Unconditional Love

Greetings One & All!

Do you believe we each have the potential for unconditional love?

Or is it just reserved for God & a few saints?

How about a few quotes -

"God, teach us to love without wanting to control; to love without limit; to love you, our friends, and also our enemies. Teach us to be patient in love when love is not returned; teach us to be patient when even you are apparently far away. Teach us loving, waiting, patience when there is no answer to our questionings and our doubt."

Michael Hollings and Etta Gullick

"When you commit yourself to living love, you feel at peace with yourself because you are at harmony with the flow of life. Viewing life from the highest perspective, you feel confident and secure. You realize that no matter how things may appear, you are loved and protected. You know you are one with God, and you bring your peace with you wherever you go. You’re not looking for love, but for opportunities to love."

Susan L. Taylor

"It is essential that our love be liberating, not possessive. We must at all times give those we love the freedom to be themselves. Love affirms the other as other. It does not possess and manipulate another as mine. To love is to liberate. Love and friendship must empower those we love to become their best selves, according to their own lights and visions."

John Powell

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

Feodor Dostoevsky

Here's an interesting search -

https://www.google.com.au/search?so...enAU453AU453&q=Higher+self+unconditional+love

I found the ultimate reality site to be most illuminating!

Have a good one!

Maybe all of us except for psychopaths. :/ Loving unconditionally is one of the hardest things to do.

Geoff-Allen said:

Greetings One & All!

Do you believe we each have the potential for unconditional love?

Or is it just reserved for God & a few saints?

How about a few quotes -

"God, teach us to love without wanting to control; to love without limit; to love you, our friends, and also our enemies. Teach us to be patient in love when love is not returned; teach us to be patient when even you are apparently far away. Teach us loving, waiting, patience when there is no answer to our questionings and our doubt."

Michael Hollings and Etta Gullick

"When you commit yourself to living love, you feel at peace with yourself because you are at harmony with the flow of life. Viewing life from the highest perspective, you feel confident and secure. You realize that no matter how things may appear, you are loved and protected. You know you are one with God, and you bring your peace with you wherever you go. You’re not looking for love, but for opportunities to love."

Susan L. Taylor

"It is essential that our love be liberating, not possessive. We must at all times give those we love the freedom to be themselves. Love affirms the other as other. It does not possess and manipulate another as mine. To love is to liberate. Love and friendship must empower those we love to become their best selves, according to their own lights and visions."

John Powell

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

Feodor Dostoevsky

Here's an interesting search -

https://www.google.com.au/search?so...enAU453AU453&q=Higher+self+unconditional+love

I found the ultimate reality site to be most illuminating!

Have a good one!

Click to expand...

Reading your OP, I have to ask how a god whose love is conditional could possibly be the source of unconditional love? Worship me or be tortured for eternity is hardly unconditional love.

Bunyip said:

Reading your OP, I have to ask how a god whose love is conditional could possibly be the source of unconditional love? Worship me or be tortured for eternity is hardly unconditional love.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by "tortured for eternity".
Where does that come from?

jeager106 said:

What do you mean by "tortured for eternity".
Where does that come from?

Click to expand...

The bible.

Bunyip said:

The bible.

Click to expand...

Which bible? Where in that bible.
It's a very big collection of literature.

jeager106 said:

Which bible? Where in that bible.
It's a very big collection of literature.

Click to expand...

Well most versions will be very similar, so I guess Mathew 13:41-50, Mark 9:48, Revelation 14:10, Rev 14:11, Rev 20:14, Rev 20:15, Luke 10:15, Luke 16:23, John 3:16.

Those are all I recall offhand, and of course like all theology it is all a matter of how it is interpreted. The notion of eternal torment is a very common interpretation within Christianity.

I don't think unconditional love is something that can be taught. I think seeking it is misguided. It's like a breeze. You don't control when it comes and goes.

I don't know whether most or all people can experience it. I doubt anyone knows that.

Matthew 15:21-28 seems pretty conditional to me.

The Faith of a Canaanite Woman
21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David. have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Click to expand...

Treks said:

Matthew 15:21-28 seems pretty conditional to me.

Click to expand...

For the terms and conditions of God's love we have the commandments - 660 of them I believe.

You don't need to beg or make excuses like the woman did if the love is unconditional. And if Jesus is God, then God's love is indeed bound by conditions.

Unconditional love is possible, but it does taken an enormous amount of time, self-discipline and effort.

Bunyip said:

Reading your OP, I have to ask how a god whose love is conditional could possibly be the source of unconditional love? Worship me or be tortured for eternity is hardly unconditional love.

Click to expand...

A person would not even come to faith if it were not for God's love. It is God that sustains all things, and the power of God that moves a self-absorbed sinner from their own desires to repentance. It is unconditional because we can do nothing, and only rest on God's sovereign purposes. We are dead in our sins, and God brings us to life through faith in Jesus. It is not "Worship me or I will torture you", because us human beings choose ourselves every time, we are already dead! God wants something for us that is far better, namely, Himself, and so He intervenes directly and brings us to Him.

EDIT: Though this intervention is not for all but for those whom God has called, so in that sense it could be said it is not unconditional for everyone, for not everyone is called to repentance, but the door is open to everyone, everyone is welcome to believe in Jesus, there is no barrier by race or nationality or background or social class. Everyone is guilty for rebelling against a holy God and sinning in all manner of ways, but God has paid our debts through Jesus Christ.

Life has been conditional from the beginning. In the garden of Eden, Adam and his wife would have continued to enjoy their idyllic existence as long as they obeyed the command to refrain from touching the fruit of just one tree. It was not an outrageous demand....it was a small test of obedience and respect for the one thing God had claimed as his own. It caused them no deprivation or hardship whatsoever.

As the giver and originator of life, God has the right as sovereign ruler to dictate the terms of our existence. For what he offered, he asked very little in return. Man chose self rule on his own terms and we have been reaping the consequences ever since.

Our continued existence is still dependent on our obedience to the one who gave us life.

He offers us life on his terms or death on our own.....we choose.

Sunstone said:

I don't think unconditional love is something that can be taught. I think seeking it is misguided. It's like a breeze. You don't control when it comes and goes.

Click to expand...

You are in part correct, from a certain perspective. If you were to go on a quest to find yourself by looking everywhere in the world high and low, but never pausing to consider the one who is looking is the same as the one seeking to be found, you would only an ever find fleeting glimpses in reflections, passing by like phantoms, like the breeze. But this is not to say it cannot be realized, fully.

It is who we already are. You cannot control it, because it's not an attribute or a quality for us to possess or achieve, but the very condition of our being itself. And hence the illusion of it being outside of us as we are under the delusion its something to achieve or attain. What we can control however is our self-contraction that disallows it. Put another way, one does not find God, they simply open to God or allow God. To know God is to know yourself. To know yourself is to know God. If God is seen or experienced as unconditional love, then removing all the conditions allows the unconditional to simply be known, at all times, in all things.

It's frankly that simple, and that hard for us to do. We attach conditions to everything and hence become blind to the simply obvious. Seen from the other side of your perspective it becomes a different understanding. It only comes and goes to us, because we open and contract to it, opening and closing our own eyes, awakening and falling back asleep.

Sunstone said:

I don't know whether most or all people can experience it. I doubt anyone knows that.

Click to expand...

Everyone can experience it. But we may be so blocked within ourselves we never open to it, afraid to see ourselves, the One we've always known but dread meeting. We put the face of death upon it because to see it we have to release all our illusions we have of ourselves and cling to as our anchor. There is a tension and a balance most will strike in order to avoid the dissolution of the self-edifice and strike out to become who they are before and beyond the self-mask, finding a dull contentment in seeing only glimpses of that Light.

JayJayDee said:

Life has been conditional from the beginning. In the garden of Eden, Adam and his wife would have continued to enjoy their idyllic existence as long as they obeyed the command to refrain from touching the fruit of just one tree. It was not an outrageous demand....it was a small test of obedience and respect for the one thing God had claimed as his own. It caused them no deprivation or hardship whatsoever.

As the giver and originator of life, God has the right as sovereign ruler to dictate the terms of our existence. For what he offered, he asked very little in return. Man chose self rule on his own terms and we have been reaping the consequences ever since.

Our continued existence is still dependent on our obedience to the one who gave us life.

He offers us life on his terms or death on our own.....we choose.

Click to expand...

Oddly contained within this story-book presentation of the human condition is what I said in my post in this thread. We place conditions, and it is the conditions themselves and our judging of our compliance with or failures to comply that create this barrier between ourselves and Unconditional. We have barred ourselves from God by self-judgment, self-contraction, we look upon ourselves and feel shame, hide ourselves from release into the unconditional. The story-book form of this simply represents this in figures. It's rather wonderful how mythology speaks to deeper truths this way.

JayJayDee said:

Our continued existence is still dependent on our obedience to the one who gave us life.

He offers us life on his terms or death on our own.....we choose.

Click to expand...

I would rather live a single day as a Lion rather than a hundred years as a Sheep.

Unconditional love is the act of loving someone without requiring them to change in any way, and despite what they may do. That seems reserved for us mere mortals, and most of the gods we've created remain incapable of achieving.

jeager106 said:

What do you mean by "tortured for eternity".
Where does that come from?

Click to expand...

Remember, it was mankind who has interpreted the scriptures, to use fear and control to oppress.

No. Thats why Jesus saved Christians so they may experience the unconditional love from Him by His wiling to take their place on the cross. The promise of the resurection brings out unconditional love for Christians, saints, and God alike.

Geoff-Allen said:

Greetings One & All!

Do you believe we each have the potential for unconditional love?

Or is it just reserved for God & a few saints?

How about a few quotes -

"God, teach us to love without wanting to control; to love without limit; to love you, our friends, and also our enemies. Teach us to be patient in love when love is not returned; teach us to be patient when even you are apparently far away. Teach us loving, waiting, patience when there is no answer to our questionings and our doubt."

Michael Hollings and Etta Gullick

"When you commit yourself to living love, you feel at peace with yourself because you are at harmony with the flow of life. Viewing life from the highest perspective, you feel confident and secure. You realize that no matter how things may appear, you are loved and protected. You know you are one with God, and you bring your peace with you wherever you go. You’re not looking for love, but for opportunities to love."

Susan L. Taylor

"It is essential that our love be liberating, not possessive. We must at all times give those we love the freedom to be themselves. Love affirms the other as other. It does not possess and manipulate another as mine. To love is to liberate. Love and friendship must empower those we love to become their best selves, according to their own lights and visions."

John Powell

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

Feodor Dostoevsky

Here's an interesting search -

Higher self unconditional love - Google Search

I found the ultimate reality site to be most illuminating!

Have a good one!

Click to expand...