So what is unconditional love? And how do you know if someone really loves you, and if you really love them? Here are five concepts that bring clarity to those questions and how to cultivate it in your life.
Is this Love?
Our society is obsessed with falling in love. From a young age we are conditioned to want to find that “special” someone. Take your mind back to your school days, how old were you when you and your friends began speaking about girlfriends and boyfriends? The conversations and days that were spent wondering if this person liked you, if that person thought you were cute? Fantasising about the first kiss, getting so completely swept up in the romance of it all, then feeling the soul crushing heart break when it ended. The highest of highs, the lowest of lows…..so many intense emotions, ah, young love they call it !! To the very young, love is only about falling in love.
How very different would our lives be, if we had known and been introduced to our own eternal nature before the obsession with falling in love began? Imagine how much confusion and pain we may have avoided if the concept of unconditional love was taught. When you know you are love and are already deeply loveable, you are able to show up unconditionally everywhere. The more we cultivate being unconditional the more real love we can experience, in our family, with our friends and of course in our intimate relationships.
The early preoccupation with falling in love is a sign that we have already started to doubt our own loveable self. By falling in love with someone, we hope we will remember how loveable we are. We hope someone will catch and save us from the basic fear that ‘I am not loveable.’ Much of the desire to fall in love is about being loved rather than being loving.
Love is not pretending
One of the joys of true love or friendship is both people being able to be themselves when they are together. Neither has to wear a mask or play a role to receive love. We don’t need to put on a performance by always staying positive happy or strong. Or always be on our best behaviour with each other, so as to appear good or worse, perfect. Love is not about approval, but acceptance. Unconditional love creates an environment in a relationship that makes it safe for you to be yourself. Love is not an audition. You don’t have to turn yourself into a pleasing image in order to get the part. You don’t have to be an attractive package. You don’t have to be a beautiful version of yourself all the time. You don’t have to dress yourself up or tone yourself down. You aren’t trying to win a place in each other’s hearts. You live in each other’s hearts already. Unconditional love isn’t about making the right impression; it’s about intimacy. You don’t have to act. You don’t have to hide. You don’t have to lie. Honesty is not a threat to unconditional love. As we get to know each other, we discover that we have many similar tastes, shared interests and matching values. No wonder we feel such an affinity towards each other.
That said, there is also space in our relationship for individuality, diversity and eccentricity. Our love for each other is large enough to honour our differences. Neither of us has to be a chameleon, a photocopy or a twin. We are extensions of each other, but not replicas. We are One, but we don’t have to be exactly the same. In love, we respect that, for instance: We don’t both have the same personalities or traits. We don’t both have to be vegetarians. We don’t have to like the same music or movies. We don’t have to have the same friends. We don’t have to hold identical points of view on things. We don’t have to follow the same career paths. We don’t have to live our lives exactly the same way. We don’t both have to be the same religion, race or nationality.
You know you love someone when you can honestly say that you don’t need them to change before you love them more. That said, we are changed by unconditional love. The change that happens is organic and natural. We stop being an image, and we become more real. A deep acceptance of each other helps to heal remnants of self-rejection, for leaning acceptance of others is key to our own self acceptance. Our unconditional love for each other helps us both to grow into who we really are. The change we both witness is the very miracle of love.
Love is not a trade
It’ s common to talk about giving and receiving in relationships, and how both parties should be equally filling up each others ‘love tank’. Talk like this is typical of how egos make agreements and contracts with each other. Invariably, both egos end up filing separate complaints about giving too much love or not getting enough love. With unconditional love, giving and receiving are experienced differently.
Love is a way of being; it is not a thing to give away. Love is an attitude; it is not a currency you buy things with. In love, nothing is taken and nothing is lost. Love is who you are, you are an extension of source energy, and this energy is infinite and eternal.
Love does not make deals. Love does not say, ‘I will give you love, but first you must give me something else.’ Love cannot be bought. You cannot buy love with sex, Love cannot be sold. It is not love when a friend says, ‘Agree with me and I will like you’, or when a parent says, ‘Do as I say and you have my approval’, or when a lover says, ‘Give me what I want and I will be happy.’ These ultimatums deal in fear and guilt, not love. In love, you can ask each other for anything, but you demand nothing of each other. All this talk about giving love and receiving love can make it sound like love can only be found in a marketplace. Love is not for sale. If you look with your heart, you will see that it costs you nothing to give love, because giving love is really just being loving.
Similarly, there is not a price to pay when receiving love, because your receptiveness is just another aspect of being loving. When you are being loving, you are not making a purchase. You are not giving away a limb; you are simply showing each other how you really feel. This is why there is no loss in love. And because there is no loss, and no invoices and receipts, there is never any debt to settle.
Love is not idolatry
I remember clearly in one of my past relationships placing him ( lets call him Thor) very high on a pedestal and feeling awestruck whenever I was in his presence. I was too infatuated to know what was happening at the time, but later I realised that what I’d done was to make him into an idol. When we matched on Tinder, I couldn’t believe my good luck. I felt like I’d won the lottery, yet I was amazed that there was even a ticket with my name on it. I didn’t feel equal to him. My lack of self-love made me turn this person into an idol and into a source of love. Whenever you make a person into a source of love, be it a best friend, a parent, a lover, a child, that person also becomes a source of fear, unhappiness and suffering.
Love exists only between equals, because love recognises everyone as equals. Therefore, in love no one is better than anyone else, no one is superior or inferior and no one is more loveable. We are equals because we are made of the same love. There are not different grades of love. When you don’t feel equal, you give yourself away. And then you take on a role in the relationship such as the sidekick, the martyr, the servant, the helper, the doormat, the cheerleader or the chief polisher of pedestals. Roles prevent you from feeling equal. They block intimacy. They conceal dishonesty. You feel unloveable.
In love, we raise each other up, without one ending up higher than the other. Love brings out the best in both of us, not just in one of us. If one of us gives ourselves away, then we also give our power away, and this is what causes power struggles in relationships. Power struggles happen because we think we are both separate and different from each other. We forget that we are made of the same love and that we both share the same basic interest, which is to love and be loved. Power struggles cause all sorts of fights in relationships. And the mindset that puts people on pedestals also blows up pedestals in an attempt to establish equilibrium. Power struggles breed resentment, resulting in the person being hurled into the pit by the very one who placed him on the pedestal.
Love is not exclusive
Love is not special. If someone says to you, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone like you to give my love to’, I recommend you turn around and run for your life. Why? Well, it sounds like they’ve never loved someone before. That means they must be completely out of touch with love. It also means that you must be their experiment. Good luck with that! I know it sounds romantic to say things like ‘You are the only one I’ve ever loved’ and ‘You are my one true love’, but honestly that is not how unconditional love expresses itself.
The goal of love is not just to love one person; it is to love everyone. Indeed, it is only when you are willing to love everyone that you will be able to love someone. The term special relationships refers to relationships that see people as objects of love. The goal of a special relationship is to milk as much love as possible from your holy cow. The word special signifies an attempt to separate your holy cow from the herd so that you can live in a little field together somewhere that is fenced off from the rest of the world. This is how you split yourself off from oneness. You end up as an alienated couple. You operate as a closed system, and one day you realise you are closed off from love.
Love is not exclusive. In relationships, you can make exclusive agreements. For example, in romance you can agree to monogamous sex; in friendship you can share certain confidences; and in business you can create sole partnerships. However, in love you cannot attempt to love each other exclusively and succeed in creating a loving relationship. Saying ‘I love you above all others’ might seem like a nice idea, but, actually, it is impossible. You can only love someone as much as you are willing to love everyone. This is how true love works. Making someone your special love object, your holy cow, doesn’t create love; rather, it leads to dependency, possessiveness, jealousy, neurosis and ten thousand other forms of fear.
Love is not selfish
In the dance of romantic love, in particular, love is always love, but sometimes other characters like lust and infatuation masquerade as love. This can cause a lot of confusion and pain. I am often asked how you can tell the difference between lust, infatuation and love. Here’s what I say:
Lust is physical desire. It is full of physical fireworks. All you want from your ‘love object’ is what you can get physically. You see this person primarily as a body. You are not that interested in who he is emotionally or spiritually.
Infatuation is mental desire. It is full of emotion and intrigue. You are obsessed with your ‘love object’. Her image captivates you. You want to know more. This infatuation can be physical, too. As with lust, you are mainly interested in what you can get from this person.
Love is spiritual desire. Love is full of desire. You are intent on knowing the whole person and not just his image. Images that ‘fall in love’, and even marry each other, are still strangers. Love beckons us to drop the mask and to stop hiding. Then the real dance can begin. In love, the real desire is not about what I want from you; it’s about what I want for you.
With unconditional love, you care about each other’s well-being. You are each other’s friend. This is true whatever the form of your relationship. Friendship is the heart of love. Parents and children learn to love one another by growing a friendship that is beyond roles. Romance without friendship does not last, but romance between friends renews itself forever. Unconditional love expresses itself between friends who tell each other, ‘I want the best for you.’ Fundamentally, friends do not say, ‘I want for you what I want for you.’ Instead they say, ‘I want for you what you want for you.’
Unconditional love is full of kindness and generosity like this. Kindness is everywhere in love, and, above all, there is no harm or meanness. Here’s how you really know if you love someone and if someone loves you: you both want each other to be happy. Each other’s happiness means more to you than anything else. Happiness is sacred because it is an attribute of love, and when you are happy it helps you to love each other more. If I know that you are truly happy, and that I am happy too, it is a sure sign we are in the flow of love. It is also a sign that we are being true to each other and ourselves. We would never stand in the way of one another’s happiness, even if that meant being apart, because most of all we want the people we love to be who they truly are, to follow their hearts and to live the lives they are called to live.
Questions you may like to reflect on-
- What does it mean to love someone unconditionally?
- How do you love yourself unconditionally?
- What conditions do you put on relationships?
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