A Report on the Lecture on Relationships by Frans Kok – Spiritual Book Club special session, ABC Treehouse in Amsterdam on March 6th, 2011.

By Oscar Petit & Petra Heuveling.

This lecture started with asserting that We are Love. That love is not something we make or do. Love is what we are.

Love, also presented as Spirit/God/Unity, is our essence. Our souls choose to experience the idea (or illusion) of separation in the human experience as a means to return to Love.  Therefore, the idea of separation is constantly present in our perception of our relations and interactions with Self and with others.

This is also referred to as Duality and it has two aspects: The Inward and the Outward. In the Inward there is the Higher Self, Love and Peace and being stillness. The Outward level represents the ego survival, old paradigms or conditioning, fear, illusions.

Both Inward and Outward aspects are projected onto others and the outside world through two levels of choice:

1st Choice for Fear: I am right, guilty, I am a victim vs. offender. There is an escalation of attacking and defending.

2nd Choice for Love: (A little) willingness to see it differently. Seeing innocence, observing error/judgment/projection.  By listening to our inner voice we allow forgiveness to take place and with it a return to our inner peace is experienced.

It was explained that “Earth is a learning place” in which we come to learn Who we really are by different means:

• By experiencing contrasts or opposites: Good and Bad, Love and Fear, Illusion and Truth.
• By projections and perceptions, characterized by our judgments, suffering, relations, perception of time/Eternity, emotions, thought-system.
• By unlearning, which is by undoing all false ideas telling us Who we are, by transcending the “special self” (ego) to the “Higher Self”.

Altogether, this is a spiritual process of discipline, which entails doing an inner work practicing forgiveness leading into INNER PEACE.

Then the lecture went through a very interesting learning practice: The intimate Relationship. The ultimate goal is to grow from a special relationship (in other words romantic love) into a Holy relationship.

The illusions of the romantic love were explained as a needy, fearful, attached dependence.  A good example of these illusions is the common expression I love you (because I need you), in the expectation of hearing a confirmation that we are loved back.  (more…)