Giving and Receiving

The wisdom of giving is the topic of passages in this section. When we give to one another freely and without conditions, sharing our blessings with others and bearing each other’s burdens, the giving multiplies. We receive far more than we gave. Even when there is no immediate prospect of return, Heaven keeps accounts of giving, and in the end blessing will return to the giver, multiplied many-fold. We must give first; to expect to receive without having given is to violate the universal law. (See Chapter 2: Duality) Conversely, giving with strings attached—in order to receive, to curry favor or to make a name for oneself—is condemnable.

Father Moon’s extensive teachings about giving provide a philosophical basis for this universal moral wisdom. Giving is rooted in the nature of the Creator, who invested Himself utterly to create all things in heaven and earth. He goes on to explain several reasons for giving’s paradoxical power to yield increase the more it is spent: first, because in giving we pattern our lives after the Creator; second, through the concept of give-and-take action as seen in the cycles of the natural world; and third, in the investment of parents in their children, with its joyful yield over the years—growth, prosperity and grandchildren. To encourage us to give without any conditions, he counsels us to “give and give and forget what you have given.”