by Rev. Thomas Phillips-Moscow, Russia
True Father has spoken often this year about the importance of being guided by our conscience so that God can directly guide our lives and dwell with us on earth. Father's concept of conscience in this usage is closer to our understanding of the original mind. Our conscience becomes fully developed when we come into the vertical understanding of truth which the Divine Principle gives to our lives. When we come into this vertical understanding of reality, we feel that most of our questions about life are answered through our conscience. This is what most of use experience after understanding the Divine Principle.
Centered upon our conscience we can come to stand as a true subject over our lives. The first step to connect to our conscience is to ask ourselves where we are standing today in the process of our spiritual growth. What is really motivating us? Somehow, part of the motivation may be lack of love. Human beings need love in order to be fulfilled; however, since the fall, we have been controlled by Satan with false love. To follow our conscience we first have to end the false subject which is directing our lives. We have to find how to deny him. We are receiving false joy and satisfaction from letting the false master be the subject over our lives. That is why religious life always begins with denial-the denial of the false subject in my life.
If we want to find our false subject, we can set out a task directed from our original mind such as sacrificing something we have for the sake of another person. After this we can listen to the counterproposals within ourselves. It requires honesty and courage to confront the enemy within ourselves. Then once we realize our false subject, we should deny it. Still, we would need to replace it with something positive-our true self.
The human spirit has the potential for change. After all, we were created to be worthy to call ourselves the sons and daughters of God. It is the experience of true love which can change a person. When our original self becomes the subject of our lives, we can receive true joy and happiness. The false self motivates us to do the wrong things in order to get love. The more we can learn to put our true self in the subject position, the more good energy comes to support us. If we look at the examples of Jesus and Father, rather than losing energy and power by totally investing themselves, they are constantly filled with more power.
In my ministry in the CIS, I have been very blessed to have the close support of Albertina Clarke and Thomas L.. We share the responsibility of assisting Dr. and Mrs. Seuk in the leadership of the CIS and the Baltic nations, representing them in their absence. Our relationship is based upon a deep heartistic unity which transcends any feeling of authority or position. The relationship among us is very fluid and spontaneous. Based upon our heartistic unity we have experienced many miracles in our daily life of God's close presence and guidance. Albertina represents the heart of absolute attendance to the True Parents and True Family and the higher spiritual realms led by Heung Jin Hyung Nim and Jesus Nim. Her heartful prayers of repentance and her passionate personal relationship with Heavenly Father and True Parents have been the spiritual basis for Jesus' appearance and guidance through Thomas L..
Spiritual phenomena in our movement have not had the best record, often becoming uncentered. Therefore, it is understandable that spiritual phenomena are met with suspicion. However, we are now living in a new era, as characterized by our new Family Pledge in which we pledge "to advance positive development daily in order to unify the subject spiritual world with the object physical world."
Those who have experienced the "Pentecostal appearances" of Jesus through Thomas L. can testify that Jesus speaks as one of the True Family testifying to the revelation of God revealed through the True Parents.
My own personal experience has greatly helped me personally to understand what it means to come from the archangelic realm into Adam's realm as a subject of the spiritual and physical world. Jesus came one evening in my flat while my wife and I were together with Thomas L. and Albertina Clarke. This experience has helped my wife and me to understand more deeply the value and dignity that True Parents have given us through the Blessing. Since then our marriage life has been greatly blessed, liberating us to deeper levels of relationship to one another, our family and the mission.
I want to share heart to heart with brothers and sisters the experience that is available to us at this time in the providence. I hope that the relationship between Albertina Clarke, Thomas L. and myself as a trinity can be an inspiration as what our working relationships as missionaries can be. We have no interest in position or authority over one another.
There are different viewpoints within our family, but how can we come together bringing unity among east and west, north and south? True Parents have come to do far more than unite the Unification movement: our goal is the unification of religions and cultures. It is my experience that if we center upon bringing liberation to our True Parents' grieving heart and are willing to do whatever is necessary to realize their expectations, we can then find unity within our diversity.
True Parents have an absolutely victorious standard on all levels, from the individual to the cosmic. They have created the environment in which we can complete ourselves as God's sons and daughters through providing us a formula course by which we can stand at least on the tribal level of messiahship. It will be through us that most of the world will know True Parents; therefore, we have the responsibility to realize our True Parents' words substantially in our lives, creating unity between races and nationalities and developing our character to incarnate God's heart. True Parents' expectation is that we become even greater than them, as fantastic as it sounds. Realizing that our lack of fulfillment takes away the authority of True Parents' words, we should testify to the world about True Parents through fulfilling their words in this, the Completed Testament Age.
We should believe that we can change and perfect ourselves if we follow the Principle pattern that True Parents have established. First, it requires that we are honest and frank about where we stand today in the process of our spiritual growth. Second, that we are flexible and willing to change, no matter what our age or how long we have been in the movement. And third, that we allow God and the higher realms of spiritual world to come to us, allowing us to stand in the center of harmony between God and True Parents' work in the subject spiritual world and the object physical world.
Reprinted from Family Ties.