We can only create new political and social structures if we include the topic of love and sexuality.
Sexuality is the greatest power on the earth, more powerful than the USA and NATO. At least as long as we allow it to influence politics and the a19> shaping of the social system as taboo and as private matter dismissed. Through the suppression of Eros arises violence instead of connection and love. Sabine Lichtenfels has been researching this topic since over forty years. a41> topic for over forty years not only theoretically, but above all practically. Her findings led her to found the School of Love and the development of an online course called “Healing of Love“, because in order to truly achieve peace we need to be able we need her view according to a basic knowledge about love and sexuality. Mutmach editor Elisa Gratias completed the course and regained her zest for life.
Love is political. The mistake that it is a private matter leads to the destructive system in which we live. Even people who are critical of the system let love or the lack of love in a23> their analyses completely outside of. In doing so is exactly this lack of love perhaps the clue as to why despite all the revolutions of the past centuries, despite the Enlightenment and despite the knowledge about a53> the background and abysses of our current system has changed nothing fundamentally.
Love and politics
Everything is connected in some way to everything else together. People shape politics and the economy, and if these people do not act out of love they make they make decisions that destruction as a result have, even if their intention may be different.
Even the population, which is not involved in the most important decisions despite the alleged democracy will, can only be a9> is, can only because of their inability to love so indifferent before a19> themselves function and thereby keep the system running going. The Indian philosopher Osho describes the connections clearly and vividly:
“Love is nourishment for the soul. Just as food nourishes the body, love is nourishment for the soul. Without food, the body becomes weak, without love the soul becomes weak. And no state, no church, no establishment has ever wanted that people have a strong soul, because a a39> person with spiritual energy will always be rebellious.
Love makes you rebellious, revolutionary. Love gives you wings so that you can soar. Love gives you insight into things, and then no one can deceive, exploit or oppress you anymore. (1).
Now, the concept of “love” is very abstract.
We often confuse sexual attraction with love and want to a9> and other people into relationships that last — at least after a few years — often no longer like love, but like duty feel.
That is why it is important that we also the topic of love clearly and concretely address. That we turn the vague empty phrases into understandable information in order to derive a new course of action from it.
self-love
This brings us to the first step: self-love. I have been practising self-love for years and try to distinguish between selfishness, narcissism and self-love. But if I am honest, I still don’t feel it most of the time. Maybe every now and then for a few seconds. Now, thanks to Sabine Lichtenfels’ School of Love, but more on that later, I have discovered that I had a false idea of what self-love actually means.
Osho, whose teachings repeatedly emphasise the connection between love or spirituality and politics, a11> politics emphasises, describes also this with an understandable image:
“Whoever loves themselves loves, takes the first step towards true love. It is as if you throw a pebble into a calm lake: The first ripples form around the pebble close to the stone. That is natural, where else should they form else? From there on they spread a37> spread further and further, until they reach the farthest shores. If you prevent these waves close to the stone, then there are no further waves. Then you don’t need to hope that that any waves could reach the farthest shore, impossible.
The priests and politicians became aware of this phenomenon: If you prevent people from loving themselves, you destroy their entire capacity to love. you destroy their entire capacity for love. Then everything that they consider love will pseudo-love be. It may be a sense of duty be, but not love.” (2).
Of course this statement is initially bitter to hear. Everything that we consider love to be, should be pseudo-love? We feel moments of infatuation but real love!
Now, of course, the question is what each person understands by the word love. Perhaps some would like to use the word for romantic love, and another word for what Osho describes when he speaks of love, the gentle overflowing of a pleasant feeling within us that connects us with our fellow human beings. For example, when we watch a little kitten, cuddle with a child, watch the sunrise, or concentrate on the sound of the pines rustling in the wind during a walk in the forest. Or the feeling of compassion for others, as Sabine Lichtenfels explains:
When we talk about self-love, then we are not simply talking about a kind of narcissism, but it is about that, that we recognise our core essence, our essence understand, our uniqueness understand, and if we do this in the spirit of love, then it leads us naturally also automatically to the topic of compassion for others. When these two elements come into balance, then we can a54> understand more about the nature of universal love.”
She also emphasises that it is important not to get caught up in rumination, because self-love is not about the ego and recognising and accepting strengths and weaknesses, but about the question: Who am I? Where do I come from? Science still cannot say exactly what and where the self is. However, we can feel it when we observe ourselves quietly.
Osho also explains why self-love is the prerequisite for our ability to love others. a9> our ability to love others is:
“(…) For centuries, your roots have been cut and poisoned. You have been made afraid to love yourselves. But that is the first step in love, the very first experience. Those who love themselves respect themselves. And those who love and respect themselves also respect others, because they know: ‘Others are just like me. Just as I rejoice in love, respect and dignity, so do others. (…)
Those who love themselves love enjoys love so much and it makes him so happy, that love begins to overflow and also others to reach” (3).
And back to the picture with the pebble in the lake:
“Slowly, the waves will spread out in ever-widening circles. First you love other people, then you begin to love animals, birds, trees, rocks. You can fill the entire universe with your love. A single person is enough to fill the entire universe with love — just as a single stone can fill an entire lake with waves. A tiny little stone!” (3).
Before we get to that, how we can now specifically love ourselves, I would like to a13> Osho with another example to speak for us:
“(…) It comes from the wrong kind of upbringing: you avoid yourself. People sit glued to their armchairs in front of the television for four, five, even six hours. (…) But it has always been this way, even before television existed. There are plenty of other things to do. And the problem is always the same: how do you avoid yourself? Because you feel so ugly. (…)
Every child is beautiful from birth, but then we set about robbing them of their beauty. We cripple and paralyse them in many ways, distort their form, disrupt their balance. Sooner or later, these people become so disgusted with themselves that they are willing to settle for any kind of society. (…)
“Love yourself,” says Buddha. This sentence can transform the entire world. (4).
Even though we, as users of alternative media, got rid of our televisions a long time ago, I ask myself: How often do we avoid ourselves by consuming news or writing articles — so as not to exclude ourselves, the authors of system-critical texts?
Most people are characterised by a lack of self-love. I enjoy talking with all kinds of people, listening to a16> their stories and I always find that I know personally no one who is really at peace with themselves, who feels valuable and fulfilled themselves.
We are so afraid of our vulnerability, yet we do not take our own fears seriously because so many people in poor countries are worse off than we are. And by “we,” I mean middle-class people from Western industrialised nations. We have material privileges, but we are still mostly anything but happy. Juli Zeh wrote in her novel “Empty Hearts”:
“In a world where those who are doing the best feel the worst, something is fundamentally wrong.”
We suffer from our wounded souls. We prefer to remain in our minds, not wanting to lose control, preferring to feel nothing at all in order to avoid the shame and darkness that arise when we do not distract ourselves from ourselves. So we analyse the state of the world outside and criticise power relations, politicians, and those who think differently. But even we as critics are part of what we criticise:
They say: ‘Love humanity, love your country, love your homeland, love life, love existence, love God.’ love life, existence, God.’ All big words, but without meaning. Have you ever encountered humanity? You only ever encounter individual people. But even the first one who encountered you, you judged — and that is you.
You have never respected yourself, never loved yourself. Now you are wasting your whole life condemning others to. That’s why people are so good at criticising.” (5).
I’ll just leave that there for now in the magazine for critical mass. Because yes, we criticise a lot — and that’s important — but it’s not enough. I hope that more and more people will understand how fundamental their own happiness, which begins with self-love, is to the transformation towards a better world. It’s not selfish, it’s the foundation for it.
The more you focus on your own happiness, the more you will want to help others to be happy. Because that is the only way to be happy in this world. No man is an island (…).
Unhappiness is destructive. Happiness is creative. (…) If you are (…) unhappy, then you want to break and destroy things. Then you might become a politician or a soldier. Then you look for a situation that allows you to be destructive.
That is why war breaks out again and again somewhere on earth. It is a widespread disease. Yet all politicians talk constantly about peace. They arm themselves for war and talk about peace. (…) How irrational! How can you preserve peace by preparing for war? To preserve peace, you should prepare for peace.” (6).
Osho’s writings show how closely everything is intertwined — our inner lives with the situation in the world.
Caitlin Johnstone described the same phenomenon in a Rubicon article in other words:
People who are convinced thatare as a rule people who have made such changes in their own lives.
People who believe that human nature is selfish and destructive are as a rule also selfish and destructive people. We describe only ourselves ourselves. We describe the inner of our own reality tunnel and a30> embellish it then as a33> great knowledge about objective reality.
In reality, none of us knows the fate of humanity, because our thinking about human potential and a17> human nature is shaped by our personal experience of a25> humanity from within it shaped. It is a mystery and we can simply leave it as a mystery.”
Perhaps I am provoking some readers here who have a very negative view of humanity and the world. But that is precisely the point: we cannot change others, but we can certainly change ourselves. And training our capacity for love can greatly strengthen us as individuals and as a society, bringing about almost automatically the transformation that so many people long for.
In module 3 of the course “Healing of Love,” Benjamin von Mendelssohn who together with Sabine Lichtenfels runs the global love school and a16> since 1998 in the community Tamera:
“Instead of just talking to my partner and sorting things out with him or her alone when there is conflict in our relationship, I have made it a principle to involve others. Because how we treat our romantic partners is not just a private matter. So many communities, projects and families are destroyed by relationship conflicts that we can see that it is not just a private issue.”
And thus we are finally at the actual topic: How do we train our ability to love and what role does sexuality play in this?
Men, women and sexuality
In her book “And they recognised themselves”, which is part of the course material “Healing of Love”, write Sabine Lichtenfels and Dieter Duhm:
“Whoever controls sexuality controls the whole person. People had to learn their feelings and their erotic impulses to hide and to wear a mask to the outside world, with which they escaped punishment.”
It began with religion, which declared people’s sexual needs to be sinful. The Enlightenment freed us from this oppression, but even today, when sex is omnipresent in the form of naked women and men in advertisements, pornography and casual conversations between friends, many of us feel wrong, either because we feel too much desire or none at all.
“Sexuality dominates literature and film, tourism and the happiness industries, advertising and car design. Let us take its subconscious powers, effects, tentacles and seductions to, so pervades it the entire body of a society like a the finest nervous system. Everyone reacts to it, whether they want to or not. Sexuality is the world power number one, far ahead of the USA, NATO or other power systems of human beings.” (Module 2, “Healing of Love”).
Sabine Lichtenfels explains in her online course:
“As long as Eros is suppressed in this way, and as long as social conditions are not created in which it can actually unfold in its natural way, it will become violent. But if we create natural conditions and truth in Eros, a new system of love will emerge.” (Module 2, “Healing of Love”).
Love learn
When I started eight years ago my blog about self-love, I already suspected that it was a16> important cornerstone for a more peaceful world is. After and after reading I always more books on the subject, such as the above much quoted book “Love Freedom, Being Alone” by Osho.
But despite all this knowledge, I keep reaching dead ends and simply don’t feel it. Then feelings of guilt arise because I’m not living up to my own standards. It’s a vicious circle. How am I supposed to learn to truly love? How can I inspire my fellow human beings to treat themselves with more love when I can’t even manage to do so myself?
Recently I read the book published in 2021 by American literary scholar bell hooks “All about love” following lines:
Surprisingly, our country, more than many others, has a culture that is characterised by the search for love (love is a theme in our films, music and literature), even though we have so few opportunities to understand or experience the meaning of love, or to realise love in deeds and words.
But our nation is not only driven by a6> the longing for love driven, but also by sexual desire. There is no aspect of sexuality that is not examined, discussed or demonstrated. discussed or demonstrated. For every dimension of sexuality there are advice guides and courses, even for masturbation. Schools of love can not be found anywhere.
We all assume that we instinctively know how to love. Although so incredibly much speaks against it, we still always recognise the family as the most important school of love. From those who in the family have not learned to love, expects that they experience love in their partnerships and relationships. But this love often eludes us. We spend our entire lives trying repair the damage caused by cruelty, neglect and all kinds of lovelessness in the family and in our relationships, in which we simply did not know what we should do, have caused have caused” (7).
They also emphasise how important it is for the transformation of our system to us to deal with love and sexuality. And she notes that there is hardly any possibility of to learn how we a28> apply theoretical knowledge in our everyday life in concrete action. So she wrote at least the book “Everything about love”, in order to give an impetus to something.
In doing so, bell hooks has overlooked the fact that a small community in Portugal already founded a school of love in 2012. It offers regular internal and external seminars and organises once a year a “Global School of Love“, to the she peace workers and leaders from all over the world are invited. There they research together, how they everywhere in the world, in personal and public life with the questions of a51> love and sexuality in a healing way in order to create a a58> global network to establish and jointly a new planetary culture to realise.
In order to reach even more people with this important issue, and a10> perhaps also to private individuals such as me in their personal endeavours to help, they created an a21> also created a comprehensive online training programme in English and German, including the online course “Healing of Love“, which I have just completed .
After I spoke with a Rubikon author about my mental state regarding the situation in the world and my heartbreak wrote, made me aware of this course to.
The course: Healing of Love
The online course is divided into six modules. The first module deals with some basic concepts of love: love as a system change, love without fear, love without jealousy, social environment for love. Like also Osho illuminate they in doing so first the topics of self-love and compassion. Self-love does not mean narcissism, but the question: Under what conditions am I in a position love myself to love? Similar to Osho, Sabine Lichtenfels explains:
“True self-love is almost identical to the love of life.”
In the second module, the Liebes School team invites us to take a fresh look at sexuality as a subject of study, so that we can understand sexuality as a political issue and remove it from the realm of taboo, thereby making a culture of peace possible in the first place.
The third module deals with the fact that the longing for free love and the longing for partnership are not contradictory. Both thrive on our fidelity to the truth. Trust is what makes partnership possible, and this arises when we truly encounter one another and can show and accept ourselves and each other as we really are.
The fourth module deals with being a man and a woman, with role patterns that we want to abandon , with the attraction between the sexes, the healing of gender relations and a deeper insight into gender issues.
The fifth module is dedicated to the exciting topic of Eros and religion:
“Religion without Eros becomes cold, dogmatic and fanatical. Eros without religion becomes destructive or boring. (…) Sexuality becomes truly free and healing when it is allowed to be sacred.”
The sixth and final module is about perceiving love as a force in our universe — not just as a feeling, but as a power that underlies everything. In this way, we learn once again to marvel at the miracle of life, which is completely lost in our everyday lives.
Fazit
It was very beneficial for me to listen to and watch the various audio and video lessons in the courses. The greatest benefit was that both Sabine Lichtenfels and her conversation partners live what they talk about.
In 1978, Sabine Lichtenfels, together with Dieter Duhm and others, founded an initial project as an interdisciplinary research centre, which was intended to attract specialists from a wide range of fields such as bionics, architecture, nutrition and new technologies.
However, they soon realised that without a solid human foundation, they would not be able to develop sustainable solutions and were forced to first resolve the interpersonal conflicts within the group. From then on, the core question of the project was: “How can people live together in trust on a long-term basis?”
In 1995, they then founded Tamera on a piece of fallow land measuring approximately 140 hectares. a7> piece of fallow land in the sparsely populated Portuguese region of Alentejo, where they still today live in a community of nowadays around 200 people live together.
Dieter Duhm and Sabine Lichtenfels have been in a relationship for almost forty years and also talk about their personal experiences in the course. All of the interviewees do the same. And they all radiate something in a certain way, which transferred to me in the form of inner peace and trust.
I realised that my own drama affects us all at some point in our lives, and this makes me feel less wrong. Finding more and more confirmation and feeling that by healing my capacity to love, I am also contributing to a more peaceful world motivates me to continue on this path, even when it hurts or sometimes feels pointless.
At the same time, of course, an online course is not enough. The traumas and unconscious relationship patterns run deep. Even the founders of the Love School say that it is mainly thanks to the community in which they have lived for many years that they have been able to heal their wounds deeply.
The online course is definitely a great help in getting started, regain confidence in humanity, and above a16> everything he gave me the desire to meet my my fellow human beings and my shared world, the desire to live again.
Sources and notes:
(1) Osho, „Liebe, Freiheit, Alleinsein“, Goldmann, April 2002, S. 17
(2) Ebenda, S. 18-19
(3) Ebenda, S. 19-20
(4) Ebenda, S. 25
(5) Ebenda, S. 23
(6) Ebenda, S. 33-36
(7) bell hooks, „Alles über Liebe“, HarperCollins, Juli 2021, S. 30
This article first appeared on rubikon.news and manova.news.