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Okay, well let’s go on with my adventures in Korea. I know I tend to go off on a tangent sometimes and get into this
message thing. A part of my writing these articles is to allow myself to get all of this off my chest. After all, I’ve
never really had much of an opportunity to vent this with anyone. I went through a lot while a member of the Unification Church.
I was a member of this messianic organization. Now, I call it a messianic organization because I feel that it is. I believe
that up until a certain time Sun Myung Moon was a very important messianic figure. If you who are reading this are a member
in good standing then I applaud you. If you’re not then that’s okay too but, let me ask you; what’s going
on? Did raising your children and having to hold down a job get in the way of you devoting a lot of your time to that cause?
Well, that’s okay. You’ve got to take care of your family, right? But if after taking that time away from a full-time
mission to take care of your family you’re just going through the motions then why are you doing that? For your children?
Okay, but what about you?
I address this problem in the first article on that articles page in “Why Do We Go To Church?” You should read
it. Spirituality isn’t just about going to church every Sunday or tithing or any of that. If you’ve had a chance
to read my paper on “The Integration of Male and Female Aspects of Men and Women” I really go deeply into this.
Spirituality is about coming to grips with who you are. Who are you? What’s your purpose in life. When you joined the
church way back then weren’t those questions that you thought you had answered for yourself. What’s my purpose
in life? To serve True Parents and establish the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.
Um, I don’t think so. I mean, if that’s your purpose, fine. It’s you who have to know once and for all what
your purpose is on this Earth but is that really your purpose or a purpose given to you by virtue of the collective
mindset of the Unification Church or the Family Federation For World Peace or whatever you want to call it? Spirituality is
again, coming to grips with who you are. Spending time alone, quieting your mind in contemplation or meditation and meeting
yourself. Spirituality is your own quest for truth and nobody else’s.
I spent many years and a lot of time trying to figure this one out. Mainly because I was in pain, emotional pain. Perhaps
you were lucky and life hadn’t dealt you so much discomfort. Perhaps you were popular in high school, became class president
and achieved a lot in college and then when it came time to join the church you just happened to stand out amongst the rest
as a leader whether you became an MFT captain or a state leader or in whatever leadership role you served in.
You see, that didn’t happen to me. Adolescence was the toughest time for me. I started smoking pot when I was fifteen
and I was a burnout, skipping class and never graduating. I had to get my high school equivalency diploma when I was 31 years
old when my wife convinced me that I should go back to college. When I joined the church, it was great and I was so inspired
but I was so lost. I hadn’t an ounce of self respect and I was a nobody in the church. I was a grunt working in a hot
sweaty fiberglass boat factory in New York City. I was that struggling member you always saw dragging his ass around the church
center, the guy on MFT who couldn’t make the grade and it got so bad that I was placed on the Struggling Members
Team selling roses in the middle of winter when everyone else was either selling those Monchicis or the laser prints.
I was standing on a street corner in the middle of a bedroom community suburb, for God’s sake, in the middle of winter
with my bucket of roses tucked inside a plastic covered card table with a Coleman lantern so that they wouldn’t freeze
in the 15 degree Chicago winter all because I couldn’t come out of myself enough to see that every day as I went fundraising
I had this opportunity to love people as I went fundraising. You all read my testimony before. My life was pathetic. And I
went from mission to mission just trying to survive another day, another year and that went on for 15 years until I just said,
Stop.
One reason why I said stop, one experience that I had that really helped me say stop was when I was at the Seminary. Did you
ever read Nan Sook Hong’s book, “In The Shadow Of The Moons”? Go to page 186 and in the last paragraph of
that page is a brief story about me and Hyo-Jin Moon. For those non-church members, Hyo-Jin Moon is Reverend Moon’s
second oldest child and eldest son. Without going into details about Hyo-Jin let’s just say that he was a tortured soul.
I’ve made my peace with him since his passing from this world on Saint Patrick’s Day of this year but he was giving
a talk during Professor Shimyo’s “Life Of Faith” class in the fall of 1994. When he finished he asked if
there were any questions. I put a very general question to him about his remarks. He took offence at what I said and walked
down the aisle, then over to my chair and assaulted me. Nan Sook was behind him trying to hold him back. Dr. Shimyo was off
in the corner, frozen with fear and refusing to bring order to his class and eject this bully from his class. And someone
else was holding me down as Hyo-Jin was foaming at the mouth looking like he was going to continue pummeling me.
It was after that when I began doing my research on this paper which I’ve posted here on my web site. And that was the
beginning of my path of exploration into my own soul. Of course it was the beginning of the end of my membership in the church
though I remained silent about my intentions until I graduated in the summer of the following year. Then my wife and I and
our daughter conveniently moved to Connecticut where she began working at a local Community College.
So, that was a good impetus for me to begin questioning the religion I was currently involved in, and then questioning what
are my core values and then begin to get at the heart of the matter once and for all. Who am I and why am I here? What is
my own spiritual path? Why am I suffering. Is there a connection between why I am suffering and the spiritual path that is
mine to tread? And coincidentally there was.
You see, when I began to ask those questions to myself or my Higher Self as I like to refer to it, I would listen, listen
real hard but then perhaps I heard or felt feelings and I tried to interpret those feelings. You see, feelings are the key.
Thinking isn’t. I’ve done enough thinking and criticizing and judging myself for years and years. But it’s
when I began to feel and allow my emotions to be expressed whether they were happy or sad and even cry if I had to,
that I really started to connect to myself. And that was a recent development, last summer, fact.
Okay, so I’ve been considering the fact that I’ve been writing all of these articles about my life in the Unification
Church. Why? Why the hell am I doing this. To entertain you? I hope it’s been entertaining and that I’ve elicited
a few laughs and given you a reason to smile. But that’s not why I’m doing this. Yea, it’s been a process
in order to get this stuff off my chest and vent but I like to think of it as an introduction, a whetting of your appetite,
if you will, to the main course of which I wanted to address to you.
I want to talk about my own individual path of raising my spiritual consciousness. And that’s why I posted my paper
recently. Because when you talk about spirituality you cannot avoid the Sacred Feminine. She is the keeper of the Unconscious
World, what we’re all used to calling, The Spiritual World. But correct me if I’m wrong but—and I’m
chiefly addressing Unification Church members now—with all that the Divine Principle says about The Spirit World, would
you say that you have a good handle on what that means? You talk about The Spiritual World but what about Your
Spiritual World?
So, in the next installment of these next set of articles, let’s try to get away from the spiritual world we’ve
come to expect which is defined in the Divine Principle and get more into the World Of The Unconscious. I think that
will prove to be a discussion that is much more interesting and useful for you to know about.
Oh, and I know that you thought that I was going to talk more about my experience in Korea in this article. Shame on me for
I have led you astray. Not to worry; I promise that I will come back to that. In fact I’ll do something better. I’ll
weave it into these next series of articles as it is relevant to the topics that I bring up.
Part 2 of "My Spiritual Path"
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