Love.
Such a small word, such an all-encompassing concept.
Such a mystery ! and such a pivotal part of our lives.
The most important question. The most meaningful answer.
The beginning of all that matters, and where all that matters leads us and ends.
Hello my caring friend,
I hope you’re having a week that either feels like relief or like a meaningful learning experience. I hope you’re finding support within yourself or thanks to any guide who can bring you back to you. I hope you’re feeling safe and seen and held. I hope this letter will feel like a hug, like a friend, like a timely reminder that you’re ready for your next step, your next dream, your next breath.
Today I want to write about Love, because there is so much about Love I’m yearning to understand… and writing is how I find my way… when the way has not been paved in a way that makes sense to me, and to my heart.
Love. We misuse this word so much… and because we misuse it, a lot of us have learned to fear a force that can only heal, witness, soften our experience. Love is real life magic. Love is free, generous, endless and everlasting. And, yet, we all suffer in the name of what we call love and then turn our hearts away from the very essence it was made from, Love.
We get lost in the semantical debate… Is Love a verb, is Love a noun, is Love a worthy treat or a vicious trap, is Love a source of strength or our greatest weakness, and most important of all: Do you love me? (Because “Who cares about the rest?”).
We turn Love into enslavement:
If you love me, you will do what I ask. If you love me, you will stay. If you love me, you will understand what I need without needing me to understand what I want. If you love me, you —.
We see Love as a contract. A contract that entitles us to receive everything else:
If you love me, you will respect me. If you love me, you will listen to me. If you love me you will validate me. If you love me, you will protect me. If you love me, you will accept me.
And a contract that also asks you to forfeit all your rights:
If you love me, you will stop doing this. If you love me, you will stop seeing them. If you love me, you will change your plans. If you love me, you will change.
As if loving someone meant we had to stop loving ourselves.
As if all these other words only existed for the sake of making conversations more interesting, and as if love was a garbage drawer in which we carelessly put all the other words that matter, deciding that they would only serve as weak synonyms and, in doing so, allowing ourselves to be a lot less intentional with our choice of values and our own inner work.
Yet, Love and Respect are too different things. They go together often but they can also exist without one another. Same for Love and Protection. Or for Love and Change, or Validation, Joined Timelines. And same for Love and Acceptance. This is a big one.
I realized recently that Love and Acceptance are not two sides of the same coin. I used to think they were. I thought “Love is Acceptance”.
That sounds right doesn’t it? And yet, Love is unconditional. Acceptance is not (and probably should not be).
Whether we’re ready to admit it or not, whether we’re conscious of it or not, there are things we can accept and things we can’t. We tell ourselves that we should be able to accept even the inacceptable, and I believe that’s why there is so much normalized abuse, burnout, depression, conflict and suicide in this world.
We sacrifice our own truth for the sake of an unconditional Acceptance, which serves no one and destroys us fast. We banish our needs to a far away land we never plan to visit again; and because we tell ourselves that we have to accept others unconditionally, we get very busy turning them into a version of themselves we could accept—never acknowledging that they’re not the one who are unacceptable as such, WE are the ones not meant to accept them in their current state of chosen behaviors.
It robs us from our chance to set them free and towards people who are more suited for them. It robs us from truly finding OUR people, and it robs us from doing the inner work we need, in order to love the people we do choose as they are—and not as they would need to look like for us to find them acceptable.
We do not realize how quickly our ego builds jails for ourselves, jails that it then calls the reality of life. We do not realize what a trickster the ego is and how it uses our best intentions to turn us into slaves of the scarcity mindset the ego abides by.
Unconditional acceptance is not a worthy pursuit, an honorable goal or in service of the greater good. Unconditional acceptance gets children killed, wars unleashed and mistreatment glorified. We vilified anger because it was making unconditional acceptance impossible, and yet anger was a well-meaning gate keeper, guiding us to stand up for what’s right and showing us which behaviors serve and which behaviors hurt.
Unconditional acceptance is a trap. Unconditional love is the only unconditional part of life,—and it’s also the closest description of the reality of Life. Nature is the embodiment of Unconditional Love.
Unconditional Love says: You are whole and complete and worthy of kindness, of care, of oxygen, of your needs being met, and of your dreams coming true (when you nurture them with soulful intention and heart-led care). Unconditional Love does not say “I accept you”, it says I see you.
Because Acceptance is a form of judgment, and Love is the antithesis of judgment.
Love cannot judge. And that does not mean that love does not acknowledge right and wrong.
Love says I love you and I witness you being loving right now. Love says I love you and I witness you being unloving right now.
Love says I love you and I see you win and I’m here for you. Love says I love you and I see you lose and I’m here for you.
Love does not love us “despite” our faults, our flaws, our so-called failures, our ego. That’s not Love. Love does not love us “because” of our good deeds, our so-called good qualities, our successes, our soul. That’s not Love.
Love loves us just because we are. Love loves us, human beings, who each have a body, an ego, a heart and who all are souls BECAUSE. Love loves animals, things, what is and what is not BECAUSE.
Love loves.
Love says I’m watching you struggle and I love you and I’m watching you figure it out. Love says I’m watching you soar and I love you and I’m watching you figuring it out.
Love does not love you more today, as we share a delicious meal, than yesterday when we were co-creating an argument. Love does not love me less today in all my moodiness and exhausted body than love loved me yesterday when I was smiling, dancing, laughing or helping—as hard as it is to believe.
Love loves.
Love says I’m here, and that’s all. Love doesn’t give help, Love provides presence. I can love you and not help you. I can help you and not love you. All those words are different words for a reason.
Why do I believe it matters so much?
Because unconditional Love is the greatest force there is, our way to Heaven on Earth, our path to Peace and Joy, the root of a meaningful world.
And no, unconditional Love does not mean a world free of so-called negative emotions, because with the proper definition of unconditional Love comes the understanding that Anger and Grief are a part of Love. That they are just as sacred as Joy and Relief. I wrote about why Anger is Love HERE and I’ll write about Grief and Love very soon.
Shame however is the antithesis of love. There’s nothing sacred in shame… Yet, shame is healed by Love in an instant… when we remember that Love is unconditional.
Shame says “I’m worthless now”. Unconditional Love reminds us that our worth is inherent and not bound to acceptance, independence, helpfulness or validation.
Shame is what happens when we disconnect from Love. And Shame can swell in front of someone committed to unconditional Acceptance!
OF COURSE it can. We don’t realize that accepting poor behavior from someone else is sending them the message that it’s okay for them to behave in a way that hurts, wounds, disappoints or diminishes either themselves or others. We’re unconsciously telling them that we don’t believe that they could have done better, so… that’s okay. We’re making them feel that part of their worst appears to be the best they could do to us.
Take a second for letting this realization sink in—if it resonates…
To me, when I’m on the receiving end of this so-called Acceptance, it feels like disappearing, like unbearable violence… and yet it is so well-intended. It comes from a will to love me unconditionally! That’s why the Buddhist warn us about the near ennemies. Those feelings that seem so close to what we’re aiming for, but that come from a should instead of our intuition, and therefore cut us from our humanity and the other’s essence—instead of bringing us closer and back in each other.
Near enemies, such as pity and compassion. They can look so similar and yet one subtly implies a difference of status, of resourcefulness, of oneness:
“Oh no, you poor thing, I wouldn’t want to be you” is what the other person receives when we misguidedly pity them. “I wouldn't want to experience what you’re going through, I wouldn’t want to live in the street, I wouldn’t want the man I love to leave my side, I wouldn’t want my child to feel that bad” is what we’re unconsciously saying. “I feel different than you” is what we’re misguidedly proving.
It is the opposite of compassion that says “I know what pain feels like and I’m here to hold yours with you . I too have experienced what felt like the end, like rock bottom, like there was no way out… and I’m standing right here with you now, and I’ll be standing here until you find your own way to remind us all of how deep and resourceful we are. This is not about me AND I can use my shared humanity to connect to yours, while you face your share of our shared human experience”.
Unconditional Acceptance is the near enemy of unconditional love—and that’s why so many people refuse to let themselves love ever again, thinking it means they will have otherwise to face what cannot be accepted once more.
However, there is nothing safer than unconditional Love, because unconditional means that there is no condition to Love (yes, bare with me), so that means that the receiver of love is the whole, it means EVERYONE—which means it includes me by default. That means that I cannot lose anything by unconditionally loving you, because if it requires a lack of love for me to love you, it immediately stops… being… Love.
Unconditional Love therefore can organically create distance with the object of our love if it’s not safe or healthy or loving or good for us to be around it or them. Unconditional love was embodied by Prentis Hemphill words: “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love and you and me simultaneously”. It teaches us that boundaries are not meant to be walls to keep everyone out—that’s hyper independence. Boundaries are not meant to be self-sacrificingly destroyed in the name of unconditional Acceptance—that’s co-dependency. Boundaries are the logical space that unconditional love allows between you and me in order for both of us to be unconditionally loved.
And this is why we can love a murderer and not condone their behavior. This is why we can love someone who deeply hurt us without letting them come close enough to hurt us again, if they haven’t done the inner work. This is why we can love ourselves, without letting ourselves becoming complacent or driveless or harmfully overindulgent.
Unconditional Love is not unconditional Acceptance. Love holds us up, love empowers our values, love shapes our truest dreams, love lights the world.
Let’s remember what Love is, what Love means, what Love feels like.
And let us not turn our truest friend into a foe, because we misspelled her name. Love is unconditionally loving. That’s how we know if it’s love or not. Love leads to Love. That’s why it’s so easy to know that love is Love, and why love is so powerful.
Unconditional Acceptance does not lead to love. We have tangible everyday proof of that. Unconditional Protection does not lead to Love. It leads to blurred lines and self disempowerment. Unconditional Validation is not Love. It gets others addicted to our thoughts and behaviors, it prevents us from learning from our mistakes and from growing into the wonderful beings we are all meant to become.
This is also why we can’t ever lose anything in Love, why love does not have a price nor a cost. Love will feel good to you and love will feel good to me. Love does not sacrifice one for the others, love looks at what is, and follows what love understands needs to be done. Love does not need to disown me to give to you. Love makes it obvious that I am responsible for meeting my needs, because that’s the loving thing to do; and then Loves makes it obvious that if my needs are met, all the rest is meant to be shared with you! Including my fed and nurtured body, my enlivened heart, the fruits of the blossoming tree of my dreams, and all that I can share with you without having to forfeit one of my needs to do so.
Love is what will heal our world, once we’ll have finally remember the meaning of Love and why Love is indeed by nature unconditional.
Care.check:
Take a look at your surroundings, at your lived experience, at your relationships, at your expenses, activities and dreams. Where have you coupled your understanding of love with sacrifice, your call to help, your will to serve or… your right to live?
Are you ready or willing to change that?
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo