This Friday is Valentines Day, our secular celebration of love. So of course, it feels timely to focus on love for this week’s Wednesday Wellness post. However, instead of viewing love on the worldly plane of emotion or feeling, I’d like to take a leap to higher ground.
All spiritual teachings (no matter where they come from) speak of living from a place of love rather than hate or fear. But what does that really mean and how to actually do this? To understand love from a spiritual perspective, we must see it not as a sentiment but as an essence, as an experience without conditions.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
While the concept of unconditional love sounds appealing, most of us struggle with this ideal. How can we love someone who thinks and behaves completely different from us... with whom we share nothing in common? Or even more challenging... how to live from love when someone is unkind, hurtful, or mean-spirited? And if we do, doesn’t that imply that we somehow endorse their bad behavior and are not holding them accountable?
Our interpretation of love as a feeling of affection, adoration, attachment and/or favor - all qualities directed by the ego - is what creates this conflict within us. A less worldly and more spiritual love - guided by the soul - involves elements of kindness, benevolence, goodwill, compassion, equanimity and non-attachment.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT...
If we don’t agree with others or share nothing in common with them, we can still be kind to them. We can still wish them well rather than denounce them and wish them ill. We can see them as worthy of love even though we don’t favor them. And we can hold space for them to be who they are without judgement. These are all ways by which we live from love.
If someone is hurtful or acting inappropriately, calling him out on the action may in fact be the loving thing to do - for you and for him. The key is to do so from a non-harmful place of integrity rather than from hate or vengeance. Or it may be more appropriate to simply NOT engage with the person at all. This may mean walking away rather than fighting. Not engaging is not the same as condoning; we simply are not contributing to his negativity and disfunction by adding "fuel to the fire". Additionally, we can truly practice spiritual love by wishing him well despite his harmful actions.
As all wisdom traditions teach us, to live from a higher love is to hold space for ourselves and all living things without judgment, demands, expectations, attachments, or prejudice. This unconditional love is both a practice and a state of being and is necessary to not only elevate our individual consciousness but also promote our social evolution.
May we all LIVE a HIGHER LOVE!
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In Buddhism, metta is translated as loving-kindness and is at the core of Buddhist teachings. The practice of metta is considered a primary path to higher consciousness and unconditional love.
To celebrate this higher love, this Friday's LIVE YouTube meditation on Empowered Wellness with Sheetal will be a metta meditation.
As always, if you’re not able to join LIVE at 9am, please share in this intention of metta - unconditional loving kindness - at any time via the recording.