Unconditional Love or Universal Love?

I have to be honest with you, as spiritual as I believe I am, I still wince when people say they can feel unconditional love for all humanity. It’s not that I’m afraid to let go of all judgement, it’s just that I have trouble reconciling that part about free will. For example, I’m not sure I can feel unconditional love for people who choose to be cruel to animals and exploit them. Animals, despite their nature’s programming, know love, feel it, and express love, and have a dignity all their own.

I remind myself that if all bad deeds create karma, then there is no permanent way to get away with it.

Research into past lives suggests we plan our lives, and that souls who hurt others in a life, will tend to plan their next life as a victim.

Now it‘s easier to reconcile how unconditional love could exist. Yet the spiritual texts I’ve read don’t mention karma related to animals.

I prayed one night, before sleep, to ask if animals were considered in karma. I think I got a reply the next day. I bought a carton of hot chips with my lunch, and noticed the pattern on the carton had a string of words that said, ‘What goes around, comes around’. It seemed an answer to my prayer. Spirit does listen and will use everyday objects to communicate to you.

We know from religions that God’s love for us is unconditional. Then if God is our parent, that is the most accessible way to understand unconditional love. As parents, we tend to love our children unconditionally.

Small children are receptive to love from a feeling sense very directly. You’ll notice they respond instantly with smiles or giggles. An adult tends to react more slowly and will pause before they react to the word ‘love’. They may scan their memory for the last time they felt the warm glow of love.

The longer we live on earth, the tougher we become. On a writer’s forum I used to participate in LinkedIn, there was a man who signed off with ‘I love you’ instead of the usual ‘regards’. One day, one of the forum members responded, ‘Oh you love everyone.’ The forum was not a spiritual one so it did seem out of place yet I was struck by the idea that declaring unconditional love like this doesn’t really cut it with many people.

One of the times I felt the unconditional love for my daughter was when she was about 3 years old and just had a tantrum. After the dust settled, I declared, ‘I love you from here to the moon’ and she instantly replied, ‘I love you from here to the kitchen.’ Still, we can’t really will ourselves to love all humanity unconditionally. Even if the will is strong, it is tempered by the hurts and changing emotions we all experience.

What seems more achievable, for me anyway, is having an unconditional love for love. To love the ideal of love with no reward expected in return. Just enjoy the act of giving and feeling love. The focus is on universal love, as in ‘love is a substance’ – as a way of being, rather than something that has to be earned.

The most direct way to tap into universal love is through the vibration of Love, by focusing on the heart. After doing this many times, it becomes a way of living. When love is felt in the mind and the heart in tandem, the effect on ego is like it gets demoted to a salesman trying to get a foot in the door of your mind.

In case you think that’s idealistic, let me tell you, as a fallible human, I’ve made this switch in my conscious mind simply by using will and desire. The challenge is how long you can maintain that state before the mechanics of ordinary life chip away at it.

But that’s okay because in this world it’s not realistic to feel this way constantly. It can be a fine line between spiritual detachment and disassociation. If we are conscious beings then we can stop cycles of abuse or depression, from generation to generation, by being conscientious which is simply observing thoughts but not totally identifying with them.

Universal love is a bottomless reservoir that lives in the heart of every soul. Blow gently on that glowing ember inside you and ‘light the light within’. Accessing it is much like tuning into a radio frequency, into the universal love station GOD.

Universal love does not have to be a continuous state felt all the time. Simply ‘turning the other cheek’ to someone who has done wrong by you is a great act of unconditional love in that moment – the highest.

It’s an inside job. The following advice from Jeshua (not to be confused with Jesus), is a spirit channelled by Pamela Kribbe, jeshua.net, and says it all about unconditional love, in the ‘From Ego to Heart’ series, part 1:

Your own divinity is your entrance to unconditional love. You can only find it by going through the fear and darkness surrounding it, and this you do by turning inward, instead of outward. You do it by using your consciousness as a light that chases the shadows away. Consciousness is light. Therefore it does not need to fight darkness; its mere presence dissolves it.