UNIT 7
Love Without Conditions
You have learned conditional love from people whose love for you was compromised by their own guilt and fear. These have been your role models. You need not be ashamed of this. You need only be aware of it as a fact.
From the time you were an infant, you were conditioned to value yourself only when people responded positively to you. You learned that your self- worth was established externally. That fundamental error has perpetuated itself throughout your life.
Your parents’ experience was no different from yours, nor was your children’s experience. All of you need to heal from the same wounds. All trespasses/violations must be made conscious and the emotions attached to them must be released. This is the way that all wounded beings move from the experience of conditional love to the experience of love without conditions.
In the process of healing, you learn to give yourself the unconditional love you never received from your biological parents. And in this process you are “born again,” and reparented, not by other authority figures, but by the source of Love inside yourself.
Learning to give love to the wounded child within begins to reverse your belief that your self-worth must be based on how others respond to you. Gradually, you retrain yourself to value yourself as you are, here and now, without conditions.
No one else can do this for you. People can assist and encourage, but no one can teach you how to love yourself. That is the work of each individual soul.
Each soul comes into physical experience intent to grapple with these issues of self-worth. However, very early on in the soul’s sojourn here conditions are placed on its natural ability to love and include others in its experience.
Reversing these conditions is essential. If the soul leaves the physical world believing that it is the victim of its experience here, it will be drawn back again to unlearn that belief.
However, if the soul awakens to the truth that its worth is not dependent on anything or anyone outside its mind or experience, it will establish itself in the source of Love and awaken from the dream of abuse.
Awakening from abuse means rejecting te illusion that you are not lovable as you are. You demonstrate love by giving it unconditionally to yourself. And, as you do, you attract others into your life who are able to love you without conditions.
Your attempt to find love outside yourself always fails, because you cannot receive from another what you have been unable to give to yourself.
The experience of unconditional love begins in your heart, not in someone else’s. Don’t make your ability to love yourself conditional upon someone else’s ability to love you. Don’t place your faith in the conditions that surround love or in the form in which it presents itself. For these are impermanent and subject to the vicissitudes of everyday life.
Real love does not change. It is always present.. And once it is firmly established in your heart, you will never need to look for happiness outside of yourself.
People will come and go in your life. Some people will treat you well. Others will treat you unkindly. You will learn to accept the love that is there and see the lack of love for what it is: a cry for help from one who is hurting.
You will encourage others to find the source of love within as you did, knowing fully that you cannot fix their problems. The tragedy of their lives can only be addressed by their willingness to look within their own hearts and minds.
Do not place limits on your freedom nor on anyone else’s. Do not try to keep love, for to try to keep it is to lose it.
Love is a gift that must constantly be given as it is asked for in each situation. And the giver always knows when and to whom the gift is to be given.
There is nothing complicated about the act of love. It only becomes complicated you start to withhold love, and then it ceases to be love that you offer.
One who loves himself unconditionally does not love in degrees or with strings attached. He does not search for someone special to love. He loves everyone who stands before him. One person is no more worthy or unworthy of his love than another.
This is the kind of love that I offer you and that I ask you to extend to others.
It is very clear, so please understand what I am saying to you. Love can exist only between equals. Love can exist only between beings who have learned to love and value themselves internally.
Love takes no hostages. It makes no bargains. It is not compromised by fear. Indeed, where love is present, fear with all its myriad conditions cannot be.
Journaling Questions
When have you given love freely and without conditions?
When have you placed conditions on love and what was the outcome?
When have you received unconditional love from others and how did it change your life?
UNIT 8
Opening the Door
To bring attention to any person or situation, you cannot have an agenda of your own. Your ability to be attentive depends on having an open mind, a mind that is free of judgment and free of expectation. And it means having an open heart capable of feeling compassion for yourself and others.
The door to love opens and closes. When it opens you can be fully present. When it closes, you need to be patient and forgiving, and then the door can open again.
You need to feel not only the presence of love, but its absence as well. Feeling its absence, you learn to listen, and to soften in the heart. Feeling separate from others, you learn to look for the subtle judgments that are being made.
Every experience of separation or judgment is an opportunity to open to love’s presence. Mentally, this involves moving away from fixed perceptions and their justifications. Emotionally, it means feeling the effect of separation: your own pain and the pain of another.
The shift from judgment to acceptance, from separation to empathy, is the essence of healing. When you are unable to make this shift, you establish the conditions for dis-ease in the mind/body field.
Learn to shift from dis-ease to ease, from constriction to openness, from distrust to trust. Learn to demonstrate peace by transforming “defensive” postures into a “receptive” ones. Demonstrate harmony in your relationships by transforming “exclusive” thoughts and actions to “inclusive” ones.
Being a healer means accepting your inherent capacity to be free of conflict, free of guilt, free of judgment or blame.
Authentic Spiritual Practice
Remember that all authentic spiritual practice begins with the cultivation of love for and acceptance of yourself. Don’t try to love other people before you learn to love yourself.
You can’t run before you learn to walk.
When someone comes into your life who pushes all your buttons, don’t try to love that person. Just don’t blame him or make him an enemy. Simply acknowledge that he pushes your buttons and take time to sit with your feelings.
That person was just the trigger. Remind yourself that what you are feeling shows you some aspect of yourself which is wounded and needs to heal.
Be compassionate with yourself. take small steps. These small steps are essential. They open the door to the recovery of your innocence.
Knock and it will Open
An open heart and an open mind are the door that opens to love’s presence. Even when the door is closed, it bids you open it. Even when you are judging and feeling separate from another, love calls to you from within.
I have told you that, no matter how many times you have refused to enter the sanctuary, you have only to knock and the door will be opened to you. I have said to you “ask, and it shall be given you,” but you refuse to believe me.
You think that someone is counting your sins, your moments of indecision or recalcitrance, but it is not true. You are the only one counting.
I say to you, brother, “stop counting; stop making excuses; stop pretending that the door is locked. I am here at the threshold. Reach out and take my hand and we will open the door and walk through together.
I am the door to love without conditions. When you walk through, you too will be the door.
Journaling Questions
When have you experienced the pain of separation and owned your triggers so that you can restore a loving connection with yourself and others?
Do you understand that you close the door to love when you make judgments of yourself or others, but you can open it when you take responsibility and bring love?