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?
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14 comments:
Molly, I just discovered and love this blog...you ask what we think? Check this out from August
http://deathsweeper.blogspot.com/2007/08/unconditional-love-never-dies.html
Sorry I couldn't put it on as a link - don't know how!
I think we first have to know what love is and then begin to truly love ourselves first. If you cannot love yourself, you will not be able to love anybody else and therefore the whole unconditional love theory will fly out the window.
As I think our your question, it comes to mind that we are in this life to realise that we indeed can love unconditionally, and it is this love, that when we give it, we receive it from our own creation, a creation that we have temporarily lost sight of in this world. That creation is that all is one. If we practice acceptance, our path will lead to it, for what is unconditional love, if it is not total acceptance?
"Do not go seeking for that which you are. Those who go seeking for love only make manifest their own lovelessness and the loveless never find love. Only
the loving find love and they never have to seek for it."
Good question. Unconditional love is first seen in our Creator. It is His unconditional love that created all things so that He would have an object of His unconditional love. We being made in His image and likeness can now choose as a part of our very nature to exhibit the same unconditional love. It's effect on those around us is restorative and redemptive.
Grace and Peace,
Ed
I've often pondered this question. To me, it is first important to define the term "unconditional love." If by the term one means "love without any condition"; that is, "I love you (no matter what)" instead of "I love you (and presumably will continue to love you) if..." If this is the definition of unconditional love, then I think it may be possible.
Having said that, however, I think the pragmatic question is not whether one can love unconditionally, but whether one can stay married (or in relationship) to another individual - unconditionally.
Another important question is: What exactly is love? What kind of love could be "unconditional?" I'm not sure we can define love adequately, even though we can feel it and sense it. Since we cannot comprehensively define "love", the question of whether one can love unconditionally is, on one level, meaningless.
Eric Bryant, CEO
Gnosis Arts
I think your site is a tad high-brow for me but here goes. I think for us humans there will always be a condition, a "win" if you like. The nearest we get to unconditional love is when the win is provided by someone or something other than the person we are loving. That something can be the knowledge that we are doing the right thing or the promise of rewards in the afterlife.
Having waffled on, it occurs to me that the love of a mother for a child must surely be a pretty close thing to true unconditional love?
As I said, too high brow! ;-)
Can We Love Unconditionally?
Absolutely yes.
This is not something can be explained in words, only by example.
Yes. It's easy for me as a mother yet can be sometimes challenging with other relationships, but I am striving for perfection in this area!
When we are not quite there yet, we can remember to BE love to all we meet. This will attract love back to us and raise our energy to a higher level. If we do this frequently and consistently enough, I believe we'll reach that point of loving unconditionally.
LOVE, has no boundaries or judgements. It embraces the totally of all things born and still unborn. It waits patiently for us to take her hand and follow her to our greatest potential, it forgives our shortcomings and speaks quietly to us when we need her most. Love creeps through our life often unnoticed but catches us as we fall. Love is our only true friend, our faithful companion that walks with us from age to age, beyond the graves.
Love is what we truly are
Tony
http://www.the-guitarplayer.com/
I believe that the only unconditional love is the love which originates from God.
We live in a time and place where we have the illusion of being separated from God. It is this duality which limits our ability to Love unconditionally.
As God is all things God's love is also all things. When we become truly conscious we will come to understand this and in reuniting with God finally come to understand a love which which really is unconditional.
Your statement is so beautiful, and all encompassing. Many thanks.
While one can work on tuning one's love for a specific someone to be more selfless, all embracing and forgiving, unconditional love in its higher aspects goes beyond any personal love in that it embraces others in a more collective, undifferentiated sense. Speaking from my own experience, this kind of love comes and goes like a wave.
As is commonly the case with any path, the steps I took to arrive at unconditional love did not follow a straight line.
At the heart of the spiritual experience is the sense of at-one-ment with the world. In my early years, such mystical states of mind and being were fleeting and rare. But, over time their effects bled through to my normal, everyday existence, during which I began to see the inner and outer world as interchangeable.
I started seeing individual people as a part of my own psyche. As the years passed by, any negative judgment I had towards another resulted in rather acute psychological aberrations in my own self, so that the very notion of not accepting others for who they were became mentally/emotionally painful. To this day, if I am ever in conflict with someone, I commonly hallucinate their image when I close my eyes as if I were staring two inches away from the mirror. We are all one! This is the inevitable conclusion of the mystic.
As one lives more and more with this "Law of One", one becomes more balanced as an individual and this balance translates into unconditional love. Unfortunately, this is best described with respect to the very vague subject of chakras, or energy centers, a system of thought which tends to be written about with great variety and inconsistency. My own lessons came from the Ra Material, which describes the first triad of chakras as having to do with egoic concerns. Once acceptance of the self, of the other self, and life in general is achieved to a certain degree, the fourth or heart chakra begins to open up. This opening is the gateway to unconditional love as well as to the path of the spiritual adept.
In conclusion, from my experience, unconditional acceptance of life, the self, and the other self is what clears the way to unconditional love. This is easier said than done.
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