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Love By Richard Kieninger The most crippling disease
of mankind is pandemic in its proportions, and it appears to be worsening
with every passing year. For want of a technical name, I will refer to it as
lack of love. Literally millions of us function on a bare subsistence level
of emotional fulfillment which deprives us of any real sense of warmth in our
lives. Without receipt of love, we cannot give love; and this points out that
love is a currency which must always be kept in active circulation or else we
all suffer emotional bankruptcy. Human beings are social creatures, not so
much because of the herding instinct of animals but because of the interdependency
of Egos for the love that nurtures the emotional aspect of their minds. Our
psychological make-up purposely was created with this need. Throughout the world there
are vast legions of love-deprived souls who never experience love from birth
to death. They may go through all the motions of sex, marriage and child
rearing, but it all rings hollow. Their ability to engage fully with life—and
life is the interplay of people—lacks enthusiasm and outgoingness, and their
life is but a series of struggles with few satisfying rewards. Striving for
power or material gains becomes a substitute for love for some persons, but
the majority suffer a malaise of spirit which keeps them from being
successful at anything. A sense of unworthiness dogs the person who
experiences no love, and this results in depression and defeatism. I
distinguish between “experiencing” love and “receiving” love because a
chronically love-deprived person cannot participate in a meaningful receipt
of or acceptance of love should he later become involved with a loving person
who can give and express love to him. The exchange of love requires clear
mental-emotional channels of the mutual recipients. It is difficult to learn
how to love and be loved if one enters adulthood without having acquired a
loving nature in early childhood. However, many grown persons have
determinedly managed to learn how to love. Acquiring this ability is
intimately tied to one’s achievement of emotional maturity and mental health.
The crux of the problem lies with the fact that most babies are given no love
because their parents are incapable of loving. There is a far cry between a
woman fulfilling her maternal instincts and being able to love her child. A
baby’s body is inhabited by an Ego of thousands of incarnations of
experience, and the Ego’s ability to communicate on an emotional level is
especially free when he is in the early years of a new incarnation. He is in
need of assurance of acceptability and security while in the frustrating
circumstance of trying to function through a helpless, infant body. The Ego
in a baby’s body is acute in his telepathic perceptions, and his astral
awareness is not yet overlaid by physical awareness. An infant, therefore, is
very sensitive to the moods of the people around him, and he responds
particularly to emotions of love. When instead there are only feelings of
impatience, irritation or unconscious hostility directed toward him by his
mother, he is set upon a path of lovelessness in his life. It is not enough
that parents express good will toward their offspring and provide their
physical and educational needs. Real love is of paramount importance to their
children, but many “good” homes have none to give. A child is intended to take
in love along with his mother’s milk, and he quickly learns to love in return
at a tender age. The emotionally mature, loving mother rears children who
learn how to love by example, and they come to expect that the world is a
loving place. Such children are a delight because of their own loving nature,
which is a reflection of their environment. They are well on their way to
becoming capable, confident, outgoing youngsters who will engage with life in
a zestful, creative manner and be able to cope successfully with the problems
of life. Moreover, these healthy-minded people develop a sense of acceptance
of themselves because their successes engender a sense of personal worth as
well as the ability to love themselves. When a person is feeling on top of
the world, when he can find joy in everything he does, and when he finds good
in everyone he knows, then he expresses love in the most expansive terms—he
loves God and man and needs not hoard his love. The person who does not enjoy
a sense of worth is miserly in his love feelings and must figuratively turn
what little love he can engender inward upon his own crippled self for
sustenance. Therefore, he is not a channel for God’s love to function through
him nor can he be in sympathetic attunement with love flowing toward him from
any other source; so, he himself blocks fulfillment of his most urgent need. We all envy the loving
person because he is so attractive to others. How, then, does one learn how
to love and thus attract even more love into one’s environment? The key lies
in developing self-worth, and this depends upon performing and accomplishing
in accordance with one’s higher ideals (rather than the current psychiatric
practice of reducing frustration by lowering one’s ideals and demands of
conscience in order to satisfy one’s desires without psychic conflict), so
we are talking about an aspect of emotional maturity again. Acquiring the
Great Virtues, being recognized for one’s contribution of skills, practicing
love of Christ, and accepting responsibility in serving others are the paths
to self-worth and self-love; and these in turn eventually allow one to give
love and become an open channel for it. Love supplants fear and hate; and
inasmuch as bodily ills, insanity, bigotry and warlike tendencies spring from
fear and hate, the loving person is free of these destructive, crippling
conditions. Indeed, he becomes attuned to Christ’s work for mankind’s uplift. |
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