Unconditionally

"Unconditional love is to love another exactly as they are, so-called “flaws” and all, while also holding space for them to continue growing into the best and highest version of themselves."

“Oh mirror in the sky, what is love?” Landslide, Fleetwood Mac

Let’s talk about love and the difference between unconditional and conditional love. In many ways, the terms and concepts are self-explanatory; conditional love is love given with conditions or “with strings attached” while unconditional love is love without any conditions. While the definitions are fairly self-explanatory, it is not always as easy of a concept to truly understand and accept in terms of our physical 3D world and lives.

Unfortunately, so much of the “love” we experience or witness in our lives and that is modeled to us in the present world could be described as conditional love. Conditional love such as the idea of only loving and approving of someone if they meet your expectations, only if they be who YOU think they should be, only if they behave in the way you think they should behave, only if they believe the way you think they should believe, and so on. That is a very limiting type of love and more often than not is coming from a more egoic mindset. With every condition given, we are building a cage around people and telling them they are somehow only worthy of our love when they remain inside the cage of limitations we've built for them. We should learn how to love people into freedom instead.

“Learn to love people into freedom, not cages.” — Malanda Jean Claude

We all have egos so we are all susceptible to falling into ego traps including this practice of conditional love. Often this is the type of love or attachments that we learn from our parents, whether through observing their relationship with each other or through our own relationship with one or both of them. They likely learned the same patterns from their parents who learned from their parents. I’m not saying that our parents can’t or don’t love us unconditionally but sometimes they have wounds and traumas of their own that may get in the way of expressing that love unconditionally or that influence their expressions of love. If they were not taught how to deal with their own emotions and wounds in a healthy way, they often unconsciously continue the ego patterns created from those wounds and may inadvertently carry those patterns into their relationships with their children, creating similar wounding in the children. It can become a vicious cycle. I also believe there are beings and forces in this world that have a vested interest in keeping humanity stuck in lower vibrations and in those egoic mindsets and pattern, and so these patterns and this conditional love is often what is broadcast to society as “normal” and the conditional love and related ego patterns persist and cycles are perpetuated.

Sometimes we develop wounds from our past experiences that make us afraid to be ourselves. Perhaps we experienced conditional love with a parent when we were younger. Maybe we were not given support or loved when we expressed a certain part of ourselves or when we expressed certain feelings and beliefs so we learned to hide that part of ourselves or even deny it for fear of not being loved or gaining approval. We may have learned how to “perform” or to wear a mask in order to receive that love, approval, or validation from our parent. These patterns will then likely carry over and influence our lives and other relationships (until we learn to heal ourselves) and possibly be reinforced by society whether unintentionally by those who are also wounded or intentionally by those who have agendas and benefit from keeping humanity in the lower vibrations and operating from ego. Unconditional love can feel really scary when most of what you’ve known or been taught is conditional and ego-based love or relationships.

I believe unconditional love is to love another exactly as they are, so-called “flaws” and all, while also holding space for them to continue growing into the best and highest version of themselves. There are no conditions. You love them as they are. You love them even if they think or believe differently than you, if they choose to speak, behave, and act differently than you think they should. You love them even if and when they make mistakes. You love them wholly and entirely. I think it is a much more freeing kind of love. People grow when they are loved well and when they are free and feel safe to be themselves. Unconditional love is true unity.

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

It needs to be noted though, and this is VERY important, there is a big difference between loving someone despite their mistakes and staying in a toxic or abusive relationship or allowing toxic and abusive patterns and behavior from someone. Now I want to be sure I’m absolutely clear here so I repeat: unconditional love does NOT mean that we allow ourselves to become doormats or that we allow or enable toxic and abusive behaviors from others. I think some people get this part mixed up and can fall into abusive, toxic, and codependent arrangements or relationships because they think that loving someone unconditionally means sacrificing one’s self or enduring whatever shitty behavior someone throws your way in the name of “love.” No. That’s not love, that’s attachment. That's unhealthy. I already addressed controlling behavior in a prior post titled: The Masks Will Fall Off; view that post here. Just to summarize it, controlling or attempting to control others is not healthy and not true unconditional love.

I think the key here is that you must always love yourself unconditionally and you must love yourself first. Just like loving another unconditionally is to love them as they are while also holding space for them to heal, grow, and better themselves, you must love yourself this exact same way. Love yourself and all of your wounds and perceived flaws and imperfections. Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. Accept your shadows and mistakes, do not try to hide them or deny them, but allow yourself to heal, improve, and evolve as well. Boundaries are an important aspect of self-love and unconditionally loving yourself. When you love yourself first, you can and should put up boundaries when people’s behavior and vibration are not aligned with what you deserve or your vibration. When you love yourself unconditionally, you will not be seeking any kind of validation, approval, or love from someone or somewhere else and so you’re less likely to form these unhealthy attachments or fall into codependent patterns/relationships where you’re essentially using someone or something to fill a void in yourself or where you're willing to settle for less than you deserve and unequal give and take. We cannot expect others to give us the love that we must first give ourselves. We cannot expect others to save us or fill our cups for us nor should we think we can save others or fill their cups for them. That is codependency and attachment. We must fill our own cups first and then we can share without developing codependency and without depleting ourselves.

"The problem is everyone is looking for unconditional love carrying a bag full of conditions." -- Simran Chaddha

This concept of unconditional love can be tricky to fully grasp (and also is not easily compressed into only a few paragraphs) and our egos often do not like and are resistant to the idea of unconditional love. The ego can’t really understand unconditional love as unconditional love is very soul-based; the ego is very rooted in the physical 3D world and its set patterns, beliefs, and “rules” about how it thinks things should be (which are often very rigid). The ego often thinks in very black and white terms. The ego thinks unconditional love is impossible but your soul knows the truth--nothing is impossible, especially when it comes to true love. We have the power to choose unconditional love, to break the cycles. Are you ready to drop your bag of conditions and open up to a higher love? You deserve it, you know.