Unlocking the Mystery of Giving and Receiving Unconditional Love
Article Highlights:
- Getting it straight about Love
- The effortlessness of Unconditional Love
- Satisfying the longing
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Dear lover of Love,
We all know that unconditional love is The Thing, right? We all probably aspire to giving unconditional love. We all probably think we should do that all the time. We may secretly criticize ourselves for not doing that well enough.
We have many ideas about this, most of them less than fully conscious, many probably untrue. We’ve learned about unconditionality over lifetimes from this or that spiritual teacher or author or belief system. Because most belief systems have dictates and teachings about unconditional love, don’t they?
These range from “turn the other cheek” to “love thy neighbor,” to the idea that unconditional love is part and parcel of enlightenment. And the idea that if you don’t feel unconditional love, you aren’t there yet. Hmmm.
What is true – and what isn’t – about unconditional love? I wrote an article here a while back in which I shared a young memory of seeing someone with a small baby in church, gazing so lovingly into the child’s face with utter devotion. What I remembered was my own recognition of that as a “bigger” love. And I remembered my longing to have that directed at me.
It’s a longing every human shares, one that never fully leaves us and for most is not fully satisfied either. And my guess is that within all the songs and poems about it, all the attempts at love, the root is probably our longing for unconditional love – a steadier, deeper, more pure experience of loving and being loved.
Early in a relationship, we may feel unconditionally loved by our partner, we may feel unconditionally loving toward them. When our children are young we may find it easier to love them unconditionally.
However, as relationships progress, as young humans grow, as people fulfill fewer of our expectations, we begin to see that… well.. love is complicated when it comes to unconditionality.
This is discouraging, isn’t it? Perhaps confusing too. Time and again it seems unconditional love fails us, or we fail it. And with that, our relationships often fail to satisfy our hopes and expectations for love.
This is difficult for all human beings, but perhaps especially for people who are spiritually inclined. We feel we, or others, should surely be making more progress in this by now. What is missing In this equation? How do we get there?
For me, the journey toward unconditional loving has been nothing I’d imagined it to be. So much so that in the beginning I didn’t even realize that was what was happening! Today I want to share what it’s really been like because a clearer understanding of this has been a game changer for me.
We all know by now that Love is the essence of all things. Thinking about that, one soon realizes it means that unconditional love is itself. Not something else to be acquired or arrived at by our effort. It is that which flows through all things. It need not, therefore, be sought out or achieved. Because it is already here, there, and everywhere.
It need not be sought because unconditional Love is always seeking us, finding us.
As we grow in light, in spirit, as we progress on our paths, it is increasingly more obvious in our field. It becomes more expressive in our actions. This happens automatically, naturally. So naturally that, as I said, I didn’t recognize it by its name in the beginning.
Many years ago now, the first signal I had that unconditional love was growing in me was when I looked at someone who seemed utterly unlikeable and without warning saw such beauty in his face that it seemed my heart would burst for love of him. I felt so surprised!
Then a little later, I had a feeling that someone was talking behind my back, I strongly felt someone didn’t like me. I was perplexed until, in a moment of illumination, I remember that I’d gossiped to a friend about someone.
What I realized in this moment was life-changing for me. I’d unfairly criticized another and I couldn’t distinguish how that felt to me from how it would have felt to them if they had known. I felt like I had done it unto me. I felt as though someone were talking behind my back, I felt someone didn’t like me instead of the other way around. (more…)
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