Unconditional
Love
“Unconditional
love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being.
It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I
love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.'
It's love for no reason, love without an object.”
Ram Dass
One way to get in touch
with the unconditional love in yourself is to watch one of the sweet
animal videos on YouTube—like the horse nuzzling the kitten, or the
golden retriever letting the little monkey climb all over him.
Watching, we feel our hearts open; we say, “awww,” and love pours
out of us. When we saw the photo of the little girl in pink at the
border crying for her mother, we had the same feeling. We don't personally know
either the animals or the little girl. For all we know these images
could have been created on a computer—doesn't matter. What we felt
in response to them comes from inside us—the unconditional love
belongs to us.
Realizing our capacity
for unconditional love and beginning to intentionally work with it
greatly improves our quality of life. Learning how to evoke and
extend it is a process. It can start on a personal level with the
people and places you already know and love—think of them, feel
your heart open, and experience the outpouring of love. Then extend
it to what is before your eyes—the fields and trees, the mountains
and plains, the ocean, sunrise and sunset, flowers, birds. Even when
we close our eyes and simply think of them, we feel the love response. Once
we get used to the feeling, and are good at evoking it within, we can
extend it to people we don't know or with whom we have a difficult
relationship. Pioneering psychotherapist, Carl Rogers, referred to
this as “unconditional positive regard,” and declared it to be
the essential condition for any true relationship.
When our intention is to
walk through life with love, we are living from the level of our
soul, and not our ego. If enough of us practiced this, it would
change the world.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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