I have been reflecting recently on the nature of love and unconditional love. This is due to a recent life experience which perhaps one day I will write a book about. One of those big transitions which come about in life.
Love is at the heart of my life and all our lives –However – love, a little word and a little matter which affects us all – what is it really?
I believe that love is the centre of all life, that we have to feel love in all ways in order to feel truly human and that it is essentially beyond words. It is a feeling, a sensation, a true depth of the soul acknowledgement, that to truly love, we need to think only of the other, of care, and of wishing the best. This other can be a person, an animal, nature, music, art, or any of the myriad experiences in life. Love takes many forms, in my experience and my belief and we all have our own ways of expressing love. Look in a dog’s eyes when they look at their master – this seems to me to be love in its most unconditional form. Look at two lover’s when they gaze at each other – this is love in its essentially pure and human form.
Love in a romantic sense, however is very different from the unconditional love felt when the other loved one is more important than self. When a person loves romantically, it seems there is more personal need involved in the love. Just listen to love songs and many pop songs,or watch romantic videos – they all appear to encourage a sense of ‘need’ and ‘desire’ which is the more selfish version of love. One in which a person does not feel complete without the other, when the need is to ‘be together’, to merge and melt, and in which there does not appear any sense of separation for awhile. Nearly everyone recognises however, that this form of love, the stage of being ‘in love’ is temporary. It is beautiful, necessary and vital, as by being in love, we begin to recognise our human nature of needing to be connected, we touch the sexual nature of love which is in its purest form deeply spiritual. But it is also a blind form of love, some cultures have even called it a sickness! in which the loved one can do no wrong for awhile, and in which the rose tinted glasses give a sense of beauty whatever is in front of you. This love cannot be sustained. This love is indeed blind, as it is formed of projection, hope, need, desire and to some extent infatuation. And eventually it ends.
If we are lucky, in our human relationships, the stage of being in love will turn to the stage of feeling more unconditional love. In this stage, there is more acknowledgement of the whole person, where all the good and bad are accepted, and in which different nuances are accepted and growth occurs. Unconditional love allows that failure occurs, but does not stop the loving. Unconditional love within human relationships, allows that two people are separate, but that each can come together to give the other a flavour of unity, connection, flow and beauty. If we are lucky, we will feel unconditional love in our relationships, both our intimate relationships and our family or friend relationships. We will hopefully feel this in life, about all aspects of our life.This can then inform our need to stand back, accept, care and be mindful that this love is not about our own need, at all, it is only about the other, and about wishing what is best for the other. It is about true acceptance of all that is. This form of love, I believe, is the truly divine form of love that can be found on earth today.
How do we learn to express this more unconditional form of love when we are merely flawed human beings, you might ask? Well, my first step is to use my heart chakras. I use my innate sense of what is right in my feelings and emotions, to check if what I feel is a more conditional form of loving or is truly unconditional. The truly unconditional love gives a most amazing sense of grace and beauty, but is not experienced for this. This is indeed simply a byproduct. If we search for love to experience such feelings, we are still wanting and needing – we are still using the experience of love for selfish means, as opposed to unselfish. Love by its very nature, can imbue all with a feeling of great warmth, humanity, beauty, and compassion. But only the truly unconditional form of love can really open our hearts. We accept what is, we see only the best in a person and we allow all to be there, the flaws and the truth. Truly opening our hearts to unconditional love allows us to connect, deeply and totally without any sense of needing anything in return. It just is a state of grace.
Recently I attended a sufi day on opening the heart and discovered, to my amazement, that between the states of agony and ecstasy, the two extremes of how we can experience love, there is a soft, gentle and deeply humming love which just is – this is the unconditional love which is the heart of our souls and the heart of the earth. I hope we can all experience this eventually.
Our unconditional heart chakra is in the space above our regular heart chakra, and spins at a different frequency to the heart chakra. It spins at the frequency of the earth, and is the core of our being. It is now waking up, and many people are beginning to have experiences related to this chakra, which give a true flavour of our inner senses, our need to connect to each other, the earth and all living things. Bringing unconditional love into every aspect of your being, as much as possible, will imbue you with a true satisfaction of life being lived according to the laws of the nature and cosmos. It will bring with it a gentle beauty and grace which you will never have felt before.
Use the colour magenta, to try and engage with this feeling and this heart chakra. Go into your deeper self and ask yourself, ‘How can I express my unconditional loving self today?’ And if you are lucky, as I have been, you will find the answers that can change your life.Namaste.Anna x