On unconditional love
Unconditional love is an everyday emotion. Anyone can feel it, not many people sustain it, vanishingly few use it intelligently as a tool. However, this emotion can *zap* the world around you into the best version of itself.
I wrote an advanced article on divine love, but as near as I can tell its simply a more distilled, pure, high-vibration version of what I am describing here. The structure doesn’t change, the expression, intensity and availability of it does though. Higher beings are more adept with love, which I guess is the point of working with it. To progress.
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“A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s. Once he has done that, his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God..”
— Dr. Helen Schucman, A Course in Miracles
Odds are if you reading this article, you’ve experienced love in some form at some time. Either feeling it coming out of you, or feeling it emanating from someone or something else. But many people aren’t sure if they have really felt love before and that’s okay too.
Sometimes you have to know that you don’t know to open up room for the experience.
Unconditional love and skeptics
“Our newest experiment has been hatched by my colleague, Art Aron -- putting people who are reporting that they are still in love, in a long-term relationship, into the functional MRI. We've put five people in so far, and indeed, we found exactly the same thing. They're not lying. The brain areas associated with intense romantic love still become active, 25 years later.”
Helen Fischer — The brain in love
Many people are skeptical about love. In my experience, this is with very good reason. First let’s look at definitions.
Love is an emotion, emotions are a type of energy, love is also an energy. (Some people are probably going to hear an echo of “particle / wave” here.)
When I use the term ‘love‘ I am talking about an energy that I visually see as a golden light, and feel as an involuntary beam of energy emanating from my heart. I’ve written elsewhere about the changes in senses and perception that happen with a spiritual awakening. But I want to be very precise that this is not a high-minded philosophy that I am writing about, its a tangible, manipulable, and observable phenomenon that I see having real-world effects.
If you don’t have that experience of the world, I completely understand (my first 30 years weren’t like this) and I don’t expect you to rely on my testimony of reality to make your decisions. But I do use the world very precisely, more so since I developed the ability to see it and realized how confused most people were about love.
As near as I can observe, love is a current that connects things like electricity, it has to run equally both directions. It has to have somewhere to flow too, and people can be good ‘conductors’, or dense and difficult to penetrate just like an electrical ‘ground’.
Unconditional love is a kind of misnomer, love is always unconditional. I use it here to differentiate real love from what most people mean when they say ‘love’ which is often attachment, ownership, fear of loss, dominance/submission routines, and lust.
I believe love should be measurable. Right now the only scientific work I’ve seen seems to be measurement of indirect effects on the brain with fMRI by Helen Fisher, an anthropologist. I am following evolution in fMRI closely but the evidence would also seem to suggest that most humans have neurological patterns that filter love out of their sensory experience. Experiences of love are very reproducible and easy to trigger with yoga, psychadelic substances, and many people report feeling strong experiences of love with with strokes, brain pathology, and near-death-experiences.
Unconditional love and spiritual awakening
There are many ways to trigger a spiritual awakening, intense emotions of any kind will do it, I think I have mentioned before that mine was triggered by an experience of love (like Rumi) and in retrospect I feel very lucky that I had such a nice way to wake up.
I don’t think I had experienced unconditional love before I met this person, I don’t know if it was the receipt of the love (the person loved me back) or it was my feeling the love for that person. But I know the intensity of the emotion was completely different than anything I had ever experienced prior and it changed me fundamentally and permanently.
Currently I believe that all love is the same energy, but its expression depends on the chakra it emanates from. Many people seem to feel it in the head, or pelvis, it’s less common for people to express it from other areas of the body and usually the person has done significant spiritual work and inner development in order to do so.
For instance:
Hands: I saw it coming out of a surgeons hands when he operated, and afterward when he unwrapped bandages and inspected wounds.
Feet: I’ve seen the feet of accomplished yogis and dancers have a golden glow,
Belly: I saw it coming out of the belly of someone who I had just finished executing a complex task with for many hours. Their belly appeared rounded and full as well, like they had just eaten a big meal.
Head: I’ve often seen it around the heads of parents looking at their children, people looking at pets (especially dogs), and, predictably, in young couples of all sexual orientations and genders.
When I see the current of love flow through someone it visibly ‘lights them up’, their auras get brighter, they become more animated, have ideas, talk to other people more, and generally seem happier. Sometimes problems around them go away instantly. In most circumstances this is a little bit like an animatron being wound up and then winding down again. Most people have transient effects if you shoot a beam of love at them. (Although I should note that it is characteristic of love that there is no withdrawal effect (depletionafter its gone) its just that the high wears off.)
Some people have a constant current of love running through them and that’s usually an indicator they have plugged into the divine circuit which is very sustaining. These people can be very attractive to other people and are often described as high-energy.
My takeaway has been that any action we do with the body, can and should be done with love. I will say that seeing love was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received and it should be the first thing you ask for when you start asking for things. Working with love will greatly speed and smooth a spiritual awakening.
Lastly. I want to discuss a serious misconception I had about love which is super common. For lack of a better word, I thought love was… light. I thought it was airy and high-minded.
But I have learned that I had it backwards. Love is powerful. It is POWERFUL. It is not high-minded, its just like an electrical current and strong love can connect you the same way a lightning bolt rips through someone and connects them to the ground. A feeling of very strong love can be the most destructive influence you will ever have in your life.
When you feel real, unconditional love, you will do ANYTHING for the person you love. No reservations. And you will feel great doing it. You also do not stop loving them, even if the relationship is not functional and needs to end. The feeling is stronger than anything to do with your ego. And its very difficult to control your behavior under its influence. Your love will cut through everything that is optional in your life and lay you humbly bare.
It is an awesome weapon of total ego destruction.
Unconditional love and spiritual awakening for skeptics conclusion
When I say love is always unconditional, I mean that. If you truly feel it, you will feel it in the strangest situations with the strangest people, and be helpless to control it. You can control your behavior while feeling it (with skill and experience) but anyone talking like butterflies is not feeling love. It’s not butterflies, it’s blood and very high-voltage electricity.
In my advanced article I talk a little bit more about the responsibility involved when working with love and other people. Suffice it to say, that all power must be used with responsibility and love is the strongest and most powerful medicine there is.
It’s absolutely imperative on the spiritual path to be able to consciously work with love. I recommend asking to sense it directly at the earliest opportunity and updating your understanding of the topic as frequently as possible (your ability to understand love will change over time so you have to keep asking for more information). This is just pragmatism. Love is a more efficient and pleasant way to wake up than the alternatives.
