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.

There is much to ponder in this, isn’t there? It was an experience about loving. It was an experience of oneness and oneness is implicit in unconditional loving.

Eventually I realized these experiences were indications of unconditional love – that it was becoming more and more a part of my expression. It seemed a miracle to me that it happens of its own accord.

This seems a miracle still. It happens simply because we value it, it happens simply because we long for it, it happens because we truly do remember it’s who we are.

The key to Unconditional Love isn’t effort and trying.
The key is becoming comfortable with the unresolved longing for it.

The longing activates the unfolding.
Rather than trying to satisfy the longing
we can just let the longing be there,
opening us into greater and greater Love.

This growth toward unconditional loving hasn’t meant that I’ve achieved some perfect way of being with others or perceiving myself. It has instead meant I was, and am, faced with new conundrums about love.

For instance, I’m uncomfortable now when gossip is happening, it feels like physical pain to me. But do I speak up, interrupt a group conversation to say so? That would be uncomfortable wouldn’t it? And is it even the right thing to do? That’s not an easy question to answer, and the answer is different at different times.

Another example: when boundaries must be set, when someone isn’t treating us right, when firm words are needed, what does unconditional love look or sound like then? Ive learned that sometimes the soft-spoken words are what it looks like, as we might imagine. But I’ve also learned that sometimes bluntness is part of unconditional love, that confrontation is part of unconditional love.

I’ve learned that ill feelings toward others still arise, but with a difference. The difference being that I experience those feelings within the Love in me. And it is Love that I must trust to show me what is the right action, when.

So it begins to be Love that leads me and guides me in these conundrums. It is Love that I can trust regarding my response in a given moment. Learning to trust Unconditional Love to lead is part of the unfolding of the Love we are.

It also means that the unloving feelings – about another, or about humanity, or myself – are now included in the unconditional Love within me. It’s not that judgement or ill-will never occurs any more. It’s that a new perspective develops and unloving feelings are experienced from this new perspective on Love.

The unfolding of Unconditional Love is a continuum that has no end, that ranges into lands beyond my, and your own, imagining. It is, I feel, a never-ending journey, this journey into the fullness and beauty that is Love.

I’m so pleased to walk with you as love reveals itself to us all,
Lovingly,
~ X♥️Mayet Leilani

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