What is the significance of living for others? It has the meaning of recreating something. In living for others we must make a commitment and make something out of nothing by adding on. Because of you something will come to exist where there was nothing before.
If a person tries to live for others then he has left many works behind him on earth and his achievements are accumulated there to benefit everyone. There are a great variety of ways of living for others-some will do so by giving money, teaching, or doing medical or military work. What is the primary way, however? By giving love. There are many kinds of love and many steps in love. We are not just thinking about the smaller scale love in a single family between a man and woman, but the largest possible love of God as an infinite subject loving His object.
Even in love we find an order; not all love is the same. Love for God would be the highest plane of love; love of the world would be next, and so on down to love of the family. We find this concept of order in the categories of love: Love of God is the greatest; next to it is love of the nation, society, clan, family and then the individual. Of course, we love ourselves, but if we love the family more then our love remains in greater form. You may sacrifice in loving the family but you are losing nothing by forgetting yourself; the remainder of the family cherish you in your place. That is much better than trying to cherish yourself.
By loving ten other people, you have found ten other places to live centering on love. Then you remain in ever greater form in the minds of those ten other people. Wherever such a person goes, those ten people will follow him. Why would they follow him instead of going their own ways? The explanation is not difficult to understand. When subject and object become one in give and take, God joins them there and relates to them both. When God visits there and decides to stay, it means that the family becomes perfect; then it will never perish but remain eternally.
If a nation chooses to sacrifice itself for the sake of the world, the world will cherish it and make it the central nation. If the spirit world decides to sacrifice itself for the sake of God then the degree of love there will become even greater. We have an innate element which pushes us to want to become bigger and bigger and have more and more value. Even after uniting with people of higher value than himself, a person wants to go still higher until he reaches God. We always want to elevate ourselves. Without that desire we would not go ever higher until we reached God.
This cannot be accomplished without love. Love is the only way to elevate oneself to God and fulfill the pattern of constantly uniting with a higher value. As we do that we will increasingly resemble God. No one can complain about this; the only complaint could concern a person who doesn’t become greater and greater – “You are crazy not to become greater!” If we have this love then even though we want to remain mediocre we will be lifted up by others, even turned upside down! Can you really imagine that?
Our One Life
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
March 4, 1979
As I Can See 