Blog #44--What Is Unconditional Love?

Many spiritual leaders encourage us to demonstrate unconditional love for our fellow man. Unfortunately, the various perceptions we have regarding love make unconditional love difficult to understand and even harder to practice. A review of the subject is in order.

Literally, unconditional love is acceptance without conditions. This sounds simple enough, but practical application is difficult at best because of our ego’s tendency to evaluate and judge what goes on around us. We like some things and some people more than others. We like some physical and/or behavioral aspects of a person more than others. We may want to love some one without conditions, but if only they change this, that or the other.

I would guess at least half of newly-married couples have at least one thing they’d like to change about each other. That is not a great way to begin a life of togetherness. After all, some things simply cannot be changed; trying to change them will backfire. Expecting changes is not unconditional love. A couple desiring to spend a lifetime together must eventually accept each other’s foibles as well as their assets to prevent the discord that can lead to divorce.

We often equate a strong physical attraction with love, and that is certainly one aspect of the situation. A sexual relationship can be one of several benefits of unconditional love, but it is not a necessary component. If anything, a strong physical attraction toward someone may have little to do with unconditional love. The two are definitely not synonymous since our egos often react selfishly toward the object of our attraction.

Unconditional love is unselfish love. If we can love someone enough to accept his or her desire to leave us for a life or partner elsewhere, then we love them unselfishly. Unfortunately, few people alive today can truly accept all others as they are and put aside their personal desires and preferences. It requires our higher selves to replace the polarizing aspects of our egos.

While both positive and negative emotions can be intense when we have a strong attraction (or repulsion) from someone, unconditional love is unemotional. It allows us to love and accept someone the same way every second of every day regardless of the situation. The normal ups and downs of our life cycles may cause us to react with strong emotions at times, while unconditional love helps prevent extremes.

We call a physical attraction “love.” We also frequently equate an emotional heart with love, another misnomer. There is nothing wrong with sharing strong emotional energies with someone we care about; those who are born under the signs of Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio are especially capable of overwhelming the object of their affection with strong emotional energies.

But strong positive emotions can become the exact opposite if their love interest spurns them.

In one episode of the original Star Trek television series, Captain James Kirk falls in love with an artificial life form but loses her. As he suffers from the torment of personal loss, ship’s doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy derides unemotional first officer Spock over his inability to experience love. McCoy seems to indicate one cannot love without experiencing the emotional extremes Kirk is displaying.

But when alone with Kirk, the Vulcan Spock used his ability to communicate mentally, telling him simply, “forget.” He was helping Kirk overcome his torment. Spock displayed an unselfish act of loving kindness toward Kirk. Since this is a fictional story, we will never know whether Spock truly cared about Kirk or simply wanted his captain to function normally again. But he placed no conditions on his actions.

Unconditional love is infinite and doesn’t change under varying conditions. It allows us to accept others the way they are, even if their actions harm us. After all, we are actors in this passion play, not the authors. We may only get glimpses of unconditional love in our lives, but every opportunity to experience it encourages repetition. When we offer unconditional love to every object in our universe, living or inanimate, we are one with our creator.

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