Love usually comes with conditions, expectations and images of how we want another to be. We say to someone we love them, we care for them, want to be with them, all the while what is expressed comes loaded with conditions of how we want them to be. If they are how we want them to be then we say we love them, although it is not a love that is unconditional. It is conditional. We have a level of judgement that comes with the love we are prepared to show, share and give to another.
We want to be loved but are not prepared to drop our guard and truly love another, unconditionally, in full, warts and all. I observe people say how much they love someone, followed by a ‘but’ – I love… but when they are not in their essence, living who they truly are, I cannot be around them.
There is a level of acceptance we do not allow; we have expectations of another to be a certain way for us. We do not allow or create a reflection for them to live all that they are. Instead they are met with conditions. It is these conditions that create tension; even though it may not be said, it is felt through our movements.
There are many times I have felt a tension from someone, not knowing if it is something I have done, or not done. They may not have said anything but I can feel in my body there is something not quite right. For many years I sat with this feeling of awkwardness; it would at times be very uncomfortable, usually with myself analysing what I did wrong to make another feel so distant. There was always a dissecting of what I did or could do to make things better.
It was not until recently and after many years of attending Universal Medicine presentations and sessions that I have come to a deeper understanding of what is at play – games that our spirit loves to indulge in regularly, for it, our spirit, is cunning: it is a side and part of our being that likes to keep us in the overwhelm and complication of life, along with the avoidance of feeling what we know to be true.
It likes to keep us as a participant of as many games as possible, planting seeds of doubt, second guessing and blaming. We are extremely good at judging others. We have at times a massive lack of acceptance of ourselves and our own grandness, which in turn is reflected and often directed at another.
To recognise, accept and love another in full, as the amazing grand being they are, can be difficult for us. Our spirits love to keep us in a level of competition and comparison. It loves nothing better than to play it small, or to keep another as less, to stop at any cost true love being expressed, lived, moved and reflected.
What I have come to feel is a deeper level of acceptance for myself, and to see others as equal beings; that no one of us is ever or always perfect. We are after all in a human body, a form that is far removed from our natural state of being. That in itself is the first hurdle.
The lies we live are being fed to us and choosing to reflect this to all is a hard act to keep up! The façade at times becomes exposed, although our spirit is quick to jump back in the game as soon as truth begins to rear its head. Clever, manipulative, sneaky and extremely creative, we have set up many distractions and addictions to keep us busy, all in the name of avoiding Love – that is until we begin to expose them for what they are.
Moments constellated to connect deeply with another, to show a true way, a reflection of Heaven, our Soul tapping on our door, reminding us of where we all come from. A place where there is no judgement, comparison or jealousy; a place where true love, equality and brotherhood reside and originate. No bastardised versions of truth as there is only one truth, one Soul and one God and an acceptance of all equally so.
Yes, this is another plane of life, an existence many of us do not recognise yet, but one that lives within us all. That plane of life is getting closer and closer to our planet Earth every day. It is being felt; people are beginning to question life, how they live and why they live the way they do. They are feeling there is more to themselves and others.
We are being given an opportunity to feel what it is to truly love ourselves and others, without conditions, expectations or judgements; an allowing and acceptance of each other, a deep love that we have not expressed on earth in this life or for some thousands of lives.
We cannot deny what is on offer. We cannot avoid what is being felt.
Love, as we have known it to be, is not working. When we are told we are loved by another, without it even being said the BUT is felt. It is that ‘but’ that leaves us feeling empty, seeking true love and yet not thinking we know what it is. If that were the case, if we did not know what true love was, would we be questioning the love we have lived thus far?
For me, my relationships have changed enormously since becoming more open to and exposing my spirit’s game plan: switching the focus from others to me, opening up to the love that is on offer, knowing that I am forever supported and loved… that it is not a love I can get from outside of me. No one else can love me unless I first allow the love I am to flow in and through me.
My spirit loves nothing better than to keep me in the doubt of “Do they love me?” – wanting love to be proven and shown, instead of showered upon me from the Heavens.
True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me. I have up until this time not allowed myself to access, appreciate or live it. So when I hear someone say, “I love you… but… “ what I recognise is the lack of understanding and the judgement, no true acceptance or appreciation of another. It feels enormously harmful. I myself am not yet completely free of this but as I become more aware of the energy at play I can see it for what it is and the harm it can cause.
Our lives are lived on a very superficial level, occasionally dipping our toes into the shallows of Heaven. We play it safe, allowing our moves to be governed by a leading hand – a hand that has its own personal agenda, the hand of our spirit – whose aim is to keep us away from re-connecting to our one true source, our Soul.
We have a choice to choose which hand moves us – the hand of God or the hand of the spirit. The hand of God is what guides us back to Soul, to a life lived in true connection, where we can love, reflect love and see all as equals.
We have an enormous opportunity and responsibility to look in the eyes of another, to connect to the love they too hold deep within them, to offer a reflection that ignites in them a deep pondering, a time to reflect and question which hand it is guiding or moving them through life.
To truly love another is to love unconditionally, connecting to and feeling ones essence, then when you say “I love you,” you truly love them.
By Nicole Serafin, 46, Woman, Self Employed, Wife, Mother, NSW, Australia
Related Reading:
Expressing love: I love you
Being your own valentine – real love begins with YOU!
True love … no Valentine’s Day card required
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Thank you Nicole, because adding to what you have shared that until we know our Soul it is impossible to energetically know Love ❤️ as Love ❤️ is an energy we are aligning too and thus L❤️ve keeps on deepening within us as L❤️ve is never static.
What are we choosing, we have a choice in what we align to, ‘We have a choice to choose which hand moves us – the hand of God or the hand of the spirit. The hand of God is what guides us back to Soul, to a life lived in true connection, where we can love, reflect love and see all as equals.’
Love of ourselves and all equally is the way forth, ‘We are being given an opportunity to feel what it is to truly love ourselves and others, without conditions, expectations or judgements; an allowing and acceptance of each other, a deep love that we have not expressed on earth in this life or for some thousands of lives.’
People are becoming increasingly aware, aware that something is not right with what we think, how we live etcetera, ‘people are beginning to question life, how they live and why they live the way they do. They are feeling there is more to themselves and others.’
Acceptance of ourselves and another in full is a great place to start, ‘What I have come to feel is a deeper level of acceptance for myself, and to see others as equal beings; that no one of us is ever or always perfect.’
We can choose to live and be love, and be another reflection of this in the world, ‘We want to be loved but are not prepared to drop our guard and truly love another, unconditionally, in full, warts and all.’
I loved this reminder but if I had read this years ago, I would have thought the spirit was the thing that led us. When I think about that saying, mind, body and spirit, I have come to discern that the mind and spirit are the two that keeps us at distance from our soul and with that comes the separation from others too. This is conditional love, you give me this and I will give you that in return, its an expectation.
When I connect to the soul, everything around is rendered and it does nothing but love serving and brings it for the all. That is unconditional love and is for the all, with no image, expectations or outcomes. I get it…
As we evolve understanding the non-imposing nature of True-Love as it deepens within us, and we also loose our relationship with our past, by understanding that any way of living that was not of service to humanity needs to be healed by becoming transparent to every form of ill way of living from our past and in do so we can heal all these ill ways and become aware of True evolutionary way of living.
A much needed read today as I find myself being hard with another. The situation is quite simple, I have held onto judgement instead of love. When simple things can change and everything is simple once the energy behind it is understood.
I also call it control of it needing it to be a certain way, so in that I make the call of judgment. In that I am the one left wounded and hurt, instead of bringing in understanding and appreciation of what also has been offered to me too.
Loving and accepting another for who they are, ‘There is a level of acceptance we do not allow; we have expectations of another to be a certain way for us.’
Very true Ariana. The fact that we’re getting our conditions met often covers up the fact that we have conditions in the first place. As long as our kids, our partners and our mates are roughly doing what we want them to do then we sail along comfortably oblivious to the fact that we are silently imposing our conditions on all those around us. And we can even slip unspoken threats in there too ‘hey keep meeting my conditions otherwise things may get nasty’, not heard by our ears but felt by our bodies.
“True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.”
So often we look outside of ourselves for love- emotional love, which comes with conditions. But if we recognised that we come from Love, and it is already living within us, there would be no “needs” to chase. We would then be more accepting of others, knowing that they too come from love. And wouldn’t the world be a more loving place?
True love doesn’t even recognise the word ‘but’, so if someone is proclaiming that they are in love and yet is tagging the word ‘but’ into the proclamation then it ain’t true love. There is nothing that any of us can do that will effect God’s love for us, nothing whatsoever, including the most despicable of acts. Love just is, it’s not dependant on anything.
We are only capable of putting conditions on another if we have put conditions on ourselves first. The ‘I love you… but…’ has always started in me first, with my own conditions upon myself. And I love the responsibility of this, as it means that I have never in fact had a problem with the other person, there is something sitting right under my nose that I can look at first. This is a work in progress.
“To recognise, accept and love another in full, as the amazing grand being they are, can be difficult for us.” – I too have realised that I allow people “in” only so far, in other words my loving of them is actually conditional. This is not a fun realisation however, it allows me to begin working on letting this go first by exploring it and then experimenting by just letting their grandness in and learning to be comfortable with the intimacy and the nakeness of the experience.
To build a relationship with the hand of God and to surrender to its direction is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and those around us.
On a deep level we all crave true love. But we then substitute this for recognition or some form of superficial emotional ‘love’. How quick are we to abandon what we know to be true and why does this happen so easily? We must have attachments or something else that we get from what we are investing in on a superficial level to deny a truth we know to the bone.
Conditions stop the unconditional love from flowing. We place conditions on ourselves first before placing onto others…any condition is a lie about what love truly is..
It makes sense that when we truly accept and love ourselves then we can do the same for another.
What a great place to start, loving and accepting ourselves in full.
Yes God’s love for us in unconditional. I also know one or two humans who are able to offer a similar reflection. How fortunate are we to have that!
“We want to be loved but are not prepared to drop our guard and truly love another, unconditionally, in full, warts and all.” So true Nicole. We want to be loved unconditionally – but are we prepared to do the same for another? The ‘But’ creeps in. Learning to love ourselves warts and all is a start.
This is so true Sue – true love must begin with oneself and the intimacy we learn to surrender to with the deepest part of us.
Yes, that is very true. The ‘but’ signifies the conditions, therefore it is not Love with an ‘L’ but love with an ‘l’. Give me the capital L any day. There is much more space and truth in Love.
I can feel so much in what you have shared here, so much that would be considered normal in relationships. Conditions and expectations are such heavy weights to bear, we walk with them, we carry them and they harm us as much as they do another because they deny the fact we are all from the same essence and that essence has no judgement whatsoever.
I feel that actually life comes with conditions, we place so many conditions on ourselves and other people we seem to have painted ourselves into a corner because we have so many conditions it stops us from just being ourselves. I can feel that when we have conditions on life it stops the natural flow that we are all a part of.
Conditions stop us being love.
I loved reading this; the exposing of what’s not love but we wish it was so we can continue the game of trying to capture love and own it. This game detracts us from feeling the devastation of not connecting with the love we actually are. And, at the same time, I’m feeling my spirit loves this game. Now to ask myself, is it really worth being a being of love not being love?
Do we as a standard, live in a world of buts? Why do most people do things if it is not for some personal gains? The list has not been selective; It covers every aspect of life; jobs, relationships, love, beliefs and the list goes on. What would the world look like if everything we did, was done with unconditional love that supported everyone?
“BUT” is certainly one of our most common and biggest hurdles in life!
When we love ourselves more deeply how can we not love others the same way and see them as equal. So that just shows the importance of self-love, self-worth and self-care.
Loving and accepting ourselves is crucial in our return to being love.
How much do we truly love another if our loves comes with conditions? When we do something only because we want to be acknowledged, to be liked & praised? Are we truly doing it out of love if there is an emptiness in us that we are looking to fulfil or is our every so altruistic behaviour actually selfish?
One of the greatest things we can do for another person is to give them space – no imposition. Our emotions are a form of imposition and do not support another to be love and express love. When we can hold another in love whatever then a true relationship is born and at the same time there is no end point to love so a relationship requires both parties to continually open to more transparency and deeper honesty. This possibility is stronger the more love we have for ourselves.
Yes, no matter what we hold them in Love knowing that we all have free will. I can even feel there could be judgement in that sentence because who is to say the picture of free will I have is the same as that of another. Love is also responsibility, joy, truth, stillness, there is no activity, it is what it is, and we are it.
Giving another space, is giving them love.
Oh those little buts! They are a give-a-way aren’t they 🙃 this week I have had a beautiful and not so easy week with lots of things coming up regarding how I am both with myself and others in relationships… those layers just keep on peeling. Through the process though I allowed myself to just be with what I am feeling and have come out the other end (a pun wasn’t intended but I have just seen one) with my heart more open and even more loving with myself and others which is pretty cool ❤️
Attending Universal Medicine workshops are a life changer, every aspect of my life changed completely for the better. Nothing can beat the feeling of getting to know ones true self again.
To love with no need for what comes back to us – now that is something.
We know all too well the extent the spirit will go to keep us going around in circles but we have fallen for the trap that this is all there is.
Sadly true Julie. No wonder mental conditions are going through the roof. Accepting a lesser version of whats available to each and every one of us is most definitely a trap. The spirit is very cunn8ing and sneaky.
Every movement we make is felt by all, we cannot get away with it no matter how clever we think we are. Another can choose to live in whatever way they choose to; my responsibility is to hold them in the love they are from a place of love that I am.
It would be great to hold others in love in it’s truth – and not in conditions. Do something rash – let yourself go and just love.
What is the purpose of speaking, if we include a but, in the middle?
Our spirit is relentlessly playing games that creates conflict and pain; never stopping. But there is such irony here, as I and we are all made of pure love.
Right now I’m working with gentleness so that the games of the spirit can be kept at bay and I get to show what I’m really made of.
This reminds me of a visit to the doctor I had yesterday, it went so quick it left me wanting more and deep down I wanted to feel loved, seen, met. It is curious to feel this as a patient because often health practitioners can complain about people talking too much, not wanting to leave… Makes me wonder if this has to do with love too, that people don’t feel truly seen for who they are, not truly heard and met and therefore crave more. What if we meet all our patients or in general all people we meet? This will then totally change because when we are met the craving for more ends.
I love your honesty in your comment. I’d always assumed I only wanted to be loved by close friends or partners or family. But now I can see this isn’t so. When I’m not connected with the love I am inside I’m wanting to be loved and accepted by everyone I meet. Being honest about this and not doing an intellectual pretence otherwise, allows me to observe the hurts this produces and feel how thwarted this way if living is. Then I have the choice to connect with the love within and not continuously seek it outside myself.
Nicole thank you for outing this aspect of ourselves that is so cunning and devious; our spirit will do anything to stop us from returning back to our soul. I’m just beginning to understand it is absolutely pure wickedness to constantly fight against its return to the soul.
If we use the, ‘ I love you, but’ are we living in the darkness protecting our light. As a child, we are born to shine. What is it that is outside of us that effects our choices to shut down?
When we say to someone we love them, do we really or do we love them on certain conditions?
When I look around me I would say we love conditionally, we love some more than other depending on our need for them and their need for us. I have come to the conclusion this is not love at all. I have also come to the understanding that until we love ourselves we cannot possibly love another, it is just words that have no meaning or real substance. This is a big ouch!
“True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.”These are simple facts that if taught properly in schools we would have much less mental health problems.
I agree LE. We are taught that love has to come outside of us, something that is not what we give ourselves. Yet, from learning to love myself more and more the less I need it from others to prop me up. This means I also have more to offer others as I am not so much in need.
I express to you how I love you today… but, not tomorrow because it is not Valentine’s Day? Love doesn’t have a special day, it is something to be expressed every day.
Understanding and knowing the truth regarding spirit and Soul is something that is fundamental to our whole wellbeing and something that everyone should know.
Why would you ever ‘but’ the sweetness and purity of a true ‘I love you’. In relationship we are offered everything be that with partners, siblings, friends, colleagues or one off interactions; we are born to love and be loved and with each other we can reflect this shared quality.
To love and be loved without conditions is to be part of heaven.
There’s nothing more lovely than being loved unconditionally. I’ve not always been loved this way so came to the conclusion that to be liked, for people to want my company I needed to be needed – that was the surest way to guarantee friends and support. So I checked out what I thought a person needed and went about giving it to them. When I met people that didn’t need anything from me but loved me for being me – whether I was upset or joyful – I realised I needed to learn to appreciate what my presence brings so I didn’t feel unbearably uncomfortable. I had to start loving me and letting love in.
‘I realised I needed to learn to appreciate what my presence brings so I didn’t feel unbearably uncomfortable. I had to start loving me and letting love in.’ Well said, Karin when we are with people who know themselves and fully appreciate/love themselves it tends to highlight our own lack of self love/worth. We all know deep down that living a lesser version of ourselves is just a delay tactic.
When people are loved with conditions, it is not love, and does not feel great, ‘Instead they are met with conditions. It is these conditions that create tension; even though it may not be said, it is felt through our movements.’
Love with no want or return is the kinda love that supports everyone to grow.
‘Need-free love’ leaves us ready for more and more and more love.
Once we choose to allow the spirit to put a ring in our nose it becomes easy for it to lead us.
‘We have at times a massive lack of acceptance of ourselves and our own grandness,’ I can certainly relate to this and now I’m coming to see this as a choice that I don’t have to indulge in. Coming away from it can feel tricky at times but it is so worth it because then we bless everyone we know with who we truly are and inspire them to be themselves and come together in that acceptance and brotherhood.
Nicole, I love that you are exposing this; ‘We say to someone we love them, we care for them, want to be with them, all the while what is expressed comes loaded with conditions of how we want them to be.’ It is clear that this is not true love.
Beautiful; ‘To truly love another is to love unconditionally, connecting to and feeling ones essence, then when you say “I love you,” you truly love them.’
This is so true; ‘There is a level of acceptance we do not allow; we have expectations of another to be a certain way for us.’
Are we holding ourselves, hostage, when we have a checklist that must be used for relationships?
A but after I love you is so awful. And it is a sting that goes deep. I love what it feels like when my acceptance and love of myself and others is unconditional.
We can end the ‘I love you but…’ and change to –
I love you because you are here and I learn so much from your reflection – thank you, thank you, thank you for shinning your light that I may see who I am.
The thing is that there can be no buts. Our commitment, love, respect, care, sense of joy need to be unconditional. Not perfect, simply unconditional. There are no buts and definitely not following ‘I love you’.
There is a song with the line; I would do anything for love, but that! Does that make it conditional love?
We all have a connection to the love that exists within us all. When we try to withhold this love, our body becomes a pressure cooker, that normally regulates this pressure with reaction.
We are love, it is innately within everyone of us, ‘True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.’
Whenever I hear the word ‘but’ in any context I feel the potency of whatever was communicated before tit fizzle out and the focus becomes the latter part of the sentence. In the case of “I love you,” or anything else that feels lovely to receive, the use of the word “but” feels like a real manipulating gesture, like the person is half offering something, then whipping it back to deliver the blow of what they actually want to communicate.
The ‘but’ is a great excuse for us to not commit to life in full.
The definition of ‘But” shows it can be being a; conjunction, preposition, adverb or a noun. Could this be the greatest non-committal word we have in our vocabulary to hold ourselves back?
What I can feel reading this; ‘There is a level of acceptance we do not allow’ is that I accept people that I do not know very well, such as people I meet in shops or in the street, for who they are, but this same level of acceptance is not there for people close to me, it seems that the closer they are the less acceptance there is – that’s interesting to be aware of. It makes me realise that with people closer to me I have more pictures and expectations of how they should be.
The deeper level off acceptance I have felt since being involved with Universal Medicine is astounding. with this new found acceptance life has become magical in every way.
One of the biggest conditions I feel we put on others is time – we want them to be somewhere or change something in our timeframes that we set and we do not allow them the space and the grace to come to things in their own time. To hold someone in this offering of space is one of the greatest forms of love on earth. This does not mean we put up with abuse or something that is disturbing, it just means we cannot hold another in judgement if they do something disturbing or harmful.
Knowing the true truth about spirit and Soul is something every single person should know and to know the true truth the only place I would currently signpost people to would be Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
But, must be the greatest caveat for being non-committed to life.
Love by definition can not have pictures, expectations or conditions attached to it. It is not something we can give, demand or own. It is our natural essence. So if we are talking about conditions we will be refering to something else altogther which we have decided to also label ‘love’.
We are really shooting ourselves in the foot by not taking the care to communicate exactly what it is we are referring to. Without being clear about what we are talking about, we can never truly get to the bottom of the issues that we are observing.
So inspiring to understand the clarity between emotional love and true love … the difference is so very important to know – and so very needed in the world today.
Using the ‘but’ with our love is a selfish way of wanting what we want without opening ourselves up to everything that is on offer.
To hold and allow another to be is to hold and love self in the absoluteness of who we are. The greater we love self, the greater we love another.
When we hold and love self in absoluteness, it is felt by all.
Beautifully said Steve.
Expectations, images and conditions are imposed in the hope that we get the best options in life. Yet exactly because of this way of controlling everything, we end up getting in the way of the stupendousness of the true qualities we could be experiencing, relating and living.
Not having expectations at all is one of the hardest things I find to do – even if we drop all expectations of others, we can still hold expectations of ourselves – such as the expectation to drop all expectations 😉 . But once again this shows us how deeply ingrained these things can be and how it can take layer upon layer to be shed to be free of these and hence then connect to the deep love that we are that resides within.
True love does not ever come with conditions – but how often can we honestly say that we do not have conditions in some form or another – so does this not then expose that we are not expressing true love, but more a conditional love that is a warped version of the real thing that we are so capable of being?
The ‘but’ after “I love them, her, him, etc.’ is a sign of our conditional love where it seems to be important that another/others meet our expectations and fit into the preconceived and well laid out arrangement. In short, it is about self rather than about love.
That is a prenuptial agreement in a nutshell of legalised conditional love.
And when we surrender into ‘the hand of God’ we begin to feel and understand what it is to be truly held and never alone.
It’s actually impossible to be alone because we are the collective All That Is and so if we are The Everything then how can we possibly ever be alone?
We can feel a ‘but’ coming from a mile away. And I know how much I have used ‘but’ as a safety net and defence. Enough of ‘but’, let’s lean into life and be open hearted, unconditional and full in everything we do.
Using but, is like being on a swing; you go forward then go backwards and there is constant movement, but for the moments you stop and go the other way. All of this motion, but you never go anywhere!
If conditions are put on love, then it can’t be true love that is being expressed… just a form of control.
Good point – a form of control and a tactical manoeuvre to stay ‘safe’ and keep people at arm’s length, much to our own detriment.
Removing all the conditions we have created about life is a truly liberating experience and completely changes the way we are in the world.
We all know love deeply but when we put conditions on love then it is no longer love because true love has no conditions, expectations or reward, it just is.
Every single one of us has built a concept around the word love because we all have ignored the energetic meaning of this word, have come up with our own interpretation and are throwing it around. When energetic truth is concerned, there are no semantics, each word means something and holds a vibration. But when we ignore the energetic truth, we are left with one word (love) meaning from “i would do anything for this person” to “I can hit you but I still love you”. – How can we abuse somebody we love, and still claim that we love them?
‘But’ is not a bad word per se but when we we use it to put conditions on another we limit ourselves to a picture we have subscribed to and leave no room for another to express in full, to learn and expand together.
Nicole, thank you for sharing this; ‘There is a level of acceptance we do not allow; we have expectations of another to be a certain way for us. We do not allow or create a reflection for them to live all that they are. Instead they are met with conditions.’ Reading this I can feel how it is more common to judge and have expectations of another in relationships rather than to accept and love unconditionally.
Oh, the conditions we put on each other, in a way demanding that someone acts a certain way so that we get our picture of love met.
Crazy isn’t it Julie, making up a false version of love all because we refuse to accept that we are already love.
Be this, be that, do this, do that, not that way, this way, stop that, start this, these are our modern days mantras. It’s no wonder we’re all so fatigued and fed up, not an ounce of true love anywhere and yet true love is our very foundation.
Beautiful Nicole; ‘We have an enormous opportunity and responsibility to look in the eyes of another, to connect to the love they too hold deep within them, to offer a reflection that ignites in them a deep pondering, a time to reflect and question which hand it is guiding or moving them through life.’ Reading this I can feel that us living that love is very powerful and that we do not need to try and change others, for living with love shines out and can be an inspiration for others.
What we have made the meaning of love to be is far from what the true meaning of the world prevails. We use the word love to suit whatever vibration we want to put out, but not in the integrity of these four letters put together. We use it, and we don’t even know what it means, we throw it around to impress another, or to please, but how often do we truly tap into the vibration of this word and let that be the guide of our words.
True love can be described and it can be read about or written about, but nothing in the world replaces feeling it in the body and the realisation that it is a state of being and not an action or a doing.
Key words here – love does not come with conditions, expectations nor demands. And how often do we still impose this on another and/or ourselves?
That is a very valuable awareness to go forward with: “love does not come with conditions, expectations nor demands”. It allows us to know so very clearly when we erroneously think we are talking about love and helps us unpick what we ARE actually meaning when we use that word. This is so critical especially when there are issues at play. Without unravelling what is really going on we will never be able to truly resolve our issues.
We’ll never resolve our issues when we try and resolve them with the same energy that created them in the first place. It’s like trying to clean a dirty wall with a dirty sponge, it just ain’t gonna work. But we keep scrubbing away, dumb founded by our lack of advancements and scrub away we shall until one by one we start to wake up to the fact that there is much more at play than meets the eye. So much more. There’s the energetic truth of all things and that’s what we have to return to.
“True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me” Please lets have educational books written on just this very subject -knowing this stuff is the foundation for a loving, joyful life.
This is absolutely true; ‘We have a level of judgement that comes with the love we are prepared to show, share and give to another.’ I can feel that we do not hold others in love no matter what – that we are sometimes loving and sometimes not.
Love is a word that is used often in daily life but it also has an energetic meaning which can be felt in the body and therefore known when it is truly meant and delivered or not.
When we say ‘I love you’ it is often because another has offered us what it is we want in the way of attention and recognition … and not the truth love can be.
To finally, truly feel and understand that this true love is already (within) me and that peeling back the layers of all that I have put in place to keep this true love deeply buried is all that is required to resurrect this love has shifted my perception dramatically. No longer do I have to go out and find someone to love me please; I can take the bull by the horns and say right, what’s next to be peeled away because every layer peeled brings me closer to the amazingness I get a glimpse of when I am in full re-connection with the astounding love that I am. And for every layer that is discarded it’s like I not only get a glimpse of my amazingness without that layer, I get a glimpse of others underneath their layers too and can connect more deeply with them regardless of the number of layers or for how many years they have been in place.
This is beautiful to read Brigette. There is so much to explore about ourselves that life simply never is boring. There is so much to learn, find and share.
I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when we all stand together with all of our layers discarded like the skin of a snake. Stripped back to the pure unbridled Gods that we all are. My goodness me the day feels like it’s been a long time coming.
If I feel any discomfort in my body when I am around another it is not them that I need to look at but myself and the reflection of what is being offered to me. What comes up or is shown in my body is what needs to be addressed.
Yes, for in truth they are offering us to go to a deeper level of love and in that we will be renouncing old behaviours – a great gift to acknowledge and appreciate.
‘Love, as we have known it to be, is not working.’ I love how this sentence is not asked as a question, Nicole. ‘Love, as we have known it to be, is not working’ feels simply to be an observation of how we have bastardised the true meaning of love and how far we have drifted from its divine source.
This is a great place to start. There comes a point when we need to stop blaming, demanding, manipulating or strategising in the hope that we will experience the real deal, and accept that we may need to go back to first principles and consider what our definition of love is in the first place.
Absolutely, Golnaz, for we cannot make the leap from commercialised, romantic love to understanding the true meaning of Love without first retracing and re-considering the ideals, beliefs and pictures we have bought in to from outside forces that have fed us their version of what love should look like and how it should be delivered.
If we put a ‘but’ after anything then how honest are we really being. You can feel how loaded “I love you …But” is, it is not love, but a set of conditions to fit the pictures we have.
When love comes with conditions, a ‘but’ or three, it isn’t true love. True love is unconditional.
Loving ourselves unconditionally and without judgement feels key to loving others in the same way.
Rebecca it feels like if we’re able to allow love to flow in towards ourselves then it will naturally keep flowing out to all others and conversely if it’s stunted on it’s way in towards us then it’s gonna get caught up trying to reach others.
Where there is reaction of any kind there is judgement… a moment to reflect upon and deepen the love for self accepting and claiming the responsibility to reflect that there is another way to be and live.
The fact that so many people read this blog and understand exactly what it is saying shows the ‘way’ love is being lived in relationship with others. ‘But’ is another word for judgement, justification, comparison, jealousy etc and so it is for each of us to sit in stillness every time ‘but’ comes up and feel what is really going on in that moment. Thank you Nicole for this honest and challenging blog and all that it offers in ‘Love’.
“…and so it is for each of us to sit in stillness every time ‘but’ comes up and feel what is really going on in that moment.” How truly loving this feels for ourselves and everyone around us to be so honest as to stop the ‘but’ in its tracks and feel into where the ‘but’ is coming from and why. The depth this would bring our connection to another to feels quite astounding.
It’s important to admit we have made life about getting attention from others as a substitute for accessing the love that we naturally are. Then we can let that simply shine.
Love is a universal energy we are surrounded by and it innately lives within every one of us … all that is required is for us to make a choice to connect with love and then live it.
‘But’ always seems to come with some form of negativity, such as conditions, procrastination or resistance of some kind.
We can love without conditions and yet not accept another’s unacceptable behaviour.
And that is truly liberating Jenny.
And what loving from the Soul looks and feels like.
The ‘but’ speaks volumes and is used constantly. When at college they mark our work with ‘You’ve done a lot of great work here but ..’ As soon as the but comes you know that everything that has been said before is wiped away. The but brings in the expectation or picture of what others expect or want from us.
This is an amazing blog. It really highlights the folly of trying to be loved by another. I realise how conditional I have been in my ‘love’ for others and how yucky this has always felt because when I do love there is no need only an acceptance of all that they are, whatever their choices.
“We have a choice to choose which hand moves us – the hand of God or the hand of the spirit. The hand of God is what guides us back to Soul, to a life lived in true connection, where we can love, reflect love and see all as equals.” The more you sense what love actually is, the less plausible it is that a ‘bit’ can ever go with it.
It is wise to ponder on what love truly is and whether what we call love is a word that can stand on its own, simply being love, or whether we substitute it with many different words. Then we should use the words that truly describe what we want to say. If we use a word but mean something else we fool ourselves and truth becomes something we lose our trust in.
This is something that I experienced recently – I let go of the judgements that I could feel coming in about looks and choices that a person had made made and looked into this persons eyes and saw the absolute beauty and oneness that was there; ‘We have an enormous opportunity and responsibility to look in the eyes of another, to connect to the love they too hold deep within them’. A great lesson that if I had let the judgement come in then we would both have missed out on a beautiful connection and learning.
Reading this I can feel that no-one is perfect and that we are all learning and yet we can hold pictures of how we want someone to be and if they do not live up to this picture, this ideal, then in a subtle way we are rejecting them and not fully letting them in and loving them; ‘ We say to someone we love them, we care for them, want to be with them, all the while what is expressed comes loaded with conditions of how we want them to be.’
To live for a while without any buts and blaming is a very revealing way to live and brings us back to the responsibility every single one of us holds and the power we have. We never have to wait for another to change or bring us something, we can live the love that we wish the world to be in every move we make, we are not dependant on the world to do it first.
We are not here to float along on the river of life. We are here to cause ripples by our movements of how we choose to live, that we offer to all we pass.
There is definitely no ‘but’ in a true ‘I love you’.
‘We have an enormous opportunity and responsibility to look in the eyes of another, to connect to the love they too hold deep within them’… This is beautiful Nicole… and even more so if we can live it.
A beautiful sharing and understanding of unconditional love with the love we all are to reflect on and express for ourselves in the true quality of who we are simply and divinely.
For me there are so many pictures attached to the word “love” and saying “I love you” and although I have dropped many of them, I still get caught by them. The only way I know of getting round those pictures is to let myself feel the love that I feel I am, regardless of another person, then let that fullness express whatever words or movements would be expressed.
Yes and this makes life super simple. We build, deepen and honour our relationship with ourselves and everything else is taken care of.
Thank you for raising my awareness about the significance of the quality in every word we speak and that we are responsible for this and feel it always.
“I love you… but” is so common, it’s normally, I love you but I need this or want this, removing another free will to choose what is presently correct for themselves. Whereas actual real, true love gives another the space they need to choose what they want and learn what they need without bringing in personal preferences or desires.
Meg just reading those words ” true love gives another the space they need to choose what they want and learn what they need”, feels lusciously spacious in itself.
Does anything we make conditional by adding a but, at the end of it, waste everyone’s time and just leave both with empty space?
Well said Steve. A great question. And we can all feel the ‘but’ coming way before it is actually spoken.
Conditions abound in our society and we are brought up with learning these conditions and living with them. And so when it comes to love, we also learn to place conditions on it despite its natural and beautiful quality. In the process we distort it and make it something that no longer is love and yet we call this bastardised version love. How much confusion does this lead to?
Nicole, this is such a great article. I can very much relate to this; ‘We want to be loved but are not prepared to drop our guard and truly love another, unconditionally, in full, warts and all.’ I have noticed that if I have conditions and want someone to be a certain way or I don’t like certain things that they do – then there is a holding back and I am not open and loving like I could be. There are some people in my life that I love unconditionally and this feels very simple and true and is very beholding.
Thank you Nicole. I step into today reminded of the simplicity of our choices in every moment. Am I in God’s arms or letting myself getting played by my spirit?
It is true we do have a responsibility to connect to ourselves and others.
Self-acceptance is so fundamental to letting go of the conditions we place on love – they always start with ourselves.
Why is it that we focus so much on behaviours rather than the essence of another?
Love what you have pointed out here Anon – behaviours are the focus as we live in a world that focuses on the seen rather than the unseen. Yet the essence, though unseen is the founding element of all of us, and it would make so much more sense to relate and feel this quality and presence rather than the behaviours we get so caught up in and distracted by. A work in progress for us all, to make it about the unseen and what we know to be true.
We can judge others behaviours in our heads, whereas feeling the essence of someone is what it is.
To live life from my essence, the truth of who I am and not get wet is my purpose in life. Life is not about blaming another as to where they are at but the forever deepening of the relationship I have with self.
I have so many conditions I put on love, always imposing on another, rather than bringing understanding and allowing another space.
What a beautiful realisation Anon. I find the moments when I let myself be honest as this without any judgment, tend to be the beginning of the unravelling and letting go of behaviours I have walked with for perhaps lifetimes.
I couldn’t agree more, I feel sadness come up as I can see the harm and that it is a pattern I have lived with for years so much so that the pattern has now become an addiction which I hadn’t seen before.
We do feel the littlest judgement from others which shows just how sensitive we really are. This does not mean we can demand others to never judge us, but it means that we can acknowledge what we feel and not let it affect us as much.
I love the bit where Nicole writes about the ‘but’ that comes after ‘I love you’ because I know I feel it before it is said. So yes, we are very aware and sensitive and it is great to acknowledge, appreciate and work with this.
Anything like “I love you but…” should read “I say I love you but I actually don’t”
Just recently I have been exploring the word “love” in my relationship with my husband. I realised that the more love that I gave to myself first allowed me to then naturally extend this to him. It started with “my beingness first” which then emanated from my body and flowed into my movements.
Relationships always offer an opportunity for deepening and expanding our awareness and expression. If I am honest, I always know this deep down even in the midst of choosing conditions, judgment or discord.
You write so tenderly about love Nicole that it is living within us that we do not have to go looking for it as so many of us do. We have not been taught that true love is all ready residing in our bodies quite the opposite in fact we have been taught to look outside of ourselves and there is the deceit of this part of us called the spirit fully exposed in its willfulness. As long as we look outside of ourselves for love it is completely in control.
“My spirit loves nothing better than to keep me in the doubt of “Do they love me?” – wanting love to be proven and shown, instead of showered upon me from the Heavens.” It’s quite a journey making ones way out of emotional love and the notion that love is outside of ourselves, to realising not only is love within us but it is actually our essence. I have lived love at times from my essence and then back again into the falsities of love and feeling it’s outside of me. To me the true version of love is what would support humanity to resurrect itself out of the global epidemic of every kind of abuse and self abuse, low worth, and other world issues, etc, so how did we collectively allow love to be so corrupted?
“I love you … but…” places false conditions on a relationship, and in reality is a form of control and manipulation – none of which supports an open, honest and truly loving relationship.
There is no love when I judge another; love and not judge myself and there is love.
Every time we finish something we express with a but, we are negating all that we have just spoken. So, do we just become the butt of our joke?
If we recognise love is our essence and that it would always be flowing through us unless we stopped it, then we would know whenever we are not experiencing it in our life, instead of looking out, blaming others and expecting to be fulfilled by them, we need to look within at why we are blocking the flow of such an exquisite quality through us.
Our responsibility is to be in love – simple as that. We live and work in a way that we can access a love inside ourselves and then ‘hey presto’ it is by default available to everyone.
You describe it very wonderful Nicole “True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.” So let us love ourselves deeply and unconditional and then find out what will happen in our lives . . . it is worth trying as we as a society have nothing to loose right now.
I love you….but…. , is the same as saying ‘if you loved me you would or wouldn’t do… xyz’, or ‘I’ll only do xyz if you tell me/show me how much you love me’. I always found these kind of statements very unsettling – as far as I understood love, I either loved/was loved, or not.
Is love, but, a sandwich with nothing in it?
I had a great example this week of what looking into another’s eyes can do…it is pure alchemy when we connect to the person behind the mask and allow them to be who they really are.,
It comes back as always to the relationship we have with self. When I feel solid in my connection to my essence, accepting and honouring me, I truly love another. Thoughts may try to creep in to pull be away from this love for self but I know it is the only way to hold another in the love that they are.
Love is showered from the heavens – this is so beautiful and costs absolutely nothing but to be open and allowing. Thank you Nicole.
When we are feeling down and needing another to ‘love’ us it is an expectation and an imposition we are placing upon another and it is not true love that we are seeking in this instance. For at that moment in time we are simply feeling how empty we are – ie how disconnected we are from our our essence and instead of simply taking responsibility for this and beginning to connect and allow the fullness of love that we are to be felt completely, we turn it around and want someone else to do it for us and so we ‘need’ another. True love from another would be someone who simply stands in the love that they are and reflects that to us so that we are inspired to do likewise and hence are not in ‘need’ of another to fill us up, but rather can then share the joy of the love with each other. I still find myself disconnecting and feeling empty and wanting anther to ‘love me up’ however, as soon as I realise the game that is at play, I know it is about my own disconnection and the craving for my own Soul so that I can then feel the true love from those around me.
True love is simply a state of being, hence it cannot come with any conditions.
We need love from another when we are void of love for ourselves.
This is so true, but then we also lace it with what our view of what love is. As an example, one of my now deceased relatives believed that love meant that we should be doing things for them all of the time. We saw it as being demanding but from their perspective, it was the proof of our love. It’s easy to see how our pictures dominate our thinking.
Agreed – impossible to fill a bottomless bit of emptiness when we try it like that.
Lifting ourselves out of the lies and complication can take some doing but is worth it as life takes on a whole new meaning.
To truly love and accept another is to know and accept who they are first. Their behaviours are an expression of what they choose and where they are at – it is not who they are therefore I speak up and say ‘No’ to any abuse that comes from their expression but ‘Yes’ to who they are. If I do not speak up in my authority and reflect who I am in that moment there is a tension in my body; it is through accepting and understanding the reactions of another that supports me with the tension.
Love is who we are and so the fact that we live in what appears to be such a loveless world is a reflection of the fact that we are not being who we are in truth. When we return to who we are in truth then we will experience love everywhere.
“We have an enormous opportunity and responsibility to look in the eyes of another, to connect to the love they too hold deep within them, to offer a reflection that ignites in them a deep pondering, a time to reflect and question which hand it is guiding or moving them through life.” This is so beautiful Nicole. What a difference we can make to the world when we doo this….And then the domino effect….
From seeking to find a version of love that centred on ‘one’ other, I’ve now found a deeper quality of love within myself, in my work and with clients. Love is where-ever we are.
Loving ourselves first then we can love another to that depth too. We fool ourselves if we think we can love another more than loving our own self.
So true Sue … it is the quality of love we have for ourselves that is then naturally on offer for everyone around us; so too, if we are empty then that is what will be with us everywhere we go.
I am sure many of us say that we love unconditionally. Until I met Serge Benhayon I did not know the meaning of the word.
A TV programme featured two parents who in their attempt to compensate for adopted twin boys with autism and epilepsy and in sympathy, felt compelled to indulge them with grossly expensive gifts, toys and clothes. They were supported to strip back excessive spending and understand that the main ingredient needed was not material possessions, but love.
Yes, material possessions can never compensate for the lack of love. Why do celebrities – who can pay for expensive items feel less than, unless they get the high from their last performance, feeding off their audience? loving ourselves – and others – is the true gift – not material ‘stuff’.
We don’t love another person we emanate love and everybody gets encompassed equally by that love.
On my first workshop with Serge Benhayon we explored the difference between sending love and being love. It transformed my understanding of Love, but took much longer for me to embody and live it.
Love isn’t a harpoon it’s a fishing net.
That did take me time to understand, to embrace and now life is so very different as a result.
Loving another person is invariably about us, whereas being love is about everybody.
I am deepening my understanding of this and realising the consequences. The development of my love for myself, the steadiness and sureness I feel as this deepens, impacts every aspect of my life in a super cool way.
Thank you for this brilliant blog Nicole. To understand we have a spirit that is running the show, and is very cunning and manipulative, and all about maintaining it’s individuality regardless of the consequences to our body and those around us, is a great starting point to see what is at play in our daily choices and behaviours. There is no true love in this way of life.
We are part of a whole, grand universe that requires us to become responsible for how we live and the grandness and love we are.
The word “but’ is a very loaded word. Its full of our needs, our hurts, our compromises, our way of down grading the meaning of the word love so that we do not take and live the responsibility of what this word means.
True love is not a doing, it’s a being.
When I started to understand this it changed my life forever.
Most of us misunderstand the meaning of true love. The love we express is conditional, measured and expects to get something back for what we’ve put in. This version of love, broken from the start, unsurprisingly leaves us feeling constantly needy and unloved. True love emanates from within us and is free of conditions as we can freely offer love through our movements and expression.
The more the spirit and its individual, selfish way gets exposed, the more aware we become of what is actually running us, and what is behind all our choices; the hand of God or the hand of spirit – always our choice.
Understanding what true love is, is like an unfolding love affair with ourselves. As we peel away layers of need and protection, we discover it is more a deepening of the love we have for ourselves and God, rather than what we do for others.
The fallback, never expiring, get out of jail free card, the magic, But! It allows us to stay sitting on the fence and never commit. By not committing we are just a part of the silent majority working for our spirit!
We have well and truly mangled the definition of love.
Totally agreed and something I was so confused with growing up, what was love, who would love where love came from. Having that clarity today through the love and support of Serge is everything.
If, rather than permanently leaning on the flood gates of life in a feeble attempt to force them to stay shut, we allowed them to open, then a torrent of love would flow through us that would almost knock us off our feet.
True love is who we all are, it’s just that we’ve put so many conditions and restrictions on ourselves that we are no longer recognisable.
It is with so many things in life, if we allowed ourselves to truly reflect upon them we would find that how we live does not make sense and that the answers how to live are right there in front of us and very simple.
A sure fire way to distinguish emotional love from the real McCoy is to pay attention to all the demands, clauses and conditions we place on our selves and one another when it comes to love. True Love asks nothing other than to be who we truly are, and will only ever support us to find out what this means and how to live it. It never contains one inkling of having to meet a criteria, whim or need.
As soon as we have an expectation of how love should be we have limited its potential, for love is greater than anything we can imagine. In doing so we limit our potential for life and live within the confines of our own making rather than in co-existence with the Universe.
It is clear that we don’t understand love at all when we try to put it into a box.
So correct, love cannot be boxed.
A revelation to discover that true love can be a stepping back from others, allowing them to be who they are and live their lives in their own way. When we release the need to impose, show the way, be recognised or accepted, love flows through us and few words are needed.
Nicole I agree with you when you say
“We have a level of judgement that comes with the love we are prepared to show, share and give to another.”
We can feel if another or others can accept the love that we are and if we feel they cannot we calibrate to them rather then just being all of who we are. This happens from a very early age so that by the time we are adults we have calibrated ourselves down so that we do not upset the status quo of the society we live in.
Unconditional Love, often expressed, rarely understood or lived. The first stage is to fully accept self and others as we/they are, warts and all, for this releases judgement. To live this way creates space, and allows us to truly be with and love another
A few years ago, here in the UK, a man died of old age that had lived in a large house that had no family. What was discovered, in his house were pictures, lots of pictures. I took an auction house almost a year to catalogue what was packed into this house. The sale made millions. Do we hide away pictures within ourselves where we lose what we see around us?
‘We do not allow or create a reflection for them to live all that they are. Instead they are met with conditions.’ – so true, I can feel how I do this, which is a simple and very powerful reflection for me that I am not living all that I am.
It is not easy to swallow the fact that most of our lives we are loving conditionally. Thank you Nicole for raising it so lovingly in your awesome blog. To know that we are all experts in loving unconditionally and therefore know exactly how to avoid it makes it even more ridiculous. It is really time to change that.
It’s true that love comes with conditions and we use these to fill the pictures of a relationship we have set up to achieve.
We all know love so well but when we express with conditional love we are simply avoiding true love and it is also a way to try to own love. It’s like saying ‘love is mine and I will only share it with you if you share yours’. How can we own something that lives in all of us and is all around us? The moment we try to own love it gets blocked and suppressed by our own choosing.
‘The façade at times becomes exposed, although our spirit is quick to jump back in the game as soon as truth begins to rear its head.’ lies always beget more lies to keep the truth hidden.
Thanks Nicole, it’s an essential read on a topic we are all influenced by daily. The pursuit of love is currently a huge part of the human condition, as the majority of human beings would like to love and be loved. We have so many pictures about love though and they are rarely achievable, and when we get there we still experience an emptiness. We do truly miss the love we are within, but we seem blinded to the love within as we are often striving for it outside of ourselves, and also are unaware of self love and how this is way back to living from the love we are.
“There is a level of acceptance we do not allow; we have expectations of another to be a certain way for us.” Its so true. We do put so many conditions on others and if they do not live up to our expectations then we get upset or disappointed. But its also important to look at the conditions we put on ourselves, as when we let go of these and accept ourselves for who we are, it becomes much easier to accept others in full, regardless of what we may see as ‘their faults.’
I am discovering that to love another more, I truly have to take more care of myself, by nurturing myself and everything that goes with it. The more I fill myself up with me the more there is to go around for another.
I agree – the more I love myself, the more I am capable of holding another in space and that actually feels like part of loving myself.
So many beautiful moments as I connected to your blog Nicole – ‘Moments constellated to connect deeply with another, to show a true way, a reflection of Heaven, our Soul tapping on our door, reminding us of where we all come from.’ When this moments are felt our souls are in deep connection.
Sometimes the but isn’t even said .. but you know it is there. It is are we honest enough to allow ourselves to feel this and look behind the words? Everything is energy first something that is good to remind myself.
It is beautiful to reflect upon what love truly means and what it is we are in truth deeply yearning for.
How many aeons have we suppressed the beauty that lies within us all? That has always been a choice away!
The conditions that come with love are beyond words, they are thick as the wildest forest and yet when we experience love without conditions we soon appreciate and value how incredible that is.
Love is so simple when we drop the pictures of how we think another needs to be.
I have come to understand that by not loving ourselves first and foremost we have given our power away and over the ages made choices that have led to the abusive way we live with each other today. If we where to come back to loving ourselves there would be no way we could harm another person it just wouldn’t be in our psyche.
So true Mary for when we do not love ourselves we give permission to not love, in fact abuse, another. When we love ourselves we cannot but be loving in our expression and hence love others.
“It is these conditions that create tension; even though it may not be said, it is felt through our movements” – yes, more than in word, through movement everything is revealed.
If we all wait for someone else to make ‘the first move’ regarding being and expressing love then it will never happen! I know the only way things will change in this world is if I start choosing to love myself and to start expressing that love to everyone around me, regardless of what others may be choosing. I can’t wait for the world to be a safe place first.
“True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.” The secret of love and life revealed. Its not up to anyone else to love us, we are perfectly capable of doing that our selves and when we do it is simple to ignite Love in another, a precious tenderness that resides in every cell in our being.
It’s easy to see why relationships get rocky or end when we have a picture of what love is and then expect others to give us our picture. It just shows how cunning the spirit is.
Is love with conditions really love at all?
Definitely not Kev, and we put conditions on love because we think we can own it and this hurts to the core because we are no longer aligned to love by trying to reduce it. Love is only ever expanding and it is for All.
No, it’s ticking a box that has nothing to do with love. Or perhaps it’s a game, a form of protection as we already know the other person can never match up to our list of expectations. Either way, it is not love.
Why do we believe we can put conditions on love? At what point does a measured life become enough? Or, is it like a lie that needs to be constantly fed to be maintained?
Nicole, I love this, love is not love when it is conditional for then it is judgement first.
True Love is not needing to be loved back, but simply holding another in the same equal space and allowing their beautiful and gracefully nature to blossom.
A true love story.
We all deserve to live with true love and care. But to think we are entitled to be treated this way is a serious mistake. This world is here for us to bring Love to.
We are Love… and when that love is not connected to within we project our supposed lack of it outwards in the expectation that another should supply it. It is not possible to hold another in love if we do not hold and know ourselves as love.
It is easy to say ‘I love you’, yet if Love is not first connected to within oneself and lived the words are empty.
Yes this is interesting that the words we use have a certain vibration or tone that we can all feel and we all know when someone says something that they don’t really mean or if they say one thing but do another.
Yes, so true Victoria. Also, if words are empty they just feel like a lie.
All our conditions on love are mentally created pictures – let go of these pictures and love is simply there to be felt and lived.
“I think I love you but in all honesty I don’t understand the true meaning of the word ‘love’” feels much truer.
To truly love ourselves and others without any conditions, expectations, judgments.. a lifelong work in progress and an unfolding of ever greater depths, beauty and freedom. The more we commit to to knowing and understanding ourselves, the more we see ourselves and others in and with the full-powered expression of who we truly are, seeing clearly the layers we and others put in the way, but not getting distracted by them.
To love another unconditionally is asking for a great surrender within ourselves. I have come a long way but can still fall for judgement and comparison. A game in the name of individuality and identification.
That no one of us is ever or always perfect” This is key, how much effort do we put in getting it right, being wrong and projecting this on others? Even if we choose to not be perfect as a rebellion we try and perfect that.
“I love you…. but” is wanting someone to be a different way and not accepting them for who they are.
We do not allow or create a reflection for them to live all that they are” What if love is not about what we want or need but about supporting others to be all they are by being all that we are?
So gorgeous reading your invitation for each of us to know the “enormous opportunity and responsibility to look in the eyes of another, to connect to the love they too hold deep within them”. The world would be a truly different place if we all lived this way.
‘We are being given an opportunity to feel what it is to truly love ourselves and others, without conditions, expectations or judgements; an allowing and acceptance of each other, a deep love that we have not expressed on earth in this life or for some thousands of lives.’ I am certainly experiencing this now, being in a new relationship and learning to let go of judgement and deepen the love. It is a beautiful feeling.
Love with conditions is no love at all, just a contract.
Yes, or an arrangement – no true love at all.
Yep. It would be great if we were honest and started looking at the contracts we had in relationships, it would be very revealing … and freeing.
As simple as that: ‘We have a choice to choose which hand moves us – the hand of God or the hand of the spirit. The hand of God is what guides us back to Soul, to a life lived in true connection, where we can love, reflect love and see all as equals.’ Our soul and God know what true love is, our spirit knows and does everything to avoid us to connect to that for then it has lost its right to exist.
Like you it’s taken me a number of years to grasp what love is truly about, yet at the same time what stands out is how I put so many conditions on love and the main one being I wanted someone to love me instead of loving myself.
Same for me David, I fell for this version of love too and it led me to seek love from others, measuring, waiting and expecting love to be shared. Conditional love is not love at all but a false version that keeps us away from connecting to true love within ourselves and others.
And another one is waiting for someone else to love us first before we will love ourselves … whatever flavour we each have, it all comes back to a lack of self worth.
I agree Paula there are those of us both men and women who do not believe they are worth loving at all, and so they easily accept an abusive relationship because they feel they don’t deserve anything better.
“We have at times a massive lack of acceptance of ourselves and our own grandness, which in turn is reflected and often directed at another.”
So true Nicole, through building a greater honesty with how and why i feel the way i do – i am able to claim responsibility for how i interact and express with others. I can see clearly how my self frustration is vented out towards those closest to me, it is the willingness to see this and be honest about it that is the foundation to changing our behaviours.
To differentiate the common use of love from knowing true love changes everything.
It is such a blessing to be able to see and feel the difference between the two.
It is true when you can feel the love that resides within there is no need to seek love outside of oneself.
Very true Julie, this is true love we have been looking for and there is no need to search for it because love indeed lives inside all of us.
It makes sense that if we see love as something given to us from outside by another instead of something on the inside that we feel from a connection with our soul, then we will always be set up to be disappointed or hurt.
So true Andrew, a very clever set up for when we are disappointed or hurt we have a justification for not letting others in.
“To truly love another is to love unconditionally..” and to love unconditionally is to truly evolve.
Conditional love is what we are shown most of our childhood. I felt the density and intensity at home as I wasn’t performing well at school, and that was very likely the result of the tension I could feel between my parents that I did not want to feel, hence I was checking out or day dreaming all the time and then i would not allow myself to focus in class.
Thank you Nicole. There is so much in this article about the double lives that we lead. A life where we have a sense of love on the one hand and actions that don’t match that sense of love on the other hand. When I read this blog I recognised the many games that our spirit plays and that I willingly indulge to avoid the connection with people. When will we stop playing the games?
‘Love, as we have known it to be, is not working.’ This is clear when we see the amount of divorce and domestic violence that is everywhere. If the model of falling in love with a partner was true, then surely this would be long lasting?
To love without conditions is freeing and empowering for all concerned.
“We have a choice to choose which hand moves us – the hand of God or the hand of the spirit” So true. The first is unconditional love. The second gets us into the mess we re currently in. What do we choose?
There are more and more people that are becoming aware of the trickster that is our spirit. As I have said the spirit really ticks me off because everything it does is to keep us away from our soul. We are all living with a traitor within us that wants to keep us squashed and feeling insignificant so that it can rule over us. The only way out of this mess is to reconnect back to our soul and if we think that our spirit will just allow this to happen then we have again miss calculated how manipulative our spirit can be. It feels to me that we are at war with ourselves without realising we are at war.
“What I have come to feel is a deeper level of acceptance for myself, and to see others as equal beings;” This is beautiful. If all the world were able to do this how different society would – will – be…..
‘True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.’ In the denial of this, we expect others to give us the love we are refusing to give ourselves. However, if they are not fully loving themselves either they can’t reflect back to us the love we are really craving. We become needy and when that other can no longer service the need we have created our relationships break down. In such circumstances, we like to blame the other and class them as inadequate, when all along we simply haven’t stepped up to the responsibility we have of loving ourselves first.
CI TBM
Once we can admit that we are living in a form that is far removed from our natural state of being then at last we are being honest with ourselves. I personally hate our spirits, they constantly feed us lies, doubt, comparison and jealousy towards others. It’s all a game to keep us all from the grandness we are. Most of us have no idea that this battle is going on in our bodies. We are totally controlled by our spirit believing instead we are in charge. Let me tell you, we are all being led by the nose by an out of control spirit that does not want to go back to the soul that it separated from this is the constant unrest we feel in our bodies and try to advert by all the distractions the spirit can come up with. Actually hate, detest are not strong enough words to describe how I feel about the control the spirit has over our bodies and hoodwink us into believing the life we are living is it.
Nicole, this feels super important; ‘True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.’ We can all love ourselves dearly and live with true love and not be reliant on others to love us. When we live with true love then we can have true and loving relationships with others.
Love with a ‘but’ is not love but a buttress to keep us away from love.
We all know what love is because we all know what love is not… and yet how many of us play this game of using the word love for all that is not love? I wonder if we knew just how much we are harming ourselves by doing that if it would make any difference?
True love is the freedom of being and observing without conditions.
Love is devoid of any buts and so if we are putting love and but in the same sentence, it sure as hell ain’t love.
If we are able to feel a deeper level of acceptance for ourselves and accept self-love as a way of being, seeing others as equal beings and forming true loving relationships then becomes possible as opposed to the conditional so-called love most of us buy into.
Love categorically has nothing to do with anyone but us, and whether we choose to connect to God. The rest as you brilliantly say Nicole is just the detritus of age old lies.
Not accepting another not in their essence is a judgment we have on our own spirit, which is something we learn to love till the last ounce and that is the return back to love.
Love is not conditional but we choose to forget this and give ourselves so much heartache because of it.
“To recognise, accept and love another in full, as the amazing grand being they are, can be difficult for us.” And that is because usually we are being given a reflection of something we do love about ourselves.
I think everyone ever could relate to the title of this blog.
When we capped the love we are ourselves and how loving we are with ourselves, then that will automatically translate to how we are with others. So we could say “I love me, but”.
“We have a choice to choose which hand moves us – the hand of God or the hand of the spirit.” This always inspires me – the fact that we always have a choice. We cannot blame another for our life – we have been the common denominator in all that has happened so we are responsible, we have made every choice – some with spirit and some with God/Soul. So we have the power to transform our lives – it is simply our choice – will we choose the same with spirit, or will we choose a new path with God/Soul?
An inspirational sharing – one that offers truth and leaves us pondering, where are we at with Love…?
It is a regular occurrence to see partners criticise each other, put each other down in front of others, trying to correct, adjust and somehow alter them to better fit the preconceived picture of how they should be, speak, act, behave, dress and carry themselves. And afterwards come the laments that they are not the person they married, that they have changed and metamorphosed into someone different, alien or unknown. Something is obviously very wrong here.
Sad but often true. Ownership in relationship has nothing to do with love, Love cannot be owned.
True love never judges or waits for the other to express that love back before it expresses the magnificence of its beholding light. Love simply loves for if it did not, it would not be love but a substitute for it that we would accept in place of such grandness.
“We are being given an opportunity to feel what it is to truly love ourselves and others, without conditions, expectations or judgements; an allowing and acceptance of each other, a deep love that we have not expressed on earth in this life or for some thousands of lives.”
Words straight from the heavens. Indeed we are being given this opportunity and I think on some level we do all know that or at least are feeling it, or the tension of not living it.
Nicole an absolutely masterful piece of writing. Truely superb.
“There are many times I have felt a tension from someone, not knowing if it is something I have done, or not done.” This is one very familiar scenario for me, a very uncomfortable one too, and one that has my spirit in overdrive as it works silently to convince me that yes, I have done something wrong that I will be called out for and probably very embarrassed. And in the process, I begin to disconnect from myself and the love I am – just what my spirit wants. To understand the duplicity of this part of us, has begun to make sense of my life.
Reading this what came to me is not to doubt ourselves. I have doubted myself so many times over my life in the ‘was it something I said’ etc however what i am understanding and experiencing more and more is the more I commit to loving me the less I doubt myself and the more I can hold both myself and others in love. We are always learning.
So many people live with a lesser version love, conditional love, and think it is real love. What this does is blinds us and stops us from living true love. We crave love when we are not living its true form. This blog is brilliant at exposing what is going on.
‘True love is not something anyone else can give me: it is already living within me.’
I experienced the last month how spacious it feels inside if I let this true love out and how fulfilling in my body it feels. Gone are any feelings of emptiness or holes inside me.
Love is something we google and think about more than just about anything else. “If we did not know what true love was, would we be questioning the love we have lived thus far”? Even though we rarely experience true love without any conditions, at our core we do know what love should be, even though we do not give or receive it.
Every relationship I have had a picture of what I thought or needed love to be it doesn’t end well i.e. the picture causes tension and then a conflict that is not true for the relationship because the picture is brought from outside and into the relationship.
Just reading your first two paragraphs it must be very clear that what you are talking about has nothing to do with love and yet we use that precious word to describe all that is not love. It is criminal!
‘We are being given an opportunity to feel what it is to truly love ourselves and others, without conditions, expectations or judgements; an allowing and acceptance of each other, a deep love that we have not expressed on earth in this life or for some thousands of lives.’ This is beautiful. I know that for me personally, my relationship has deepened since we married and since I have let go of the judgement that I previously held.
‘We want to be loved but are not prepared to drop our guard and truly love another, unconditionally, in full, warts and all.’ So very true, Nicole. If we only love based on a measure then it can’t be true love at all.
In my experience my own judgements of others gets in the way of love, connection with others and intimacy.
Same here Andrew, everything is on offer and we are the ones that often get in the way of the depth of love that is there for us.
The spirit is self-centered and creates such a human that thinks only about themselves. The Soul, however, is far more considerate, respectful and unifying as a human and in its essence. I have lived and experienced the difference and still do and I know which one I prefer to commit to.