I regularly read “positivethoughtsforyou.com and today Mr. Stephen Levine wrote about unconditional love. Here’s an excerpt:

“When we say love we usually mean some emotion, some deep feeling for an object or person, that momentarily allows us to open to another.  But in such emotional love, self-protection is never very far away.  Still there is “business” to the relationship:  clouds of jealousy, possessiveness, guilt, intentional and unintentional manipulation, separateness, and the shadow of all previous “loves” darkens the light of oneness.

But what I mean by love is not an emotion, it is a state of being.  True love has no object.  Many speak of their unconditional love for another.  Unconditional love is the experience of being; there is no “I” and “other,” and anyone or anything it touches is experienced in love.  You cannot unconditionally love someone.  You can only be unconditional love.  It is not a dualistic emotion.  It is a sense of oneness with all that is.  The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal.  It is a feeling of unity.  You don’t love another, you are another.  There is no fear because there is no separation”.

My understanding of this is if we feel love on an emotional level there are conditions, desires, expectations. With conditions, desires and expectations there is the risk of squeezing the life out of relationships.

When we have unconditional love it is not a feeling but a state of mind of openness and accepting everything as it is.  No conditions no desires no expectations  create unlimited possibilities in relationships.

That works for me.

How about you?