UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

What a concept, eh?

Is it really possible? The boys come in with mud on their feet and wreck the floor you spent hours cleaning, and you still have to love them?

Your wife talks all night on the phone, making jokes about how fat and stupid you have become, and you still have to love her?

The guy runs off with the twenty year younger secretary. Love anyone?

The borrower blithely purchases luxuries you would never grant yourself, and then just as blithely, "forgets" to repay, and then acts shocked when you ask for your money back. What a good excuse to not exactly love this one, eh?

Well, that's that lot of it. We're a bunch of selfish and thoughtless and oftentimes mean scoundrels.

Hard to love.

Hard as hell to love.

And how hard is hell to love? I don't know, but there are a lot of places on earth right now that could give that phrase a go for its money, and just to realize how great it is not to be living in Sudan or Iraq or some slum in Brazil/Africa/ Chicago/ Mexico City/ anywhere, is to begin to see that maybe things aren't so bad when the hubbie runs off with the hottie.

But to love him, the scoundrel? Love her, the bitch? Love them, the selfish and thoughtless one? Love It, the Mean Thing?

Well, well, well. A deep subject, as a former friend of mine used to say, a friend who won't speak to me and whom I love. From a distance of necessity. And joy. Loving her while she's still got a bug up her ass is a lot of fun.

That's a weird concept , but try it out.

All these people that fill the shadow edges of our phone books, who we don't really want to talk to, who we can't feel good inside when we think about them, what if they were a source of joy rather than the kind of undercurrent grind of dissatisfaction that they are?

This is the hoot of unconditional love: you don't have to wait around for the impossible, for the liar to be honest, for the scoundrel to be straight, for the rat to be unselfish. You can just love and enjoy your loving while they are still waltzing around in their lives of small minded slop. Or worse. Large minded larceny. Whatever. They are the mean and the selfish and the unfaithful, and that's their job in life.

And we ARE NOT THE MARTYRS. NO. NO. NO. NO.

This isn't about suffering. Suffering is not unconditional love. Love is really digging and appreciating them as they are, in a way that feels good inside us. We feel good.

Now, another thing here, and this is the rathole down which many people send their minds to avoid this brave new world of unconditional love. This other thing is that unconditional love does not mean condoning something you wish to stop. If someone is abusing a child, you can love this person, and separate them from the child. Call the police. Talk to them firmly. Wrap your arms around the child.

And love this person.

Yuk.

Well. So be it. Hate the person, and how do you feel inside and what good does that do anyone? Perhaps it shows the child it's okay to hate, which gets tricky, since it's fine to be angry, if you are a child and you are being pushed around unfairly. Or if you are an adult being pushed around unfairly.

It's just not fair to your own life to allow that circumstance, as an adult, get you pushed out of your happiness. Change the circumstance. Leave. Say no. Call the police. Put up your voice and strength to stop something that needs to be stopped.

And still: keep loving.

How?

Well, that's a Byron Katie essay, which this isn't, and here's the good news: you don't keep loving by Trying to love, or by Being Good, or Being Full of Love. You keep loving by doing the Work and discovering : this is who and how I am when I hold to my thoughts of condemnation, and this is who I am when I see and love What Is, for being What Is?

Is that still complicated?

Yes. It is.

This is one of the most complicated and wonderful things in life, this chance, which comes from the work of Byron Katie, or the work of being purely present, or the work of not grasping and not avoiding (sometimes called Buddhism) or the work of loving your enemies (sometimes called Christianity), this chance to not fall into misery, sorrow, resentment, angry, victimhood or hatred, just because someone else has decided to play out the not so wonderful side of human nature.

For now though, this: this is about making choices, not about being good. It's about feeling good for the love of ourselves and the love of life and the love of feeling love, and not letting other people set up the conditions for when and how we can shine and glow and be free from within.

This is about freedom and the glory of being alive and having awareness and making choices.

Wow.

And it's about now.