Unconditional Love

What is unconditional love and how do we feel it? Who do we feel it for and how do we feel it for ourselves?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello everyone, I hope you've had a beautiful week. In today's episode, we're going to talk about unconditional love and what it actually is. Although many say they feel it, that love is usually never unconditional. Conditions to how we feel about someone or something have a propensity to hide in our subconscious minds, only to be brought forth when triggered by something the ego doesn't like, or when the ego has had enough, and we are faced with the reality that we did not, in fact, love unconditionally. We have to remember that a lot of feelings of unconditional love can be created by hormones such as dopamine, calcitonin, endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin, and vasopressin. I'm going to talk about what unconditional love actually is and why we cannot experience unconditional love until we truly break down the ego and look at the macro. Unconditional love is having no expectations. Sounds simple enough and also sounds very easy to debate against, but expectations are linked to everything we do, say, think, feel, and everyone we talk to, don't talk to, perceive, see, and think about. So I'm going to give you some examples by making statements, and you can answer them for yourself. Let's pretend you and your sibling or best friend are having lunch at your favorite restaurant. I want you to picture the restaurant and the food in your mind. Your sibling has been dating someone for over a year, and this is what they say to you. I haven't met any of their friends. Now pause and notice what your immediate thought is. Not what you would necessarily respond to them with, but what your immediate thought is. Now your sibling says, I haven't met their parents, even though they live less than a mile away from us. Again, pause and notice what your immediate thought is. Now your sibling says, we haven't had sex in three months. Every time I try, they come up with an excuse. Thoughts? Take a moment and decide what you would say. The egoic problem in this scenario is that you're gauging them based on what your own value system and expectations are. So when you give the advice of you should break up with them or give them an ultimatum because you deserve so much better, you believe you're doing so with their benefit in mind. You may call it standards, you may call it self-respect, you may call it normal or self-love or self-worth. But really, they're expectations. Also, your favorite restaurant that you're currently in has a new chef who's not as subjectively good as the last. You had to send your food back because the wait staff didn't write your order down correctly and the prices increased. Can you picture it? Disappointing, isn't it? That disappointment is coming from expectations. You cannot love something unconditionally if you only love aspects of it based on egoic expectations. Expectations are a desire for something in the future because the action hasn't occurred yet. Unconditional love, however, is found in the present moment without contemplation, worry, or fear for what is to come. Unconditional love is a surrendering to the present moment, a giving in to the flow. We have expectations of even the most basic things, such as waking up in the morning or being healthy during the coming weekend. If we didn't, we wouldn't put our clothes out the night before work or buy tickets to a concert that's coming up. We wouldn't plan anything without the expectation that we will be alive within a designated amount of time. I'm not saying planning things and having an expectation that we will still be breathing in this body in a month is wrong. I'm trying to point out that we may believe we have no expectations, but we do in every single aspect of our lives, even down to the smallest of details. So how exactly does this have to do with unconditional love? Because if you buy tickets for that concert that you've wanted to go to for a year and all of a sudden the date comes up and your body has the flu? Are you going to be loving yourself unconditionally when you're lying in bed cursing the fact that you're missing the show? Are you going to be unconditionally loving whomever gave you the flu? Are you going to be unconditionally loving your body when you're purging your guts out and have a fever? Will you be unconditionally loving your partner when they go to the concert that you bought the tickets for, but instead take their friend while you lie in bed feeling terrible? And will you be unconditionally loving your boss when they tell you that you have no more sick days left to use and you either need to come into work or make a doctor's appointment to get a note for your absence? Chances are the answer is no. Unconditional love is not for a single person, a single thing, a single action. Unconditional love encompasses everything all at once, beyond what you can see and experience with the ego. Have you ever meditated on unconditional love and felt like your body was about to explode with how much you felt? You weren't meditating on loving a specific thing unconditionally, because specific things can always let your ego down and disappoint you. You were meditating on unconditional love in general, love for the planet, all of the things on the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the cosmos. When unconditional love is felt, it spreads like fungi to everything simultaneously, regardless of whether you can see it or not. It has no expectations. It has no worries, care, needs, or desires. It's non-attached to the ego and all-encompassing in energy. It has no timeline, no space, no boundaries, no dualities. Unconditional love recognizes the here and now, regardless of whether here and now exist or not. Unconditional love is the antithesis of expectations. It is non-attachment and the ability to love everything for what it is instead of what the ego wants it to be. And it has this ability because unconditional love understands the interconnectedness of everything and that we are all the same. Getting the ego to not have expectations takes work. It's not going to show up immediately and magically. It is a constant, everyday, mindful practice in which we have to remind ourselves, what am I expecting and can I let go of this expectation? The ego is here to problem solve, to help us to evolve on the 3D plane, to work out answers and attempt to control situations so we're not in danger. With these, it links emotions to everything. And when emotions get involved, it's very easy to forget that expectations are fruitless and just going to hurt when they're not met. Unconditional love will most likely not be felt every moment of every day. But just a taste of unconditional love will help to guide you to continue this practice of letting go of expectations. It is only through the symbiotic relationship between universal energy and non attachment to ego that unconditional love can be felt at all times. Until next week, all of my best and highest vibrations to you.