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Some Thoughts on Loving Part II by Richard Kieninger From age six weeks a baby
is able to distinguish the face of his mother from all others. He’s really
kind of falling in love, as it were, with his mother. As a result, he will
feel easily able to express love as an adult whether it be to his spouse or
his children or other associates. Psychological and psychic interchanges
occur between a mother and an infant. On many subtle levels, much information
is transmitted from mother to infant without a word ever being spoken.
Children who are deprived of a sustained human attachment don’t have a
preference for one nurturer over another, and their impulses are less
controlled. This is especially true in regard to aggression, temper tantrums,
less tolerance of frustration, uncontrolled behavior, and impulsiveness. Such
children suffering from lack of mothering and real love develop lying,
stealing, brutality, and infantile modes of behavior. What they do as
children they extend into adulthood. In matriarchal cultures
children are very serene. In our Western culture babies kick and strain
trying to relieve their built-up tensions. As adults, we end up being
permanently armored with muscle tension and live in a fairly chronic state of
dissatisfaction, which can manifest itself in bad temper, an inordinate
interest (or a devitalized interest) in sex, inability to concentrate, and/or
nervousness. The enjoyment of bodily
contact in Western culture tends to be damned as sexual or possibly leading towards
sexual things, which then further denies the unbonded person of the friendly
assurance that could be found in touching and holding. An appetite for
extreme sensations grows out of emotional vacuum, which can result in
indiscriminate brutality and drug usage. In the absence of close mothering, a
conscience cannot even be formed. Even the qualities of self-observation and
self-criticism fail to develop. These people are shadows of what they could
be. They are unable to value one person above another and therefore
painlessly change partners in an absence of love and treat their children
with indifference. On the other hand, it’s
kind of awesome how the in-arms bonding of a child that we see in other
cultures produces people who strive to serve mankind rather than selfishly
endeavoring to alleviate a continuous ache for something that is missing. The
mother’s role of loving in those early formative months is of utmost
importance. She must always be available to her child for comfort and food
and holding, and yet offer the minimum of guidance so as not to usurp his
initiative as he grows older. The father also has an opportunity to build his
child’s reservoir of love and affection. There’s something very special about
father’s presence. He is the interface to the outside world and another
person to emulate and imitate. Moreover the most important thing a father can
do for his children is to love their mother. He then gives his children the
priceless example of how to love a partner. Love is the great creative
power that comes from God. It’s not necessary for us to understand what the
power is, but rather how we can use it to greater benefit. And what is that
love that occurs between two people? Unfortunately, we are
conditioned by mythic customs of our society to attribute the cause of love
to the other person. That’s reinforced by every love song. It deprives us of
being able to recognize that what you love is yourself around the person to
whom you have assigned idealistic characteristics. Because of this myth, you
deprive yourself of the possibility of owning and being responsible for your
own experience of love. When you give another person power over your sense of
well-being by assuming that he or she is the one who is responsible for it,
this leads to the desire to have control over the other person who is the
so-called “source” of this beauty and fulfillment and excitement in your
life. So your focus is misplaced. The focus turns to trying to control a
person who is perceived as the source of your well-being. However, once you
discover that love manifests through channels within yourself, you need never
be without it. Even though that’s a difficult trick of counter-conditioning
the belief structures instilled by our culture, the fact remains that you need
not be dependent upon others, whom you could never really control anyway.
Jesus and other advanced Egos are remarkably self-contained. To aspire to
that kind of freedom and independence allows genuine love to flourish. You are projecting onto
another person almost entirely when you are in love. Your contemplation of a
prospective partner’s admirable personality elicits pleasurable psychological
responses which set the stage for opening yourself to self-awareness. Even
your reticence is diminished, and it’s wonderful and inspiring. But all of
this is a matter of what you can see in yourself. You are loving your mirror
image of your highest ideals for a human being, and those are your ideals!
Other people may have higher ones that you can’t see yet. Others may still be
fumbling around trying to get some of those ideals which you have. Unfortunately, most
people’s relationships are built on need, and such people feel they can t
make it without the other person. But demands upon another person, which are
based on your dependency, are suppressive and binding on that person rather
than supportive of their individual growth or freedom. So naturally the
person upon whom you make those demands is threatened. Relationships based on
need deteriorate in the contest of who has the most control of the other
partner in order to manipulate the source or the satisfaction of needs. And
these manipulative routines include: childish dependencies, being sick, not
letting the other person make it with you, having children in order to bind a
relationship that is otherwise falling apart, invoking guilt and shame.
Society provides you with all the different examples that you can use for
that. These are madness-engendering entrapments. Society has traditionally
been concerned with the legalistic economics of marriage and the role of the
family in providing for children, and these are important. But we’ve begun to
recognize the need for psychological health and spiritual fulfillment in all
members of the populace. And so new criteria for man/woman relationships are
being developed as people begin to experience deeply satisfying love and
richly rewarding Egoic advancement as a result of their relationships.
Imagine the creative environment that can result when each partner encourages
the other’s adventure of life. Everyone wants to
experience himself as a loving, capable, worthy human being. As partners
commit themselves to the well-being and spiritual growth of each other, that
all happens quite naturally. We all want the opportunity of working together
to make a contribution which is of joyful service to yourself, your children,
other people, and the world. It’s what most people hunger to do, and the
Brotherhoods provide a ready framework to make it easier to accomplish. Living a lifetime is
largely experimental, and everyone needs room and the time to find out what’s
best for him or her. Eventually, you come to the point where having mature
love is being so self-assured that you are primarily concerned with another
person’s relationship with his own life rather than with his relationship to
your life. You can appreciate his acquisition of mature love, knowing that
since his relationship with himself works, his relationship with you will
work automatically. And, of course, if your own life isn’t working, then your
relationship with another person isn’t going to work either. The person who is free of
dependencies upon others and who is balanced and complete is in fundamental harmony
with every other person whose life has turned out in a happy understanding of
what love is about. People who are okay within themselves are always
comfortable to be with. What seems to come across from them is a sense of
fullness of life, a joy, and they convey the power of love that emanates from
God. Maybe they never describe it as that, but you know that’s really what
they’re doing. That power flows through them unimpeded, and you can sense it.
You know that they are so complete within themselves that they accept you
without being threatened by who or what you are, and they rarely do say, “I
love you”, since you already know it implicitly. (This is not to advise
lovers they needn’t say these three little words.) Your own spiritual uplift
directly depends upon your being able to love. And that, in turn comes from
having self-esteem. When it comes down to it, ultimately, love is everything.
It is the answer to everything. Love allows a person to be open and accepting
of others, and certainly it’s far better to love than to be suspicious all
the time. What can you lose if somebody disappoints you in so-called, “loving
you”? You still are you. Love builds bridges between
people. Everybody is ready and willing to love. Sex is an entirely different
matter and should be, but there can’t be too much love in the world. Being in
a constant state of love is a natural human condition, even though our
patriarchal culture has made love a rarity in the face of the aggression,
fear, conflict, even hatred, spawned by our sick institutions and our
possession-oriented values. It is somehow unsafe to be
a loving person. And yet whenever we see the grandmotherly person who is
permitted by our society to be loving, we are all drawn to her. How much we
appreciate that genuine affection that we don’t have to do anything for, just
be our own selves and bask in the sunshine of someone’s genuine love and
acceptingness. How nice when we all learn to do that all the time, with
everybody. Then we don’t have to worry about being on the short end of a
transaction relative to the Golden Rule. Everything is safe—we don’t have to
defend ourselves against anyone. |
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