UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
By
Bill Cottringer


The quality of our lives as spiritual beings on this human journey involves learning one thing above all others: How to love unconditionally. What we have to learn is how to close the gap between real and ideal love. Success in this effort is closely tied to how our own personal definition of love evolves.

Learning to close the gap between real and ideal love is full of bruises and broken hearts. The reality is that our hearts can only grow bigger and stronger by experiencing much sadness in real hurt and disappointment. This is the painful process of refining our personal definition of love.

A bumpy, rough, and winding road full of potholes, dead-ends, breathtaking views and scenic detours lead me to this tentative conclusion: Love is a state of being that gradually comes over you as you increasingly give more of yourself to others. It is not a mysterious, overwhelming feeling you instantly have about another person. Love is both the ordinary, unselfish acts and the natural consequences from carrying out those acts, which you can practice each and every moment. Each time these acts build a more ideal unconditional love.

What exactly is the ideal of unconditional love we are all striving towards? It is these seven ordinary acts of unselfish giving and their consequences:

ACCEPTANCE

Acceptance is the most difficult virtue to develop and practice. That is because we have all learned to be so successful doing the opposite—using our abilities to control and change things more to our own liking. Acceptance is usually considered passive and weak. However, anyone who is struggling with learning the wisdom of being more accepting knows very well, such an effort is hardly passive. In fact it may be the most aggressive, strenuous thing you can ever attempt.

Learning to practice acceptance involves loosening your mental grip on things—gradually giving up your illusion of being in control of yourself and others, especially your ideas of how you expect things should be. Ironically, when you shift your focus from how you want another person to be, towards accepting how he or she really is, the less you need to change and the more you learn to enjoy that person. When you do this, you are communicating one of the most important values we are all looking for—freedom. Why would you not want to freely spread this most valuable form of love?

UNDERSTANDING

The road to being more accepting starts with the effort to understand ourselves and others better. You can best do this by sharing your deepest inner self with others to help them understand you better and listening closer to them for the sole purpose of understanding them better. This process requires much courage and attention, minus any form of judgment or control.

By understanding yourself and others better, you are focusing more on similarities than differences and this just serves to increase understanding itself and make acceptance that much easier. What you eventually understand is that we humans are very paradoxical—and we all want our cheese and eat it too, especially being unique, free and independent, as well as being the same, equal and dependent. When you understand how to help another person get what he needs—even both sides of the equation at the same time—you are applying the most practical form of unconditional love.

EMPATHY

As you increase your abilities to understand and accept other people more, you are moving toward a very peaceful and satisfying place of unity and love. This balanced position is where you can become more sensitive to the unnecessary areas of human suffering and actually do something constructive to help.

The only way you can get to this place is through understanding and accepting the heartaches you can’t avoid. These painful life experiences are what build the bonds between people that help you relate more deeply with others without the confusion of words. Empathy both comes from understanding and acceptance and increases them as well.

TOLERANCE

Sooner or later in our relationships, we begin to focus on differences and how they make us feel uncomfortable. In reasonably healthy relationships that are based on liking and mutuality, these differences are just ordinary shortcomings than can easily be overlooked—if you choose to.

Learning more tolerance in relationships begins with the realization that intolerance never has any positive consequences. The mere act of becoming more tolerant feels very good in and by itself. And a side benefit is the reciprocity—the more you tolerate about others, the more they tolerate about you and you both end up feeling better. Who wants to feel lousy?

ENCOURAGEMENT

We are all our own best critics. We know our own worst faults and don’t need to be reminded of them. Being overly critical of the little things other people do to irritate you releases the termites that destroy the foundation of even the best of relationships. The simple act of being more tolerant of these insignificant irritants often communicates the freedom for the other person to change if these little faults aren’t really so little.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to realize criticism is just another form of punishment, which never gets the desired result of changing the behavior. Encouragement of right behavior is what always works best. And when you focus more on overcoming your own faults, the other person’s faults aren’t as visible. Besides, they are highly likely to learn much from your demonstration of self-improvement, than words of judgment or criticism.

REVERENCE

The act of treating others with reverence—showing deep respect and positive regard—is the best application of The Golden Rule. Practicing all these other acts of love forms reverence and gets returned tenfold. Why do we disregard the wisdom of this valuable guideline in human relationships?

Sometimes it seems to be easier for us to treat strangers, animals and things with greater reverence that those closest to us. Why is this? Do we focus too much on the negative emotions and even anticipate them?

RECONCILIATION

One of the biggest obstacles in having loving relationships involves the inevitable human conflicts that arise between each person’s opposing needs. One person needs space, the other needs company, one needs emotional support and the other needs physical intimacy. Another obstacle is in our human drive to resolve or “fix” these uncomfortable conflicts, which often results in painful compromises that really satisfy no one. The only solution is to focus on positive similarities in one another’s needs, rather than negative differences.

To do this, you must transform your approach from resolution to reconciliation Resolution is individual efforts to reach agreement on the problem, whereas reconciliation is a mutual effort to make the relationship more whole by practicing these other ordinary acts of unselfish loving.

In the profound words of Rick Warren: “The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.


William Cottringer is a Business Success Coach, College Teacher and Sport Psychologist from Collinsville, IL. He is also author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too. He can be reached at ckurtdoc.charter.net