Embracing Unconditional Love

Are you yearning for more love and acceptance in your relationships? Join us to explore the 3 Principles' perspective on unconditional love, empowering you to liberate your heart and experience profound connections with others.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the CalmCast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Clare Downam,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt-out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The CalmCast is a series of short explorations,

Gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today we're talking about unconditional love,

Embracing unconditional love.

And it used to feel like a thing to do for me,

Embracing unconditional love.

It was sort of something that I could do deliberately,

Just by deciding that I would be unconditionally loving towards the people in my life.

Like a behaviour thing,

Really.

And I think since my exploration of the three principles,

It really has dramatically changed how I see that.

Because really what I see now is that unconditional love is our default state,

Because it's just love,

Isn't it?

Because we just are love.

We're made of love.

We come from love.

There is this truly amazing thing to see,

That the power of the universe in creating is filled with love,

That infinite intelligence.

It is love in action,

Isn't it?

It's love in action that a tiny little tadpole thing can connect with an egg inside a woman's body,

Or wherever that happens.

And that a human being of this level of complexity can come from that magic,

That all those cells split and do what they do to create a baby.

How amazing is that?

It is just amazing,

Isn't it?

And that is supported by the love of the universe,

That the universe is a loving,

I can't think of the word,

But a loving,

Compassionate space,

Really,

And that we are part of that.

And it's not always easy to see,

But it's a direction to look in,

I think.

It's a bit like Michael Neal often says,

It's like pointing at fire with ice,

This looking towards something like unconditional love,

Which just feels so,

You know,

This idea that we're made of love,

It feels so expansive,

Doesn't it?

It feels like something that we can't touch,

Can't hold,

Can't really experience in the way we might want to experience things in life,

But that it's there,

And we just look towards it.

We look towards unconditional love.

So what is it?

Of course,

I like to do a little troll on the internet when I have these subjects to talk about,

To see what the world out there is saying about it,

But it says to love someone no matter what they do and have no expectation of repayment.

So that's the practical side of it,

Isn't it?

But why would we do that?

If somebody is being a pain in the backside,

If somebody is all take and no give,

If somebody is being demanding,

Expecting lots of us,

Why would we unconditionally love them?

How would we navigate that if somebody isn't being as we would like them to be?

And that could be anybody.

It could be somebody close to you.

It could be somebody who you don't perhaps have a lot to do with.

It could be somebody who just seems to be a little bit of a pest in your life.

Those difficult relationships,

Shall we call them.

We've all got some of those,

Haven't we?

We've all got some people who are in our lives because that's the position we're in.

So it might be a boss,

Partner,

An ex,

A partner's ex in my case,

A parent,

A child,

People who we do love but who aren't being as,

Well,

Not all people who we would outwardly say we loved.

Like I wouldn't at the moment outwardly say that I love my fiancé's ex and all her shenanigans.

But I'm looking towards it.

I know that there's something for me to see when I still feel the opposite of love,

Whatever that is.

I don't feel love towards her,

I don't feel unconditional love because it looks to me that she does need to be a better,

Different person for me to have any kind of feeling like that about her.

Compassion I'm definitely easing into and I do wonder in my head what the connection there is between compassion and love.

How do they connect with each other?

I think maybe love is just a deeper seeing of that compassion,

A deeper seeing that everybody really is doing the best they can with the thinking that's true to them.

And the falling away of that which seems to separate us,

Falling away of seeing ourselves as separate,

That I think is where the space for compassion,

The space for unconditional love can open up.

Everybody's looking towards that compassion.

And for me,

The other thing to see here is that we are all the same,

That the illusion that we're creating of separation is what makes us think that we can't unconditionally love someone else,

That our love is conditional upon them being a certain way.

For us underpinning all of that is the idea that somebody's behaviour,

Somebody being a certain way,

Somebody doing a certain thing,

Somebody saying something,

Can make us feel anything.

I think it seems then,

Doesn't it,

That our love is conditional upon somebody's behaviour because we can't feel OK while ever they're doing that.

Well,

Why would we love them for doing that thing that we don't like,

That we think makes us feel terrible?

So it's underpinned.

A lack of unconditional or conditional love,

Perhaps we could call it,

Is underpinned by the outside in misunderstanding,

The idea that another person makes us feel things when they don't.

They just don't.

It just doesn't work that way.

So there's just so much and what I'm enjoying in sharing this with you is that I know that this is a space where I would love to see more because for me all this stuff around how we relate to other people and seeing it works inside out is so key to our own well-being.

If I'm not in a place of unconditional love,

If I'm in a place of judgment and wanting somebody else to be different and it looking like they need to be different for me to be OK and I love being conditional upon all these different things,

Then I feel terrible.

I don't navigate life with ease.

I don't have a nice experience.

I don't feel calm because of how I'm relating to those things,

Not because of the things but because of how I'm relating to them.

I kind of have a sense of looking towards,

Lightly held of course,

Being in this nice feeling,

The feeling I'm in right now while I'm sharing with you.

That's the feeling I want to be in most of the time or I would love to be.

It's a preference.

It's not necessary.

That would be outside in as well,

Wouldn't it?

But I'm looking towards life,

Experiencing life from this space,

This space of love,

This space of connection,

This space of compassion because I know that I work better when I'm there.

I know that if I'm not in that place,

I tend to be less productive,

More difficult to be around.

I tend to not look after myself as well.

All sorts of different things come up when I'm in that poor state of mind.

So the better connected I am to other people,

The more in truth I am because in truth they are me and I am them anyway.

So the more I am in that space,

It's just a nicer experience of life.

It really is.

Even if that was on a pure selfish level,

I would want to look towards experiencing more unconditional love,

Really seeing that.

Underpinning this is this acceptance piece,

That accepting and knowing that the truth is that everybody really is just doing the best they can.

We're conditioned human beings with thinking.

That means that sometimes we do things because they make sense to us but they are not ideal because we do,

Because we're human and that's okay.

And I think for me,

The more I see that in another,

The more calm I experience,

The more clarity I experience,

The more peace of mind I experience,

The more I feel connected to wisdom,

All of that.

And that's so powerful.

And it is,

I think in all our relationships,

Unconditional love is transformative.

I would say I'm there with some people.

I'm there with Bruce.

In the moment I might get a little bit,

And that's the other thing as well to see that sometimes in the moment I get a bit upset with Bruce about something.

I might not be particularly polite or whatever,

I might say something a bit in an upset way towards him.

But really that lasts such a short time now because I do know that he's doing the best he can with the thinking that looks true to him.

Maybe not all the time,

Not that he's not doing it.

He's always doing it but I don't always see it.

I don't see it all the time.

But the more I see it,

The nicer experience I have of all my relationships.

So it's an interesting place to look towards.

It's a place I'm still exploring.

Please do follow me on Insight Timer.

You're always going to see me moving and changing in how I see things.

So it's an ongoing journey is this three principles exploration.

I'm seeing things different and new all the time,

And it's actually a really exciting and wonderful experience to be doing that.

So,

Yeah,

Keep following me,

Joining my courses,

Attend some of my lives.

There's plenty of those going on.

And,

Yeah,

I hope to see you in there.

Or in here,

Rather.

Take care and lots of love.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been The Calm Cast with Clare Downam,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.