A Space of Love.

From Space of Love Magazine, Issue #1:
http://www.spaceoflovemagazine.com/magazine_1.htm

What an interesting idea and what an interesting phrase: A Space of Love.

Most of us think of Love as a word, a feeling, an experience - maybe a concept. Our narrow ideas of Love have even brought confusion and to some people, pain. We are conditioned to think of Love in a very limited and limiting way: as ways of feeling - from romantic to altruistic - which can arise between men and women, parents and children, maybe for our pet animals, and for some people the emotions for our idea of God or Divine Mind.

So what inspired your publisher to use this wonderful term, laden with profound and unexpected meaning, as a name not only for his web-domain but now also for this wonderful new magazine? When talking about Love in connection with space, many of us might first think of the metaphor of a space to feel safe to love and be loved. Certainly, there could be no better name for a magazine that represents such a symbolic meeting-place.

But beyond that, for real and tangible space, we hesitate to use a word representing our most intense emotions for something we think of as dead - even though maybe a lovely garden is growing in that space. We might say "I just love my rose-garden," or "I love to sit at my beautiful pond." But the idea of actually extending the same open-hearted, intense and soulful feelings we exchange with each other to a space such as our garden or the special plants growing inside of it - that may seem unusual.

And even more unusual seems to be the idea of Love itself as space, as a domain, maybe even as Space itself, what we call in the German language the ALL - "das Welt-All" - or the "World-All." These are words which express the difficult effort to describe all the space we know of, the space which makes up our world and its surroundings, the UNI-verse. I remember the exact moment when, as a young woman, I first discovered the sensation of a space opening as a result of Love, namely the sense that I was actually not feeling a feeling as much as entering into a space - a space that I have called a domain ever since then, for lack of a better description. It felt as if I entered into a different domain altogether by way of a shift in my heart, which becomes almost like a transit-vessel to this larger experience of what feels like the endless expanse of Oneness consciousness - the ALL.

I have had much opportunity to feel and think about that shift since then; that domain into which we enter when we approach life in a certain way, in a way that is hard to explain, something we seem to do "just right" at certain moments. Modern science has helped us to explain what actually happens when we - ourselves along with our environment and everything in it - become entrained and attuned to each other. The ancient traditions of our tribal are replete with stories of such connection - pantheistic as they seem to us. The science of fractal mathematics actually helps to conceptualize this strange sense of resonance and belonging even better and in a more visually-oriented way. I first heard the term self-similarity described by Dan Winter as a phenomenon where everything is so perfectly entrained and attuned to one another that it can occupy the same space in time - like the beautiful flowing-in-and-out-of-each-other fractal images of the Mandelbrot or Julia sets. (See also certain kinds of computer screen-savers)

But Anastasia, the beautiful recluse living in the Siberian Taiga which has amazed and inspired so many millions of people - including your editors - with a whole new vision for our Earth, brings us additional interpretations yet. She describes what a Space of Love can do for us by way of even further-reaching meanings and implications. This brilliant young mystic describes something which is challenging for our minds to recognize as attributes of our environment and of Nature. Our modern minds have been so burdened and conditioned by concepts of what we call science and its delimiting way of defining reality, we have to learn how to stretch them again, like stiff, bound-up extremities so as to overcome the cramped philosophical space to which we have become accustomed. What is real, we have been told, is what someone else, in this case traditional scientists, have defined as real. Everything outside of that definition, they imply, we should exclude from our considerations of reality.

So here, in this wonderful new Space of Love, let us instead be inspired by people such as Vladimir Nikolaevich Megre, the fearless author of the Ringing Cedars of Russia book-series who was so very challenged by what he encountered in the harsh environment of the far-away Taiga with this unusual young recluse, Anastasia. But fortunately for his millions of readers, he did not let his preconceived notions get the better of him - notions about what is real and possible and what is not. He is therefore enjoying great and wonderful changes in his life and offers the same to his readers.

We hope you like our name, so richly laden with meaning for this exciting, cutting-edge magazine devoted to sharing inspiration, resources and a whole new vision for our Earth. What could be better for a troubled world such as ours than to reach out and help ourselves and each other to reconnect and, together, co-create a much more radiant future for mankind than a few dark but forceful minds seem to want for us? So let us meet here as beloved poet Rumi suggests in the celebrated sentiment: “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I will meet you there."

Love does not categorize into good and bad. It accepts, on each individual's terms, their own reality and circumstance. I suppose that is also what is meant by the lion and the lamb lying down together - duality thinking healed at last, whether it is a divisiveness inside our own hearts and souls, between each other, between feuding nations, or maybe even between dimensions such as the human, plant and animal kingdoms. Ultimately, all of it comes to bear powerfully upon the quality and meaning of our human lives here on earth.

An unusual and new Space of Love: We all know, but rarely consider that life on this planet would be impossible for us without the loving service of the plant-kingdom. Those readers who are familiar with the fresh ideas about Nature and the sentience of the plant-kingdom represented in the Ringing Cedar book series know that "...an even more important and overlooked function which plants have been granted is that when they are in an individual, loving relationship with humans on a small, blessed piece of land, a Kin's Domain....they will create for Man a Space of true Love." (Paraphrased from a personal interview; www.vladimirmegre.com)

Vladimir Megre, in addressing a challenging European audience in Zurich on the spiritual necessity of connecting with one's own, tangible piece of Motherland, added this expanded, radiant and inspiring invitation to us to create a symbolic as well as tangible Space of Love: "We all, together, should listen to our hearts and should pass from words about spirituality to its materialization. A hectare is a tiny spot on Earth. But millions of such spots will turn the whole planet into a blooming garden. Trillions of flower petals, happy smiles of older people and kids will tell the Universe: 'People of Earth are ready for the great co-creation. We are waiting for you, the planets of the Universe will answer...The new millennium has laid down the foundation of a great transformation on Earth...May the spirit of each person grow from this land as a beautiful flower or a tree with flavored fruit and may it happen on each hectare of our planet." (www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org)
And Anastasia promises even more powers obtained from such a Space of Love - the unusual union of land, plant-life, animals and human beings: "Then all the best things of the Universe could come into contact with it first hand - and you yourself will feel the whole vast Universe through this point and possess powers unsurpassed...Everything will serve you, as God, our Creator wanted it." (www.vladimirmegre.com)

So, for now, let us end here, so as to open the way for a new beginning. We are committed to celebrate and support all those meanings here in this beautiful new magazine: with you, for you and for each other. The greatest reward for our efforts is not what we receive, but who we become in the process, said a wise man long ago. Here is your new Space of Love where we can share just such a process of Becoming.

Regina B. Jensen, Ph.D. (c) 2008

Note: Translations from language to language bring many challenges, and so it is with many of the more complex words in the Russian language. We have joined the struggles which were first experienced by the translator and editor of the English editions of the Ringing Cedar book series: Neither the word man nor the word human, nor human being, adequately represent what Anastasia means when she uses the word represented here by way of capitalized "Man" - which is to represent the divinely inspired Being existing beyond gender identifications. May those of you who take offense forgive us for these choices. The last thing we want to do here is to minimize the powerful female half of the human race.