Genuine Love

Topic: Love, Compassion, & Kindness

Love is the fountain of an individual’s happiness, life and joy. This precious, genuine love is not obtainable through external knowledge or external conditions or techniques. True love can be felt only through experience and acquired through life.

Hak Ja Han Moon

Hak Ja Han Moon, born on February 10, 1943, in Anju, South Pyeongan Province, now part of North Korea, fostered a deep connection with God from an early age, which significantly influenced her life's direction. At the age of six, she and her family undertook the daunting task of escaping to South Korea to avoid the challenging conditions in North Korea. This testing journey, early in life, instilled a resilience within her, underpinning her dedication to peace and unity.

In 1960, she wed the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Their union was more than a marriage; it was a partnership of shared goals, dedicated to creating bridges across divides. Together, they laid the groundwork, notably through the Unification movement, addressing reconciliation and unity across sectors such as education, politics, arts, and human rights. However, following the transition of her husband to the spiritual world in 2012, Dr. Moon faced the challenge of not only preserving but also expanding upon their shared legacy. With determination and vision, she took up the mantle, advancing global initiatives with renewed emphasis on education, environmental conservation, and humanitarian outreach.

Beyond her role as a wife, mother, and grandmother, Dr. Moon's leadership has been marked by her ability to continue building on the foundation she co-laid with her husband. The Marriage Blessing initiative, which they began with three couples in 1960, has grown exponentially under her stewardship, influencing millions worldwide. Her founding of the Sun Hak Peace Prize and the "Peace Starts With Me" global tour are testament to her independent initiatives post-2012, which have garnered international respect. Amid challenges and headwinds, Dr. Moon has emerged as a significant spiritual leader, both continuing the work she began with her husband and charting a distinct path forward.

Heavenly Parent's Holy Community

Moon, Hak Ja Han. A Model For the Ideal Family and World Peace. Vol. 2, Sun Hak Institute of History, 0AD, p. 171

Hak Ja Han Moon

Theme: Love

About Hak Ja Han Moon’s Quote [Commentary]

Hak Ja Han Moon teaches that “true love can be felt only through experience and acquired through life.” In the surrounding passage, she affirms that “love is the fountain of an individual’s happiness, life and joy.” This kind of love cannot be gained “through external knowledge or external conditions or techniques.” Instead, it becomes real only through personal growth and direct experience. Her words point to a process in which love is not learned in theory but becomes known by living it.

Hak Ja Han Moon describes how this love unfolds over time. As children receive their parents’ love, they experience “the heart of children.” With siblings, they come to feel “the heart of brothers and sisters.” Through marriage, they encounter “the heart of husband and wife,” and through raising children, they come to know “the parental heart.” These stages of love are not merely relational roles but experiences through which individuals deepen in character. The rhythm of life itself offers the conditions through which “true love can be felt” and steadily acquired.

This growth in love reflects what Hak Ja Han Moon sees as the purpose of human life: “to develop and embody God’s true love, step-by-step, during their growth period, through their life experiences.” As this love matures, it takes on “the same qualities of maturity, unselfishness and total investment that characterize God’s own love.” Each stage, each relationship, becomes a place where love is both given and received—where life itself becomes the means through which the heart is formed.

Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, A Foundation of True Love [Context Excerpt]

“As people grow, receiving their parents’ love, they experience the heart of children. And through the love of brothers and sisters, they experience the heart of brothers and sisters. When they mature as perfected true people with true character, through their married life, they experience conjugal love and the heart of husband and wife. When they give birth to children, through those children they experience the parental heart. All creation wants love and needs love. And people are especially filled with happiness when they feel true love and live a life based on true love. When they give and receive love, they are vibrant with life. The perfume of life blossoms in genuine love.

Love is the fountain of an individual’s happiness, life and joy. This precious, genuine love is not obtainable through external knowledge or external conditions or techniques. True love can be felt only through experience and acquired through life.

Human beings were created to develop and embody God’s true love, step-by-step, during their growth period, through their life experiences. In other words, people perfect their character as they experience, through this process of stages, the heart of a child, the heart of a brother or sister, the heart of a husband or wife and the heart of a parent. People’s character and happiness are determined by how rounded, how versatile and developed their love becomes as a result of experiencing these stages of life. To achieve the perfected ideal, their love must come to have the same qualities of maturity, unselfishness and total investment that characterize God’s own love.”

–Hak Ja Han Moon [A Model For the Ideal Family and World Peace. Vol. 2] p. 171.

Hak Ja Han Moon lives the ideal she teaches

Hak Ja Han Moon lives the ideal she teaches—that “true love can be felt only through experience and acquired through life.” In her words, love is not found through “external knowledge or external conditions or techniques,” but through the unfolding stages of life itself: the heart of a child, a sibling, a spouse, and a parent. Each of these experiences becomes a gift, a way in which human beings are guided to develop and embody “God’s true love… through their life experiences.” In honoring this path, Hak Ja Han Moon recognizes that the ability to grow in genuine love is not a private achievement, but a shared inheritance from our Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father—our Heavenly Parent—who ensures that each person has the inner ability to realize the same capabilities and “qualities of maturity, unselfishness and total investment that characterize God’s own love.”

Genuine Love

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