You need to cultivate good habits and develop your spiritual senses. Nothing in your surroundings is meaningless.

Sun Myung Moon

Cultivate and Develop

Topic: Spiritual Growth & Practice

You need to cultivate good habits and develop your spiritual senses. Nothing in your surroundings is meaningless. Everything can be used as educational material, as a textbook for self-development. We need to have such an outlook on life. Then even when you are alone, you will not act just as you please. If you live with such an outlook on life, you will not mistreat anyone, whether an acquaintance or a stranger. You cannot treat a person casually simply because he or she is a stranger you meet for the first time. You really do not know who that person is. Therefore, in our life we need to develop our spiritual senses by relating with our environment centered on the standard of heart. People who never fail to find meaningful value, and delight in any situation or incident, are no longer practicing a faith that is merely conceptual. Such people practice real faith. Their life of faith is to live together with God.

Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon, born on January 6, 1920, was a spiritual leader and luminary hailing from North Korea. He founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, better known as the Unification Church, in 1954. Drawing upon direct Prophetic revelation, influenced by the major faith traditions—especially Christianity, but also Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, and Buddhism. He also developed a political philosophy to resist the spread of the anti-religious Communist ideology. Reverend Moon's teachings centered on love, unity, and peace. He aimed to spark a global spiritual movement that transcended religious and cultural divisions, and his vision resonated with followers all over the world. Through the Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon also promoted interfaith understanding and collaboration, striving for harmony among diverse religious traditions.

Reverend Moon's teachings went beyond the realm of the spiritual to touch on the universal human themes of love and family. He emphasized the importance of nurturing strong, loving families as the cornerstone for a harmonious and peaceful world. To this end, he conducted mass wedding ceremonies known as the 'Blessing', symbolizing the unity of all people under God, regardless of their cultural or religious backgrounds. Moon also stressed the value of community service and encouraged his followers to actively contribute to their local communities.

Sun Myung Moon's partner in both life and work was his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon. As co-leader of the Unification Church, she is a pivotal figure in spreading their shared vision of a world unified by love and peace. Affectionately known as 'True Mother', she embodies the ideal of nurturing and unconditional love in their teachings. After Reverend Moon's passing in 2012, Hak Ja Han Moon assumed sole leadership of the Unification Church and changed the name to Heavenly Parent's Holy Community. In her leadership role, she has tirelessly carried forward their mission, upholding the church's emphasis on peace, interfaith dialogue, and strong, loving families. Under her guidance, the church has continued to flourish, spreading its message of unity and love to people around the globe.

(1920-2012) Heavenly Parent's Holy Community
Cheon Seong Gyeong

Moon, Sun Myung, (Sun Myung and Hak Ja Han Moon.) Cheon Seong Gyeong. [Book 8, Chapter 1:20] pp. 802-804.

Sun Myung Moon

Theme: Spiritual Growth

About This Sun Myung Moon Quotation [Commentary]

Sun Myung Moon’s perspective on spiritual growth emphasizes personal cultivation through attentive awareness of one’s environment. His words, “You need to cultivate good habits and develop your spiritual senses. Nothing in your surroundings is meaningless,” encourage a way of living that sees all experiences as valuable for self-development. For Moon, true growth means realizing that our surroundings continuously offer lessons in character and self-discipline, urging us to see each moment as a chance to deepen our inner values.

Moon explains that those on a genuine path of faith go beyond belief, discovering value and joy in both simple and difficult situations. Spiritual growth, for him, isn’t found in ritual alone but in a mindset where life itself becomes a “textbook for self-development.” This approach invites us to strengthen our spiritual senses and cultivate habits that help us see situations with compassion and openness.

Ultimately, Sun Myung Moon envisions spiritual growth as a humble, continuous integration of faith into daily life, where individuals “live together with God.” By treating all beings with respect, whether familiar or unknown, we begin to embody a faith that is not only conceptual but practical, honoring the idea that all life is interconnected and meaningful.

Additional Sun Myung Moon Quotations

“When we look at the creation, we feel a religious emotion welling up from deep in our hearts and naturally bow down before it. Gazing up at the constellations of the night sky or exploring nature around us, we experience awesome and mysterious feelings surging up from deep in our hearts. This state is the starting point of religion. While gazing at living things and the phenomena of nature, we can sing songs that arise from the precious world of the heart within.
Playing nature’s music, displaying nature’s art and reciting nature’s poetry, all living things resonate in our hearts. Then we can relate with God, who rules the heavenly bodies. Experience the feeling that you are intimately connected to everything; then you can enter a state of the heart to rightly appreciate them. You enter a mystical state in which you can experience everything in its reality. God created human beings to connect with all His creation, which He had made inseparably interrelated with Himself. Externally we appear to be extremely small and insignificant, but when we behold nature from this understanding, we can feel a human being’s true dignity and value.”

—Sun Myung Moon, Wilson, Andrew, editor. World Scripture II. Universal Peace Federation, 2011, p. 135 [Teachings of Sun Myung Moon (5:344-45, March 8, 1959)].

“People have the duty to to preserve and love the natural world as God does. I am saying that you should develop your human nature to the point that you experience resonance even with a cluster of wild flowers, as if you were sharing a heartfelt conversation with them. This is as it was originally meant to be. That is a shortcut to restoring humanity to God.”

—Sun Myung Moon. Cheon Seong Gyeong, 2015. [Sun Myung and Hak Ja Han Moon, Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 13, Chapter 2, Section 2.30] p. 1401.

Cultivate and Develop

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