li attended the 10 days silent meditation- he describes it as the most rewarding and hardest thing he’s ever done)

2) Joe Dispenza meditation (Youtube)

3) Louise Hay meditation (YouTube)

4) Tai Chi meditation—various, example, Master Chunyi Li – (Youtube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dL2ztzn0zU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyINAjEoTIs

 

Here is the Drowning Man’s story that we can learn from!

The Drowning Man story

A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.

Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”

The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.”

So, the rowboat went on.

Then a motorboat came by. The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.”

To this the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

So, the motorboat went on.

Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.”

To this the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

So, the helicopter reluctantly flew away.

Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you, but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!”

To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?”

Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Teachings On Meditation

Compiled by Taekon Lee
September 1, 2010

As you become one with all beings, what phenomena will occur? You will feel something multidimensional that you have never felt before. It will come mysteriously…

Once you enter the door to your mind, you will have intuitions and premonitions. Maybe as you walk down the street you see a bird flying. All of sudden, you feel the door to your mind opening. You do not realize what is happening, but suddenly you receive a heavenly inspiration that teaches you some lesson. Maybe the inspiration will hit you when you hear someone talking. The more you practice, the more often you will experience such incidents.

The next stage is to enter a dream-like state, not a dream in deep sleep but a state half dreaming and half waking. The Apostle Paul experienced three levels of heaven in that state, when he did not know whether it was a dream or reality…

Do not let such experiences pass casually. Collect them, analyze them logically, and figure out the direction that God is leading you. Keep a record of your experiences every day and you will see that your most unforgettable visions actually came true; their predictions were one hundred percent accurate.

Maybe in that dream-like state you were talking with someone about certain things, and later on you actually talk with that person and the things you discussed actually happen. Maybe in your dream you and a friend were singing a certain song. Later on that person actually sings it. Such phenomena can take place. What do they mean? You entered a spiritual realm, and there your mind was resonating with everything in that realm. Your mind was like a tuning fork, resonating with the vibrations of the cosmos. If you have such an experience, treasure it as precious…

Where does God appear to us? Not in the sky, but in the mind. For this reason, we know that our self and our original mind are two different entities. If you do not feel it, it is because your original mind has not fully established its existence. Being often dragged about by the body, it cannot stand. Therefore, once your mind is established in its existence and subjectivity, things will change.

Once you reach a higher state, during prayer you can communicate with your original mind. Your prayer will resonate with your mind, and you will hear yourself in your mind. At this stage you will receive messages or warnings about events in your daily life. Religious people should keep a record of these experiences.

Whenever you relate with someone, do not be careless or indifferent. Think, “What can this person teach me?” Have a hungry mind, eager to learn something new from him or her. Also, you should discern right away whether to relate to him or her as your subject partner or as your object partner… Then your mind will be happy and will be automatically attracted to that person.

This is due to the influence of mind waves. Do you believe that every mind emits mind waves? When you meet a butcher, don’t you smell meat? When you meet a fabric merchant, don’t you smell fabric? Just as you can smell a person’s unique body odor, you can also smell the mind’s odor. Such phenomena happen.

In our body, we have a special sense which strives to reach out to everything. It sends out invisible energy waves to locate its object partners. It is true. Even if our mind wants to go its own way, it cannot. As the pole of a magnet is attracted to the opposite pole, minus is attracted to plus, and plus is attracted to minus.

Therefore, the attitude of believers should be that all beings are related to us. Why? Due to the Human Fall we lost all relationships — with God, among human beings and with nature, all were entirely severed. In order for us to reconnect our relationships, we should always strive to make these connections ourselves. If we do not have the attitude to make connections with others, we cannot improve the environment in which we live.

For this reason, you should all have a mind to anticipate new things. When praying in the morning, you should feel, “Today, something good will happen.” But do not just think that good things will just happen. You have to seek for them. This attitude of seeking should be your life of faith. Experience and continual practice bring relationships to life. Yet it all stems from cultivating a dream-like state in meditation. (76:129-133, February 2, 1975)

Sometimes we hold all-night prayer vigils, focusing on God and leaving all worldly matters aside. We do not sleep, but try to enter a state beyond sleep. As we cultivate the mind and repress our consciousness, remnants of our flesh mind sink down and our spirit rises to the surface like pure water.

Then although we are tired, we reach a state beyond sleep — a state where we are half sleeping and half awake. We can hear sounds, but not precisely; we can see things, but not clearly. Dream-like phenomena unfold, and God can instruct us.

We hold prayer vigils to disconnect from carnal desires and unify the spirit. Your spirit will be elevated to the point where God may give you a glimpse of your future. After many of these vigils, you will arrive at a state where in prayer you see visions and hear voices. Your eyes see events both spiritual and earthly; your ears hear sounds both spiritual and earthly. Then you can direct events in the spirit world and on earth. (91:275, February 27, 1977)

At the next level, we can receive oral directions or symbolic visions. Visions require careful analysis. Directions are directly given, but visions require interpretation, and this is where we meet with problems. Heaven often teaches us by words, but sometimes it is through a vision. For example, you have a vision of a beautiful spring-like day; a pair of deer drinks at a stream and then looks far off at the mountains. That vision is a very good sign, and you can expect that something good will happen.

This is not a coincidence. God is working to cultivate the field of your mind. Why so? The field of your mind is not flat like glass. It is rough and uneven. It may appear flat, but look closer and you see that its surface is rough. When the light of Heaven hits a rough surface, it is not reflected, but scatters in all directions. That is why revelations are received and interpreted differently. Therefore, to properly discern Heaven’s guidance, we need to cultivate the various aspects of our mind, piece by piece. This requires our effort.

Beyond the stage of revelations as oral directions or symbolic visions, we arrive at the stage of direct revelations in silence. Like John in the Book of Revelation, you can have spiritual experiences all day long, journeying into the other world and exploring its mysteries. Eventually, everyone is to be connected to the spirit world, reaching the realm of God’s heart and feelings.

Unless you experience such things in your life of faith, you cannot carry out God’s great Will on the stage of your own life. Therefore, I do not trust believers who have not had actual spiritual experiences. Please understand how important it is for you to have these spiritual experiences for cultivating your life of faith…

God works when you pray, sending His spiritual power like electricity. But since this high-voltage energy is stronger than your consciousness, it will lift your consciousness to feel the supernatural.

However, when supernatural and divine emotions come inside you, your body, imbedded with fallen nature, rebels against God’s original divinity. Fallen people do not naturally harmonize with God’s divine energy, no matter how strongly it tries to penetrate. As a result, the energy does not come all at once. Like alternating plus and minus energies, like a spreading sound wave that is sometimes strong and sometimes gentle, the energy comes as a series of vibrations. They overwhelm your conscious mind and display their spiritual power. That is how God performs His work.

When God is working with you all the time like this, what happens? Your body-centered fallen nature is gradually purified, and eventually it will accept God’s indwelling activity naturally and 100 percent. Then, when God ceases sending His spiritual power in this way, your own spirituality will exceed God’s work in you. At that point God will be with you, and He will teach you without your realizing it.

You should reach this level of total purification, after going through all these stages: the dreamlike state, oral directions, revelations, and so on. At this level, your mind will fully direct you. You may want to chastise someone, but your mind will stop you. You may want to say something sweet, but instead you say words of admonishment. Such phenomena can seem incomprehensible. You need to learn how to adjust to them, otherwise, you could be regarded as an insane person.

You must absolutely experience something like this in your life of faith. People who experience these things in their life of faith, always testing and experimenting, will become strong. They have first-hand knowledge and do not need to believe what others tell them. Experience and practice are the most necessary elements in our life of faith. (76:133-136, February 2, 1975)

In the mind there is a door, called the door to the mind. God enters through that door. That door does not open only to one direction. Since the mind is in motion, the door is also in motion. For God (plus) to enter through this door, we should relate to Him as a minus (object partner). Yet if our direction is slightly off, even by just a degree, the door will not open.

There indeed exists a door to the mind of each human being. You can discern it in your prayers. The feeling you get when you pray changes depending upon the time of day. Praying at 1:00 a.m. has a different feeling than praying at 3:00 a.m. Try it yourself, and you will sense the difference. If you pray in a deep mysterious state, you will feel different depending upon what time you are praying. The feelings of your prayers in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening are all different.

The same is with the state of our mind. Our emotions change with the seasons, our feelings towards our loved ones change; in such ways the world of the mind is constantly changing. That is why we need to discover the best time to pray. You need to pray when your spiritual senses are keen, so your sensitivity to God will be high. As you enter deeper and deeper into a state of feeling connected to God, you will eventually reach the door to the mind.

The door to your mind connects with the door to God’s mind. Once it opens, the way unfolds to experience God’s feelings.

What should you do to enter such a state? You should cultivate your mind. First, examine the state of your mind. It was originally to be at the zero point, but because of the Fall its direction has deviated by 180 degrees. Although your mind is supposed to rest at the zero point, because of the Fall it behaves randomly and unpredictably. Your first task is to return it to the original point.

Since we are 180 degrees opposite the zero point, we should struggle to turn around in a clockwise direction. As we move in this direction seeking the zero point, we will feel a minus-like sensation. Nevertheless, most people are inclined to go counterclockwise. Yet going in that direction they will not succeed, even if they continue for a thousand years. Everyone must return to the zero point…

If your mind is deviated from the path by a certain angle, you should adjust your mind’s direction by the opposite angle and return it to the proper course… Each of us has a good mind and an evil mind. You may think that your mind is always good, it is not so. As a result of the Fall, human beings are contaminated by Satan’s realm of evil minds. We struggle to remain in the realm of good minds.

For this reason, what is most important is to find the zero point and reach the door to the mind. Learning how to do this is crucial in our life of faith. Therefore, you should learn to discern when is the right moment to open the door to your mind and how to match it to the door of God’s mind. (76:127-129, February 2, 1975)

We need training in the way we think and the way we use our mind. Meditation and prayer are methods for cultivating the mind. (67:178, June 10, 1973)

Zen meditation brings your mind to a level place on the horizontal line. There you lose consciousness of self. Consciousness is formed through resonance; in that horizontal state it can resonate with wavelengths coming from the vertical world. (296:203, November 9, 1998)

When we pray or meditate, as when Buddhists practice Zen, we are seeking a state that is void of self. What is our goal in seeking this state? It is to awaken the elements that can become the nucleus of the mind. If you set that one standard and establish the center of your mind, you will see, hear and cognize everything in accord with the principles of Heaven. Then you can offer a full bow before God and return Him glory. (2:193, May 19, 1957)

We seek the deep ravine of the world of mind. Buddhists who meditate also ask, “What is mind?” and enter the deep ravine of the mind. When you enter the deep ravine of the mind and journey to the state of the original mind before the Human Fall, you will be connected to Heaven. Indeed, without entering the world of the mind, you cannot make a relationship with Heaven.

As long as we are holding on to the world, we cannot contact or attend Heaven. Human beings are composed of mind and body, yet because spirit and flesh are in opposition, we are unable to attain the original world of the mind in a state of mind-body unity. Instead, the journey to the world of the mind requires that we deny the world of body — deny it one hundred percent. We have to remove all that the body desires and isolate ourselves from the world. We have to separate from the world and put it behind us. This is the religious path; it is opposite the ways of the world. It seeks that original point to which we should return. (21:37-38, September 1, 1968)

Make your mind taut like a round air-filled balloon. If you are insecure or self-centered, or if you are approaching things from a personal viewpoint, then your mind is not round but wrinkled and jagged. Therefore, you need to stretch your mind and make it round.

When your mind rolls like a ball, it makes smooth contact with a flat plane. But if it is jagged, only the points make contact. In that case, it will not smoothly stimulate anything but will act against everything. That is when we feel conscience-stricken, and if we continue this way gradually the standard of our conscience will decline.

Therefore, you need to keep your mind taut like a round balloon. Then upon receiving a stimulus, the whole of it will resonate. Take two tuning forks and strike one; the other will vibrate with the same frequency. A well-rounded mind makes a good resonating vessel. It has the sensitivity to feel the spiritual vibration coming from the Subject Being. Therefore, when living a life of faith, you need to take time to meditate. Meditate while longing for goodness. When you meditate, open the door of your mind completely and make your mind round.

Then, God’s original nature and your original nature will resonate together. The individual qualities of your mind [e.g., your spring-like personality] will resonate completely with those same qualities of God, uniting you in a complete relationship with the Subject Being. In that state, when you go out to pursue your desired purpose, God will certainly be with you. (40:278, February 7, 1971)

Happy October BFC!

Check out these amazing pumpkin carvings by our very own, Taka Sugawara, perfect for the season!