Sun Myung Moon
Circa 1968
Excerpt
"Origin Source of the Loyalty and Filial Piety?"[1]
Unofficial Translation
Even if you experience lonely time periods when you feel you have no power within, you should not get discouraged. You should know through such periods you could overcome the valleys of your life. A border in the valley is the midpoint of the valley. The larger the valley, the wider is the bottom of the valley. You will experience a lonely time when you alone pass through the expanse of the bottom of the large valley. When you are there, neither God nor Satan can interfere with you. You must pass through it all by yourself. Like a boat has to navigate through sunken rocks in dark night, you must face such a dangerous time. You want to gut it out, but you have no power left in you. Then you will be overcome with the feeling that God has forsaken you. You are so bewildered that you cannot tell if God really even exists.
The question is how can you overcome such a time? You must remind yourself of a past time when you were filled with joy because of the grace and blessings you received from God, as if you were a bee that was intoxicated with nectar. You need to have such experiences. God who protected me in the past when I faced difficulty is my loving Parent. I am without a doubt God's child. No matter how curved and contorted the road your travel takes you, in the end God will put you in the position to fulfill the purpose of His love. This is absolutely true, no matter what.
A reason why God lets you go through this process is that He wants you to realize something very important and very significant. For that reason, God gives you this kind of time period. It is not that God is blocking the way so that you must face this lonely period. If you face a period of loneliness, you must overcome the period with faith that is rooted in the conviction that God loves you from your personal standard -- that God has been protecting you and encouraging you. In spite of what people may say, you must overcome such a lonely period. You cannot depend on anyone. You must not be discouraged even if you fall into the position where no one recognizes you.
When you are lonely, you must realize that God too must be agonizing, since He has to place you, His loving child, in such a position of loneliness. Do you agree with this? God is in the same position as parents who anguish over their child as they helplessly see their child suffering. Realizing this, as you go through this lonely period, God will be filled with a great desire to love you even more. However, He cannot give you love because it is a time you have to go through alone.
So, you should know as soon as you go through the lonely course, God's love will reach to you. So, you must go through the period with this faith. You should know once you overcome that, you will definitely receive great blessings. After you experience this several times, you will never doubt God's Will nor wonder about your destiny even though you are over and over going through a lonely course, or being placed in a lonely position. In this way, you will learn the process for going through a lonely period.
Note:
1: "Origin of The Loyalty and Filial Piety" is several volumes of books compiled Father Moon's speeches (many of them spoken in Japanese) from later 60's to early 80's by Rev. Kamiyama. For the above excerpt, it is not clear which speech it is taken from.