Can We Love Unconditionally?

I have listened to many discussions over the years, about whether there can be true unconditional love. Is it something that can exist in relationship? Can people love each other unconditionally, and if so, what about the harm we do each other? Can love exist between people that has no conditions or boundaries at all?

Harold W. Becker, in his article Unconditional Love - An Unlimited Way of Being, describes the term like this: Simply stated, unconditional love is an unlimited way of being. We are without any limit to our thoughts and feelings in life and can create any reality we choose to focus our attention upon. There are infinite imaginative possibilities when we allow the freedom to go beyond our perceived limits. If we can dream it, we can build it. Life, through unconditional love, is a wondrous adventure that excites the very core of our being and lights our path with delight.

What do YOU think?

Does Evil Exist?

There is a wide variety of opinion on the existence of evil. Some see any opposing force as evil, while some think that to be termed evil requires an act resulting in an injury to life of some kind. What are your thoughts? How does your belief about evil effect your life?

The 19th century Christian mystic Thomas Troward defined evil this way: "This is the old original sin of Eve. It is the belief in Evil as a substantive self-originating power. We believe ourselves under the control of all sorts of evils having their climax in Death; but whence does the evil get its power? Not from God, for no diminution of Life can come from the Fountain of Life, however evil may have relative existence, it can have no substantive existence of its own. It is not a Living Originating Power. God, the Good, alone is that.

What we recognize as Evil is the One Good Power working as Disintegrating Force, because we have not yet learnt to direct it in such a way that it shall perform the functions of transition to higher degrees of Life without any disintegration of our individuality either in person or circumstances. It is this disintegrating action that makes the ONE Power appear evil relatively to ourselves; and, so long as we conceive ourselves thus related to it, it does look as though it were Zero balancing in itself the two opposing forces."

What do YOU think?

Forgive and Live

There seem to be many faces to the process of "forgiveness" being worn these days. Many books, lectures and workshops are available to help us contemplate and adopt forgiving behaviors. We are all taught as children that forgiveness of friends and family is an important part of social life. What are YOUR thoughts on forgiveness? How do you make it work for YOU?

William Blake tells us: "In heaven, the only art of living is forgetting and forgiving."

The process that Neville Goddard presents as forgiveness, takes us beyond separation and cause, and requires that we simply see everyone in their highest potential: "What we mean by forgiveness the identification of the other that we would forgive with the ideal that other wants to embody in the world. And so we do to him what we expect or would like the world to do to us. So whatever I myself would like to embody that is the vision that I must hold of every man that I meet in my world; that no man is to be discarded, every man is to be redeemed, and my life is the process whereby that redemption is brought about. And I do it by simply identifying the other with the ideal I want to externalize in my world" and you find yourself then not justifying but forgiving, and you will realize that freedom and forgiveness are indissolubly linked. You cannot be free and not forgive, for the one that you would bind and judge and condemn anchors you by your own judgment of him--for he is in you. And so by identifying him with the ideal you want to really realize you free yourself."

What do YOU think?