Love itself is unconditional by its very nature. It just loves. What else can love do?
Love itself doesn’t hold back. It doesn’t fear. Holding back holds back. Fear fears. Love simply loves.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
-Rumi
For those of you familiar with author David Hawkins, he speaks of progressive levels of consciousness that one can evolve through. Towards the higher end of the spectrum, beyond guilt and shame, one can open up to the flowering of love itself.
At first this love that is experienced may seem conditional. For instance, maybe you only love the people you approve of. Maybe you only love your friends and family. Maybe you only love “your type” of people. Maybe you only love these people in certain situations and under particular contexts and not others. In this sense, we could say that this love is experienced conditionally.
Yet experiencing love conditionally does not mean that love itself is conditional. For those of you who are looking to become unconditionally loving, let’s take a closer look at this.
Let’s explore the idea of being more or less loving. We could say that one of the common goals of the spiritual aspirant is to become a more loving person, correct?
For sure.
Let’s look at how this evolution works from both the relative and the absolute perspective, as well as how those two interact.
So in my previous post, I mentioned the willingness to cry, and today actually brought me to tears… tears of joy.
I was walking around the mall today feeling incredibly vulnerable. Just open and unprotected, willing to live without the protective walls around my heart, without trying to cover myself up with a fake “ideal” happy face or anything. Just being totally authentic and vulnerable.
As my friend Davidya perfectly describes it, it’s the feeling of the crusts of the heart falling away.
Divine Love
This Love that is revealed, this unconditional love, it’s literally not human. It’s not an emotion. It’s more spirit than anything, totally impersonal. They call it Christ Love, Divine Love… I feel my presence literally more as love and light than as dense physicality, my whole body just glowing and radiating light. (I was always wondering why people kept talking about “love and light.” Now I know… That statement is now finally grounded in experience for me and so it doesn’t sound as “airy fairy” anymore…)
It’s like you look and you see ONLY Love. The mind may look at people and see man or woman, attractive or unattractive, but none of that is really focused upon or even all that relevant. Instead there’s just this deepening on love from within. This love doesn’t take into account any conditions whatsoever or any ideas about a person. It just loves without condition.
One of the deepest human desires is the desire to be loved.
So how do we get to be loved? How do we love ourselves?
There are many wonderful strategies and techniques, many ways of expressing or giving love to ourselves. They can be very effective and powerful and play a significant part in positively transforming our lives.
Yet what is the “me” we are trying to love in the first place? Is there really a separate self who is separate from love that needs to be loved?
Today’s guest post is brought to you by Father Peter Bowes who shares with us his take on how to have a direct experience of the Divine.
Many say they believe in God, but believing in God is not the same as having a direct experience of God. Direct means first-hand, not second-hand. It is not hearsay or conjecture. Direct means something happens to you. You go through something, and then you can say you have had an experience. Throughout history, belief in God has resulted in people gathering for worship in churches, mosques, and temples. All over the world people still congregate based on similar beliefs about God. But how many can really say they know God?
Love and faith are the two most important qualities that make a substantial relationship with God possible. Love pulls you to the Divine Being; faith expects that something real will happen. Love connects you and God together; faith brings trust that God will respond to your hopes. Love creates the opening for something genuine to occur in relationship with God; faith reaches out beyond what is comfortable, stretching you to feel and see what you long for with your whole heart, mind and soul.
A direct experience of God requires love and faith, both of which play integral roles in preparing you to meet God. With love and faith, you let the Divine Being know you care enough so that God will come and give you God’s Self. You have to silence the mind and the emotions, and develop a stillness that can wait for a response from God. With meditation and prayer, a person can clear the mind of the world and the distractions of the senses in preparation for this meeting with God. God will come when you have cleared away all the other gods in your life, and this takes work, patience and diligent effort.
The initial phase of this preparation can be somewhat discouraging because the most dark and detrimental parts of your nature show up for review. You just can’t ask God to come into a place soiled with dirt, confusion and negative energy, so you will have to make a clean and wholesome space before you invite God to reside in you. Often you will need a Teacher – someone who has had a direct experience of God, who can see what needs to be drawn out of you – to help you clear the space within you.
All the mystics and saints have described direct experience of God in much the same ways. Each describes experiencing the love of their life in the embrace of God’s kiss and God’s presence. No fear can exist in the presence of God since God is all love and light. God is inside you and is loving you with every ounce you are willing to receive, and this experience will move you from belief to knowing. When you come into a direct experience of the God at the center of your being, it will change you completely, and you will know a profound peace that cannot be disturbed by the confusion of the world.
About The Author
Father Peter Bowes is a Master Teacher, priest and co-director of a mystical Christian order with spiritual centers in 15 cities called the Centers of Light. EnlightenNext Magazine named Father Peter among the “Top 10 Internet Gurus,” between Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle. To learn more about Father Peter Bowes, visit FatherPeter.CentersOfLight.org.
You know what? That’s not a metaphor or just some random lyrics in a song… When we talk about physical reality being the “dream state,” that’s actually a quite literal explanation.
Life is becoming such a joy now that my state of being is no longer tied to the circumstances of life and thus at the affect of it. It’s like unconditional joy. It literally does not depend on what happens in the world!
Blurrrrrr
The lines between what we call “real life” and what we call “dreaming” at night have begun to blur for me. There doesn’t seem to be much difference anymore and it’s quite a fascinating and enjoyable experience.
Real life is literally starting to glow with this colorless radiance. It feels much more malleable, as if it’s more like playdough than actually solid substance. Even walking through the aisles at the grocery store, I don’t so much see cream cheese and milk (though I do mentally perceive that too when necessary), but I feel like I’m directly interacting with liquid love. That’s how I’d describe it. (Looking at this experience right now, it feels more like I’m feeling it with my heart than seeing it with my eyes. I guess our hearts can see!)
This is sooooo not what I thought it would be or what I was expecting it to be, this whole awakening thing.
It feels like I’m being wiped out, deleted, cleansed away, the little “me” anyways. I’m not completely done by any stretch of the imagination, but rather right in the midst of the process.
You Are Truly Loved features content designed to guide people towards enlightenment, unconditional love, and living a life of joy through Self-realization and proper application of the Law of Attraction.
Let’s explore the idea of being more or less loving. We could say that one of the common goals of the spiritual aspirant is to become a more loving person, correct?
So in my 
Many say they believe in God, but believing in God is not the same as having a direct experience of God. Direct means first-hand, not second-hand. It is not hearsay or conjecture. Direct means something happens to you. You go through something, and then you can say you have had an experience. Throughout history, belief in God has resulted in people gathering for worship in churches, mosques, and temples. All over the world people still congregate based on similar beliefs about God. But how many can really say they know God?
