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Dallas Spring Conference Report by Catherine Collé |
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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 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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