“Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It is not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.’ It is love for no reason. Love without an object.”
—Ram Dass
From personal experience I am well aware that dogs can be truly terrible roommates during certain fleeting moments. They freeload off all your hard work and sometimes chew on your favorite pair of shoes when left idle.
If you make a beautiful sandwich and swing your hand too low as you walk to sit at your table, that dog is going to snatch it and run for cover. And your turkey club will be devoured in two breathless chomps before you have a chance to recover it from the four legged thief.
But that very same dog will consistently meet you with unbridled Unconditional Love every time you walk through your front door after being away from them, even for short periods of time.
That dog will yelp with glee as it jumps up to express its love for you. It will wag its tail so wildly that it knocks everything from your low shelves and tables as its furious love rapidly expands to enfold you.
Your mere presence is enough to create passionate explosions of love within your dog that simply can not be contained. And your dog is eager to share that love with you whenever it possibly can.
The dog is showing you something incredible, my dear friend. Its open heart eagerly pours its love upon you like a grand fountain of golden ambrosia, and your heart bathes in that love without words when it is freely given to you.
Why do you think so many hue-mans say things like, “I love dogs but I can’t stand people”?
People often hurt people with the specific intent to do so, because they too are hurt and do not want to be alone in their pain.
But when your dog destroys your couch because you were gone for several hours, your heart knows that it was not an act of spite. They just got bored, or scared that you might never return, and had to express their boundless love for you somehow.
How could you get truly mad at a dog for destroying one of your “things” when you know that their action was based in a love so incredibly strong that they simply could not contain it?
Whether the dog is currently obeying your commands or not, its being is teaching you the power of love in every moment. That is, if you are willing to learn.
It is teaching you what Unconditional Love feels like, what it looks like in action, and that you are more than worthy of receiving it.
Hue-mans are capable of Unconditional Love at an even higher level than dogs because we are capable of consciously acting in higher ways through pure intention.
We have thumbs built onto our hands which allow us to build beautiful things to share with each other. To write unprompted love notes to serve as reminders. To carve the name of our lover into the bench we overlook the river from.
We can recognize beauty in its many forms, and use our creativity to amplify it.
We have the ability to observe our own behavior and the behavior of others to make decisions about how we will conduct ourselves, despite whatever might happen between us.
We have the ability to choose whether we will be champions of Unconditional Love, or consumed by fear, and then to act accordingly based on the choice we make.
And in the immortal words of Yoda, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
Some people allow painful stories to get in the way of their ability to love unconditionally, and their innate love gets distorted to its negative polarity which we call “hate”.
This is what happens when we deflect our experience instead of reflecting upon it.
Fearful energy transmutes their grand golden love and contorts it into shadowy actions rooted in painful feelings of lack.
But what we call “hate” is simply a distorted projection of love that fear mangled into submission.
Your dog does not tear your couch up because it “hates” you. It acts impulsively out of the fear that you might be gone forever. Its love is so strong that it can not be contained, and the fear of losing you causes it to express its love in a dysfunctional way.
The same is true that people who you believe “hate” you are actually your biggest fan club. The hatred they project onto you is merely a distortion of their love put through the lens of judgment which they focus on themselves.
Marian Keyes once said, “the things we dislike most in others are the characteristics we like least in ourselves”, and she was right.
When an individual is hurt, they often use the story of their hurting to project more hurt into the world because they do not want to feel alone. Yet, on the polar opposite end of this spectrum we find the healed individual who wishes to heal all who they encounter for the very same reason.
The only difference between the two individuals is their ability to utilize emotional intelligence to harness the purity of their love, and to translate it in a way that disregards whatever fear may be present.
Unconditional love is a choice. It is a commitment to a state of being which does not ask permission or validation to love openly and equally. As Ram Dass said, “it is not love because…”
It is simply loving for the sake of love. And the understanding that no action whether “good” or “bad” could diffuse its omnipotent power.
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This week’s practice brings our focus inward. In order to love the others unconditionally, we must first love ourself unconditionally, and that is no small task.
If you are a person who has a hard time saying, “I love you” to the person you see staring back at you in the mirror, you must ask yourself why that is. To have distaste for yourself is not a natural thing. It is learned behavior that can be replaced by new learned behavior.
Loving yourself unconditionally is learned behavior as well. It takes time and emotional intelligence to develop through experiences that show you your ability to love despite whatever happens.
Developing unconditional self love is not an overnight feat of accomplishment. Watch the tree grow from the seed, patiently, little by little each day, and you will see how the process works.
Each day we must give ourselves something to love about ourselves and place our focus on the process of growing into full acceptance of that love. Each day we must tend to the garden of our mind if we are to see it fruit in due time.
What experiences have you created for yourself recently that prove to your harshest critic, aka YOU, that you are absolutely worth loving?
Do you have a dog at home? Pay attention to how they look at you, how they express their love for you, and to the energy you receive from them while they furiously wag their tail.
You, my friend, are a beautiful human being. No matter what happened in the past, it all led you to this moment we are now sharing together. Breathe in and know that you are one resilient MF for still being here after all that stuff happened.
And know that you can build upon whatever foundation of love you are currently working with to create the ideal world which we all wish to share.
The natural byproduct of learning to love the one in the mirror unconditionally is an ever expanding Unconditional Love for everyone you encounter. And if you ask me, that is what our world needs right now, more than anything else.
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If you are asking yourself, “Who the heck is this guy and why am I sitting here reading what he has to say”, then start at post #1.
And please remember, I am not your guru, you are :)
What do dogs teach us about love?