Tina Keller: “The Radiant One”
Message One morning as I awoke there was an incredible joy in me because the message “you are children of God” had taken on full reality.
This truth transformed everything.
It means that there is in me and in others a divine heredity.
We are not only creatures slowly evolving from our animal ancestors, but to be human means that in some way divine power, that which we call “God,” has planted a seed in us that has in it divine potentials.
It is not so important what I do, but it matters that I furnish in my life the best conditions for the divine seed to grow.
I have been feeling for some time that a growth process is taking place in me, even during my sleep.
There were mornings when I woke feeling that a conflict had been going on in my sleep but that it was not as yet resolved.
I felt tired and unsatisfied.
On other mornings I would awaken feeling satisfied and at peace, as if something had been accomplished.
Then came this special morning with the radiant message and its reality.
What can I do to follow up the radiant message?
To my great regret, the full radiance is gradually getting lost, but I cherish its memory and I want to follow up its implications.
I see how my orientation must change and I recognize how one-sided my thinking was.
The opposites belong together, but by habit I still want to separate them.
We learned to think by comparison and opposition.
My reason is offended at the very idea of the combination of opposites.
A recent dream reminded me how as a child I had had an experience of a combination of opposites.
I was around eleven or twelve years old when I was to have my tonsils out.
I was terribly afraid of the operation and of being put to sleep.
In despair I cried out, “I cannot.”
There was a very competent nurse who put her arm firmly around me and with great kindness but unshakable firmness gave me the necessary confidence.
My recent dream showed a similar situation giving me confidence that I will be similarly helped in my present difficulties as I am preparing for death.
At once I “see” the masculine figure who appeared in my imagination and who has stayed with me these many years.
“Leonard” would help me in the new orientation as he is bringing to me those necessary qualities that my one-sided education had repressed.
If I had been asked what it meant for me to be good I would probably have answered that it meant pleasing people.
In my upbringing, obedience and adjustment were required while self-assurance, independence and the ability to say “no” were repressed.
“Leonard” brings up these qualities and I am gradually assimilating them.
By the new orientation as I try for more self knowledge, “Leonard” showed me my tendency to leave things vague and how in this way I was escaping reality.
I must face reality.
I must want to know myself and for this “Leonard” keeps at me.
Getting a general impression of myself I first saw how there were endless beginnings that lacked continuation.
I am getting a demonstration of this as I look through my books and papers.
There is so very much I have forgotten, read so superficially that when I re-read, it is a new discovery.
In many ways I was superficial, but that also helped me achieve, not hesitate before big tasks.
I needed this superficiality for my studies where otherwise I would have gotten too discouraged.
I have spoken of feeling a process of growth going on.
Of course such a process includes losing and gaining.
There were constant new beginnings and endings.
Sometimes painful partings led to joyful openings.
When we had to move to Geneva from Zurich I was torn away from my close association with the Jungian circle.
Yet very quickly I felt the wider atmosphere of Geneva and its international organizations.
After a long time of intensive preoccupation with my inner development, it was very enriching to come in contact with world wide concerns.
I had a most enriching contact with a Quaker group that asked me to speak to them about Jungian psychology.
The children had left home and were all married, living their own independent lives.
My marriage ended when my husband died.
It was not easy when he fell ill in California, where our elder son lives, to leave my practice and my belongings for immigration to a foreign country.
Yet my years in California were a new opening and a great enrichment.
In all these experiences I had a feeling of this being my destiny.
In each change some inner feeling of destiny led me on; I did not have to force myself.
Even now in the decision to return from California to live in Switzerland and the decision to enter an old age home, which are restrictions, I feel guided by “my destiny.”
The radiant message about being “children of God” transcends psychology.
- G. Jung had shown how from the unconscious new elements constantly flow into the conscious.
He had shown me the reality of the inner life and it is thanks to C. G. Jung’s teaching that my association with “Leonard” has been an enrichment, not a
disturbance.
But it is most important that I discuss with him and do not let him rule me.
“Leonard” brings the elements I need for wholeness, but I must bring my part also.
I feel as if I were being transformed, as if even my consciousness were changing.
I can only accept the process which is a religious process, although it has nothing to do with theology.
Very gradually I learned that my naive childhood religion that had continued far into adulthood was expressed in out-dated rational and one-sided terms.
I had clung to orthodox formulations trying to believe, but suffering from anxiety.
I then realized that anything we try to formulate in this area is inadequate, because what we call “God” belongs to another reality, which goes quite beyond our understanding.
So I no more try to understand, but gradually inside me there grew a feeling of confidence in some unknowable power to whom I am related.
I object to the way churches insist on our being miserable sinners.
It discourages people and brings resignation.
I know evil is a reality, but it is also a mystery and in the teaching about sin, there are many misunderstandings.
For my part, I can only say that when I hear and feel the radiant message about being children of God, I am awed and have a great desire to be worthy.
There seems to be a false idea about man having to achieve.
As children of God, something greater is taking hold of us.
In psychotherapy one meets persons who are caught in some negative tendency.
It looks as if they should be able to correct it, yet there is a strange incapacity.
Gradually the person may come to the insight that something in her or him dings to this situation, is afraid of becoming normal.
When we look at ourselves closely we can see how often we are unable to put into practice our best intentions.
We need to become aware of our limitations and respect these.
We may then turn inward and pray for help.
It is much more important what kind of attitude one has than what one does.
It is the inner attitude of a person that makes the same action good or bad.
Two teachers may punish their pupils and it will have a quite different effect.
The one who loves children is felt as just and not resented; the other, who is full of personal bitterness and resentment, is felt as cruel and unjust.
In fact to become loving one needs to experience love; it is happy people who bring happiness to others.
The radiant message would bring us happiness.
There exist persons who seem to have been taken over by some greater power and are able to mediate this in their lives.
It is inspiring to read about such persons.
It is most visible in those we call artists.
We stand before some mystery which however shows us a reality.
In small ways I can feel such a reality.
When I accepted that I am before an “unknowable God” gradually there grew inside me a confidence and a knowledge quite beyond words.
Also the feeling that my life was guided by a destiny.
Of course I tried to obey that destiny, to follow the signs I could notice and as I tried to follow a greater design, life became meaningful and satisfying.
Of course achievement is important.
As the artist has to work hard at his technique, so also we have to work hard toward acquiring the knowledge and the qualities we need for what we are meant to be.
I believe that every person can, as he or she sincerely asks himself, find what he really is meant to do and enjoys doing.
There have been many false ideas about going against one’s wishes.
I think that which one is really fitted for is also what one enjoys doing and continues to enjoy. In something one enjoys one is most likely to be creative.
But achievement is not the ultimate goal.
We need to come in contact with another dimension.
We need help by superhuman forces which we cannot command, only pray for.
So we need also the opposite of achievement, times of non-doing and receptivity, where we are fully open to what may come. ~Tina Keller, Tina Keller Memoirs, 133-137