Dallas Spring

Conference

Report

 

by Catherine Collé

 

 

 

Dr. Arnold Mech speaking on the Development of the Loving Self at the Challenge of Loving Conference on March 7-9, 1986

 

 

    

     Christ’s central theme, love—which He commanded of His followers—was the theme of the Stelle Group's Spring Conference, The Challenge of Loving, held at The Stelle Group Center in Dallas, TX.

     Love, Richard Kieninger tells us, is an energy of the Mental Plane, a creative and healing force, not an emotion, even though it gives rise to feelings. Unless we love ourselves (in a kind of divine selfishness), we can never love others or fulfill our potential for humanness. Self-realization is our highest good. To want happiness is not evil, but our brain can be culturally trained to block the force of love and deprive us of this happiness. If a person is unable to give or receive love, his natural advancement to inner spiritual union is blocked.

     During the Conference’s four seminars—The Mystery of Love, Development of the Loving Self, Keeping in Touch with Love, and The Challenge of Loving—about 100 participants from coast to coast and Canada looked at ways we block love through projection (avoiding what feels bad and blaming it on someone else) and muscular armoring (blocks in the body due to fear, anger, and pain). Exploring the differences in sexual love, romantic love, and mature love, we then reviewed the challenges we face in order to become the loving Egos we’re designed to be.

     Richard Kieninger in The Mystery of Love discussed the need for pleasure (which spans all ages), what happens when pleasure is denied, and the necessity for self-esteem to our ability to truly love others as extensions of our higher selves. Denying pleasure, which automatically denigrates self-esteem, is an important controlling tool used by priests and kings. If we accept the notion that experiencing pleasure leads to Hell, we effectively block growth to our higher selves and to an intense involvement in all aspects of Life. “Life should be fun,” Richard insists, “and is when we are passionately involved, when we are sexually, emotionally and spiritually connected.”

     Blocks to this passionate involvement with life was the crux of Dr. Mech’s seminar on Development of the Loving Self. Dr. Mech, psychiatrist, wasted no time giving us the key: “The way for us to develop loving selves is to confront what we don’t like about ourselves—our shortcomings.” Since the self is a moving target, we must constantly ask ourselves “What’s happening?” Much of the answer will be ‘bad” and our tendency is to push that away. But we push away ‘badness” at our peril. An overly positive attitude can be self-defeating when carried to excess. We must look at our “nasties,” “go against our flow.” Combating ignorance, becoming aware of past and present interactions, and looking at them and dealing with them is growth. It is also work. This work requires our bumping up against others in a reciprocal process with the environment.

     Dr. Mech stressed the importance of projection as a valuable tool. What we can see in others and don’t like is what we need to work on— like looking into a mirror.

          John Rierson, a certified Radix instructor in his seminar, Keeping in Touch with love, believes that if we are evolving in a healthy, ego-enhancing way and if our self-regulation processes are healing ones, then we have healthy and growing self-concepts. If we find pleasure in sharing, if we are in expansive, risk-taking modes and know that it is alright to explore everything, then we have a kind of joy akin to a spiritual state, a mental state of coherence and clarity through which we can be of service to others.

     If, on the other hand, we are imbalanced, disturbed, and diseased we have lost contact with love and joy. Wrapped up in self, in old unresolved feelings and relationships, we flounder in confused, negative emotions and become dysfunctional by degrees. Persons in devolution need help. Radix facilitation puts us in touch with the defense mechanisms we have created and use to block the flow of our emotions and our ability to love.

     In closing the seminars with The Challenge of Loving, Richard Kieninger warned us that inhibiting our children from expressing emotion creates muscular armor and that society replicates itself over and over, positively or negatively, by virtue of its armoring. A civilization balanced between patriarchal and matriarchal cultures is necessary for full Egoic growth. We must learn how to build without war, competition, and one-up-manship.

     It is a given that everyone wants to love and be loved; the problem is how to make ourselves lovable, and how to acquire loving attributes, which are non-grasping and undemanding.

     To begin, we need to differentiate between love and sex, between sexual love, romantic love and mature love. Due to our gender polarity on the Fourth Plane of Existence, we are sexually attracted to all people of the other gender. The promise inherent in this sexual attraction is that we can romantically fall in love with an appropriate individual and eventually experience mature love.

     Being sex-linked and erotic, falling in love is not a conscious choice. It is a happy state of mutual delusion and lasts no longer than thirty months before reality cones into the picture again. Falling out of love and looking at the reality of a relationship may indicate, often painfully, that no basis for continuing the relationship exists. But romantic love is important because during those hectic and wonderful months, we can get intimate enough with another person to appreciate him or her and see what works between us. Being together, close-linked, prepares us for lifelong relationships. ‘The loss of romantic feelings does not mean the marriage is a mistake. It does mean that the time has arrived to experience mature love with our partner. But all too many people believe that when the romantic infatuation ends it means the partner has betrayed us or they must have been the wrong mate to begin with otherwise the honeymoon would never have ended. So they try with another person only to find the romantic/sexual heat dies there too. Sane people search on and on for a condition which simply can’t last.

     Mature love means being so self-assured that we can give total freedom to others to create the environment necessary to Egoic fulfillment and advancement. The trick, of course, is knowing what we want and having the ability to ask for it clearly, being open and honest, operating within terms of our agreements, and finding out who we are. There are no shortcuts from sexual and romantic love to mature love, nor are there any shortcuts from mature love to the mystical union saints enjoy—the ultimate of mature love. Psychological growth is equated with spiritual growth.

     Mystics do love; love flows through them. They have learned to open their hearts to themselves. Self-contained and serene, they do not have to be dependent on others for love and are in harmony with all things. Perpetually in awe over the marvels of life, they are the great workers for the world. Truly Spiritual people know how to deal with the whole world. Nothing is so practical as spirituality. As Spinoza wrote: “The more love a man possesses, the wider his world becomes until it embraces all creation.” ∆

 

 

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