Unconditional Love

I’ve been reading “The Five Levels of Attachment,” by don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. At the same time, I’ve been working to understand the concept of “unconditional love”.

My understanding of the message from the book is that our attachments to our beliefs get in the way of our following our own, best path. The more strongly we are attached to a belief, the less likely we are to challenge it, even if it becomes almost impossible to make that belief work with what we see around us.

People kill and die because of their beliefs. That belief may be that only their religion is right, that their country is the best, or that their physical body’s shape, size, or color is somehow better than another.

The Dalai Lama, the well-known Tibetan Buddhist teacher, explains the difference between attachment and unconditional love:  “Attachment and love are similar in that both of them draw us to the other person. But in fact, these two emotions are quite different. When we’re attached we’re drawn to someone because he or she meets our needs.[…] On the other hand, the love we’re generating on the Dharma path is unconditional. We simply want others to have happiness and the causes of happiness without any strings attached...” He neither accepts nor denies that unconditional love is possible, but he does explain it quite clearly.

People harm each other because of attachments to a belief that there is a limited way to love. I’d bet on the fact that you know someone who believes it is wrong to love outside of your race, your religion, or to love someone of the same gender. Those same people may tell you that God doesn’t want you to love in the ways they believe are wrong—and they may also tell you that God loves unconditionally. 

Perhaps they explain this as a paradox—that God loves unconditionally, but with a few conditions.

A Yoruba priest, Kalila Borhgini says, “God’s love is unconditional, but God also has expectations and requirements.” She accepts this and, a little later, calls it a paradox.

Baptist Rev. John Piper writes, “There is such a thing as unconditional love in God, but it’s not [...] for everybody. Else everybody would be saved, since they would not have to meet any conditions, not even faith.” What I get from this is that God loves us unconditionally, only if we have faith—which is of course, a condition.

I don’t believe in paradox. My feeling is that when we see something as paradox, it’s because we are seeing part of the equation incorrectly. 

2+3 will never equal 4. No matter how attached I am to the number three, as long as I hold it in that part of the equation, I am going to come up with a paradox because the only thing that logically fits, is another two.

Consider this statement: God is everywhere. 

At first, I took that to mean that God was here with us, all the time—that God was always present, right along with everything else. In time, I considered the possibility that God was neither another dimension superimposed over what we see and feel, nor a presence far away that was somehow aware of everything else.

Maybe God isn't here WITH everything, but AS everything. Maybe God’s presence “everywhere” really means that everything and everyone is God. 

Einstein and other physicists tell us that all matter is actually energy. Slow down energy's vibration and you get what we call matter. This means everything we see, feel, know or imagine is energy. Our thoughts and feelings, our movement through space, and even our bodies. 

Everything is energy. God is everything. Therefore God is energy. This equation makes sense to me. 

Perhaps God slowed down bits of that energy in order to experience what we think of as the physical realm. 

In the Law of Attraction teachings (also called the teachings of Abraham) it says, “Unconditional love is staying in the vibration of Source regardless of the condition.” To me, this says that we can only love unconditionally if we are in alignment with the vibration of the Universe (God). In a way, this is saying the same thing as the Baptist Reverend--that faith(or alignment with God) is a condition of unconditional love. 

One could look at it to mean that only God can love unconditionally, but if we did accept the premise that God is all, then God is us, and we are God and therefore, we should be able to achieve unconditional love.

I will make mistakes and you will make mistakes, yet God is perfect. If we are God, then mistakes do not take away from our perfection. How can that be? 

If I am God and you are God, then the concept of ‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’ has a different flavor. Thy neighbor IS thyself and both of us are God. We are meant to love ourselves and others and God constantly and equally, because they are one and the same and Divine—and therefore perfect. It’s like saying God has unconditional love for us because we are Divine and perfect aspects of God. That equation seems to ring as true as 2+2=4. Both sides are equal and the same. 

Catholic Fr. Vincent Serpa writes, “God does love us unconditionally in that he loves us even in our sins. But he cannot love our sins.” This is the “love the person not their actions” version of “unconditional” love. It represents an attachment to the “good and evil” concept. 

But maybe the way we choose to manipulate the energy around us (the way we choose to live our lives) is not good or bad. Maybe that judgment is irrelevant to God. Maybe God does not have any expectation of how we will use our time in this physical realm, but instead, has a knowledge that all aspects of God will always be aspects of God regardless of how we shift that energy—that no matter what we do, we are still perfect.

We would not put the three in the 2+3=5 equation unless we had a really good reason to believe that the three belonged there. If we were to accept that this paradox of expectations and unconditional love is a faulty equation, what attachment would have caused us to create it?

I think it’s an attachment to conditional love that moves me—and others—create the paradoxical equation. 

In my most rational moments, I don't actually believe God loves one person more than another. I accept that everyone and everything is an aspect of God, and that God loves all aspects of the Universe equally. Therefore, what I do here has nothing to do with how much God loves me.

The first time I considered that idea, I was surprised by a wave of fear. Why would that be a scary thought?

As a small child, I wanted to be loved unconditionally but I learned that love was conditional. I believed my parents were not capable of giving me unconditional love because I was not capable of being "good enough". If I believed unconditional love was possible, I also had to accept that my parents chose not to give it to me. This is harder to accept than to believe there’s an unknowable paradox—which would allow me to never have to look at the situation too closely.

In order to imagine this need for unconditional love being fulfilled, I personified God. I gave God the quality of requiring a condition for love, a quality that actually belonged to my parents. Like many (as my examples above display) I developed an attachment to the belief that "unconditional" love would be given to me if I followed a certain set of rules.

An attachment to this belief has several benefits.

For one thing, I can solve the greatest dilemma of my childhood. With God, I can finally be "good enough" to receive “unconditional” love. 

But also, by believing that God’s unconditional love actually has some conditions, it gives me an illusion of power. If I do “God’s will” then surely God will love me more. I will become one of the chosen, the beloved, the saved—whatever name you’d like—by fulfilling the conditions imposed by my belief system.

If I give up the attachment to the concept that I gain God’s love by following certain rules, does that mean I have to believe I can’t gain God’s love?

Yes. That's true. I can’t gain God’s love because I already have it. We can't ever lose it.

If we have to follow rules in order not to lose God’s love, we live fear-driven lives. There is constantly the possibility that I might lose the love I need, so my actions are driven by the set of imposed rules in my belief-system.

If I truly accept that God's love is unconditional, then I am no longer driven by fear of losing that love. It is that fear that seems to hold us to the rules of society—the things our society has decided are "moral” or “right”. Without that fear-driven base, It seems I would no longer be governed by the laws of man. I would be free to act exactly as I'm called to act. The moral "dilemma" would not exist. 

Our attachment to the concept of "good and evil" may be the hardest one to release. How many paradoxes would be wiped out of existence if we saw that this is really a societal concept, not an actual law of the universe? We would not have to hold ourselves (mankind) to a different standard as the rest of nature, for one. We would not have to judge ourselves or others harshly for "making mistakes", for another. We all know we are going to "make mistakes" yet we live in resentment, shame and guilt. 

If we were going to release our attachment to societal morals. We would have to raise our children in an entirely different way. When a toddler first experienced rage and struck out to show it, we would not tell him what he was doing was wrong. Instead, we would teach him that everything and everyone IS God, just as he is, and that when he strikes out against the world, he is striking out against himself. 

Of course he would not understand this as a toddler, but neither does a toddler understand “wrong”. We drive that into children until they believe it and then expect them to accept the "paradox" that God loves unconditionally—with some conditions.

Being: Part One

For some time, I’ve been trying to gain a deeper understanding of the concept of “Being, not doing”. When I started writing about it, this morning, I realized I have more thoughts on this topic than one post can hold. So, without knowing exactly what part two will look like, I decided to call this part one.

At my CoDA meeting last night, we read Mary R’s story in the Blue Book. Mary R is apparently one of the founders of the CoDA organization. While the concept of codependency had been around for a few years, she and her husband were instrumental in turning the idea into a twelve-step program.

After we read the story, the floor was open for sharing. Before anyone could begin, a fairly new member said, “I have a question. What does she mean by ‘needlessness’?”

In the story, Mary R wrote that needlessness was one of her character defects. She said that this is what prevented her from sincerely asking God to help her with her seventh step.

I looked around the room, and no one seemed ready to answer the newcomer's question, so I gave it a shot. “What I got out of it is, sometimes we deny that we have needs. I think she was saying that she was unable to acknowledge her needs and unwilling to ask for help meeting those needs. Because she thought she was supposed to be without needs, she didn’t even feel as if she could as God for help.”

I looked around, taking in the affirming nods, and felt good about my answer. Saying it aloud had the extra advantage of clarifying the concept in my own mind.

We all have needs. No one can meet all their needs. Yes, we are adults and we are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we never need any help.

My father is an excellent example of someone who struggles with needlessness. He is an old man, closer to ninety than eighty. He had a bad fall a year or so ago which has left him with chronic pain and a great deal of instability when he’s on his feet. One need he has, which he refuses to recognize, is the need for help when he’s walking. He will not use a cane, and often refuses the offer of a steadying hand. He is so certain that he is not supposed to need anything  that he would risk another fall rather than accept help.  

Maybe you're thinking, Sure, he needs help. He's an old man. But not me...

Consider what you would do if you were suddenly stricken with an appendicitis. I’m fairly certain you would have to accept the help of a good surgeon as well as nurses, orderlies, and other hospital staff. There's proof that you sometimes have needs.

But what about when there's no crises? Shouldn’t I be able to meet my own needs, then?

I believe the anser to that question is no. We are able to take care of ourselves in many ways, but refusing to consider asking for help in meeting our needs is unhealthy and self-defeating. We are not alone on this planet and there's no reason to behave as if we are.

Then why do we do it? Why is is such a common thing in our society to think we have to do everything ourselves?

Denying our needs is something we were taught. If you were told not to cry or chastised for expressing anger, you were being taught to deny your need to feel and process emotions. If you were forced to do things you didn’t want to do, you were being taught to deny your need for autonomy. If good eating and sleeping habits were not modeled by your parents, you were taught to deny your own most basic needs. If positive attention and touch were replaced by neglect or abuse, you were taught to deny your need for affection, physical contact, praise, and affirmation.

Thinking about this, last night, I realized that I carry needlessness to an extreme. I have a tendency to look at even basic needs like exercise, food and sleep as optional. They're not! Is there anything more absurd? I don't even allow ME to meet my needs. 

I have to remind myself constantly that it’s okay to take time for myself, that hunger and fatigue are not feelings I should ignore, that pain is neither a reason to panic nor to dissociate from my life. Physical and mental discomfort are clues that I have a need waiting to be met. It’s an opportunity for self-care and sometimes self-care includes reaching out to God or other people for help.

But, we don't want to completely rely on others, right? When is it okay to ask for help?

My therapist has a “three strike rule”. This means when I suddenly discover an obstacle in my path –  an emotional block, an upcoming event, an unexpected twist in my life-path – I am to make three attempts to solve the problem myself. I may try to walk around it, push it out of the way, and step over it. If none of those things work, it’s time to determine what kind of help I need. Is it something I can let go, and allow God to handle? Or, do I need to call a therapist, sponsor, or friend?

Acknowledging my needs is an important step in learning to BE. Ignoring my needs leads to dissociating from my life. Instead, I choose to move forward consciously, taking time for myself as needed, happily offering a hand to others when they ask, and accepting support of all kinds,  when that's what I need.