Unconditional Love Comes with No Conditions
Love in all forms is bigger and more empowering than you think.
The number of false narratives in the world on the subject of love are many. Much of this comes from the idea that love can cause pain and suffering.
Not true. Love, in and of itself, can never cause pain or suffering. By itself, love is the ultimate creator, source of wellbeing, empowerment, and any and every good thing you can think of. All by itself, attached to nothing, love is never hurtful, harmful, or bad.
The keyword above, however, is attached. In other words, when love comes with conditions, that’s where the problem is. Love itself is unconditional and in more abundance than every subatomic particle in the universe. Conditional love, however, and attachments placed on love, are where it all goes wrong.
Before I go deeper into this, I’d like to offer an important matter of clarity. You are love. Not the product of love, not capable of giving or receiving. You are love.
There is only one you. You’re unique. You’re 1 in 8,000,000,000 (8 billion). You alone are here on this planet to experience your life and all the ups and downs therein. You beat a lot of odds to be you, here and now. The simplest and least conditional explanation for this is that you are love.
Any and all conditions attached are artificial.
The lies of conditional love
Some of the conditions that get attached to love are innocuous. They might be well-meaning. Unfortunately, some are unkind and uncompassionate, and create a false impression of what love truly is.
This begins with your family. Growing up, you were taught various things, many of which were valuable. Saying “please” and “thank you”, sharing, learning how to interact with others, and the like. Hopefully, you were loved by your family.
Still, some of that love was likely conditional. If you did something unacceptable, bad, or inappropriate as deemed by a parent or caregiver, conditions might have been placed on love. This is also true if you did something desired, good, and appropriate according to those authorities.
Punishment was sometimes a condition of love. Any time a command, suggestion, or the like was followed by “or else”, that was conditional love. Sometimes this was unintentionally conditional. Sometimes, though, it was only by meeting a given condition that you got love.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t end in adulthood. Dating is often fraught with conditions for love. If you don’t give enough time, spend enough money, buy enough gifts, or lots of other notions, love gets withheld. It can also be much subtler. Touch withheld, expressions of love made, and gaslighting are all mental, emotional, and spiritual conditional love.
The worst of this comes from the nature of our fear-based society. Advertising frequently presents you with conditions for receiving love. Buy that product, purchase that service, spend the money, or you fail to meet necessary conditions and get no love.
All of this, however, is a lie.
Unconditional love comes with no conditions
Genuine, unconditional love comes with no conditions. One of the best places to see this is with animals.
Despite cats being aloof, they give unconditional love. Dogs are even better at showing this. They don’t care what you do, so long as you are there. They will love you simply for being.
Unconditional love is love that simply is. That’s why you are love. Because you simply are. There is no need to do something, be something, have something, or otherwise. Love is abundant beyond reckoning, and it has no conditions attached to it that aren’t entirely artificial.
Love in all forms is bigger and more empowering than you think. It’s not the fairy tale notion of kisses turning frogs into princes or waking sleeping princesses. Love is the sun shining on us, the moon and stars lighting the night, and acts of kindness, compassion, and empathy.
Love cannot and does not cause pain, suffering, hurt, or anything else bad that gets attached to it. It’s the attachments of conditions that are the cause. When you get dumped, for example, a condition of love was not met, so it’s denied you. Due to your failure to provide a given condition or conditions, the love that was between you and your ex has been removed.
The pain and suffering from this has nothing to do with love itself. It’s the condition that existed that has been used, abused, and implemented in one form or another. This can be both unintentional and with malice of forethought.
Love, however, is never the source of pain, suffering, or any other negative.
Releasing the conditions
You and I have been trained to believe that conditional love is real love. It’s become accepted that conditions on love are how it should be. Whether given or received, conditional love is the predominant idea of what love is.
This is not true. Love is you and you are love. Unconditional love is the truth behind what love is. In the world we live in this can be hard to believe. So many messages imply and outright state that conditional love is true love.
When you look more within and less without, this becomes easier to recognize. Looking within is an act of conscious awareness. That’s mindfulness. Mindfulness tells you what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, if your approach is positive or negative, and what you are and aren’t doing.
When you practice this, you begin to see the conditions attached to love. You further see them for what they are and how they are not the truth. From there, with this knowledge, you can practice giving more unconditional love. That opens you to receive more.
Except you don’t need to receive more. That’s because it’s everywhere. This might seem like a stretch, but unconditional Love is The Force. As Yoda said,
“Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”
That’s the truth of love at its core.
You are unconditional love
The last and often most insidious condition placed on love is worth and deserving. Artificial conditions are often created – not necessarily from a place of malice – that must be met. These form attachments to ideas of being worthy and deserving.
For example, let’s say you’re in line for a promotion at work. However, that new person they hired a year after you gets it and you don’t. Now you question your worth and feel hurt because you thought yourself deserving. Because your boss judged you as less worthy and deserving than that other person, you now question your own worth and if you’re deserving.
This is all artificial. You are worthy and deserving of everything. Unconditional love is yours, and you don’t need to have, be, or do anything to receive it. That’s in part because you are love.
There are too many false notions of competition in the world. These created numerous artificial conditions of accomplishment, achievement, and the like. When not met, you might question if you’re worthy and deserving. They are, at their core, elements of conditional love in the world.
Detaching yourself from this takes practice and time. It will vary from experience to experience and situation to situation. Mindfulness is the tool you have to do this. You need not do it alone, either. There are lots of books, therapists, and options to get guidance in this process.
However, it starts with recognizing and acknowledging that you are unconditional love. I can’t convince you of this truth because you alone know who, what, where, how, and why you are. I share this idea here in the hope that it opens you to taking the journey and learning that you are, truly, unconditional love.
Can you see the differences between conditional and unconditional love?
This is the six-hundred-sixty-third (663) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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