Unconditional love is something that we all receive at the beginning of our lives.
If we didn't receive this love,
We would die.
But imagine what might happen if you were to start screaming the house down every time you were hungry and having uncontrolled bowel movements.
I doubt that love is what you'd receive first.
But wouldn't it be nice to have someone in your life who would love you no matter what you did?
What if this person was you?
Sadly,
It's all too soon that the other people in our lives begin to put conditions in the way of their love for us.
Take that out of your mouth.
Do your homework.
Cheer up.
When are you going to settle down and give me some grandchildren?
Sadly,
Most people are dissatisfied with life.
And conditional love is their way of passing this dissatisfaction onto you.
At least it's one of the ways.
See,
The common strategy for dealing with dissatisfaction in Western society is to make changes to one's external world in an attempt to make it satisfactory.
You know,
Get this,
Get rid of that,
Get closer to him,
Alienate her.
The problem with this strategy is that this so-called external world has nothing to do with satisfaction.
Satisfaction is an internal experience,
So to speak.
Put a homeless person in a modest two-bed terrace and they'll be over the moon.
Put a billionaire in that same spot and they'll likely be miserable.
The house itself has no ability to make someone satisfied.
Yet round and around we go,
Attempting to change that external world in order to bring about satisfaction.
Guess what else is part of this assumed external world?
Other people.
Why do parents want children to do their homework?
Well,
The almost unanimous answer is something like,
Because it's best for them.
But is it really?
Does anyone really stop to think about whether or not the activity of begrudgingly struggling through basic trigonometry is really best for a child?
What would an inquiry like this require of the parent who is already busy struggling through their own daily tasks?
It's much easier for this parent in the short term,
At least,
To presume that society knows best.
So it's do your homework.
And if the child protests?
Punishment.
Typically in the form of removal of privileges such as,
You know,
Things the child is actually curious about.
Now by the age that homework begins,
The authoritarian parental dynamic is usually well established.
But where did it begin?
Well,
Sadly,
It begins as soon as the child can understand its parents' words.
Which is long before the child can answer back with even one word of its own.
At this age,
The child is completely dependent upon the parents.
Disapproval from the parent,
Which is bound to be tasted at some point or another,
Invokes a primal fear.
Since the parent is the giver of life and the provider of sustenance.
Its love is equal to survival.
Disapproval.
On the contrary,
Could mean that this sustenance is to be removed.
Scary shit.
So in order to survive,
We as children learn to change ourselves in order to satisfy our parents.
Over time,
Socialization occurs.
Which is basically a process of denying certain parts of one's nature.
In order to become more acceptable to those who have already denied those parts of their own nature.
And yes,
This is convenient.
But at what cost?
These conditions that are placed upon us become internalized.
And we end up in the sad position of holding ourselves to these conditions.
And using the same currency to bargain as our parents did.
Love.
If you're here listening to this talk,
You've likely begun to investigate this issue of self-love or self-acceptance.
If your investigation has gone anywhere,
You may have been shocked to discover just how conditional your love for yourself has become.
I can't believe I said that.
I gotta do better.
I'm never gonna make it if I don't.
Why am I like this?
Thoughts like these are expressions of dissatisfaction with the way we are.
And they're manifestations of that old conditioning that was forced upon us in childhood.
That we have to be a certain way in order to be worthy of love.
Unconditional love is realized when we remove these conditions from ourselves.
Shining the light of awareness upon these processes is the beginning of their dissolution.
Indeed,
Loving yourself even though you don't love yourself short-circuits the whole thing.
If loving yourself sounds too soppy,
Then accepting yourself is just fine.
It's the same thing.
Ram Dass said,
When you go out into the woods and you look at trees,
You see all these different trees and some of them are bent and some of them are straight.
Some of them are evergreens and some of them are whatever.
And you look at the tree and you allow it.
You see why it is the way it is.
You sort of understand that it didn't get enough light and so it turned that way and you don't get all emotional about it.
You just allow it.
You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans,
You lose all that.
And you're constantly saying you are to this or I'm to this.
That judgment mind comes in,
Said Ram Dass.
So I practice turning people into trees,
He said.
Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
Let's turn ourselves into trees.
And love ourselves unconditionally.
As we become more able to do this,
We become more able to love others unconditionally.
This is something we've all been longing for since birth.
What a gift.
