“How would you find me if I were on a far away star? You would set the direction automatically with a loving heart. When you set the right direction and say, ‘Teacher, Father!’ it will immediately strike the core.” (CSG 124-41, 1983.1.16)
The relationship with True Parents is not membership in an organization, attendance at events, or correct doctrinal belief. It is a directional orientation of the heart. A genuinely loving heart points toward True Parents the way a compass points north — automatically, regardless of distance, without needing to calculate or work it out.
This is a claim about love’s nature, not about religious performance. If the love is real, the orientation follows. If you have to consciously remind yourself to think about True Parents, the love is not yet a compass — it is still a decision. The practice is to deepen the love until it becomes the default orientation.
The daily instruction:
“You should therefore live your daily life with a heart that longs for your True Parents until you die. You should live a life in which you can shed tears for your True Parents before you leave this world. Only then will you enter the Kingdom of Heaven after you pass away.” (CSG 124-41)
Three things in this passage:
- Longing — not just respect or loyalty but an active, felt longing; the word implies missing someone, wanting to be with them
- Daily — this is not reserved for holy days or service moments; it is the texture of ordinary life
- Tears — the standard is high enough that genuine emotion is expected before death; not as performance, but as the natural result of love that has grown to that depth
What this reframes:
Most frameworks for spiritual growth ask: are you doing the right things? Reading, praying, serving, attending? This note adds a different question: do you long for True Parents? Is there a pull in your heart toward them that doesn’t require willpower to maintain?
This is the criterion that can’t be faked. You can perform the practices without the longing. You can’t have the longing without the love being real.
The inheritance at stake:
“God and True Parents embrace everything… God will bequeath this entire universe to us. We gain this amazing inheritance through True Parents when we meet them, make a determination to be eternally one with them, and follow through with this determination.” (CSG 124-39)
The compass that orients daily — the longing that produces tears — is the thing that makes the determination real and lasting. Without it, the determination is a resolution. With it, it is a relationship.
The certificate:
“The term ‘true parents’ brings with it all the blessings in heaven and earth and a certificate that guarantees eternal life… On the day you receive it, your third-generation ancestors will come and bow down.” (CSG 200-73, 1990.2.23)
The certificate is not received by belief or ceremony alone. It is received when the relationship is real — when the heart has actually turned toward True Parents and cannot turn away. That turning is what the longing and the tears indicate.
Devotional use
A simple practice this note suggests: notice, today, whether there is any longing for True Parents in you. Not a performed thought, but a felt pull. If yes — good; feed it. If not — that is the information. Not guilt, but a starting point. The compass can be oriented, gradually, through attention.
Moon’s suggestion is not “do more activities.” It is “cultivate the longing.” The activities follow from the longing, not the other way around.