The Secret to Unconditional Love
"When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes them feel loved and cared for, but it also helps us to develop inner happiness and peace." – Dalai Lama
Love is the most important thing in this human existence.
Sometimes it can be so difficult to embody the essence of love in a world that is so harsh and unforgiving.
So, how do we do it?
How do we draw in enough of this unconditional love energy that we not only fill ourselves, but have so much love that it pours out into the lives of our friends, our family, and our community?
I used to think that the only people who could attain this status of unconditional love were those who completely devoted their lives to spiritual practices.
The gurus of the world like the Dalai Lama or the Maharaj-ji.
But we don’t have to become gurus or monks in order to embody the energy of unconditional love.
The secret to tapping into this well of deep love is so much simpler…
...a practice that anyone can pick up, wherever they may be in life.
It’s a practice that revolves around loving-kindness, which is the distilled essence of pure love itself.
I call it a practice because we’re here in these human bodies to move through the full range of human experience...not only love.
It’s natural for us to also feel emotions like anger and frustration or pain and sorrow.
In fact, it’s these more difficult emotions that have the potential to crack open our hearts to the experience of deeper love.
And it’s through kindness that we tap into that reservoir.
These thoughts have been at the forefront of my mind since last night, after a conversation that I had with a friend as we were closing up the studio after a workshop.
We talked together for sometime and as I was expressing the anger and frustration that I had been feeling that week, I realized something…
...she was holding a beautiful space of loving-kindness for me, so that I could move through that emotional wave without judgement or shame.
I keep thinking about how her kindness created such a soft space for my heart to land.
That’s how we embody pure and unconditional love.
It’s not through trying to attain a state where love is the only emotion we feel, but rather how we express kindness in everyday situations.
As you move throughout your week, bring awareness to how you’re embodying kindness.
Are you showering yourself with loving-kindness through your thoughts and actions?
Or are there areas where you can work toward being gentler with yourself?
Are you offering loving-kindness to the people in your life who are hurting?
Even in the simplest form of lending a nonjudgemental ear.
Are you gifting strangers with loving-kindness as you live each day or are there areas where you can expand more fully into this energy?
As you contemplate and reflect on this concept, remember that tapping into this unconditional love energy through the act of kindness is a practice.
There will always be ways that we can expand more fully into the embodiment of this energy.
It’s a lifelong exercise.
Think of how many hearts you can expand (including your own), along the way.