so. much. spiritual. bypassing! Yes, you can claim the idealized high ground, but that's not where our efforts to coordinate break down. They break down around trust, communication, and money-sex-power games. If we pretend we exist only, primarily, or persistently in the realm of non-dual perfection, we guarantee we get our asses kicked down in the Here and Now.
Seems like you misunderstand what love is. The only love that exists is unconditional love for your ‚true self‘.
Love is a state of connectedness with everything and everyone - where being and becoming merge.
If you are in this state your authentic enrealed expression in the moment is love. Even if that is being angry at someone, or sadness.
TL/DR: Love isn’t a feeling. It’s a way of being in which every color of the rainbow of feelings is expressed. Feeling IT is love. Doesn’t matter how that humanifests through you.
Agreed - I have unconditional love for Trump even though I find many failures in him. To me, love is not why I trust or set boundaries with people - those are separate concepts. For me, unconditional love means that if I need to set many boundaries with someone, I don't hold bad feelings about them. Instead, I still look for the best in them.
My two cents on this take it or leave it is that I agree. Love is All and a state of being. Love is The Self. We also have a Personality. I would argue that that 99.9 % of the population hasn’t fully integrated all aspects of personality into the Self (the state of being that is unconditional love). My experience both personally and observationally is that the mind has very clever ways to avoid that integration process. This article speaks to that nicely in my opinion.
Doesn‘t make sense for me either to distinguish between love and unconditional love. Love is all there is. Either it is expressed or it exists as potentiality.
Not really convinced that I need to have my boundaries with others related to my belief that all humans are worthy of love. Maybe the world would be better if we all loved each other equally, AND set boundaries between those who cause us harm.
Spoken from the heart, I can tell. It doesn’t really resonate here, I must say. Love, as I understand it, is not something you get to evaluate. It’s a commitment, to feeling it ‘all’.
Now, relationship advice - which your post seems to allude to - that’s a different ballgame, to my mind.
I suppose the problem is that love means different things to different people. Conditional ‘love’ is an unfortunate misnomer, in my book.
Well said Jamie. Seems that most love and emotions are conditional, and that's a good thing, I think. Without those conditions of showing up, following through, being nice, etc, (which trigger reciprocity) society may fall apart.
find it fascinating how many folks in replies are privileging an abstracted idealized notion of love that very few ever hold, and certainly can't hang onto in critical conditions--largely for the reasons I laid out in the piece. Same with win-win vs. win-lose games--we aspire to the grooviest but we end up sucking at the necessary! Far better we practice the nitty gritty to get us to the groovy.
Just read some comments. Yeah it seems your point somehow got lost. Perhaps because of a desirability bias to maintain beliefs about love that parents and others tell us growing up. “Unconditional love” just sounds so enlightening and seductive.
There is another quote attributed to Suzuki Roshi that goes something like, "I don’t trust anybody. And this is a great kindness."
To me, it suggests that loving someone also involves accepting their faults without condoning them. Calling out these faults can be an act of love. My Big Mind may love everyone unconditionally, while my Little Mind respectfully offers suggestions for improvement, but without holding expectations. You know, you will be disappointed, but you persevere in loving the person.
That said, there are degrees of love, and even my Big Mind has its difficulties with the likes of Trump.
The only people who should get unconditional love are everyone under the age of 4. Past that, it must be reciprocated.
Forgiveness does not mean letting people run you over. That is self loathing, not forgiveness, not love. We've got material, real world social interactions and goals going on here. Positive vibes only is nonsense, and a denial of nature.
(Im typing this so maybe Ill remember it. Guilty.)
Most pursuits of spiritual enlightenment are driven by abandonment and attachment issues, I would like to suggest. Maybe we only feel a strong need to find god or spiritual liberation once we’ve hit the wall of our protective defences enough times to put cracks in it’s shallow foundations. Or when we have run out of the track we laid down in unconscious reaction to our abandoned true selves. Something that happens to nearly every one of us I would imagine in one form or another. The causal event probably occurring in early childhood from trauma or some such tragedy. Whether something is either Conditional or unconditional love become mere side shows once we recover our authentic selves I would like to think and do think? Not that those things aren’t important to sort out any more. It’s just that the need to receive our just desserts is no longer so pressing when what you were missing was right there under your nose all along and was well within reach. It’s not that you cannot be hurt anymore it’s just that it no longer burns you up like it once did. It just stings instead. And all of us can live with that. Life with no pain at all wouldn’t really be a life! 😀
Hey Content Carrier. Thank you kindly for taking the time to respond. You’d ‘love to hear me out about trues selves’. That statement makes no sense mate. Are disputing something or agreeing with it. You also say that Enlightenment can’t really be a pursuit. It’s a state to your mind? Are you saying that you are enlightened? What on earth are you actually saying? Thanks again.
Sorry my friend didn’t help. Film clip didn’t make sense.
“You tap into it.” Maybe?
True self? My meaning is someone’s authentic state of self. As opposed to something of so called ‘higher nature’ being sought. My point is that the pursuit is in most cases a fruitless endeavour probably driven by an underlying sense of separation. We are kind of separated at birth or perhaps infancy from a state of ‘grace’. That is a state which dwells behind the masks of ‘survival’ imposed by our immediate environment. We, our more authentic natures, get left behind in our endeavours to fit in and appeal to the world we live in. It’s not always bad as such, but does leave a sense of longing within the individual. In some cases that sense of longing can become more urgent in times of crisis. I don’t see love as the answer. I believe it is the side effect of true connection to the world once we establish who we really are. And not who we think will make us a success. Anyway, thanks again for you thoughts and response. Appreciated.
i resonate with this, and in practical terms it is totally my experience. Spiritual bypassing is rampant. Just the smelly hint of it makes me want to not engage with someone further. All it means is a sh*t show when the going gets tough. And while I go into an engagement with goodwill and a basic trust...after that, it has to be earned. Unless it is unconditional love, can one even call it love? Love is the universal force of being and becoming, as such is can embody creation, maintaining and destruction in the service of evolution of Life/Love/the Absolute. What humans generally call love isn't necessarily "love", (though in some way it is). Once the human ego structure gets involved, it is always conditional. There are instinctual and transactional aspects, and in the more distorted forms, abusive aspects to "love". So yeah, grow up people and take 100% responsibility for your actions and reactions. Not easy....not at all. In unconditional love you want what is best for the other as well as yourself. This includes all other life forms, whether you understand them or not. Plants are life forms, ecosystems are life forms. Allowing any life form to be abusive isn't usually best for them either. Taking away all someone has worked for to make them homeless, isn't either. Taking care of your self while actually harming another ...or many others in terms of harming life itself...isn't "love" in the sense we would like to understand it. In most cases that level of commitment to be 100% responsible for one's own action and reaction with resulting consequences in relationship with any life form and with willingness to communicate might not be a very common thing. I realize I am all over the place here...but, so it is...just my quick response to it.
Bro, I haven’t chirped in a while, but I’ve been reading your stuff. I think this too is a cultural problem and where in the English language the word “love” has such a broad spectrum of meanings. What is meant by love? Is it in the consuming (having) or generative (being) mode? In a way the term “conditional love” is not love, not really. Conditional love is actually manipulative, “do this or I withhold my love”. I do not love conditionally based on getting anything or my love ones doing anything. It doesn’t mean that I enable those I love regarding bad behaviour. But that is a whole conversation. Like good fences make good neighbours, good boundaries are important for the mental health of all participants, and that is being unconditionally loving (nurturing life). So actually unconditional love would never enable toxicity. Also love means letting go, knowing what is ours to hold and do and to leave to others what is their’s to hold, at times them doing it alone, without us. Problem is that our culture really does not understand love, check out chickflick narratives. Thanks for the thoughtful provocation! Cheers!
Found this to be quite provocative. But then I prefer my Wheal served cold, so it was perfect.
For me love is only unconditional, and the essay is a reminder of how limiting language can be. Love, success, sex, snow ... we pack so much juice into a few letters, especially in english. Poetry and parables get us closer on their own than bullet points, but all attempts can lead to conversations and comments and introspection which can move us all closer to truth. Really enjoyed the comments and will participate more with them going forward.
I think if I had to oversimplify my feeling, it would be that unconditional love = love (and is the only kind). Jamie-speak seems to be unconditional love = soul love which I can also deal with. The conditional love referenced would more accurately be termed trust, as mentioned in a few of the comments. I think we can and should actively (unconditionally) love in real world situations without letting people walk over us. In fact that wouldn't be a loving thing to allow, since the first and unmentioned part to all of this is that we first need to unconditionally love ourselves.
Very relatable to my experience as a parent to teens. Thanks Jamie.
There is a distinction that makes a difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. When some primates use instrumental means to extract a non-reciprocal transaction from a relationship allegedly rooted in intrinsic unconditional value, it naturally erodes at the strong bonds of trust and intimacy. To instrumentality exploit this love loophole is counter to the spirit of unconditional, intrinsic love.
Fair point At this level of granularity it comes down to precise definition of terms Unconditional love doesn’t require trust conditional love is based upon it
“Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve – but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life – this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.” — Martin Heidegger
Unconditional love, in its truest form, does not exist without fidelity in the other.
So beautiful Jamie. I cannot wait till next week, and the new definition of tantra. Combining these girls seems very important to me, if nothing more than on an intuitive level. It simply rocks. Foundational somehow.
I love how you’re putting this, and having been raised in the ideal of pseudo intimacy in an anemic religion that fed on unconditional love as a main course communion meal, your words are timely for my soul.
I still look forward to the day of bantering over a long weekend camp fire with you.
so. much. spiritual. bypassing! Yes, you can claim the idealized high ground, but that's not where our efforts to coordinate break down. They break down around trust, communication, and money-sex-power games. If we pretend we exist only, primarily, or persistently in the realm of non-dual perfection, we guarantee we get our asses kicked down in the Here and Now.
Non-duality may be perfect, but it ain’t a walk in the park. Can get pretty brutal.
Seems like you misunderstand what love is. The only love that exists is unconditional love for your ‚true self‘.
Love is a state of connectedness with everything and everyone - where being and becoming merge.
If you are in this state your authentic enrealed expression in the moment is love. Even if that is being angry at someone, or sadness.
TL/DR: Love isn’t a feeling. It’s a way of being in which every color of the rainbow of feelings is expressed. Feeling IT is love. Doesn’t matter how that humanifests through you.
Agreed - I have unconditional love for Trump even though I find many failures in him. To me, love is not why I trust or set boundaries with people - those are separate concepts. For me, unconditional love means that if I need to set many boundaries with someone, I don't hold bad feelings about them. Instead, I still look for the best in them.
My two cents on this take it or leave it is that I agree. Love is All and a state of being. Love is The Self. We also have a Personality. I would argue that that 99.9 % of the population hasn’t fully integrated all aspects of personality into the Self (the state of being that is unconditional love). My experience both personally and observationally is that the mind has very clever ways to avoid that integration process. This article speaks to that nicely in my opinion.
Agree with you. I just believe it’s a disservice to love to call it „conditional love“, when it has nothing to do with love.
Doesn‘t make sense for me either to distinguish between love and unconditional love. Love is all there is. Either it is expressed or it exists as potentiality.
Love is all. Word.
prehaps
Not really convinced that I need to have my boundaries with others related to my belief that all humans are worthy of love. Maybe the world would be better if we all loved each other equally, AND set boundaries between those who cause us harm.
Spoken from the heart, I can tell. It doesn’t really resonate here, I must say. Love, as I understand it, is not something you get to evaluate. It’s a commitment, to feeling it ‘all’.
Now, relationship advice - which your post seems to allude to - that’s a different ballgame, to my mind.
I suppose the problem is that love means different things to different people. Conditional ‘love’ is an unfortunate misnomer, in my book.
Well said Jamie. Seems that most love and emotions are conditional, and that's a good thing, I think. Without those conditions of showing up, following through, being nice, etc, (which trigger reciprocity) society may fall apart.
find it fascinating how many folks in replies are privileging an abstracted idealized notion of love that very few ever hold, and certainly can't hang onto in critical conditions--largely for the reasons I laid out in the piece. Same with win-win vs. win-lose games--we aspire to the grooviest but we end up sucking at the necessary! Far better we practice the nitty gritty to get us to the groovy.
Just read some comments. Yeah it seems your point somehow got lost. Perhaps because of a desirability bias to maintain beliefs about love that parents and others tell us growing up. “Unconditional love” just sounds so enlightening and seductive.
Yikes. Well, love may not stop that from happening, I guess? No reason to give up on the unconditional kind.
There is another quote attributed to Suzuki Roshi that goes something like, "I don’t trust anybody. And this is a great kindness."
To me, it suggests that loving someone also involves accepting their faults without condoning them. Calling out these faults can be an act of love. My Big Mind may love everyone unconditionally, while my Little Mind respectfully offers suggestions for improvement, but without holding expectations. You know, you will be disappointed, but you persevere in loving the person.
That said, there are degrees of love, and even my Big Mind has its difficulties with the likes of Trump.
The only people who should get unconditional love are everyone under the age of 4. Past that, it must be reciprocated.
Forgiveness does not mean letting people run you over. That is self loathing, not forgiveness, not love. We've got material, real world social interactions and goals going on here. Positive vibes only is nonsense, and a denial of nature.
(Im typing this so maybe Ill remember it. Guilty.)
Turning the other cheek went out of fashion really fast, for some reason.
Most pursuits of spiritual enlightenment are driven by abandonment and attachment issues, I would like to suggest. Maybe we only feel a strong need to find god or spiritual liberation once we’ve hit the wall of our protective defences enough times to put cracks in it’s shallow foundations. Or when we have run out of the track we laid down in unconscious reaction to our abandoned true selves. Something that happens to nearly every one of us I would imagine in one form or another. The causal event probably occurring in early childhood from trauma or some such tragedy. Whether something is either Conditional or unconditional love become mere side shows once we recover our authentic selves I would like to think and do think? Not that those things aren’t important to sort out any more. It’s just that the need to receive our just desserts is no longer so pressing when what you were missing was right there under your nose all along and was well within reach. It’s not that you cannot be hurt anymore it’s just that it no longer burns you up like it once did. It just stings instead. And all of us can live with that. Life with no pain at all wouldn’t really be a life! 😀
I’d love to hear you out about ‘true’ selves!
Enlightenment can’t really be a pursuit. It’s a state, to my mind.
Hey Content Carrier. Thank you kindly for taking the time to respond. You’d ‘love to hear me out about trues selves’. That statement makes no sense mate. Are disputing something or agreeing with it. You also say that Enlightenment can’t really be a pursuit. It’s a state to your mind? Are you saying that you are enlightened? What on earth are you actually saying? Thanks again.
As for ‘true’ selves, well yes, there’s a lot to unpack there. Is the separate self ‘true’, and in what way?
Hey Michael, meant to say ‘talk about …’ - fixed it.
Enlightenment is something an ego cannot really pursue, in my view. So it’s a nondual state, of being both in the body and at one. You tap into it.
This may help: https://youtu.be/aX_2-UJp7cs?si=i6Hp1RFmeHkFxA8G
Sorry my friend didn’t help. Film clip didn’t make sense.
“You tap into it.” Maybe?
True self? My meaning is someone’s authentic state of self. As opposed to something of so called ‘higher nature’ being sought. My point is that the pursuit is in most cases a fruitless endeavour probably driven by an underlying sense of separation. We are kind of separated at birth or perhaps infancy from a state of ‘grace’. That is a state which dwells behind the masks of ‘survival’ imposed by our immediate environment. We, our more authentic natures, get left behind in our endeavours to fit in and appeal to the world we live in. It’s not always bad as such, but does leave a sense of longing within the individual. In some cases that sense of longing can become more urgent in times of crisis. I don’t see love as the answer. I believe it is the side effect of true connection to the world once we establish who we really are. And not who we think will make us a success. Anyway, thanks again for you thoughts and response. Appreciated.
As long as we know that the separate self is an illusion, then we’re on the same page!
i resonate with this, and in practical terms it is totally my experience. Spiritual bypassing is rampant. Just the smelly hint of it makes me want to not engage with someone further. All it means is a sh*t show when the going gets tough. And while I go into an engagement with goodwill and a basic trust...after that, it has to be earned. Unless it is unconditional love, can one even call it love? Love is the universal force of being and becoming, as such is can embody creation, maintaining and destruction in the service of evolution of Life/Love/the Absolute. What humans generally call love isn't necessarily "love", (though in some way it is). Once the human ego structure gets involved, it is always conditional. There are instinctual and transactional aspects, and in the more distorted forms, abusive aspects to "love". So yeah, grow up people and take 100% responsibility for your actions and reactions. Not easy....not at all. In unconditional love you want what is best for the other as well as yourself. This includes all other life forms, whether you understand them or not. Plants are life forms, ecosystems are life forms. Allowing any life form to be abusive isn't usually best for them either. Taking away all someone has worked for to make them homeless, isn't either. Taking care of your self while actually harming another ...or many others in terms of harming life itself...isn't "love" in the sense we would like to understand it. In most cases that level of commitment to be 100% responsible for one's own action and reaction with resulting consequences in relationship with any life form and with willingness to communicate might not be a very common thing. I realize I am all over the place here...but, so it is...just my quick response to it.
Bro, I haven’t chirped in a while, but I’ve been reading your stuff. I think this too is a cultural problem and where in the English language the word “love” has such a broad spectrum of meanings. What is meant by love? Is it in the consuming (having) or generative (being) mode? In a way the term “conditional love” is not love, not really. Conditional love is actually manipulative, “do this or I withhold my love”. I do not love conditionally based on getting anything or my love ones doing anything. It doesn’t mean that I enable those I love regarding bad behaviour. But that is a whole conversation. Like good fences make good neighbours, good boundaries are important for the mental health of all participants, and that is being unconditionally loving (nurturing life). So actually unconditional love would never enable toxicity. Also love means letting go, knowing what is ours to hold and do and to leave to others what is their’s to hold, at times them doing it alone, without us. Problem is that our culture really does not understand love, check out chickflick narratives. Thanks for the thoughtful provocation! Cheers!
Found this to be quite provocative. But then I prefer my Wheal served cold, so it was perfect.
For me love is only unconditional, and the essay is a reminder of how limiting language can be. Love, success, sex, snow ... we pack so much juice into a few letters, especially in english. Poetry and parables get us closer on their own than bullet points, but all attempts can lead to conversations and comments and introspection which can move us all closer to truth. Really enjoyed the comments and will participate more with them going forward.
I think if I had to oversimplify my feeling, it would be that unconditional love = love (and is the only kind). Jamie-speak seems to be unconditional love = soul love which I can also deal with. The conditional love referenced would more accurately be termed trust, as mentioned in a few of the comments. I think we can and should actively (unconditionally) love in real world situations without letting people walk over us. In fact that wouldn't be a loving thing to allow, since the first and unmentioned part to all of this is that we first need to unconditionally love ourselves.
Very relatable to my experience as a parent to teens. Thanks Jamie.
There is a distinction that makes a difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. When some primates use instrumental means to extract a non-reciprocal transaction from a relationship allegedly rooted in intrinsic unconditional value, it naturally erodes at the strong bonds of trust and intimacy. To instrumentality exploit this love loophole is counter to the spirit of unconditional, intrinsic love.
I wonder if you’re conflating love with trust a bit.
I can love the begeezus out of my mom, but not trust her to keep her word.
I can love Trump and believe he’s a danger to America.
Fair point At this level of granularity it comes down to precise definition of terms Unconditional love doesn’t require trust conditional love is based upon it
I don’t see how unconditional love equates with trust AT ALL, other than trusting another to be exactly what they are and what they are not.
Is that what you mean?
Yes. I understand. It’s confusing. Ponder this:
“Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve – but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life – this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.” — Martin Heidegger
Unconditional love, in its truest form, does not exist without fidelity in the other.
So beautiful Jamie. I cannot wait till next week, and the new definition of tantra. Combining these girls seems very important to me, if nothing more than on an intuitive level. It simply rocks. Foundational somehow.
I love how you’re putting this, and having been raised in the ideal of pseudo intimacy in an anemic religion that fed on unconditional love as a main course communion meal, your words are timely for my soul.
I still look forward to the day of bantering over a long weekend camp fire with you.
Peace and courage to you dear brother.
Oops. That should’ve said, combining these thoughts … not girls. I have too much unconditional love for dictations :-)
I love this