True love can be felt only through experience and acquired through life.
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 (born February 10, 1943, in Anju, in what is now North Korea) is a Korean religious leader, humanitarian, and co-founder of the Unification movement, often referred to by her followers as the “Mother of Peace.” Born during a turbulent period in Korea’s history, she was raised in a devout Christian household guided by her mother, Soon Ae Hong, who was active in spiritual renewal movements. From an early age, Hak Ja Han was taught that her life held a divine purpose and that she was called to play a central role in God’s providence. This sense of spiritual mission shaped her character, discipline, and understanding of her place in the world.
In 1960, at the age of seventeen, Hak Ja Han married Reverend Sun Myung Moon in what the Unificationist movement calls the “Marriage of the Lamb,” an event symbolizing the opening of a new era of spiritual restoration. Together, they were regarded by their followers as the “True Parents” of humankind, embodying the restored unity of the masculine and feminine dimensions of the divine ideal. As a partner in ministry, Hak Ja Han traveled internationally with her husband, speaking on themes of peace, family, and reconciliation. After his passing in 2012, she assumed full leadership of the movement, guiding it through a period of consolidation, renewal, and global outreach. Under her stewardship, the movement expanded its focus on education, ecological responsibility, women’s leadership, and interfaith cooperation.
Hak Ja Han Moon has emphasized the centrality of God’s maternal love and the vision of humanity living as one global family under God. Through initiatives such as the Women’s Federation for World Peace and the Universal Peace Federation, she has called for moral awakening, compassion, and collaboration across borders. Her message consistently highlights the dignity and leadership of women as co-creators in God’s providence and the essential harmony of the divine feminine and masculine in building lasting peace. Through her decades of leadership, Hak Ja Han Moon has become a symbol of steadfast faith, perseverance, and the enduring power of love to heal, uplift, and unite the human family.
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


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]
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.”
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