The Culture of Unconditional Love

Life is expressed within conditions and to love unconditionally, we must first learn radical self acceptance. There are many ways to define love just as there are many nuances to the word and perspectives of it, accumulated from our experiences of what it is and is not. Life hungers to teach us what love is in the lessons of fear.

To know the opposite of love, is to know a definition of love and its expansiveness. But love is so capacious that it cannot be fully expressed, no matter how deeply we understand it. Love, by its very nature cannot be fully understood, because it is the impetus of the Universe's expansion towards consciousness, and it is the very fabric that makes up the totality of the Universe. To fully grasp it requires the highest level of consciousness that we may obtain, but to do so is virtually impossible within our finite minds. Love may be understood through the heart, but there are no words within mind to fully define it adequately. It resists definition.

We seek order and to define our world, as a species, as if to control it. Love, by our understanding, has many definitions within human culture and to us its qualities are as faceted as a diamond, even while we define it as one thing or another. We may say it is familial love, platonic love, romantic love, etc., yet love is love regardless of how it is defined.

To love is to sink into the intimacy of the other, to support and give of oneself selflessly, and in pure love this is reciprocated, but we either crave to love and sink into it, losing ourselves and become unbalanced, or we call love evil and reject it, because we think that love will hurt us. We describe love as pain and longing and state that it is an act of losing oneself in the other, which to the ego is a kind of death and so we resist it at times, as well, because we fear to sink into one another, forgetting that the other is simply an us from a different perspective, because we are all aspects of the Universe. What we don't understand is that it is not love that hurts us, but fear that separates us and causes us to feel the disconnect that is antithesis to our birthright.

Love may embody many forms to us in our experience of it as we attempt to interpret it, but the ultimate conveyance of love finds its wholeness within itself when expressed unconditionally. To love unconditionally is to first love self, wholly and without reservation, and then that love will naturally flow from the space of unconditional love; but understanding the differences between love and fear, and how fear points to unconditional love, takes lifetimes because it is so ingrained into the root of our cultures.

It is the conditioning of our species that has created our definitions of love. The generations before us, have not known love fully, and have defined it for us. Love, as seen through the physical experience, is mostly glimpsed in bits and pieces that are wrapped up in the detritus of conditions. In this, ego may love, but with its demands, and in the same way that we love others with prerequisites, we love ourselves, because this is what we are taught. Some may put on a mask of love, but it is the rare person who truly loves themselves unconditionally without the work required to obtain it within a lifetime. Loving self unconditionally takes work, because of our conditioning within fear.

We have been taught that love is expressed conditionally, because the state of ego is fear. Fear causes us to place conditions on others to meet our needs, so that we may survive. How love and fear intertwines within its measurement between one and the other is complex and wrapped up within our psyches, and nothing about it is simple. If a person satisfies our ego, we may love in limited fashion, because ego, and therefore fear, is satisfied and feels safe. If you feed me, I will love you. If you give me clothes and a sense of safety and security, I will love you. If you make me laugh and happy, I will love you. If you show me abuse, and then love in the next moment, I will choose to put on a mask of love, because to walk away is more frightening than to choose to stay. None of these examples are pure and true love, but based in fear.

There are many steps we may take towards the exalted state of pure, unconditional love. It requires a decision to be gentle with ourselves, even as we ask the hard questions, and look at ourselves with brutal honesty. Brutal honesty is not the task master it appears to be, but is a bright shining light needed to show us the way to our deepest selves. The task of honesty feels brutal because in the light of knowing we see the darkness within ourselves, and we must face everything that we have learned to be ashamed of. This takes courage, because once that light is shone upon our shadows, it then requires us to employ radical self acceptance and forgiveness.

It is not easy to accept and forgive ourselves, because ego states that morality is a law that must be obeyed, but morality is a condition used by ego because we fear. When we live within a state of unconditional love, the law of morality is not needed, because true and pure love shows us through its very essence what is needed to encourage and uplift others, rather than to hurt and bring them down. It is the act of acceptance and forgiveness of self that opens the door to unconditional love. It is the ultimate goal of spirit. To love others unconditionally is to accept and forgive them as they are, because we have learned to do so within ourselves. When we have learned the lesson of love fully, we will begin to fully grasp the never ending expansion of pure, unconditional love that is the culture of the Universe.