Three Paths to Unconditional Love

Q: What is the relationship between wholeness and unconditional love?

A: To love unconditionally is a spontaneous expression of wholeness, of self-realization. When you can embrace your shadow, transmute its leaden negativity into the gold of positivity through the alchemy of true self-love, then you become whole. When you no longer struggle with yourself and can accept yourself with all its imperfections with self-forgiveness and understanding, then you can love everyone unconditionally, even the most vile, demonic tyrant like a Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. Does that mean you approve of their atrocities? Of course not, you hate the sin but love the sinner. You have compassion for them because you know they suffer in their own self-created hell. You don’t damn them to hell; they’re already there. You forgive them, for they know not what they do. Then you descend into hell and preach to them but are unattached to whether or not they listen. But before you can do this, you must first face your own inner demon, forgive it, and convert it.

To truly love someone unconditionally, you have to be them empathically, feel what they are feeling. Be one with them both in a human sense and a divine sense. It will be painful but the reward will be great, for the heart that is pierced by empathic, unconditional love can be filled with the light of God and be strengthened so that it will never break.

Can you love others unconditionally before you attain a state of wholeness? Yes. Benjamin Franklin, a high initiate, showed us the way in his autobiography. If you desire to develop a virtue, keep a daily tally sheet, listing incidents that happened presenting opportunities to exercise that virtue and enter a black mark if you were not successful or leave it blank if you were. The goal is to eventually have a clean sheet each day. This is the slow way of the disciplinarian, the path of the willpower.

Another way to develop unconditional love without wholeness is to research all the benefits one can gain from it. Once you realize that your physical and mental health will dramatically improve and that you’ll feel happier and more fulfilled if you love others unconditionally, you’ll be more motivated to do so. This is the slow way of the scientist, the path of the intellect.

But if you want to cut to the chase, enter the hero's way of the heart, embrace your shadow, and achieve wholeness. Then you can throw away your tally sheets and forget your research, for you know that your enemy is your self and you can love them, even if they kill you. That would be the ultimate test. But if you’re ready to pass that test, think how much easier it would be to love them if they only destroy your reputation or livelihood.

So, there are three paths to achieve unconditional love: the disciplinarian’s path of willpower, the scientist’s path of the intellect, or the hero’s path of the heart, the way of wholeness. Which path will you choose?