On Boundless Love
A weighty topic, to be sure. I’ve always struggled with the call from spiritual leaders or self-help gurus for us to “love thy neighbor” and “forgive and forget” and “let your love shine through.” That felt like trying to pour from an empty cup or expecting sainthood out of golem. I have been so confused about what love is and what it means for so long, and to be quite honest it has made me so BLEEPING miserable. I certainly have felt incapable of unconditional love, confused by the parameters, and also exhausted by the idea of loving others no matter what when I could barely love myself.
The cynics among us might find it annoying to hear that as I’ve gained in my faith, my capacity for and understanding of unconditional love appears to be expanding. I hate to say it, but more and more often I feel like I’m starting to look and act like one of those happy, smiling Tibetan monks who are both widely adored and somewhat irritating because they seem so content.
What right do they have to be so happy?! What are they even wearing!?
It wasn’t like as my faith has continued to expand I have made the logical association that many others seem to make, which is something like God is love or is loving, so therefore I must mimic God until I get it. I’ve tried that path before and it was BLEEPING annoying. It felt like putting the cart before the horse.
I think what’s happened is multi-phasic (that’s a word now) and the basic steps are thus:
1. Have vague inklings of a spiritual plane
2. Be miserable and pay attention to spiritual experiences
3. Try any number of solutions, from both the spiritual and self-help spheres; continue to be miserable
4. Continue to dabble in and pay attention to spirituality until the collection of experiences is too numerous to ignore
5. Declare a willingness to have faith, no matter what
6. Continue to be miserable, while praying and paying attention
7. See results, be skeptical of results, remember the willingness to believe, double-down on prayer and faith
8. Have prayers answered with mixed results; some of it is a blessing, some of it is profoundly painful
9. Keep praying as if we have answers or know exactly what we want and need
10. Continue to have prayers answered in a smorgasbord of mixed messages
11. Have enough faith to stop praying like we’re ordering off a fast food drive thru menu and just believe God (or Good) has our best interest at heart, start praying for guidance and the highest good for all
12. Accept some of our ego-driven prayers should not be answered, accept opportunities as part of God (or Good)’s plan for us, have a lot more energy, stability, security, and generosity of spirit for unconditional love
See how that happened? See how easy it is? NOT. When I mean asking faithless people to love thy neighbor is a little bit of putting the cart before the horse, this is what I mean. There are so many steps before we arrive at having the energy for limitless love. The only reason I have arrived at the choice to just aim loving energy at everyone in my life (and I do mean everyone, it’s weird) is because a.) I have faith and b.) I have given up the struggle against Good (or God)’s plan for me.
There are roles in life that I have wanted to fulfill, industries I thought I wanted to be a part of, and God has slammed that door in my face so judiciously, causing me a serious amount of pain. It was terrible for me on several levels, and still I fought for it tooth and nail, my ego assuming I knew best. Eventually, I got tuckered out and started to see the forest through the trees. So, rather than be angry about it or struggle against it or keep fighting for it, I’ve accepted that perhaps that is not my path. If it is, it will become available at some other time when I am not fighting tooth and nail against the spiritual plane.
Meanwhile, I have God-given talents that could be put to better use. I have received several signs to return to those talents, to dust off those hobbies, to be of use to the world in other ways. Setting ego aside has been hard, but I do so with the acute awareness that even when my ego gets what it wants, it’s not happy for very long, and always seems to want something new or better or different.
Maybe there’s something to be said about the act of setting ego aside in the name of faith. Maybe that, too, makes us more capable of boundless, unconditional love. Now, when I think about a person or situation that used to make me kind of miserable, I just aim a lot of love at it instead. It’s just better and easier that way, but I also have the energy for it because I am operating from the security and peace that comes with having faith.
I am on my path, and other people are on theirs. I have my talents to put to good use, and they have theirs. I am going to do my best with my time here, without struggling against fate or God’s plan, and having faith is working under the assumption that it will all work out for the best in the end. It’s not easy, but my God, it does feel better.