982 thoughts on “Unconditional Love”

1. We have been sold the idea that love is something we receive by having a relationship with someone. There’s not many books, films or songs in this world sharing about the inherent sacredness of men an women. A space within that is very still, all knowing and complete. How wonderful it is seeing everyday people, celebrating themselves just as they are by having connected with their essence. There’s a sense of space when you meet them that confirms that beauty with no need to speak. Feeling space in every relationship is the most precious offering we can share with one another. This is about respecting each one cycle, understanding every choice we make, don’t judge or impose…love is just the opposite of any idea we may have in our mind about it. A quality that brings us to surrender and make space within ourselves. Then this is what we can share with everyone we meet.

2. Love is one of the most interpreted and reinterpreted words throughout history. However its true meaning is much deeper, wider and greater than the pictures and ideals we have associated to it. Deep down inside we all know it.

3. The most common thing in the world should be the understanding of what True Love brings, means and how to live in that vibration.

4. Michael I really appreciate what you have shared with the world.
   “Love can grow with every movement and breath. It does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.”
   If we all followed these words as a guiding principle, there would be far more understanding towards each other and less aggression that’s for sure. We have been out of love for so long so to say we have forgotten that we are made of pure love as we come from God who is also pure love.

5. so many of us ignore the fact that we cannot love another if we don’t love ourselves, we confuse “love” with need, loneliness and hole fillers and think that just because somebody gives us attention they love us. This is because we are constantly abusing one another, in our words, in our actions & our thoughts. When the bar is this low, anything which does not look like constant abuse can be called love. But what if Love is somebody walking beside you, in the strength that they hold, without needing anything from you and just enjoying the presence that you bring?

   1. That is an important point Viktoria, we can’t truly love another until we can first love ourselves.

6. Thank you Michael, “I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself” and others, for appreciating is a key to our evolution and being non-judge-mental and thus unconditional in our Love for ourself and others.

7. Michael it is a great topic, something that relates to the very essence of who we are – unconditional love and being the love we are could really be in every curriculum in education. How different the world would be if our number one job/purpose was to be the love we are in all we do. There is so much complication on false love, whereas the true essence of love we are is simplicity and allowing people space to be exactly where they are, so well expressed here in this line “simply reflect what is always there; no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.” Thank you Michael.

   1. Yes absolutely, ‘How different the world would be if our number one job/purpose was to be the love we are in all we do.’

8. ‘If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?’ What a beautiful way to live; something I’m starting to appreciate and live myself even though it is so tempting to go back into my story of poor me, look what another’s just done to me to try to justify not being love! Appreciating everything that comes my way is life changing.

   1. Thanks for highlighting this Karin, it is a very different way to view the world without the pictures of how life should be, but embracing each situation with the sense of an opportunity to respond, learn and grow.

      1. Letting go of ideals and pictures can open up space for truth to appear in our lives.

9. I am not so sure if this is true? ‘We often pretend to love someone without condition, but is this really the case? It starts with falling in love.’ …. That pretending to love someone without condition starts with falling in love. It can start in families between parents and children for example ‘I will love you unconditionally but don’t make a noise, or a mess, or ask me to be who I truly am, don’t see that I’m sad. We don’t have to use words because energetically we feel so much and often express very little, babies and children can especially feel this as they are so with their innate clairsentience.

10. I was in a shopping centre today and saw a young man with a disability go up to see people say hello and give them all a hug. Now he looked like he knew them, but feeling the warmth and the acceptance of who this person was, was very joyful to feel. They all truly wanted to be in the presence of each other.

11. Love, True expression, Evolution and how we expand our awareness are paramount in us gaining wisdom and seem to be lacking in our current schooling models! Maybe we should base our curriculum on Love, as what is happening to our children at present is not working?

    1. What is currently happening in education is clearly not working for the children.

12. I feel the key here is in the word fall ‘falling in love’ to me it has a sense of exactly that falling away from ourselves and into a void (supposedly another). What I am learning more and more is that it is about holding ourselves in love and then in doing so we can equally hold another in love. So fall or hold? I know which one I choose.

13. A great sharing of how we need to love ourselves first before we can truly love another.

14. Beholding another in the love that they are, does not impose or judge them in behaviours that are not who they truly are.

    1. Love gives another space to make their own choices, ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.’

15. Love can grow with every breath, beautifully said Michael.

16. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is.” I love this. In the past I often heard people say they could change their partner ‘once they were married’ or similar. Accepting other’s choices plays a big part in any relationship.

17. it is true, when we are angry at others we are just angry at ourselves but do not know what to do with the hurt we are holding onto inside of the body.

    1. If we are feeling angry, then that energy emanates all around us, and not only feels horrible for ourselves, but equally all others surrounding us.

18. When we meet each other in our essence we are meeting in true equality, this makes sense to me, and the common point we come to is love. Very beautiful Michael the way you express is exquisite.

19. We cannot fall into love but we can and have fallen out of it by virtue of not holding true to the love that lives within us. The esoterically referred to ‘fall of man’ is this very act and is what has led to us all, men and women, fashioning a life for ourselves that does not have this love at its core. Such surface dwelling creates much misery that then has us seeking relief in all its guises, a biggie being the pull of an emotional ‘love’ which is simply a substitute we crave when we do not honour the depth of the love that we are.

20. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices,” Love can also be when another shows you that they way you are choosing to live is not loving for yourself or those around you.

    1. The part you’ve highlighted Mary, shows me that many of us may have misinterpreted what love is, well I certainly did anyway. But now I have a very clear understanding with huge thanks for these amazing blogs and the incredible presentations and workshops I attended at Universal Medicine.

21. It is true that expression is essential to keep a relationship growing. Like love when expression stops flowing or becomes nice and unchallenging, there is stagnation between you.

22. And this we should never ever deny, even if we have previously done so. For it is so stupendously big that holding back our love, is the greatest torture.

    1. It certainly is Danna, this torture is often self-inflicted which means we can undo this form of torture ourselves by living love.

23. When you love someone I have found that one of the hardest things to do is to keep truly loving them from my heart when they make choices that I have not agreed with and which have had an impact on my life. Although this is still an ongoing learning I have found it very liberating as by doing so there are not the attachments and expectations and in place its has come space and openness for a new and deeper relationship.

    1. Expectations are a killer in any relationship. When we can let go of these it is often surprising what can arise.

24. It was good to read and feel this about falling in love as I don’t feel I have truly just been with this ‘It starts with falling in love. Well, we can fall into a puddle of mud, but how on earth can we fall in love?’ What it feels like is when we ‘fall in love’ or think we have fallen in love it is that we still have not felt the fullness of love first within ourselves and are looking outside of ourselves for love (or for an emptiness within, however small, to be filled). Don’t get me wrong, of course we can love another but with always holding ourselves equally in that same love. For how can we love another if we do not truly love ourselves?

    1. True Vicky, loving ourselves is a prerequiste for being able to love another, ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. ‘

25. The claim of “Unconditional Love” often comes out of need. We think that we will do anything and accept anything of a person simply because this is how much we love them but in truth, is it possible that we will do anything and accept everything simply because our need is strong? I.e. accepting abuse from a person who we love does not make sense, we can’t love somebody who causes physical/ emotional harm yet many people choose to stay in such relationships… there is more to uncover when these words are used, to discern where they come from because if we love unconditionally, there are no expectations, no attachments and no need – so we are actually able to let go of relationships and still hold the love for the person regardless of where they go. But in that, we remain whole, untouched and will not allow abuse in our lives.

26. Being all the love that we are and allowing another to be is living purpose to its fullest.

27. Doug this really reminds me of a time I was wishing to fall in love again. I wanted to feel the euphoria of it all and not feel the parts of my life that hurt. I didn’t want to go back to feeling the lack of self-love or self-loathing and take responsibility for healing myself. There was love in this relationship but I clouded it in illusion. So when the relationship ended I didn’t go deeper within and keep the fires burning. No, I spent many years looking for someone else to give me what I had felt and it’s only recently I’m embracing no other can save us.

28. ‘If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper…’ Very true. I’m slowly coming around to embracing the lessons and the learnings rather than wanting to hide from them and seeking comfort.

29. Everything you say here brings me back to the fact that it starts with holding myself deeply in love. When we come back to the essence of what is, it’s very simple.

    1. When we have a deep love of self we are able to observe more, ‘From there it will be natural to just ’be’ love, irrespective of what anyone does, or a desire for what would have seemed like the perfect outcome for us, and irrespective of whether others listen to us, understand us or love us in return.’

30. What we think love is may not in fact be solely love. I am a hugger at heart and love to hug and be physically affectionate. Whilst this is very beautiful it is not always the case especially if there is a slight element of need in it. Then it feels cushy and capping and imposing for the other person.

31. Great to bring some truth to what love actually is, not what we’ve been sold, or have needed/wanted it to be. That ability to be a mirror, where we simply hold steady and reflect back to others their own choices without need, investment or judgment starts with ourselves: how willing are we to be mirrors to ourselves, to see in full, all of our choices, and their consequences, and behavioural patterns, without judgment – just pure, loving understanding and observation?

    1. Unimed Living has a section on what Love truly is, a great read,
       https://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-love.html

32. I had this image today of us just being a big ball of gold emanating rather than a dense body with lots of thoughts circulating my head.

33. Recently doing Esoteric sitting Yoga and exploring my touch on my face and knee it is quite wonderful discover how tense I can be, it’s a bit of a revelation.

34. The only way to get to unconditional love is to start by loving ourselves to the bone, warts and all. Then we can begin to love others in that way.

35. I’ve learned many things about Love in the past 20 years, from being at school and needing to be loved, to thinking I was loving and being loved, when everything was based on what each of us got from the relationship, to understanding and feel what true love is. And in that true love, it’s not anything that we do for another but it is the very essence of who we are that is everything.

36. Great analogy Michael – be the mirror that is polished to just reflect and not to judge or diminish.

37. We must never confuse emotional love that often is out of a need and has to fill an emptiness with allowing the space to let the love that is always there to unfold itself into our lives and all relationships that we have and build day after day.

38. Very true not many could say they love without conditions yet we expect our children to love us unconditionally ! Such awful hypocrisy, but I guess we innately know babies and young children are love, they love unconditionally but are met with conditions so soon learn to do the same. We do have the power to return to a truer way of loving.

    1. For sure Vanessa, we do have that power like for instance to let go of judgement as it is the nail in the coffin for all our relationships, and choose love to unfold in our relationships and let blossom all of these instead. How powerful is that!

39. Very often we hold back from supporting another with truth for fear of the reaction. But I have come to understand that if it is said with love, they may react on one level but on a subtle level their heart feels it and knows it to be true. When someone speaks truth it can be felt in our bodies as the energy of truth resonates in such a way that the body resonates in response.

    1. Yes the truth is never wasted even though we may not always clock it ourselves and what we deliver may appear to fall on deaf ears. Truth expressed as Love carries a vibration – and on some level it will be registered and felt.

40. “We often pretend to love someone without condition, but is this really the case?” a great question, for myself I know too well that I would say I loved someone but looking back it was that i really deeply needed that person to make me feel better about myself and avoid feeling an emptiness inside. That is clear not love and very clearly not unconditional.

    1. Yes for most of us this is undeniable that we are in relationships to fill the emptiness.

    2. Love, and emotional love are worlds apart, emotional love feels horrible as it comes from an emptiness and so is needy.

41. That we are loved despite our choice to not be this love, is the greatest example of unconditional love that I know.

42. Love elevates us. We cannot fall into it.

43. I think being honest with ourself about if or where we have conditions on how loving we will be is really helpful. Not from a place of being negative but from being that honest with ourself we can then open up to seeing how to deepen the love we hold in our life, within ourself and equally with all others…

    1. Yeah that is a good point Fiona, being honest allows a deeper honesty to develop.

44. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices’. It holds no judgements yet holds you in the absoluteness of the love that you are. It does not look back rather says you are love just be it, knowing that our return is inevitable so there is no time factor or condition involved.

    1. True love does not have conditions, or judgement, ‘Love is the beingness of knowing that you are everything already.’SIB.

45. When we feel and know the depth of our own essence, we equally feel the same quality of essence in another.

46. True wisdom is offered here to deepen all relationships. So simple – be yourself and let everyone be themselves – “Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.”

47. It is true that we do not get anywhere when we are in reaction to each other, as opposed to communicating in a way that helps us to understand each other and the pictures we are running with.

    1. Responding versus reacting is far more loving, ‘If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?’

48. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.” – I have found that sympathy is the biggest thing that has gotten in the way of me allowing other people to make and learn from their choices. Under the excuse of ‘doing good’ I have actually interfered in other people’s progress by trying to save them from walking into certain situations that I felt would be harmful to them, because even after expressing what I felt, I wasn’t able to let it go and let them make their own choice, which is really harmful to both of us in the long run, as I absorbed their issue as if it were my own and they were imposed upon.

49. ‘express what we feel and then let the other be and choose.’ Sometimes the behaviours of others feel so ‘wrong’ to us. We can say that lying and cheating and causing harm to to others is wrong – and exposing this allows it to be in the open for all to see – but we cannot live another persons life for them, we cannot stop them from abusing – the most we can do is not be abusive ourselves and allow the love that is our natural way hold the space for others to choose their way.

50. The truth is – love is our essence.. of every single One.

51. By virtue of its vibration love can never diminish, be lost or taken away. We may walk away from its light, but it never leaves us. Love can only expand, and as we are all love in essence we are always called to be more of love that we are, which is only magnified again when we openly connect with others.

52. So many opportunities are offered for us to evolve through responding rather than being in reaction with another or a situation.
    “If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?”

53. These two statements is what I needed to read and feel, “love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices” and “express what we feel and then let the other be and choose”

    To me this is allowing the other person have free will and placing no impositions of any kind, whether personal, cultural or systems. This has been challenging for me at times and what I love is the refining process, the more I embrace this, the more I can hold the other person.

54. ‘If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.’ This is true love, anything else is simply a need for the other to be something for you, which is far from being loving. This is contrary to how most of us behave with love, and simply because we don’t accept our own love first.

55. Beautifully expressed Michael. The notion that we pretend to love others is rather awful but of course this is actually very common. Humans have bastardised the word love and even the words ‘true love’ in an effort to avoid the responsibility and wonder that comes with expressing and living the love we are.

    1. Well said Leonne – the real understanding of what true love is begins with developing an honest and honoring relationship with how we are with ourselves, with the love we already are within.

56. Our love is simply to enter when we open up our heart to one another and our greater self.

57. True the conditions placed on love makes it not love, simple. We all have a long way to go to live what you share, it is however super inspiring to know those who do live this unconditional love.

58. If you have never felt unconditional love, if it has never been in your world, simply meet Serge Benhayon and if you let yourself, you will feel held, and loved, and the true meaning of the word.

59. Opening up and letting another person experience your essence is truly one of the most exquisite parts of any relationship.

    1. So true Shami and the beauty is that transparency and quality of connection can be continually built on, constantly taking us to new levels of intimacy.

60. This is a great topic, because while we would all love to claim we have unconditional love, the reality is there are so many conditions we place on love – I’ll love you if you love me first, or I’ll love you unconditionally unless you forget to do the dishwasher or I’ll totally love you unless you step ahead of me….There are many… But what if love is just love, and it has no conditions?

    1. Yes Meg, we say we have unconditional love for people, animals and things – yet we lace this love with so many of our insecurities. I will love you if you love me, is a pure example of that.

61. I love this article about love. “A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to. This is equality in its truest sense.”

62. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices” – as a general consensus we might consider this challenging to allow with our ‘loved ones’ or our children, therefore does it not ask us to consider what ‘to love someone’ truly means.

63. The realisation that love is in fact a way of being rather than something we try to obtain or receive from others is very powerful. Embracing this awareness turns life upside down – or perhaps more appropriately, inside out. If we are love, there is no need to seek it anymore, and we live in the world in an entirely different way, bringing the love to it, not in pursuit of it.

    1. Yeh – I love this, love is a quality inside us so it’s there no matter whether you are on your own or with someone else – or whether you receive it from others or not.

64. “It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence” When we feel the essence of another as a reflection of ourselves, we realise that this essence is equally in all.

65. So many situations are described rightfully as loveless. Yet the fact is Love is always there just waiting for us to connect and let it through. We don’t have to go anywhere to find it, we’re just one breath away, depending on the way we move. Thank you Michael.

66. Love is love, with no room for anything else. We really do need to stop and consider this, as most relationships I see and hear about have a lot more going on within them than just love. And yet love is what we all are deep within – the same, ever deepening pool of love.

67. ‘Love is allowing the other to be and let them make their choices.’ – This hasn’t been a easy one to surrender to but the more I allow this and not have judgment for the choices made I can physically see the difference that this has on the other person. When we impose it has such an enormous impact we don’t even realise it.

68. When we have an arrangement with someone we lose out on the magic and love that is naturally there. Expectations we place on another are sure fire way to kill the romance and intimacy – let go of all that and we have a relationship that is literary out of this world.

69. Sometimes people don’t listen, understand or love us when we are allowing ourselves to be love, but those that do – wow. Makes focusing on the unloving moments very tiny. Yet if we do not have a regular experience of being in such a loving space, all the negatives are the main focus. But with consistency being in that loving space melts everything.

70. This is relationship advice all in one. Everything starts with us and you describe beautifully the steps we can take to a more loving life and thus relationships.

71. Your blog is a reminder that beneath and behind every unloving gesture or action is a being that is pure love, just misaligned in that moment. It doesn’t make the moment excusable, or suggest that we should tolerate abuse. But it certainly helps us hold ourselves in the love we are and them in the love they are whilst they are playing out what they are truly not.

72. Learning to observe – this is one of the key components to learning to express love.

73. I love the way you describe being in love. That there are no trumpets or any Hollywood romantic super duper feeling, instead something very steady that starts with us- a lived way to then meet another in the same ease, to then support each other to go deeper in transparency and accepting love as a union. Love is responsibility and union- emotions keep you individual and separate. You can choose.

74. And, may I add, any impatience or imposition is just a sign of what we hold against ourselves.

75. Love is not an emotion and thus, it allows observation and requires understanding of where another is at, allowing each and everyone, without imposition, the time and space to evolve at their own pace.

76. I very much agree with your point about challenges, if instead of calling them difficulties we recognised them for the amazing opportunities they are then we would perhaps see life as a never-ending opportunity to grow and learn.

77. When love is expressed it is felt by its expansion, a wider range of field is opened next. Hence, this shows us that we are in an never ending proces of evolution that always grows us bigger, never smaller. It can only seem small when we contract away from its depth.

    1. Absolutely, the moment we let go of any beliefs and behaviours that contract our divinity, the expansion is right there. It is like a volcano waiting patiently to finally burst out. We don´t have to do anything to expand, we have to let go, then the expansion can take place.

78. Letting go of outcomes and how we might want things to look is key to truly loving ourselves and others. I am learning this more as this gives away any conditions I may still have.

79. This is a beautiful sharing Michael, and inspires me to be all of who I am (Love).

80. Love with ‘terms and conditions’ is an arrangement, and when both parties are in it for outcomes the relationship is more of a contract than open opportunity to learn, support, connect and appreciate each other.

81. ‘…I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.’ This is such a powerful statement. Why is it I am hesitant in claiming this truth? Is it that I’ve spent years where I thought I had to do things in order to get approval, recognition, and attention – all of which I substituted and called love. I got caught up in doing more, trying to be more in order to get love, when really all I got was exhausted and a little more recognition at times. I am love all along and can be deeply caring of myself because I do deserve it. What if I don’t have to earn it but just be love?

82. “how on earth can we fall in love?” Love start by being at-least gentle for we need to take small steps on the path of return that takes us from True Gentleness to Self-Love and finally Love and this journey is an open ended transformation.

83. The more love we build in the way we are in all areas of our life the more love we naturally can share with others, just through the way we are, without needing something in return…

84. ‘Love is all we need’, the refrain of a popular song, is a truism. Understanding exactly what love is, is another matter. Applying that understanding and living it is yet another. The journey of love is ever-unfolding.

85. No matter how much we want to love someone, if we do not hold ourselves in love first then we cannot love that person. We can call it love but it will not be the quality of love. This is why we have to learn to love ourselves.

    1. This is so true and always wise to return to this simple truth.

86. This is a beautiful, beautiful blog Michael. Thank you for sharing your words of wisdom, such an inspiring blog, it reminds me to be love and to keep expressing it no matter what.

87. This is a beautiful sharing on true love Michael and how different it is from the emotional and conditional love that many live day in and day out without question. True love is a forever deepening process, there is no limit to the amount of love we can experience. That’s why it is so powerful to have others living true love as their everyday normal as it has a flow on effect that is so needed in the world today.

88. As you have so wisely shared Michael, love innately resides within us all. It is the quality of our essence and represents who we are, therefore is it not possible for another to give us what we already have and already are. But what is beautiful to share is our love with another, holding another in love, and inspiring each other to be more of the love we all are in essence.

89. Well before we try to change the behaviours of choices of another we must question why we have an investment in them being a certain way or not. Does this not reveal that there is a deeper level we can go to within ourselves with our own love at such a moment?

90. We can make loving a person such a focus. But love it not to be directed at one person – it simply cannot be as love can’t do that. When a person comes a long who we “fall in love” with, to me it’s an opportunity to connect to greater levels of love and to use the love that I feel for one person and make that available for all.

91. ‘Well, we can fall into a puddle of mud, but how on earth can we fall in love?’ This made me smile Michael, I saw myself falling with my face into a puddle of mud and maybe that is what happens when we fall in love, we are blinded by the mud instead of feeling love is within and walk with this light in our eyes.

92. I’m at the beginning of a path of understanding that love is within me, not something I seek, and it is most enjoyable and empowering to know that we are made of love, its not something we get from another, but we can share our loving selves and emanate it. It changes everything the more I grasp the enormity of what that means for all my decisions, responses and behaviours.

93. We know deeply inside what love is – so we can choose to feel it, re-connect to it and move on with that love as our basic principle in life.. That is in fact our true salvation – we can save ourselves.. Lovingly so. Beautiful Michael.

94. Love is also never passive and lovey dovey. It is real, very practical and very palpable. If the lovey dovey things while with seemingly good intent feels fake or not truly loving it is still expressed conditionally, either holding back or with judgement.

95. Falling in love is certainly a curious expression. When you fall you go from a place that is higher to where you end up (that is always lower). But, what is higher than love? Nothing. So, falling in love is not a possibility and certainly not a feeling. It is just an image… of what love is not and never will be.

96. I love this Michael – the awareness of Love as always being inside of us and how we can expand this or hold it back and live in separation and contraction by our own choices.
    “Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else. Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible”.

97. I love this – “It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on.” – it is simply divine.

98. To just let others be who they are and where they are at can be hard, especially when we feel we have the truth. Love is so important and the fact that we love ourselves first means we are then truly able to love others.

99. I can say that from experience putting conditions on anything I express is very restrictive when I compare it to just letting myself express how I feel freely and openly. And yet I have to admit that I have asked for the conditions in the misguided belief that the attention or recognition in that condition being met is of some value or merit.

    1. The conditions we place on ourselves and others are nothing more than misguided attempts at protecting ourselves from hurts. These conditions in turn hurt us and others.

100. To hold ourselves and each other in the love you described Michael, without needs expectations desires, it is indeed heavenly and all encompassing of the love that resides within the inner heart of evert human being on this earth.

101. Love is a word that everyone in the world knows but we all have our different version of what it means. The truth of love is that it is a quality – not a thing you can give or take away. It is who we are if we allow it.

     1. And like Michael said; ‘This is equality in its truest sense.’

102. The beauty about love is that it just is – love, and thus no matter how unloving we are love still is and gives us a marker from where we have strayed from.

     1. Beautifully said Esther. It really is this simple, thank you.

103. Acknowledging the reflection we are with no agenda to make things different leaves us free to connect to our essence and live from there.

104. How many times have I put conditions on love? The expectations that I have brought to relationships have been the things that have sabotaged them, looking to another to meet my needs rather than connecting to the love inside me. What you present here is so supportive and it starts with loving ourselves unconditionally ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself.’

105. I love the analogy that we are mirrors for each other, and the more I polish or deeply care for myself (and my mirror) the more reflection I can offer another person, or put simply, the more magnificent I know myself to be, more magnificent they know themselves to be.

106. I really like that we are mirrors and that our only job is to polish our mirror from the inside out so the reflection we offer is as clear and crisp as it can be.

107. Image waking up in the morning knowing that you unconditionally loved yourself? How different would life be? All our interactions would change and this would change the world.

108. Holding back never got us anywhere did it… except perhaps for the exacerbation of inner unrest, turmoil and conditions of mental and physical health… Our whole being, and all around us suffer, when we repress what we feel.

     1. I can really relate to this today. And yet time and time again I can pretend as if this delay and avoidance of letting out whats inside me is working but it cannot stop the love being expressed eventually, the tension within becomes too great.

109. Thank-you Michael, to me these words are the key: “It is then time to start to distinguish between the actions of another, which of course sometimes cannot be tolerated, and the person’s essence underneath.”
     We are continually presented with opportunities in which to truly hold others in love – founded in the knowing of the essence within, ‘the all that someone truly is’, and what is either in alignment or contra to this in his or her expression in life.
     The work for us… to be able to yes, discern the difference, and respond from love and not reaction to what’s before us. A constant work in progress for us all, no doubt – and one that offers the deepest growth possible that I know.

110. Expressing what we feel and letting the other choose is certainly an unconditionally loving and non-imposing way to live in relationship with others. A beautiful reminder Michael, thank you.

111. ‘It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on.’ I sometimes forget this in a need for people to be a certain way so I do not recognise a reflection that is asking me to consider my current or past choices and the impact they have made on myself and all those around me. And it is not for me to judge myself but bring a deeper understanding that I then reflect to others.

112. How can love impose conditions on anything, when it is not in truth a force to be applied, but simply the emanation of one’s being, and as such immune to anything outside of it. As such, since it cannot in truth be affected by anything outside of it, it is neither judgmental of anything outside of it.

113. Without knowing true love in oneself, it is impossible to truly love another. Thanks for the gorgeous insight into love Michael… the clarity you offer on the subject is much needed in this world today.

114. Love it Michael 😃 and so it is love, your tender simple and so loving expression

115. This is an exquisite blog, Michael. How clear and truly loving is felt Love, when it comes from a true experience of it in ourselves first.

116. As you say to 1st love someone you have to hold yourself in love and that is the key – then you can come together with another and share the exquisite love together. Otherwise it just comes across as need and feels really yucky.

117. “If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?” I have been working with this for a while now in all my relationships and it’s such a humbling experience. I’m not always able to claim this before my reaction, but as soon as I do react I instantly know it’s nothing to do with the other person, but my defense response to try to protect me from feeling my own hurts. So then I know what is there to be healed 💜

     1. That’s great Lucy, the more we look at everything that is presented before us to learn and go deeper the less we will react to what is going on. We can then make things light hearted and play with what is going on rather than making life so serious. Otherwise everything seemingly just gets too hard and then an explosion is going to happen at some time if we just let everything boil up inside.

118. The truth is living anywhere diverted from love is tension felt acutely within our bodies. In wisdom no one would ever want to not be love. But what is preventing us from living this wisdom that our bodies know? The core issue is a resistance towards wanting to evolve, to be in a unified movement with everyone else. We are resisting something which is very natural to us, and by letting go of heeding this wisdom, we get to be individual. The more we identify with our hurts, the less we feel connected to everyone else.

119. This is a beautiful description of unconditional love that reads like a road map for true relationship. Thank you Michael.

120. We can fall down, fall short, fall flat, fall from grace and all these sayings are suggestive of some sort of failure. So I have to agree with you Michael, in the context of this it makes no sense that we fall in love.

121. How gorgeous that love is always there, inside us unconditionally, for all to equally share. Your blog is beautiful and inspiring to read Michael; I really appreciate what you have shared.

122. It’s very true Michael, we do try to love unconditionally but for as long as we think of and live a version of love as something that exists for and between two people, it will remain conditional.

123. Unconditional love – its a tautology really.

124. I keep coming back to read your brilliant blog Michael, it is deeply inspiring. I have seen the meaning of love being distorted in people’s lives, in books, in movies and in families. I myself was living with a false version of love for most of my life and it seemed like I was always chasing love. When I thought I was in love it never seemed to last nor felt true. It has been in the last 5 years since I attended Universal Medicine presentations and workshops that I started to understand what true love means and see what it looks like in people who are reflecting love consistently. Now I understand what love is I am relearning to live it and like you shared Michael, to polish my mirror to reflect love more and more.

125. Distinguishing the actions from the essence of a person can at times be quite challenging as we can get ‘hooked in’ by having the pain of unresolved hurts being triggered unknowingly by those actions. However, the more we heal those hurts and learn to stay connected with our own essence so one can stay connected to theirs and thereby hold and express from and with love.

126. I am learning to let go of the conditions I have put on other people, concerning how much I let them in, open up etc…how I am learning to let go of these is through, learning that I am more than enough and all of love with out ‘needing’ it from anyone. From this point I can love with out as many conditions.

127. True love is needless and therefore condition-less too! It is something that is regardless of the kind of response it gets, but as you say that doesn’t mean we accept abuse or tolerate it either. I deeply appreciate the clarity with which Serge Benhayon presents on the subject of love and breaking down ideals and beliefs that we have built around it, helping many to simply re-connect with the abundance of love innately flowing through them and to begin to let go of whatever we’ve taken on that gets in the way of us expressing this love in everything we do and all interactions we have.

128. I didn’t realise it till now, but for a long long time I have been gauging life to see how much I should give, what I should show, how open that I can be. It’s been like I am measuring the world to find out if I am safe or free. Invariably, the answer has always been ‘not quite’. Today I know this measuring game is the wrong way around. We are the ones who can bring glory and harmony just in the glance of our eye or sound of our step – if we choose to embrace everything with all of our heart. This is the part where we choose Love, and know as you say Michael that this quality and energy is us. It’s never something that we find or arrive at, but a vibration we actively choose. I know I can continue to offer this no matter what the world will do.

129. It’s interesting, I can resists the love for days, months and even years, but once I let it in, it’s never so difficult, I always look back and think to myself “what was all the fuss about”!

130. True love unifies us so we are left in no doubt as to the depth of connection we are all bound by. Therefore anything that divides us, no matter how subtle that may seem to be such as a condition we may place on another, is instantly exposed for the lack of love that it is.

131. True love is unconditional because it is an emanation of one’s being, and not an state of being whose quality calibrates in any way shape or form according to what is coming towards it, and so naturally it does not reduce itself just because what is moving towards it is not of the same ilk.

132. love with conditions is no true Love at all…

133. This is such a beautiful blog Michael, I have read this many times. The wisdom you share is refreshing and deeply inspiring. I am going to print your blog out and share it with a friend.

134. Just beautiful to read Michael, my deepest lesson with love is fully understanding the importance of knowing the love within ourselves. Knowing our worth and our full fiery expression. When this is known a deeper understanding of what love is, is felt. From this knowing, we see all as equal and hold no other less, nor allow another to be less around us. We are prepared to stand, speak and claim this love, leaving space for another to walk away, holding the knowing we are forever waiting for their return back to love.

135. Very cool: that love is about supporting one another and in that – it is about bringing truth. Wow I never grew up with this understanding of love – but now I know this – what an inspiration this is for me to pass this onto my children. Love is so powerful if used and expressed in its true form.

     1. Yes it is HM. You reminded me of the two forms of love I have seen play out in my life. The false version which is emotional, needy, draining and very destructive. Then there is true love which is expansive, absolute and divine, connects us and is very powerful. Which form of love would we choose to express?

136. It did take me a while, and it does feel like a work in progress at times, to truly trust that I am love by essence. Somehow there was a sense that I had to cultivate that to feel ready to claim that I was love, and I totally got that we had to hold ourselves in love first and foremost – and that was becoming a sort of condition in itself, as in ‘I will love another when I love myself enough’. Crazy.

137. The “fall in love” saying is an unusual one we use and when you see it written like this you become more aware of how we use love. We often think it’s a word or something saved for someone special but as we are seeing in this article it is something that comes out, that is natural and also in its true form very equal and knowing. Love can be in everything in an instant but we often gauge love from our perceptions or beliefs or pictures. The more we build or expand what we feel inside does the same to the outside and so love can be also a very personal relationship. Personal in the sense that we control or hold the key to the love we can see or express at any moment. Love doesn’t come from outside in, it goes the other way and in that, we can see how it is our responsibility for what meets us.
     Ever feel love for something and not let it out? Or ever feel more love for something you see but not go the whole way to express it all? This is how we perceive love, we don’t let it out for many reasons and if we only realised that the more you allow out the more that you see and the more that returns. Love is an energy and like anything when you tend to it, truly take care of how you are with it, at some point it balances out and love returns.

138. Lovely to read this again, as I have a deeper understanding now of what Love is, and can feel it within myself – it is one thing being told that we are Love but another feeling it for ourselves and knowing that it is true.

139. This is beautiful, and describes exactly what happens when you meet another and feel that effortless connection … “… Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else. Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath…”

140. This is a blog I am going to come back to as I can feel it unpacking me and pictures I have had of how love should be! “Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano.” These are so many of the unhealthy issues we just stockpile till we have no more room. The explosions are often misunderstood and create more issues than if we had – moment by moment – simply shared what the initial problem was!

141. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” This is something I am still learning. if I express love it should not be conditional on the other person responding or reciprocating . I know I can still wait for someone to show me love before I express it.

142. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.’ …. love what you share here, Michael. If we have expectations on someone being a certain way, this is showing us that we are not truly loving ourselves first. If we were, we would not ‘need’ anything from anyone else, we would know that we already have everything that we need to be the love that we are.

143. Taking care of the mirror that we are, so that we can reflect as clearly as possible the truth of love and relationship is our greatest responsibility and blessing.

144. These are some wise words right here – “it is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose.”

145. Holding back and being nice or polite is not love either as it is bottling our emotions as well as the true and real feelings within – the ones that make up our real and whole being.

146. Many years I thought I was all the emotions that I felt inside me but I’m not. Re-connecting with my essence, learning to recognise it even is allowing me to feel the truth and reality that we are indeed love.

147. ‘Love is always there’ – this is so true. Love itself can never be measured, never argues or judges. It is only through our choice to be in resistance to the all-embracing love that we are that we behave in ways that reflect the lovelessness we feel. I love the point you make that in essence the love we are is equal in all, and therefore a commonality that we inescapably share. Through our willingness to be open and honest in our relationships with each other we can learn, grow and deepen our connection to this love. This offers us a beautiful reminder that we need not ‘do’ anything but surrender to exploring the majesty with us all, that is simply waiting to be embraced, lived and shared.

148. So lovely to read your blog again Michael. True Love is unconditional, it allows us to hold each other in our essence, never any less but in absolute equality. It is exposing in a good way to feel how much we avoid living in our essence and avoid meeting each other in our essence. It is important to first be honest about how we have been living, most of us are choosing to hold back expressing and being love, honesty and awareness is a start to supporting us to return to love again. When I look at my own life and people around me, I feel we have strayed away from true love but the amazing thing is we are all love in essence, so it is only a matter of choice to reconnect to love or not.

149. We are from love and therefore are love, very simple. The only problem is that we walked away from this truth and because of that are now missing the true meaning of it as we live in disconnection from the core we are from and instead have created images of how love would look like, like the falling in love image, which is just a creation from our mind, not from our inner heart and therefore missing the foundation of truth.

150. The mere fact that we have unconditional love means that there must also be a conditional love. Thank you Michael for expressing the purity of true Love in it’s simplicity, needlessness and equality. The more we can live this and express it, the more we are re-imprinting the truth of what we all know love to be.

151. ‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide’, very true Michael, at times we fight the reflection being offered as we want to be in control or be right, to stay in the comfort doesn’t evolve us in anyway to embrace the reflection offered to us is a beautiful opportunity to let go of a hurt or a behaviour that allows us to deepen our connection and love.

152. “If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?” This is great advice. The fight or reaction often seems easier but stopping for a moment and considering what the fight will do and if that is something we really want is so much worth the commitment. And then yes there is always something to learn for both parties – a great way to live our life.

153. If we are not able to hold ourselves in love, how then would we be able to bring that to others. Only by reflection from what is lived within we share the love that we live and can be an inspiration for others to also allow that love that is equally in them to open up to and to expand into their lives.

154. ‘Love can grow with every movement and breath.’ How equally important are these two things, movements help us to step out of our reactions.The moment we move we have another choice in which quality we want to be. Breath is also a movement and a choice to connect or disconnect from who who we are, love

155. It is true we don’t fall in love we expand in love. However, we do fall in the emotion which we often call love which is not love in the true energetic meaning of the word. Unimedpedia Love: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-love.html gives a good description of true love.

     1. That’s a great point Nicola. The term falling in love, I realised after reading your comment shows me it is not the true form of love. Because how could we fall in love when in fact we are already love. Awesome what you’ve shared here, that love is an expansion. And in order to fall in love (conditional love) means we were not choosing to live in true love and therefore we are more susceptible to falling for a false version of love.

156. Thank you Michael for a beautiful sharing on true love, a love that comes from our true essence and is equal in everyone.

157. It is interesting that we have layers of conditions that we set for ourselves to surrender to the love we are in full and then impose this also on the love we share with others.

158. ‘ Love can grow with every movement and breath. It does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.’ When we can come to this point of honesty within ourselves we see the responsibility we have to look at these hurts, truly acknowledge their source and let them go.

159. I love what you have shared here Michael, such a beautiful reminder of the responsibility we hold in reflecting unconditional love;
     “we are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide”

160. If we react to another’s ways, by accepting the fact that we reacted and are not perfect cuts down on the reaction and blame we then hurl towards the other or ourselves. Allowing for more space to understand the reaction and the other person. A process that is continuous but well worth working on.

161. Thank you Michael – like the teacher you are you show us what life is all about. Looking forward to your next class.

162. Thank you Michael. A beautiful essay on relationships.

163. Thank you Michael for this beautiful reminder. A process of getting to know people, for example, at a new work place is a great one to put this into practice as that is the case for me right now. There needs to be a commitment as they are like my new family and I cannot just walk away from them, and I also notice how it is conditioned by the past experiences (good and bad) and the ideals and beliefs I hold.

164. I love this way of how to live love and it is very pertinent to me right now, thank you. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose.”

165. I recall when I first heard about unconditional love, every cell in my body came alive with how true this love felt to me. Learning to let go of old beliefs and pictures around love has been a work in progress but a very worthwhile loving choice that continually rewards me everyday.

166. We search outside of ourselves for love in the belief that only through the love of another will we be whole. It is crazy to think but it was there inside of us all the time, but there you go, sometimes life is a lot simpler than we imagine it to be.

167. Thank you Micharel for a beautiful blog on what unconditional love really is. It is first loving ourselves from our essence and then we can love another in this same way knowing that they too carry this essence of love within them also. It is non imposing nor judging but it also speaks the truth without any agenda only a beholding and reflecting love.

168. When we are connected to our own essence, we are able to feel the love we have and hold from within, and once we are able to do this we are then open to connecting with another in their essence, both being free to be ourselves no matter what each other chooses.

169. ‘If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?’ Great question Michael. Why are we so defensive? When you see it on paper, you realise there is absolutely no point in arguing and fighting because no growing or understanding can come from that. All that does come from that is a huge drain on both people’s bodies, followed by hours, days, weeks, months of carrying it around until one person decides to clear the air, or it’s been so long it gets brushed under the carpet only to be revisited in a different time or some other time in a different scenario. Exhausting.

170. “Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else. It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.” This is so true It is about speaking up and expressing and not getting caught in any reaction. I know in the past I would get caught in emotions.

171. Michael I was considering what unconditional love is all about just yesterday and it started with myself. I was feeling a little off sorts and immediately had gone into wanting to “fix” myself, however then I realised that in the way I had approached this I was not loving of myself, loving of the innate beauty and spark of god that is inside me. I felt that it is in these moments that if I bring unconditional love to myself, that no matter how I feel I am still a son of God, then I can build a body of love without judgement or condition which allows me to hold others in unconditional love as well. For if I have conditions on myself, how can I possibly hold another with no conditions.

172. It is so true that our honesty is a gift when shared with another, as is it the expression of the love we all are within, through which we are, in-truth, not settling for anything less than the greatness we are in essence.

173. ‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there; no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.’ A great point you make Michael and bring us back to pure and simple observation and Love.

174. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself.” How important this is to start with the self first and building that commitment to truly caring for the self. With this the love then spreads and reflects out to other and the love is felt by all.

175. Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. Perfect reminder for me today, as I can still find myself wanting to change another rather than support another, but I am aware of this and it is shifting.

176. Having people around me that are consistently Love, has shaped my life enormously – in fact, I would say my life would be an absolute disaster if that reflection was not provided

177. Being in love with myself returns love in any moment of my life and gives me the strength and the courage to choose for more love every day.

178. It is so true that what we don’t express just sits there waiting to release. It is not about being nice but about being honest and communicating in honesty. When we express in full what our bodies know need to be shared – it supports us and the person hearing it. For if it comes from love, it can only be supportive.

179. A gorgeous sharing on true love. Thank you Michael.

180. Love is our common equal essence, and the times that we forget this we spend looking for that love everywhere else but at its source within us.

181. That we are a mirror for each other, and also that life is a constant reflection in every way is a true blessing. We are given so much to support us on our way back home to the oneness we are and are from.

182. As soon as we think we love someone more then another, then we have lost the true sense of Love. For Love is equal and can only ever be equal.

183. I don’t know if the majority of people actually know what love is – I know I’m still working it out and I’ve had the amazing grace to hear and feel about love from a man who is living it everyday – Serge Benhayon.
     I thought love was the obsession, excitement, and flutter in my stomach when I was with someone, but it’s not, that is elation of some sort – Love feels more steady than that, like a beholding of who I am first, then another. There is so much to feel with Love and the more we admit we don’t really know what it is, the more we free ourselves up to being shown the truth of love, and the less we are held by images of what we thought Love was.

     1. I love this opening up and humility to learning about love, practising its expression in our lives – and that it is not a peak and trough affair, but a steady, exquisite, expanding understanding of our place alongside others.

184. As I read your article Michael I could see why what we think love is has taken a big detour. Thinking that love is something we look for from another to be fulfilled. But really we are the love that we are looking for and looking outwardly will only keep this allusive.

185. Thank you Michael. I was deeply immersed in the emotional kind of love, attachments, expectations and more, with little or no love for myself. All this changed when I found Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, which opened me up to real love, a love that was inside me waiting to be connected to through deeply caring for myself. This love that I am building with allows the choice to go deeper, and is the true love I can take to others, unconditionally.

186. Love in expression doesn’t change,only we do.

187. Yes Michael, a beautiful account of what love is and is not. You blow away many, many commonly held misconceptions and bring the simple truth of love back in a very tangible way.

188. I love the concept of just being love, rather than imposingly sending it, for then it is up to another whether they choose to be aware of what is on offer and be impulsed to connect to it within themselves and then embrace and live it accordingly.

189. I can often be my worst critic and judge myself when I do not meet my own expectations, so learning to love myself unconditionally is a work in progress for me. Over the last 6 years since attending Universal Medicine workshops my level of self love has increased dramatically which is huge. I realise my potential to love another unconditionally has everything to do with the love that I allow for myself.

190. Beautiful Michael, it shares us the truth and actually cuts the ill tops of where we have made life (love) about. The depth of bastardization we have made from the word ‘love’ is intense – that’s why this blog about what ‘love’ actually is – is so superduper important. I am thanking you for sharing this and sticking your head out and saying how it is. Love is love, and if we make it about anything else – we loose anyway. So thumbs up, let’s express more, re-discover again what love is about.

191. This really does reconfigure what we ‘thought’ love to be – a neediness, an attachment, an emotion. What a simple and non invasive truth love can bring.

192. I don’t think I’ve ever ‘fallen in love’ – it seems weird to me and I’m not sure what that means but what I do am in the process of discovering is what it’s like to surrender into love. To allow love into my life and more practically into my body. It feels like love is all around and all I have to do is stop fighting that.

193. Being loving is being prepared to leave a relationship when someone is knowingly choosing to abuse themselves or someone else.

194. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices”; whatever those choices may be. It is speaking the truth lovingly and allowing another to respond (or react) as they will; without control or judgement. Certainly a work in progress for me however I am enjoying the learning and expansion.
     Thank you Michael for presenting such a beautiful and inspirational blog.

195. Growing up I fell for the belief that Love was of a romantic type shared only between two people and looked for signs of what “falling in love ” looked like portrayed by the media, romantic films and books.
     I saw love as something you did for another or family love which was something you just took for granted.
     It was not until I met Serge Benhayon at Universal Medicine workshops, retreats or from his books that I understood that true love is a quality we all come from and is deep within us all.
     “A love that is simple, still and all-knowing; and “beholding of another.”

196. Beautiful to come back to this blog, Michael – to be reminded to first hold myself in love unconditionally, forever more so, to be that for another.

197. Michael – as you say here – we are a mirror for each other. Love quiet often can be about expectations and emotions and passion – but what you have shared here is love in absolute truth – a beholding of another – a responsibility we have to keep speaking the truth to one another. An allowing of another’s choices – all these things are not shown to us through the media – so blogs like these are so important to share a different way.

198. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself.” they should have this up on billboards, this is so true. To truly love someone, we do need to hold ourselves with absolute love and appreciation. There is always more to feel and go deeper with, within ourselves and with others.

199. Allowing a space for more love to unfold; how very beautiful and divine unconditional love is. Your definition of unconditional love Michael are true, simple and clear; we are either loving unconditionally or we are not. Self awareness, self responsibility and discernment are the key.

200. Most of us are not able to live the love that we are constantly, nor are we able to love others without conditions. It is important to remember that in trying to do all the things listed above, like loving ourselves, being love (irrespective of what others do around us) bringing supportive truth to others even when its challenging, it’s important that we understand if we ‘fail’ at some or even all of the above we are still love. Love is not something we do but who we are, understand that is half the issue sorted.

201. This is a great understanding of expression and our responsibility with it – ‘Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose.’
     We cannot control the outcome nor the response, we can only honour what it is we feel and offer this as support to move through whatever muddy waters may have surfaced. It is not about fixing or a solution, but opening up and broadening our understanding of each other.

202. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.’ Here here Michael.
     This is where I can come undone at times – wanting people to make the right choices and not doing so good if they don’t. I make it about control and judgement, so really I am saying no to Love. Being aware of this makes relationships really simple – we are either in Love or not and whatever we are expressing is either coming from one place or another. So when I feel the judgement or control come in, then I have a marker and know that that is not Love, thus it is not me.

203. Gosh, this is beautiful to read Michael – I can feel all the tension I’ve been holding this morning melting away as I surrender to the truth I know about who I am and the love we all equally are.

204. I agree, it is a bit strange that we talk about falling in love. Love is love and we cannot fall in and out of love, all we can do is just not let ourselves connect to it. I love the fact that love never goes anywhere. How could it go anywhere when we actually come from love?

205. I Love the definitions you give to unconditional love, so simple and easy…

206. love, like God is always present. The question is are we?

207. Absolutely amazing blog Michael, I have read this a while ago and reading it again is simply inspiring. Love is equally in all of us, it is in how we express that either connects us or disconnects us. I can relate to the eruption you mentioned when we do not express truth, this comes in forms of rage and anger. By choosing to express love and truth it leaves no room for rage or anger, it only expands our unconditional love that is innately within all of us.

208. Unconditional love is simple and without the complications of emotional love. It holds everyone as an equal and in that equality allows for a flow and expansion. Thank you Michael for your beautiful blog.

209. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices”, what a great sentence and so very true. Love really is being able to love someone, even if their choices do not align to what we feel they should or shouldn’t be doing or living.

210. This is such a gorgeous blog Michael, I love this line, ‘If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?’. I’ve been noticing very recently how I go into this ‘fight or flight’ mode when something challenging comes up within my family; I often choose to ‘fight’ it out, trying to solve and really nut out the issue in all it’s ugliness. I’ve realised this isn’t supportive! It may sound like a simple thing to realise but in the moment I would say that many of us feel we need to ‘face’ or hammer down an issue in order to get rid of it, when we can actually simply call it out and use it as an opportunity to grow.

211. Love your description of true love here Michael! It is a clarity that is much needed in our world today with all the beliefs and ideals that abound and interfere with our otherwise natural expression of the innate love within us all.

212. This is such an awesome blog Michael, the science of what true love is, and how it is unconditionally when we truly choose to love ourself, so not needing anything from anyone.

213. Michael your blog is full of wisdom – we are really the greatest gift for each other if we allow us to support us to be ourselves.

214. This is a beautiful blog Michael, and yes we are love, we just have to choose to be love and allow that to shine forth, ‘Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else. Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath.’

215. I never got the whole ‘falling in love’ thing – although I have used that term many times to describe what I was feeling with another. So if we are falling in love, what happens when we land? Is that when the ‘honey moon’ period ends and we realise that relationships actually take a commitment to evolve in the love we are feeling for each other? I know when I have fallen in love, been swept off my feet or even had my breath taken away, the landing has always been quite painful because it was never love in the first place.

216. ‘If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.’ This is beautiful Michael, your entire blog is. I’ve highlighted this part because I have felt this and know what you’ve shared is so, so true. There is not one ounce of expectation or condition when true love is present.

217. This turns romance on its head because how often are our intimate romantic relationships actually founded on a conditional need that the other needs to meet. We call being ‘in-love’ something of an elation, something special, something unique but what if these feelings of being ‘in-love’ we not entirely true in the sense that it is still based on meeting needs instead of truly being about love from our inner-most?

218. Love must first be felt and appreciated within us. If it is searched from outside of us, it will impose on another and ourselves.

219. I have held back from expressing for as long as I can remember and it is becoming very clear to me how harming and abusive this way of being is to me and others. To express how I am feeling about a situation with no expectation, no outcome, no manipulation or control feels an incredibly loving thing to do for all concerned whether another may react or not and I agree to do this there has to be a loving relationship with self first. Thank you Michael for sharing a very inspiring and beautiful blog which I shall take with me into my day.

220. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on.” Agreed Michael, we are each of us on our own path of evolution with whatever particular lessons are required for us to learn and at times it may not make sense to us but to trust that it’s all a part of our return.

221. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” This is really pertinent for me at the moment Michael and a loving reminder. We all have free will and have to allow another to express theirs whenever and however they so choose.

222. Thank you Michael for sharing this blog, which is written with love.

223. Beautiful blog Michael. This feels much more solid and a real definition of love compared to the emotional kind that is often full of many inconsistencies and contradictions and rules as to ‘what is love’. True Love is to reflect that even in the face of unloving choices having been or being made, we always have the choice available to be the love that we are. I loved the line about not judging what situations others require as that is their lessons just as we have ours. We are all re-learning how and that we have the ability to be who we are.

224. This does make me reconsider the way love is again, and see that love is a holding quality and as you say “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” And it shows the amazing quality love is, true love is unconditional and is built from our own level of love for ourselves.

225. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” this is the absolute truth.

226. Unconditional love feels amazing.

227. I love that line Susan – love is super simple – it always supports and holds others – no matter what they are choosing.

228. ‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide ‘ I found this line very powerful – to be constantly aware of what we are reflecting at all times, brings great responsibility to those we meet.

229. Great point – there is much talk about unconditional love, but it is rarely followed through with action, and when we do meet someone who walks their talk – it’s spectacular.

230. This blog is a great tribute to ‘Love’. Reminding, reassuring and so beautifully expressed

231. Beautifully written Michael, thank you, love has no need, and can allow perfect freedom, love just is, there is nothing to do to get love, but just be, just be the love we are, how amazingly simple.

232. I’m a massive fan of your opening question: ‘We often pretend to love someone without condition, but is this really the case?’ I agree, do we really deeply love someone and allow them to come to their own lessons and realisations, in their own time, without first imposing our need of how we want things to be? From what I’ve observed and also know in myself, this is quite rarely the case, but I do know to both love and be loved liked this feels amazing.

233. Michaels reflection upon love is quite lovely… And it is also very important of course that we understand that self-love is not selfish or narcissistic, but it is actually the foundation upon which we can build relationships, both friends and intimate, and upon this foundation these relationships will be strong and clear supporting everyone involved.

     1. This is a great point, there is no selfishness in self-love, it’s actually an enormously important ingredient in all healthy relationships, and as you pinpointed: ‘it is actually the foundation upon which we can build relationships, both friends and intimate.’

234. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself”. Beautifully expressed Michael, a really lovely blog to come back to as a gentle reminder of holding yourself in unconditional love; thus being able to hold another.

235. Beautiful Michael. Holding another in love is to allow them the space to come to their own understanding of love – without an expectation or time frame.

236. Responsibility starts with self first, ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.’

237. ‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide’. What we have to ask ourselves is what exactly are we reflecting to each other? Are we responsible for adding more hurt and harm to the world or are we responsible for reflecting more love? The choice is always our.

     1. Great Elizabeth, and it also means there is a responsibility to truly understand what is being reflected to us as this is the greatest offering for understanding ourselves and what we are creating in the world.

        1. and the more we observe and understand about what is being reflected by the world the more truly we can see and feel what our next step can be.

238. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices”; very true Michael no matter how harming we might think these decisions may be. Allowing and loving with time and understanding, this is our challenge.

239. “why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?”. This takes courage to do this, to stop the fight (if it is happening) or to resist the temptation to argue and to see life as a classroom with trillions of lessons that we are here to learn from and understand our part in it and to seek understanding of others part it in it. To not get caught up in the top layer of what is going on, but to drop deeper and gain an understanding as to why that is happening for you and for the other person.

240. “Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano.” How often do we see this! This is the reason we have so much violence in the world. It is due to lack of expression which builds up and becomes behaviour that is way out of control.

241. Thank you Michael – your article allowed me to appreciate how far I have come in my relationships as it has become clear to me that choosing anything but unconditional love causes nothing but harm. What a wonderful inspiration to let go of need and simply be us in full.

242. That is best description about ‘falling in love’ – that we do not fall in love, we simply allow more of our love to come out. Gold gold gold.

     1. I love this too Sarah, there’s no falling in love here, just a sweet and always deepening of the love that is always, always there.

243. So much I love about this blog and this line especially – “Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano. Like the eruption of a volcano, this is highly likely to erase everything that has been there before. This does not mean the end to life, but it will take a large amount of time until the first new, tender plants will grow into the abundance that existed before.”. We all know this to be true because when we hold back and then finally say something, it is often wiht much more force than intended – and often with more vitriol and much damage can be caused. It is much better to express as we go along but learn to do so in a way that is honouring of the other person and not attached to an outcome.

     1. Well said Sarah, expressing from truth will save so much time and avoid conflict

244. Yes, me too Doug. I used to stop listening as soon as someone started speaking of unconditional love, as I could not relate it to anything I had seen in my life. That is until I met Serge Benhayon, observing for many years and gradually letting in what can only be described as pure love, for all equally (and certainly unconditional).

245. How often do we open up and let someone in only to shut down again if, or more truthfully, when our hurts are triggered? I know I have done this to the nth degree in the past.The inconsistency of that cancels out trust. Dealing with our hurts is the only way to come to where we have no qualms about staying open and equally letting love out and in. Until then we are like sea anemone’s opening and closing at the slightest disturbance.

     1. Beautifully expressed Jeanette. It’s such an easy thing to do – shutting down when a hurt is triggered – but the consequences can be devastating as it shuts down our connection to ourselves and the love that we are and our connection to others. We can save ourselves a lot of pain if instead we choose to remain open and vulnerable.

        1. If the sea anemone remains shut for much of the time in protection we don’t get to see the beauty it naturally is on the inside. Looking at ourselves like that you get the sense of the pain the hiding and the contraction brings which makes it harder and harder to open up. The more we take the necessary steps to see and let go of our hurts, the more we trust our inner essence, when that occurs, the easier it is to stay open.

        2. I love your analogy Jeanette between the sea anemone and the beauty that we’re denying ourselves and the world when we close ourselves down. It hurts us more to hold onto the hurt than it does to open up to growing from whatever lesson is on offer.

246. I could really feel the greatest gift we offer everyone for just being ourselves for no other reason other than to be a reflection.

     1. Beautifully put Steve Matson.

     2. I agree Steve the git of being ourselves is not only for ourself.

     3. It is that simple, I agree Steve.

247. Whoa.. this is huge. If Love is unconditional, then how can we have ‘love’ in any of our modern day institutions, religions and practises if love is so often practiced with judgement and critique?

248. I know what you mean Doug – Serge’s unconditional love is reflected to us in the way he lives life with complete integrity and respect both of himself and of everyone else. We cannot help but know this – he is the emanation of love.

249. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices,” There is such a BIG-ness in this Michael. We often want to help people that we love, and we try to fix things for them and save them from their pain. But this is not love – it is a need for things to be ok. True love is allowing people the freedom to fall flat on their face if that is what needs to happen for their evolution and healing.

     1. Love also means allowing ourselves the freedom to make mistakes without judging ourselves and giving ourselves a hard time. We need to love ourselves unconditionally too.

250. Equality is found in truth. That’s a beautiful way to express it, Michael. And an eye-opening marker for how few equality we currently have in our world, since currently we as a humanity hardly agree on any truth.

251. There are so many images i hold of how things should look. These images have developed from my life experiences good and bad and I hold onto these unintentionally holding the rest of my life to ransom. Being unconditional in love is letting of these images and opening up to that i am so much more.

252. Life can only become more loving for all if we first be love. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistical or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.” Thank you Michael, this is beautiful.

253. Or use it as a weapon against others and an excuse to be imposing.

254. Such a supportive blog to read again today, as I reacted with annoyance to choices another was making and I was really asking myself why did I feel that way… This has helped put it in perspective, thank you! “It does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.”

     1. This is a beautiful line, Aimee – “we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us”. It helps us to create space and have understanding in those moments when emotions can potentially take over.

255. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” And to truly be able to do this comes from having built that body of love within ourselves.

256. Although love is an ever present thing in and around each and everyone of us it really needs its buddy expression, its like a stick of dynamite without a match to light it. It’s presents will be felt and respected but it needs something to ignite it otherwise it may just lay dormant.

257. ’The only thing love promotes is to support each other … This does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else’. It has taken me 37 years to come to this understanding and awareness – that supporting does not mean that you blindly champion another, it is about being honest, which is how true relationships are founded. On a very practical level, I have found that this has enabled my relationships to be much more real and less emotional and conflictual.

     1. I like your comment very much chevonsimon – “. . . that supporting does not mean that you blindly champion another, it is about being honest, which is how true relationships are founded.” A relationship without this kind of support is for me very superficial and boring and not real at all.

258. This blog shows so beautifully our innate essence. And knowing this is a great support in coming back to it, I feel how my love has still quite a lot of conditions, but I know these are there to discover and discard, by loving myself unconditionally.

259. ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself’ This changes everything, and so what we bring to another is from a different foundation, a foundation of love.

260. This blog captures everything I love about love.

261. ‘Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible.’ It is beautiful to consider the link between love and allowing space.

262. I love the explanation of the quality of love “no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved”, but just “being” and offering a mirror. All my life nature has always been there doing just that. And more recently I have noticed Serge Benhayon consistently do that and more and more others inspired by him to deepen that quality in their lives too. Although I quite liked the feel of the emotional love when I did not know any different, I now know the unconditional love you are talking about leaves me so much more appreciated, honoured and empowered. Not much resemblance really.

263. “It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath.” Reading this line this morning has allowed me to feel another of understanding of what love is. What I have found of late is that when I am living more consistently from my essence I feel a steadiness of love that is innately inside of me and I also then feel this love of others too that is much more solid and withstanding. Of course the love is always there but the level and consistency in which I feel it is dependant upon how much I connect with it within myself.

264. Meeting unconditional love is rare for me too Brendan, In fact they were just words, just a dream until I met Serge Benhayon and started doing the Universal Medicine workshops courses. His living example of unconditional love has inspired me to recognise and drop many conditions I was using to hold people to ransom for my love, to recognise other people’s ‘conditions’ and allow these to be ok without reaction.

     The strangest thing is that, like you say, “unconditional love is a natural way for us all”, a way that has been robbed from us by imposing ideals and beliefs that pit us against one another. It is the greatest liberation to transcend our beliefs and to love unconditionally.

     1. Yes Jeannette, I used to get hurt when I felt the conditions others put on love, not owning up to the fact that I had my own! How many of us ‘hold the world to ransom’ and feel justified because we give power to the hurt rather than the love that naturally bubbles up inside us?

     2. 100% of the people I personally know many people do this Janet. I can only presume it is all too common a folly.

265. Love – one of the most profound and yet least understood words in the dictionary. And this is perverse if we were to consider that love is our true essence.

     1. It’s an almost unfathomable perversity Adam. Thank God Universal Medicine is here, leading us back to the love we already are.

     2. I have to agree with you here Adam, the word ‘Love’ for sure lacks the deep understanding and knowing that should be natural, considering it’s within us all equally already.

266. To understand that love is always there and we choose to move away or towards it, really helps to put into perspective the responsibility we have to ourselves and each other.

267. I am learning that love with conditions is actually not love. When I feel hurt by something it is because I am holding onto a picture of how it should be, so the ideals and beliefs that I have that hold that picture in place are a clue to some of the conditions I might be holding onto, let go of those and I come back to love.

268. Pingback: Love in a Nutshell « The Truth about Serge Benhayon

269. ‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide’ – we would save ourselves the agony of expectations and disapponitments if we understood and lived this simple truth.

     1. This is true, and can be challenging at times, which is why having the understanding really helps, ‘‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide’.

270. Indeed – it is the sad reality that as humanity, we have strayed very far away from our natural way of being. Most people are not even aware of this fact.

     1. This is so true Eva. I even catch myself out when conditions I have placed on love rise to the surface.. hence it is wise to be forever open to love deepening and expanding.

     2. Me too Abby – it is a forever deepening and developing process.

     3. As we experience a deeper love, the conditions become visible that had been there before. This process seems to be neverending. Unconditional love is not a fixed measure. It lives and expands.

271. We can create many masks for ourselves and only ever present these versions of us to the world, but in truth, what humanity really needs is the real you, no mask, no facade, no agenda, just the lovely true version of who we are.

272. Beautifully said Brendan – this blog simply ‘offers others an opportunity to consider the possibility that this could be another way to live.’

273. I just pondered on the article again, Michael, and the question arose in me how would it feel to love myself unconditionally?

     1. A great question to ask. Reading your comment I have realised that I have spent such a lot of time on working toward loving others unconditionally, yet have I put that amount of effort into loving myself unconditionally. Probably not.

     2. I feel Kerstin this is the first step to unconditionally love someone else. Stripping away any judgement we have on ourselves opens up our eyes to see another in their essence.

     3. A great question to ask ourselves and reflect on Kerstin, ‘how would it feel to love myself unconditionally?’

274. To feel another’s essence is also a reflection of our own. This allows us to feel the fullness and love we naturally are. In such a moment we are able to be unconditional and free of our ideals.
     Loving from this place is expansive, loving from ideals and beliefs is contracting and forever leads to disappointment.

275. So very true Michael,
     “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself.”
     The more I allow myself to feel love the more I experience this to be true.
     When I feel this quality of love within myself its without need, for its already in its fullness and naturally overflows to others.
     Alternatively to love from a place of need is to come from an emptiness that is seeking external stimulation and recognition. The feeling is very different one allows us to fly the other keeps us caged, the difference is conditional or unconditional love.

276. I recently could feel this week exactly this “Love is always there” Love has always been there all my life. What I could feel was all the times in my life when I actively chose not to ‘choose love’, I was always in such reaction to the world, for it not reflecting back to me what I wanted it to, so I kind of did the two fingers up to the world and said, ‘if you are not going to be love to me’ I am not going to choose to be love either. Well that didn’t work out so well, until I found Universal Medicine and began to let go of all that parts that were not me and to connect to who I truly am. In that process, understanding that love was always where, and always will be, its just a matter of choosing it.

277. It’s interesting to observe how everything that comes our way comes for a reason and is a lesson to learn. We might not much like it at the time, but each time it happens we have another opportunity to look at it and chose another way. Letting people be and understanding true unconditional love keeps coming up for me to understand another layer of it, I understand the theory but the practice is work still in progress.

278. The pictures we hold of love keep us feeling from what true love is. Unconditional love comes with no strings attached and no frame in which a picture can be hung.

279. “If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?” Each time there is something sticky comes up in a relationship, it is an opportunity for healing. If we take this attitude then each day we are grateful for the reflections we are offered – each and every one of these taking us a step closer to God.

280. “It does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.” This is such a great expose of anger, when I nominate that all the anger I feel is actually as a result of my own holding back and unloving choices it allows me to take responsibility and move forward instead of cowering in fear and perpetuating more holding back.

     1. That’s a great point Leonne. When we nominate that being angry is a choice, and is also a result of our previous decisions and behaviours then this gives us the space to consider the truth of the situation, take responsibility and stop the emotion. It’s a powerful way of truly ‘cooling off’ and taking responsibility when we get frustrated or angry.

        1. Very true Susie W. I was really angry about something today, however, when I back tracked over the days events it was obvious there was nobody else I could blame. My previous choices had led me to the choice to be angry.

        2. And that’s how we should be approaching every situation where we get angry, frustrated, hurt or let down – look at ourselves first and backtrack our choices that led to that point before pointing fingers in all directions and blaming others!

281. Love is universal it is not personal. The moment we make it personal it is no longer love.

     1. ‘Love is universal it is not personal. The moment we make it personal it is no longer love.’ – Donna I LOVE this comment – so simple and so brilliantly true.

        1. Yes and I discover more and more moments in my life where I am in the universal love and see all the little points in me which are not yet universal, but it feels great to know I am not these little points, I am universal. It is like standing on a mountain and be able to observe everything, and there are dots which do not belong to the flow and need to be adressed, but standing on the mountain I know these dots and issues are not me and who I am.

     2. Beautifully said Donna.

282. Beautiful blog Michael. I must admit that I have never chosen a partner from love, there has everytime been a need there. Being honest and accepting this diminished version of love has not been easy. As I am coming to feel and know my true essence I know that love is indeed inside and all around me and from that place I can’t help but express it.

283. Once we accept that the spark of love is within us all, then we can accept (and take responsibility for) the fact that everything we do is either from this spark or not. The more ‘from the spark’ we are the more space love has to expand out into all areas of our lives, touching the absolutely everything that we do, say think and feel. I am invariably blown away by the expansiveness and spaciousness of love when I surrender to it.

284. This is such a great reminder – ‘Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.’ – this is one that I am just starting to get more real with and not tip toeing around what needs to be said. Expressing with and from Love is completely different to expressing in anticipation of reaction to the judgement that you are projecting whilst still seemingly believing you are not in judgement… It doesn’t need to be a big thing, simply saying what you feel needs to be expressed and not holding it in the body and not leaving that other person to live in loveless ways, but presenting another way – leaving them a choice as to which one they will choose, Love or not. There is work to be done…

285. Very true, Brendan. The conditions we set on love are a hidden set of rules that we expect others must tiptoe around, not knowing what might set something off.

286. “Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible.” This is beautiful to know, as often I have felt this pull when I have met people for the first time, sometimes I have just allowed and been open other times I have held back. When I have allowed myself to just be open its been a beautiful interaction.

287. “common in everyone, is love. A love that is simple, still and all-knowing.”. I love this description of love, it is the antithesis of emotional love which is complex, up and down and never really knowing. Thank you.

288. Love – ‘equality in its truest sense’ – the inner spark that we all are. Now that is a totally steady, absolute, unwavering foundation for our every day.

289. ” If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?…” This is great as it turns on its head, the way we have either learnt or approach challenging interactions, and offers the way to bring responsibility back into the relationship with self and with others.

     1. Well said Johanne. Anything challenging is an open invite to express more love.

        1. Instead of an invitation to fight… an invitation to love.

        2. Love it. It’s as simple as that Meg.

     2. Absolutely Johanne. We forget sometimes that when issues arise it’s actually an opportunity to learn, rather than opportunity to fight and react with a ‘valid justification’ to do so.

        1. ‘We forget sometimes that when issues arise it’s actually an opportunity to learn.’ – This is so important, issues do not come up for us to fight, deny or hide, but for us to deepen our commitment and understanding of ourselves and everyone around us, and so we can clear something that may be seriously holding us back.

        2. Absolutely Meg, so naturally the worst thing to do when an issue arises is beat ourselves up, for this slows the learning process completely and means that instead of seeing the mistake/problem as a lesson, we see it as a failure and thus create another issue out of thin air.

        3. I agree, though sometimes find it hard to put into practice 😉 literally the worst thing you can do when you make a mistake is beat yourself up, it entrenches you way deeper into the mistake making it so much harder to move forward. It’s way healthier to live knowing that we will at times make mistakes, but the lesson is always valuable.

     3. So true – how many people have the thought that this could be an opportunity to deepen our relationship at the start of a fight. I would say not many – but that this thought could improve so many relationships.

290. “This essence, common in everyone, is love. A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to.” – Agree Michael, absolutely, we have an eternal essence of love that is always there for us to connect to, no matter how far we may think we are from it in our life and expression it is always there and is something we can choose to come back to.

291. Reading this blog for the second time, it seems to come to me in a very different way this time. Amazing to feel how I clearly read it more deeper and seemingly it is touching on different areas in my life. Love seems to cover so much in my life, yet I feel that not all of these fragments are a love that is true ‘ more a mask or word’ that makes L.O.V.E. It is truly beautiful to feel the quality in this piece of who we are, and the purity that love actually is – and so what truly makes us , as indeed who we are is love. No wonder we look for it!

     1. Well put Danna – like attracts like so of course we look for love.

292. Love is unconditional. I did an exercise on the weekend at a Universal Medicine workshop called Livingness 1. I stood 1.5m apart opposite another person with both our eyes shut. We just for this exercise let go our guard and any protection and connected to the essence of the other person. It was amazing we both were naturally pulled towards each other. If I did not let my toes balance me I naturally fell into the other person. I got to realise I was ‘in love’ with someone I did not know, and for me it was instant.

     1. Yes Rik – it shows that we are all one, and very naturally pulled towards each other.

     2. Letting ourselves be in love with everyone we meet, instantly dissolves any ability for conflict or separation. We cannot fight another, even with words, when we realise we are connected in love…

     3. How beautiful Rik – and how simple love can be when we allow ourselves to trust. It was beautiful to recall this simple exercise and how powerful it can feel to let go of the guard and return to our natural way of being.

     4. Beautiful Rik, a clear demonstration that we are innately love and in love we feel no separation, we are naturally drawn to be together.

     5. It is an amazing exercise and I love what you say about it is in our choices that keeps us seperate, it is inside us all, but we just need to choose it for ourselves and in turn we will open up to others.
        And this exercise shows that it is easy when we let our guards down and show all that we are.

     6. This is maybe the true version of falling in love with each other!

        1. I think it is Felix. It reminds me of kids when they play at falling towards each other and they giggle and squeal with joy, tirelessly doing this time and time again in what was, to me, a totally abstract form of entertainment. Now I get a sense that they squeal with delight at the feeling of the magnetic pull of unconditional love drawing them together. How gorgeous.

     7. This is a profound exercise Rik. Love becomes much more simple when we define it by the way it feels first.

293. I am coming to know the meaning of true love, as I allow myself to just be myself with another and then I only see another from their truth, through my own loving eyes.

294. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices”. Returning to love has to come from within a person and not from outer coercion or encouragement. This choice is the first true step.

     1. Absolutely Matthew, returning to love can only come from within ourselves. How completely the opposite than what we have believed in. This puts parenting in a whole new perspective.

295. A beautiful blog that I love to come back to; it is such a gorgeous reminder that love is always there, equally so for us all. Thank you Michael.

296. Thank you Michael, I love the simplicity and profound message of your article. The essence of love being equal in us all.

297. We absolutely deserve love and care Michael, it’s just we have built fortresses around ourselves to not let it in. It’s time to open the gate, drop the drawbridge, drain the mote and let it all in.

298. The amazing thing about expressing love to everyone equally and as you have said Michael is that if they walk away… we still hold them in love and accept their choices.

299. I love this Michael. . . . ‘If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.’ . . . as this is true unconditional love as there is no need for anything in return.

     1. I love this too kathleenbaldwin – this is the way to not lose ourselves in investments or expectations, but hold ourselves steady in love regardless of the response.

        1. Yes Eva though sometimes this is easier said than done if we are not constantly living and moving in a way that supports us to drop all investments or expectations especially with our selves.

300. ‘It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.’ especially in these cases. The fact we feel that something that we are expressing will cause a reaction is a beautiful confirmation of why we are there with something to express in the first place.

301. A beautiful blog about love felt deeply as it is who we are and when we express this by living this magic occurs everywhere. Thank you Michael.

302. Yes I agree Susan, this blog sums up the true expression of love

303. I have been meeting this someone and feeling a special connection towards this person, space grows with us and appreciation deepens daily. We commit to express everything we feel to each other and not hold it back. I feel grace, joy and glory when we express together, and most important of all, this deepens all the time, without ever coming to an end. We are always in support to each other.
     I have been meeting me, and yes I am love.

304. Holding people in love, not always easy as I still have the tendency to have an opinion about people their choices but learning to observe and to understand that we all have to take our own steps in our evolution.

     1. Yes I agree Mariette, sometimes even when we think we are not invested in someone getting ‘it ‘– the love that is on offer – we still are. It is the understanding of why the other is making the choices they are making that will bring the acceptance and the love to the situation.

305. ‘This essence, common in everyone, is love.’ Deep down we do all know this even when we choose to stray from it. How incredible love is that no matter what it waits patiently there for us to return.

306. This is a truly beautiful blog. I am in awe of anyone who can hold themselves in this manner, as I am still sometimes getting attached to outcomes. I am also in a new relationship and if the other person doesn’t react the way that I feel they should, I get angry and it’s true, I’m actually angry with myself for expecting her to do what I think she should, rather than just being comfortable being with me and allowing her to be who she is. I have to remind myself that we are very different and am learning to just appreciate everything that I am and everything that she is too and all that we bring.

307. ‘Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano’ …. Does this explain the ever increasing rage, hurt and anger we are seeing in the behaviours of so many in society today? Great blog Michael.

308. Knowing we come from Love, we choose to feel it or leave it, but it never chooses to leave us, is beautiful. So we can always come back to Love in a flash. Expression of it with each other has been very misunderstood but when we come back to the truth of it, it’s simple, simply being Love and expressing it without condition is for us all to feel.

309. We are love. When we find somebody who deeply accepts us expressing our love, then that is a beautiful case of falling in love.

310. “This essence, common in everyone, is love. A love that is simple, still and all knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to. This is equality in its truest sense.” Love is a common thread that holds us as a humanity all together in its light and grace, there is no separation, no borders, no divides between countries and races, simply a deep understanding that is so grand so all encompassing that we as a humanity are held as one.

311. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.” Beautifully put Michael, we all deserve a high level of love tender care, I often in the past had an unspoken demand that my partner should give that tenderness love and care to me, which even in the times when that did happen I never felt fulfilled, I still felt empty and longing for more love. I realised later that I was wanting them to love and care for me, but I wasn’t prepared or able at the time, to give that love to myself. Through building my self-love and care it has greatly enriched my relationships with other people.

312. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there; no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.” Wow this is a very powerful statement Michael, I have never really seen this so clearly, it feels that our biggest learning is from the reflection from other people, sometimes the reflection can be very hard to feel, as it can touch on our un-dealt with hurts, and yet this allows our hurts to be felt, looked at honestly and then healed, what a blessing this is, otherwise we can bury these hurts and they can impact on the rest our life’s.

313. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.” To hold another in this way and allow them to make their own choices even when we feel that the choice they are making is absurd or the wrong choice, feels like a holding love that is about acceptance and letting go of our own agenda and trying to control or manipulate, simply holding another in our love, because we are all from love.

314. Thank you Michael for spelling out clearly what love is and what it is not, we have so many notions, pictures and ideals of what love is, and its important to have look honestly at what these are, so we can let go of any false ideals we have been carrying, and start to build a true relationship to love, which starts with love for oneself.

     1. Thomas thats true Michael showed very clearly that most of us are on the wrong tack with the meaning of true love. I found this very refreshing and as I know it from myself it is a challenge to let this truth in.

     2. Indeed Thomas – the best place to start is to take a good look at all the ideals we have of love, we might get surprised at how strongly these are ruling our choices and even our lives.

315. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away. “ To know this to be the absolute truth and the way it is without any reaction or hurt is a knowing that we are the same love with-in us and that it is just a beautiful reflection. Anything else is as you offer Michael – equal to falling in a puddle of mud.

316. This brought me to a complete stop, to consider more deeply about relationships…”Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold…” How deep do we choose to go with love, with another person?… Do our relationships initially take the plunge, then plateau, become functional, and then resurrect back to evolve deeper again with that person? … The choices we make to evolve love in relationships reflect much about our individual choice to evolve with self love… Do we only go so far, then protect, or do we take the plunge and trust?
     Great blog Michael, thank you

     1. Johanne, these are very relevant questions – I have a feeling most people are quite protective of themselves in this area and ending up trying to control it whether they like it or not, rather than taking the plunge. I know in the past I certainly have been doing that myself.

317. Re reading this great blog this one jumped out at me – “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.” – GOLD – imagine a world where everyone had this as one of their key foundations in relationships.

318. To truly love and parent a child is nothing like we are taught. When we see our children making choices that would obviously hurt themselves, in love, we cannot choose for them. We can tell them what consequences may result from this choice, but the choice is still up to them. The love we hold for ourselves and hence also for our children, is to be gentle and never harsh on ourselves, to be in joy and not in reaction, to support but not to just make them feel better. In love there is never niceness, but there is always joy, and there is always love.

     1. In true love there is truth, truth is exposing – this we do not always appreciate, because we are having this idea that love should be ‘nice’ and ‘lovely’.

        1. Very true, Eva and Adele. There is a common picture of what love is that is constant bliss and rainbows. The truth of love is that, yes it is constant and consistent, but it is consistent truth. If we have stepped away from truth, being told that we have stepped away from truth might not be the most comfortable thing to hear, but it is the most loving. The choice then to continue on our way straying further, or to make a correction is up to us and no one else.

319. “It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.” To be able to do this I found I have to have no investment what so ever in the other person’s behaviours. I am learning that when I stop controlling the other person to do what I need, and hold them in my love no matter what they choose, the true beauty of the person comes out in all its uniqueness and I can enjoy the other person’s expression in full.

     1. Yes, Lieke, we can have relationships where the other person drops in our esteem for them, and we often blame them for something that they have done to cause this. But the truth is, it is usually because they did not do something the way that we wanted them to do it, and they stepped outside of our control. Letting go of that control, and allowing them to be a student of life with all of the mistakes that come with learning, opens up a space where they, and we, can be themselves more and more.

        1. Yes very well explained Naren. I find too that when the other person steps outside our control he or she can show me something I still have to learn too. Being open to this learning moments and not going into reaction actually helps me to be more of who I truly am as well.

        2. I have to admit that letting go of the reaction that comes when someone rejects my well-intended control is still something that I am learning. You are absolutely correct, it is showing me something that I have to look at and grow from, and therefore embody the fact that this control is actually a lessening of who I truly am.

320. A very beautiful blog Michael – thank you. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” Our love for others can often be conditional which is not really love at all. Love is accepting of where others are at and does not have neediness.

321. A valuable point I feel you make here, Michael, which has been brought to my attention recently, is the importance of feeling that we deserve to be loved. Once we appreciate ourselves and feel we deserve to love and care for ourselves, this naturally spills out into everything we do and with everyone we meet.

     1. So true Janet, when we are not appreciating ourselves, or lacking in self work, not honouring in any way, we can attract very similar behaviour from people, but when we are deeply appreciating, loving and caring for ourselves, this does spill out into everything we do and all who we meet.

322. ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself,’ We all want love so much yet often miss this crucial first step.

323. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am” I keep coming upto and reading this line Michael for to be it is the key to what unconditional love is all about. I know the way I love myself, hold love in my body and therefore hold another in love is very different to 15 years ago when I only knew love to be the version full of conditions. Its great to take time to truly appreciate that and the big changes that have already taken place in my life.

324. Thank you for reminding me that the essence is love and that essence is in me and in all of us – and that it is always there.

     1. The essence is in everybody. That’s so helpful when I meet acts of atrocity, to really feel what’s going on. Not to judge – not even wanting things to be different, but in the meantime take action without investment… Something I slowly re-learn with Universal Medicine.

325. Love always stands on equal ground.

     1. Love that simple and powerful comment Abby. “Love always stands on equal ground.”

326. Part of Love means not being attached to the choices of another.

     1. This simple line is a point of evolution for everyone in life, and one I am continually working on. Letting another be, and to make their own choices is love.

        1. Me too Heather, and as I am finding this always begins letting myself ‘be’ rather than going into ‘the should have done this or said that’ kind of inner chatter.

     2. A commitment which is essential to experience love and which enables to take loving choices.

     3. This is much easier said than do, hence why love involves a consistent dedication to always return to love.. no matter what.

     4. It can be difficult to see another making choices that are not loving towards themselves, and as hard as it can be to accept that I agree we cannot be attached to the choices another makes. Love simply reflects and holds regardless.

327. ’Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose.’ – This is the most caring act we can ever do for another, and not always simple, as most of us are coming from a culture of wanting to fix or resolve things, not only for ourselves but for everyone else as well – and we mistake it for being ’caring’.

     1. So true Eva how we have misinterpreted the real meaning of caring. Since we are so fixed on getting things resolved and wanting them to be ‘fine’ we totally loose sight of what is possible when we simpy care for ourselves and express what it is you feel to. No holding back and sharing all of you. Definitely one that can be deepened and nurtured.

     2. Yes Eva, expressing to someone that you have already build a foundation of love with is an extension of that love and if it is truly love it naturally leaves the other ‘be’ whatever they choose. I have found though that if that foundation has not been established the other will hear whatever is said as a criticism even though it was not that at all.

328. ’To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.’ Michael these lines, if applied in our societies as a norm, would be truly revolutionary. Thank you.

     1. I agree Eva as the starting point to an harmonious society will always begin with the harmony we hold within our self through our ability to hold ourselves in love, appreciation and acceptance.

329. Indeed Brendan – we need to look at our own needs with true honesty to determine whether or not we are putting any conditions on our relationships. Needs can be subtle and not always straight forward for us to admit or even see.

330. Love is always there inside of us and everyone else: Acknowledging and understanding this was a huge step in learning to trust again; I had given up on myself and humanity,
     This pain was covered up with drinking, drugs and food and drama. I wasn’t a wild party animal but I was slowly and continually numbing myself. The first step was to trust myself and to do this I had to get to know myself again and this meant letting go of what I was not, and starting to appreciate what I was.

331. One of the most amazing feelings in the world is when you feel the absolute hugeness of the love inside you and then you share it with another person, no need for them to return it, like it, or love you, just a total understanding and holding of yourself and that person… Though most people can’t resist it!!

     1. One of the most precious changes I have experienced since attending Universal Medicine workshops is exactly what you describe Meg, feeling the hugeness of the love inside me. What a revelation.

        1. Totally – it’s a revelation I never get bored of and that always continues to surprise me 🙂

     2. Beautiful Meg, love begets love.

332. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself” This is so beautiful Michael I am only just starting to understand what it means to truly appreciate and love myself and the small inroad I have made has already turned my life around. Self Love and appreciation really is the key to life with this as a foundation nothing is insurmountable.

     1. Yes Samantha, and in order to hold ourselves in Love we have to find, recognise and know when we are connected with our Love and when not. The definition of Love is very clear, but being Love and holding it, is something that needs feeling and practising. For a long time I’ve been focussing on ‘being Love’ as ‘it’ being a ‘doing. Where as now I feel how different, observing and still it is to be with my Love, connected to my body and have an open heart. It took me quite some years to slowly let down the wall that I had built towards the world.

     2. That is also my own experience samanthaengland “Self Love and appreciation really is the key to life with this as a foundation nothing is insurmountable.” And that is such a powerful and wonderful feeling – I was starting to feel me, my own qualities and therefore the lack of self worth was melting very easily.

     3. Self-love is something that has the power to see us through the roughest seas, and the darkest days. It can be found in the smallest gestures towards ourselves especially when things are seemingly at their hardest. At those times it is the small things that have the grandest impact. For they are signals to ourselves that say, “I have not forgotten you.”

333. “allowed a space for more love to unfold” I can get caught up in needing to make more time for myself, not more space. This is still something I am working on and unfolding within myself. Bringing a quality that is stillness in motion, not a nervous energy that promotes emotion and hectic living.

     1. Oh yes. The difference between space and time. Space feels like it expands in all directions and that there is a place for everything. Time feels like a lineal race – am I ahead or is time ahead – there is no stillness or surrender in here. Love is definitely a space expander!

334. Michael this is such a great reminder this blog and one of the many awesome points you make that jumped out at me was – “committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.” – That is something I have struggled for a long time in accepting that I am worth it and I deserve only Love and respect for myself by myself and from others. This has been such a key part from the whole, that Universal Medicine presents and represents. Claiming the Love that we are and not accepting anything less and to share this Love.

     1. …And doing so because we deserve it, and the world deserves to feel that love! Acknowledging my worthiness has been an ongoing process for myself as well, Natalie. But I have made huge strides over the past several years, and continue to do so. It has come down to accepting the love that I am able to show myself and to not stop gong deeper with that love and acceptance. It is a journey unlike any that I have been on!

335. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.” A beautiful line.

     How often I have mistaken trying to fix another’s choices, or present them with what I think is the right choice, only for them to choose something else. The result is feeling crushed or let down and rejected from the position I had taken on as saviour of the situation. But the truth is that there is no true love in the making of someone else’s decisions for them.

     Doing so is only an attempt to avoid our own discomfort feeling another’s pain and trying to fix that for ourselves, not an act of love for another. Love is allowing and accepting another’s choices and loving them all the same. Advise, support, be there for another, but allowing the space for them and ourselves to be responsible for themselves is truly loving.

     1. Yes, Naren, with no investment, we can truly be there for another unconditionally, which is very freeing for both them and ourselves.

        1. When we aren’t invested or needy in our relationships, it allows others to just be themselves and is a beautiful gift to allow someone.

        2. The investment is always hiding something we don’t want to feel.

     2. Yes, there is a huge judgement on another when we step in and try to fix them. We are saying that they are not equipped to handle their lives, and we know them better than they know themselves. Despite what we may claim our intentions to be, the fact is that this is a stance of pure arrogance, not one of love.
        Love is open and allows someone else to fall flat on their face if they choose to do so, and still does not withdraw, or give up, or judge because they made a mistake.

     3. Well said Naren, and how much energy we waste trying to fix or control other people. It simply is not our job to do so. It is truly loving to ourselves and others to simply let things be as they are and let people make their own choices.

        1. Yes, Rebecca. Our responsibility begins and ends with ourselves, it is not for us to be responsible for another’s life. It is actually much more supportive to allow them to make their choices for themselves.

        2. It is simply not our job – I love it. Our job it to simply ensure that we ourselves are loving and let others choose for themselves.

336. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there”, this is where great responsibility comes in as we are the mirror for each other. Our reflection is the greatest gift to others.

     1. I agree Amita – ‘our reflection is the greatest gift to others’. No attachment, investment or a need to help or fix – just reflection.

     2. Well said Amita..

     3. True Amita, we are a mirror and an inspiration for others, which brings in the self responsibility, and what do we want to reflect.

337. I so agree – we all do deserve love, and i have seen so often that when we don’t care for ourselves, we have so little ability to care for another. When our own cup is empty how can we possible attempt to fill another.

     1. Indeed Rebecca – I would go as far as saying that we have no ability to truly care for another unless we truly care for ourselves first, because the reserves we take it from then cannot be of true quality.

        1. Well said – that love of someone comes from somewhere, where is the love coming from? Also, when I don’t have any love or respect for myself, I find myself allowing things to be said or done around me that are not loving, which I would not do if I had more love for myself.

        2. Bizarely it was the time in my life when I was most empty I felt the strongest need to help others.

        3. This is a great point felixschumacher8, and something I can indeed relate to myself.

     2. This is absolute Key Rebecca – the emptiness that is felt in all that we do when we are not connected to our original impulse of Love leaves us feeling constantly looking for more. Being not meet by others in there fullness of who they are leaves us feeling lost, given up and depressed. It explains a lot where society is at with the increase intake of drugs, alcohol, illness and disease.

        1. I agree, we need to look at the culmination of all the behaviours we have as a society, all the issues and the illnesses and the rising statistics, and realise there is a trend, there is something we are missing and that perhaps that something is not more technology or education or intelligence, but a connection to ourselves and to other people, a sense of community and love.

        2. What you have said here Natalie reminds me of the ‘search’ feeling that is felt, like something is missing in life where we change jobs, relationships or move countries to find it, all the while ‘it’ is within.

338. We can only really feel the depths of unconditional love when we have indeed felt that love for ourselves.

     1. I agree Raegan, how we are with ourselves lays the foundation for how we are with others.

        1. Absolutely it starts with us, so our true foundation is important.

     2. Experiencing that unconditional love gives me a knowing of it in my body that I can live this with me and in turn with other relationships.

     3. And that is the beauty and power of responsibility. We are in our own driving seats – it is a choice whether we have our hands on the steering wheel or not.

     4. Yes, it starts with self first, unless we have love as a foundation for ourself we are unable to share this.

339. Thank you for this beautiful gift Michael that is written with so much love, the following words particularly resonated with me today. ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself.’ If I am willing to wholeheartedly commit to doing this then I have no space for being critical and judgemental of myself and others and open up the possibility of loving without placing conditions on how that will be.

340. A beautifully written blog Michael and the true meaning of unconditional love is clearly felt.

341. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there; no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.” What a true and honouring statement. And the best way we can ‘polish’ that mirror is by healing our hurts and living to the best of our ability that love in every aspect of our own life.

342. Michael I have always felt such an appreciation for nature and a deep love and tenderness in your writing, it’s beautiful to feel again in this piece and so appropriate that you have written on ‘Unconditional Love’ as a further reflection for us.

343. It has been such a transformation for me to feel the reflection of love in another and then to claim it for myself. ” A love that is simple, still and all knowing”.

344. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself.” Michael this is indeed the key to building a foundation of love for if we do not connect to our love within we feel empty and we will then go about looking for someone to give it to us which will place a demand on them. Because of this need we often settle for substitutes for love such as gifts, or saying “I love you” without really connecting to the love we feel. These are then just empty words but serve to satisfy and cement the illusion that it is a loving relationship.

345. “…how on earth can we fall in love? We can fall in lust and just as easily fall out. But “Love is always there” – it does not fade, die or get moody, it just gets covered by clouds of unhappiness, doubt or disregard. Your blog Michael reflects your connection with the love within you and it is a joy-full reminder to all of us that love is.

346. Michael, Unconditional love and it’s meaning is such a glorious thing to unfold. I find it is always evolving for me, my understanding of what it truly means to love unconditionally. For me it brings connotations of the words spaciousness, understanding, holding, being….each of these things for me are important parts of love eternal unconditional.

347. “From there it will be natural to just ’be’ love, irrespective of what anyone does, or a desire for what would have seemed like the perfect outcome for us, and irrespective of whether others listen to us, understand us or love us in return. It will not matter what the other does, the love will always stay the same. It is then time to start to distinguish between the actions of another, which of course sometimes cannot be tolerated, and the person’s essence underneath.” As a society we have so misunderstood what love is. As you say Michael love just is. It does not change whether a person does something that pleases us or not. It is simply there as a beholding energy that never goes away. All that happens is that we forget to access it and express it.

348. Absolutely beautiful Michael. We are all equal in love as we are all in essence love. It is only us that separates and as such measures the love we hold for ourselves and share. Yet in truth love is constant, ever-present and all-embracing as underneath it all this is who we are in essence, and this is that which unites us all. When we connect to and allow love to flow through us we then walk with knowing the power of unconditional love.

349. So many great points Michael and yes true love is who we all are at essence which is what makes us equal. As you say love simply is, it does not do anything and never has an ounce of imposition or emotion in it. You also say “the only thing love promotes is to support each other, as best as we can, and in everything that we do. Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest.” In line with the first part of this comment I would not actually say that love promotes anything in that it simply is. The other comment I would offer is that Love is a quality of the Soul and that another expression of Love and quality of the Soul is Truth. However, honesty is not a quality of the Soul and does not contain Truth. When one is expressing pure Love it comes with Truth and not honesty. The value of honesty is that it can be a bridge to Truth.

350. ‘This essence, common in everyone, is love. A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to. This is equality in its truest sense.’ This is the key to relationships.. to keep coming back to the truth that binds us.

     1. Gorgeously said Abby. ‘This is the key to relationships.. to keep coming back to the truth that binds us.’ And a powerful reminder that in essence we are all love, equally so and our journey is together to develop a deeper connection to the love we are and can live together in truth.

351. “We often pretend to love someone without condition, but is this really the case? ” I know that I have fallen into this category many a time. It is through Universal Medicine that I am coming to know what true love is – with no strings attached.

352. I love this – “Love can grow with every movement and breathe”. The more we express the love that we naturally are the more love becomes very real and not some nebulous thing that people think it is.

     1. A gorgeous line indeed Elizabeth and I agree. The more we express the love we are the more we feel the presence of love in and through our body, it is very tangible and feels equally natural.

     2. The way this line describes love is a million miles away from how love is presented in society, and a sentence that I could fall in love with.

353. ‘Love is always there..’ True, but so often forgotten, not felt or even not open to receive it deeply, when it comes our way. I get more and more aware of the many ways I offset love and to feel love deeply within me and from there have a loving relationship with others. To only get aware of my ways to offset love in my life, supports me to come closer to love.

354. I like the analogy you offer with the mirror Michael, the mirror does not manipulate or control it reflects exactly what is there to be seen. That is all we have to do is be aware of the reflection and what it is offering us. I have learnt through this awareness that we are given reflections that helps us learn and grow all of the time and it is up to me whether we choose to see the reflection or not.

     1. True Alison and Michael. We often try to distort the image if not correct it, ignore it or prevent the reflection in the first place.
        Immeasurable learning there is by reflection and unending inspiration, revelation and alchemy in the making.

355. Such a beautiful flow with your sharing with us all Michael. Your description of a volcano is very apt as holding back in expressing and sharing what we truly feel with another it feels exactly like that, bubbling and simmering and will, if left to its own devices erupt and spill out in all directions. We can move on from that and in your words “This does not mean the end of life, but it will take time until the first new tender plants will grow into abundance that existed before”.

356. ‘Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold’. I enjoyed re reading this, as logic then follows that the more space we have in our being, the more love can enter… this is a golden rule, and a clear guide to how we can choose to live.

357. For eons we have chosen to see and buy (pun intended) love into a doing, an action, an emotion, whereas true Love is an energy not a gift, that holds all equally by it’s light.

358. The reason we often ‘love’ another in the emotional sense is to avoid loving ourselves.

359. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love ” this is true science.

     1. True science and great joy for us to choose Love.

360. “This essence, common in everyone, is love.” – Just these words alone Michael bring tears to my eyes. It is so true what you say here- love is the foundation in all of us, yet if we look at our society today we can see we have not made this our living way. When we do finally surrender to the mighty love within then love with others happens naturally, daily with everyone.

361. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide” this is true – as soon as someone tells me what to do, I’m out of there as there is no love in this. Whereas to see another such as Serge Benhayon and his family living in their absolute fullness, observing life, this is a true inspiration and inspires me to know and work on living the truth that I am the same as them, in every single way.

362. So many relationships, not just partner ones are based on judgement, control and or manipulation of another so as not to feel our own lack of self love, the abuse we create, and with that the choices we make. This is a deep harming and abusive way to live for everybody. True love is about “allowing” another to be. Serge Benhayon is a true master at this, holding another in absolute love, never imposing, nor judging and not loving anyone less for the choices we make. The absolute freedom this creates is the greatest love I have ever felt, there is no greater love than the choice of free will.

     1. Beautifully said Gyl. When I react or judge people it is because they do not fulfill my expectations and then want them to be another way, instead of giving myself all I truly need and that is true love, care and understanding when I make a mistake.

363. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” this is the absolute truth. It is not love that wants a person to stay – but a need that is driven by our own lack of self love and the emptiness this creates. To be honest need feels physically imposing and yucky, and often drives a person away. Whereas Love allows us – space.

364. Micahel, there is so much to ponder on in this blog, what stood out for me this time was ‘ It will not matter what the other does, the love will always stay the same.’ I have noticed that I change whether I am loving or not depending on how someone else is – this doesn’t feel great and so its really supportive to read your words of wisdom and to feel that the key to this is to love and appreciate myself just as I am.

     1. It feels that knowing we are love is not enough – we need to feel it as an integral part of our way of being deep down in our essence – and I agree Rebecca I too change when I am feeling unsure of myself. As you say as we learn to love and appreciate ourselves as we are we do not feel the same need to change for another – we are more constant and steady in knowing that we are enough.

365. ” It does not have room for anger or rage against another,” because in truth that is not who we are.

366. “Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else.” this is a simple truth and absolute fact.

     1. True Gyl and something we often overlook. It is freeing to understand that a person is Love and this never changes and that an expression and behaviour is a result of choices and what we align to and never does it corrupt the purity of our essence which we can re-connect to in an instant.

367. This first sentence ‘Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else. ‘ is beautiful confirmation Michael how we are never alone. This essence never leaves us, we may choose to leave it, but it’s always there to reconnect and come back to. Only when we hold ourselves in love can we truly support another, it’s a learning journey for all relationships with each other.

368. Learning to allow and hold another in love and observe is important but equally to know when to address things even when there might cause reactions or dislike. I have a new understanding what a high responsibility each of us has in all our relationships and that it needs a constant commitment not to accept less than love.

369. “Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano.” This is my experience too Michael. Our job is to express what we feel and to start communicating with another and everyone. Holding back has never worked and will never work. And only creates stuff to stand in the way of living love with ourselves and everyone.

     1. I agree Janina, what is not expressed will erupt, absolutely, we choose if the eruption is within us or outside of us, but erupt this volcano will without fail. So why not choose expression instead? A lot more simple and much more loving.

        1. And it is just great Adele once we allow ourselves to express even things we might not like to admit to ourselves, to nominate things and get them out of the way can build intimacy with our familiy, friends or colleges.

     2. I just had the great example doing training at the moment where the group meets monthly. There were conflicts within the group which did not concern me personally but I knew some of the people so I tried to tell them to nominate the conflict and share it with the group but they didn’t want to. So the conflicts spread further and further until it escalated big time and then I did not let go of finally bringing it on the table. It did erupt like a volcano but afterwards everybody shared their feelings about it and we found a solution. We were able to continue working as a group with a new foundation. The whole group learned from this situation and it is about taking more responsibility because we can feel everything, also if there are problems which if not addressed affects everybody.

370. What a superb blog and explanation on how this common thread that we are all from is Love. That if we don’t nurture it for ourselves then we are lost in having it in relationships with others. Love is a quality that we can all connect to and be if we so choose to. Not one Soul is an exception. Love is Love and it is of the purest nature we can find, as you say Michael it is unconditional and it is gold. The stark opposite of what the world has been brought up to believe what emotional Love is. I know which one feels true to me and I keep deepening my connection with this Love day by day because we are all worth it.

     1. I’m enjoying this ‘common thread’! And like the emphasis you have made Natalie that it is a simple process of deepening it day by day because we are worth it.

        1. Absolutely Simon – each and every one of us is worth it for we are Love first and foremost.

371. Your statement that “It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on” is so very refreshing and inspiring; how often can we think that we know better or know more or wiser when the reality is that we also all know how terrible it feels when someone else puts that kind of pressure, judgment and expectation on us.

372. Thanks Michael , for a beautiful description and understanding of love .

373. “Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath.”. I love these two sentences. I am recognising that Love is a holding love and that this Love can expand with anyone we open up to and express in full. If we so choose, we can learn from everybody. And how wonderful is this precious gift of life towards our closest ones. Because when f.a. learn something from a collegae, I can share this at home with my partner, friends and / or family. And if we would all share something that we’ve learnt at a day, how fast are we able to grow and expand… Fascinating.

374. Michael, this is such an amazing blog, it is full of so much gold. This one stood out for me on this last reading, “If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?” What a wonderful insight you have provided here, absolutely, just because a couple have a difference of opinion on something, there is no need to argue about it. What a different outcome is possible if we are able to see this as an opportunity for us each to evolve, learn more about ourselves and each other, and deepen our love as a result. We need to discuss issues with no expectations of outcome, giving each other space to feel deeply into things, not put pressure on the other or ourself for an immediate answer. Or to have a quiet walk together, it is amazing what can evolve when we gently take a walk together, particularly in nature. What a different approach you have have inspired here.

     1. Beautiful comment to highlight Beverley and so true. Learning to give one another space within an intimate relationship to have a different point of view is very important. Taking responsibility to be honest about any vested interests we hold personally, as well as learning to stay open to possibilities and choices we are not used to considering are essential ingredients that support a relationship to deepen and evolve. Taking a walk together surrounded by the all embracing and accepting qualities of nature goes a long way to supporting us to connect to and adhere to these qualities within ourselves and for one another.

     2. Beverley what came to mind when I read your comment was how quickly humanity will change when seemingly minor adjustments are made by the majority of people. If, as you and Michael so rightly say, people were to use disagreements as a lever to evolution then we would be out of here in no time.

     3. Absolutely love the way you have so beautifully expanded on Michael’s insight Beverley.

375. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” Absolute truth, Michael, true love is unconditional, so therefore there is no condition that the other has to express love towards us. That is how unconditional love is. If we put conditions/expectations on our love, then it is not true love, it is a sham, we are just playing a role, having ourselves on, so to speak. True love comes from within ourselves, starts with loving ourselves, then spreads out and envelops all we are in contact with. It is what we come from and what we develop and embody more and more when we connect deeply within ourselves and live from that space. Thank you for an inspiring blog.

376. The more love, care and appreciation that we can build for ourselves, the more we will be able to share that and love, care and appreciate others. There is nothing selfish about learning and growing this for yourself first as it actually then effects everyone around you so its the opposite of selfish.

     1. Whilst what you say is not commonly accepted it is also the experience I’ve had, prior to Universal Medicine I would feel “guilty” any time I would take care of myself, yet today I can feel and appreciate the fact that my choices to build love for myself has a massive beneficial effect for everyone else.

        1. Yes David – what is this lie in society of casting guilt and shame on loving ways?
           We have been sold a complete lie that undermines the power of self-love and Love for all.

     2. Very true Rosie. Growing love and appreciation for ourselves first is not only not selfish, but in fact a very loving gift to everyone as only that will enable us to truly meet others in a loving way.

        1. Totally responsible and not selfish at all.

377. ‘We all deserve love and care”, we are all equal, we all have a loving essence. It is high time we lay down our separative ideals and beliefs and start basing human life on these facts.

     1. Yes Jeannette, we could all do with going back to the basic truths of who we are and what we are here for. The fact that in essence we all have the same loving nature has got lost in the mix.

        1. Well Janet, I sense they are deeply buried under a pile of separative beliefs but never lost. The Truth of our Oneness and Equality can never be lost for they live within all our hearts – awaiting our return.

378. That’s a revelation, Michael. My job is not to judge, but to express what I feel. How often do we walk away from a situation, don’t express with the person involved everything we feel, but then express judgmentally with others about the situation and person, because we need a relief? In that case we not only abuse ourselves and the person we judge, but also the person we tell the story to. Triple outch.

     1. Great exposure of how we will try to deal with holding back love and the truth Felix, and going to show that the effect is not limited to the moment itself but carries on throughout many further interactions by a body in contraction.

     2. Yes Felix, a triple ouch indeed! This is a great example of how we have a responsibility to express all of what we feel to another in that moment, so that we dont hang on to a hurt and let it fester away, or even share it with another and in effect dump that hurt onto them. It really does shine a big light on the harmfulness of gossip and the importance of expressing how we feel in every moment.

        1. Yes Felix and Sandra triple ouch and really exposing of a situation I have had at work this week where I have reacted to something critical that was said and snapped back at a colleague and then gone on to justify my entrenched position to others thus continuing the harm. I have allowed feeling overwhelmed to increase my judgemental thoughts which have been reflected back to me and I need to take responsibility for this and not involve others in the fallout.

     3. So true Felix, an all too common occurrence what you speak of, and when put in this way, I can see how often I have played this out in my life, rather then completing something with that person, I have created an issue by involving others. This is definitely something to be aware of and work on.

     4. Triple abuse = triple ouch! So horrible to feel the impact of our ‘loveless’ behaviour.

     5. And all of this poison from the choice to not express or to not allow ourselves to be with a tension. We create far more tension for ourselves and fill ourselves and others with the poison of emotional reactions, lack of expression and holding back – such is a reckless way of living that cares naught for the earth on which we tread and our brothers that we live with.

     6. OMG Felix, what you suggest is contra to how most of the world are led to believe – being that it will hurt someone to tell them the truth This only leads to inner conflict, judgement and often results in harsh delivery of a truth that is bursting to be expressed and resistance and retaliation from the recipient and round and round it goes. It is high time we learn to appreciate the value of truth, to welcome and deliver it lovingly.

     7. Felix thank you for illustrating the science of judgement and gossip for a deeper understanding, it goes to show that expression is everything, and the harm of what is caused when we choose to not express in responsibility.

379. Michael you are on Fire! Amazing blog and one I know I will come back to again and again. I felt myself nodding deeply to what you have written here. Words I know in my head but often do not live. This line is particularly pertinent for me at the moment, “It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on.” and it’s funny because it’s not me directing this judgement at another – more often than not it is towards myself. Giving ourselves the space and grace to learn is so honouring and supportive of building love.

     1. Yes Lucy I quite agree. I do not berate myself, or others, anywhere like I used to which is allowing me that very space and grace that you speak of ‘so honouring and supportive of building love’

     2. I agree and totally relate to your comment Lucy, particularly, “I felt myself nodding deeply to what you have written here. Words I know in my head but often do not live.”

     3. And yes indeed “Giving ourselves the space and grace to learn is so honouring and supportive of building love.” And this then naturally flows out to everyone and everything.

     4. Poignant words. How often our lack of acceptance of another’s choices reflects the harshness and critique we hold ourselves in. Appreciating ourselves and accepting where we are at in every moment is key to appreciating others and letting go of such imprisonment.

        1. Also what springs to mind is how damaging expectations are. Having any expectation of another is to set ourselves up for disappointment and then the other for the force of our judgement. By expecting another to in some way give us something, do something for us, say something we need to hear etc. we are not allowing them to be themselves, and it also exposes how little regard we have for ourselves if we look to another to fill us up.

        2. Poignant words indeed Deborah, Appreciating myself has helped me greatly in understanding others and not needing them to be a certain way for myself.

        3. Absolutely Bernard – a never-ending stream of appreciation there is, deepening our connection to God and therefore to all others.

380. This is a beautiful blog Michael, looking deeply into the meaning of both conditional and unconditional love, truth, expectation, reflection and appreciation. Coming from your own experiences, it feels like it was written for us all, to expand upon our understanding and livingness of our own love.

381. What an incredibly beautiful blog. I was held in love the entire time I read it and I was simply with the love that I am.

     The following paragraph is divinely golden:
     “Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else. Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath.”

     1. I too, Nikki, have found this blog incredibly beautiful. It is written with so much love. I love the quote you have mentioned, especially “we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath”. How inspiring is that? Absolute gold. What if all relationships were like that, how different the world would be.

        1. It is hugely inspiring and yes the world would indeed be a different place.

     2. Knowing each other by essence and honouring this in full will make for True Brotherhood on earth.

382. This is so true Michael, when I am holding myself in love, and being super loving with myself, life flows, as does my relationships, regardless of the other party, but if I come away from this love for myself, things start to go off track, there is no flow and harmony.

383. Michael, This is so true, ‘we can fall into a puddle of mud, but how on earth can we fall in love?’ It is so accepted in society that we ‘fall in love’, that it is not questioned. This is a brilliant article that makes complete sense and makes me ponder on the language and terminology we use when we talk about love.

     1. You have brought up a really important point here, Rebecca, yes, it is ridiculous to think that we can fall in love, like we can fall into a puddle of mud. What crazy terminology we use at times to describe things. True love is something that grows over time, not something that we ‘fall’ into. We might be ‘attracted’ at the beginning, but that is not ‘love’. It is time that we gave much more consideration to the use of words in society, it can lead to completely wrong impressions between us, and can be the basis of separation and violence too.

        1. True Love offers evolution and is a forever deepening process.

     2. Yes, quite so – falling somehow implies that we have tripped over something and that an oversight or inattentiveness was involved, so put ‘fall’ together with ‘love’ is a strange custom.

        1. This is very true Rebecca and Gabriele -‘falling’ denotes without purpose or intent, an accident, a meandering, a falling from Grace…Love in this context is presented as a lesser way, as the outcome and the end result of a ‘fall’ when Love is the only way, Grand and Absolute and equally beholds all in and by it’s light.

        2. Putting “fall” and “love” together is a clear clue that the love we are speaking of here is a bastardized version of what the truth of love is.

     3. Rebecca, it’s great to ponder on words for so many have lost their power through being misused. For example, the word ‘love’ can mean attachment, want, sexual attraction, or it can be used for things that give us pleasure e.g. ‘I love my cup of tea, he loves his football’ – all putting love outside ourselves. Michael’s blog reminds us that true love is within us all and there whenever we wish to connect to it and the more we do so the more it expands and emanates forth.

384. Once we embody love we can’t love one person more than another… the love is emanating from us. It is our responsibility to live this love without measurement.

     1. And how do we uphold this wonderful responsibility? We love and care for ourselves in all manners without exception. In the way we eat, walk, breathe and in every choice we choose.

     2. I love that Kathryn, love is an emanation not an emotion. One leaves our body in waves and the other sticks to us like tar.

     3. hear hear Kathryn – well said!

     4. This is beautiful and so true once we embody love it is emanating from us for all to feel, it is not just for person. The love is for all equally.

        1. Absolutely Amita. Love is a living way that calls us to a vibration we all know is home.

     5. Beautifully said Kathryn and so true – ‘It is our responsibility to live this love without measurement.’ True love is a quality that itself can never be measured it is only us that measures our connection to love, our embodiment of love and therefore the love we live, express and share.

        1. Hence to realise and emanate love, one must be dedicated to themselves consistently so in honour of the fact that we are all love.

        2. ‘true love in itself can never be measured, it is us that measure our connection to love” this is a very powerful statement Carola that confirms the fact the love is always there in it’s fullness for us to connect to.

385. How we see love and relationships really depends on the purpose of it. Is it to have someone and not be alone, just because that is what you do or do you make it about evolving, in other words learning together and being open to becoming more loving with ourselves and thus also others?

     1. A great question, Lieke. If we see love and relationship just because you need someone and don’t want to live alone, then we are not talking about true love. True love is unconditional, does not have expectations of the other person fulfilling our needs. Neediness puts much pressure on the other partner to be giving us just what we want. That is not love. So what we see as the purpose of love and relationship is something that we need to become really honest about. Do we really love another in truth when we say “I love you”. It is time humanity looked at this point more deeply.

        1. “Neediness puts much pressure on the other partner to be giving us just what we want. That is not love.” I agree. Love is an holding, unconditional, of the other person. To be able to hold someone in love you have to first love yourself. And that is the beauty that is offered by being in a relationship. When I notice myself go needy and being reactive when I do not get what I ‘want’, it is in truth a message I need to go a bit deeper with loving myself and feeling, holding myself in my own love.

        2. Yes Lieke – when we can hold ourselves in love we get our personal needs out of the way and free ourselves up in a way that is both unfolding and revealing of who we truly are.

        3. Very true Susan. It is even so that I feel more amazing than I ever imagined possible only a couple of years ago, by allowing myself to let go of lots of ideals and beliefs that were not me at all but that I hold onto because I did not chose to love myself. All with the support and inspired by Universal Medicine.

     2. Do I want a relationship to make me feel comfortable, or do I want a relationship to move on and evolve together?

     3. It’s a clear choice indeed Lieke – one of evolution or one of comfort.

        1. It is an interesting concept as we have been sold so many ideals and beliefs about love and relationships. True love can only be about evolution as it there will always be the impulse to expand and deepen, as soon as we sit back in the comfort of having our ideals met we stop evolving and love is no longer in expression.

        2. The existence of comfort certainly exposes the falseness of such relationships. There is not an ounce of comfort in evolution – there is no braking, plateau or soft cushioning involved and there is absolute Joy and Mastery guaranteed.

        3. Agreed Deborah and Carolien, this exposes the lies we have been sold about what love is as there is not an ounce of comfort in true love because it is always asking us to evolve and express more of the love within us. It is just a choice.

386. A very beautiful blog Michael, written with an enormous amount of love.

387. Beautiful Michael. We all have one thing in common, Love…. and from there the rest will unfold. ‘This is equality in its truest sense.’

388. I find the way you have expressed this portrayal of love to be very power-full Michael. There is a strong sense from reading your blog that to be truly ‘in-love’ with someone is to be expressing the love from within first. So often we make it about love coming from outside us and being ‘in-love’ as being something that is specific to what is experienced outside of us instead of an expression of the love we already are within

     1. Your words make a lot of sense to me Joshua. The way I express to others can only be an extension of how I am with myself.

     2. Lovely comment Joshua, yes I agree, to truly be ‘in love’ with someone else we have to be ‘in love’ with ourselves first. And yes, this is entirely possible. Thanks to Universal Medicine and many years of ‘Soul’ searching I have a glow in my heart and am no longer the ‘Ice Queen’ (as my family used to call me 🙂 ), the ice is melting and all due to making self loving choices and unconditionally loving me… which means that everyone around me is getting the reflection of who they are too, now isn’t that just lovely and what it’s all about.

        1. Lovely, Sandra, I too am melting more and more each day… the ice cold protection and hardness cannot be sustained when my heart is beaming out for all to feel.

     3. I agree Joshua and not only do we make love about something outside of us but we often want people to ‘prove’ their love to us. How awful that we hold our kids, partners and friends to ransom, constantly wanting them to prove that they love us. We even need our pets to prove that they can’t live without us!

        1. Alexis, it’s crazy how we are so programmed in looking for love from outside of us, when in truth it lies within us. Thanks to Universal Medicine, I was able to understand and connect to the love within my self, by making loving choices for myself in turn the reflection of my love has been felt by others.

        2. So true Alexis – when we allow ourselves to think/believe that love is something outside of us we continually need validation.

        3. So true Alexis. And what is crazy is that there is no need for another to prove their love to us when they do truly love us as it is already so clearly felt in their entire way with us

     4. In truth you can’t really be “in love with someone” you can simply be LOVE and express love in all that you do. Love is a beholding energy and there for all equally. We can express lovingly but it is not an energy that we can direct at one person and not another. There is a HUGE difference between the true energetic quality of Love which is a quality of the Soul and does not contain one ounce of emotion and the various degrees of emotion, attachment, affection, desires and so forth that we give the name love.

        1. And hence what makes being love so super special is sharing that in full with another, that is what truly “being in love” is all about

        2. Perhaps that super special you refer to Joshua is JOY – Joy is another quality of the Soul and what we feel in true union.

        3. The word Joy like Love and all other qualities of the Soul has been completely bastardised and none of them contain any emotion whatsoever. Joy is also completely different to happy and has zero elation in it. The Soul and all five qualities are well described in Unimedpedia – http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index

     5. I have found this to be true Joshua the love I will express is the love I am willing to release within me and only the love expressed can be the love that returns to me.

        1. Being love, and living that love is a foreign concept for most people, we have been sold the ideals of love, most often with a romantic parter. Yet you have eloquently expressed the cycle of love Carolien.

        2. That is a great reminder Carolien, it is not so much what is returned to us, but what we are willing to express in love that feels full, as when we express love without protection or holding back, no matter what is returned or not returned, it feels complete. Love always come back to self-responsibility.

     6. Very true Joshua – such a false definition of Love as coming from outside is one that many in Humanity run with and accept. How powerful it is to experience True Love – to connect to our true essence and to behold another, to need nothing and yet to deliver everything, the all for the all in every moment.

     7. That makes so much sense Joshua; the love we express outside of us is only ever the quality of love we allow for ourselves. Our love is god’s love and not ours to keep, or to hold back, but to share.

        1. Absolutely Bernard and God does not hold back His love for us so we have no right to hold back our own

        2. Great reminder Bernard, we have no right to hold back God’s love, it is our responsibility to express this love equally to everyone, as love cannot be given more to one and less to another, that would not be love!

        3. Absolutely Bernard, I still have this lingering sense how I used to believe that holding back or measuring the expression of the love I am was somehow ‘humble’ or ok to do. IN the understanding that we are all equally this love and that what the world needs most is refections of that which we have strayed from then the truth of holding back is becoming very visible: absolute irresponsibility.

        4. Well said Bernard, we cannot hold back God’s love that is for all ; for if we do this will create disharmony and hardness in our bodies.

389. I love this phrase : Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. A very beautiful way to express what falling in love actually means. I also love the pureness in your blog- the freedom I can feel true love gives and the understanding and accepting of each other is like heaven to me. Thanks for expressing it so purely.

390. “… If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?” What an awesome question. I am dealing with a challenge in a relationship at the moment and this helps me to see what a blessing this is.

391. A line that I had to read was “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choice”. Well written blog Michael.

392. This is a joyful blog to read Michael – thank you.

393. Michael this blog offers so much true wisdom and understanding on the word love which is the most important thing in our lives as it is what we are and is the most bastardised it could be. True unconditional love is beautifully described by you and a great reflection for us all Thank you. Letting another be, not judging whilst expressing what we feel and holding them in love is truly an amazing real way to live as is accepting and honouring the love we are firstly.

394. ‘we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.’ Several years ago I felt, during the Universal Medicine Healing courses, that often eating nuts for me was associated with a deep seated anger and/ or frustration and, like bashing cushions, was not truly helpful. It gave me relief of some kind but I felt more tired afterwards. I stopped eating nuts for a while but they crept back into my diet: I can use them as a crutch, a false friend or even as a rebellious ally. Nothing wrong with the nuts, or cushions for that matter, just the way I use them.

395. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.’ That’s a perfect summing up Michael.

396. Thank you, Michael. If someone came from another planet and asked what love was, this would be a great description for them to read.

     1. That´s true Janet- what Michael described here is true wisdom and absolutely joy to read.

     2. Yes agreed Janet. They would get the whole picture and not just the part or falseness of the way ‘love’ is interpreted in the world today.

     3. I agree Janet. Michael’s blogs offers us a deep understanding of what the quality that love is and what is possible when we embody love.

397. Michael, I can feel the love that you are and live in your every word and it’s beautiful. This is in such complete contrast to the emotional love that we are all so familiar with – the kind of love that is like a drug we crave, leaving us at the mercy of highs and lows. Allowing others to simply ‘be’ without needing anything from them takes away all the drama leaving space to feel and be so much more of who we so naturally are.

     1. Heather likewise for me the point where I started to understand that what I thought was love was not actually love at all changed everything for me. The need for another to provide love to me was exposed as a false trap and with that the responsibility and willingness to be myself and build love for myself started.

398. ‘Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else. It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.’ Love will never give up on anyone but will never need to persuade anyone either, what we live by living ourselves is very powerful.

399. Thank you Michael, could it be we are falling because love is so simple and as plain as the noise on your face, but we do everything to avoid true love so the only way for us to see and feel true love is to fall? Eventually hurting our self if we fall to often, the first time might be a bump then a bruise eventually something serious and we just right it of as bad luck! Love has a tendency or true love has a tendency to bring such stillness and joy that there is no way you could consider falling because you are with yourself no matter what you are doing!

400. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom. Wise, wise words Michael, and is something I’ve had to work on especially when it comes to family. Thank you for sharing all that you are.

     1. I agree Jacqmcfadden04, letting go of judgments on others is huge, and key to returning to be love in all that we do. I too have found that the judgments I hold are more obviously highlighted around family and those I love.

401. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there.” If this is true, what have I then lived up to the moment without being consciously aware of this? Pondering on this question makes me feel that there is a truth in this as the best teachers in my experience have been those people that by reflection of their being inspired me to be more, stimulating and strengthening my inner fire, inviting me my unshared qualities to shared and honoured for what they bring. And for sure Serge Benhayon is one of those, a man who is constantly polishing this mirror only for us all to be reflected more and more of who we truly are.

402. That is a new perspective for me to consider Michael, that when we feel a connection or pull towards some-one; ‘we have allowed space for more love to unfold and become tangible’ Makes a lot of sense!

403. I love how you described what love truly is here Michael, and can see how approaching loving someone that way is really actually much easier and does not require doing anything, but simply allowing myself and the other person to be our natural self and supporting each other.

404. To be able to hold myself in love and appreciation and then to be able to hold others in the same, to be able to observe and discern what goes on in relationships around me, this would have to be one of the most important foundations I am learning as a student of the livingness. I am experiencing equality for the first time and it is truly amazing.

     1. emmadancin that has been my experience as of late, the more I appreciate, love and nurture myself the more I see the reflection from others. I am finding all the nervous energy, the anticipation and any apprehension I have ( almost all) disappear and I can move amongst people with a total freedom because I have established a relationship with myself at a level that is so supporting and self loving that it does not falter. My self love is honest, true and ever deepening and thus so is my love and connection to all.

        1. This is beautiful and inspiring for all Merrilee. The connection we establish in ourselves becomes our outlook to the World and how we relate to others.

405. It is such a gift in relationship to be able to talk about what comes up with absolute holding and support, of myself and of the other person. To embrace ‘the opportunity to learn and go deeper instead of argue and fight’.

     1. Beautiful Emma, this is indeed the way forward in relationships.

406. Being a mirror, a reflection in the world is a great responsibility. For sometime now I have felt the weight of this word ‘responsibility’ but thanks to some phenomenal support from Serge Benhayon in a recent course and the amazing Universal Medicine practitioners who are currently supporting me, I have woken the last two days with a lightness of being and a joy to take more and more responsibility for my reflection.

     1. Responsibility is often associated with something heavy and difficult and yet it is actually the most simple thing. When we honestly observe what we are doing and open up to seeing that we are not just individual human beings, but one humanity of connected human beings, living responsibly will be the most natural thing to do. And “responsible” does not mean perfect, hard or driven, but living from a basis of love and honesty.

407. Many of us have been told to do something by a person who does not do it themselves. Many of us have done the same thing to others…as hard as that can be to admit! The words of instruction are devoid of any true power, sourced as they are from ideas but not lived truth and action.
     Power comes from what we live, and in the case of love it is no different. Love is an activity. It is expressed in how we move and the quality we bring to every action, every gesture. It is not an idea or an ideal.
     That is why it starts within us and is developed in the relationship we forge with ourselves. How we treat ourselves, the regard we have for our being and the way we move ourselves – that allows the essence within to be initially felt then unleashed in life…yes the only source of love in this world.

     1. Absolutely Rachel, I agree, true love has to “develop” with “ourselves” first, this is simple and basic, which makes the situation about love a common sense approach. Then why do we find love complicated, could it be we have chosen emotional love over true love?

     2. Absolutely beautiful Rachel ….power does come from what we live and the quality in the way we move.

        1. So very simple. The answer to our issues found in the quality in which we live our lives, and hold and move our bodies.

     3. I consider love to be more of a way of being than an activity. Love can be expressed through an activity, which as you’ve said, comes from how we are with ourselves, how we live and how we move.

408. Letting go of judgement and expectation, of ourselves and of other people … Wow, what I freedom this is for me, the more I embrace it. Letting people be exactly as they are! Letting myself be exactly as I am! So many years of contraction and reaction, expecting life to be a certain way and being furious when it was not. The value of acceptance is enormous.

409. Yes indeed honesty is a direct pathway to our love. When we can be honest and hence bring truth to ourselves and to express this to others, we strengthen our connection and holding of the love within us.

410. It is so true Michael, it is a beautiful moment when we evolve to the point where we can own our anger and rage as the hurts we are carrying rather than blaming the other person who have simply triggered us to feel and heal them.

411. I love your last paragraph Micheal, it sums it up for me, love is our very essence, ”
     “A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to. This is equality in its truest sense.”

412. If love is to be all-encompassing then for us to be truly loving we have to encompass ourselves in that same love too – no more or less. Michael, I love the way you expressed how appreciating and taking true care of ourselves isn’t about being a narcissist but about building the level of love in our life that we then naturally share with everyone.

     1. The expression “to fall in love” supports the belief that love is something we need to find outside of us, which is not the truth as you present here Michael “Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else.”

        1. True Janina, we always think something on the outside will meet us and then we fall for it. It is a choice we make within to go deeper and like Michael so beautifully expressed: It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath.

     2. I agree Fiona, I want to love myself wholly and completely in all that I do…and I have been slowly choosing exactly this, in a world that finds this very confronting and uncomfortable, but it feels so lovely when I go there.

413. Michael it’s a great distinction you have presented, to understand the difference between romantic love that we say we fall in and out of or true love that never wavers. Love is honest and to the point it doesn’t pander or entertain niceties, and can be very clear in calling out what is not love. Your point of “starting to distinguishing between the actions of another, which of course sometimes cannot be tolerated, and the persons essence underneath.” Calling a behaviour that reflects unloving ways is love in action!

     1. Well said merrileepettinato – I can see I have used romantic, false and conditional ‘love’ as a ‘prop’ to get me through life. True love never elevates or plays games, it does not seek attention or recognition, it is not exciting. True love is steady, strong, committed and truthful, it does not allow abuse and it honours the fact that we are all equal.

414. Beautiful Michael, Love is a quality we emanate, it is not ‘found’ outside of us.

415. ‘Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano’ Michael, this is a powerful statement. Thank you for shedding more light on what it is to be love.

     1. It sure does and will! I also find that when I do not express what is there to be said in a situation I then spend ages thinking over and over I should have said this or that, which is exhausting in itself. We are deeply sensitive beings and the more we allow ourselves to express what we are feeling the more we will begin to understand not only what is goin on around us but also ourselves.

        1. Beautiful comment James and I can totally relate to the spending time thinking about what should of been said. This in itself is a harshness on ourselves, in simply not allowing ourselves to be, accept where we are at, make mistakes when we do (for we will) and take the next moment with love.

        2. Well said Anna, the most important thing is to learn from what we have done and not to dwell on it or beat ourselves up because of it as that only takes us further away from love. The more I let perfectionism go, the more I understand life and can appreciate that everything happens for a reason.

416. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices” I’m starting to understand how very beautiful this is. It is hard in reality (well it has been for me) if we are attached to certain outcomes for people and want to ‘step in’ and not see people fall and fail. Occasionally this might be the thing that is needed for that person to learn a lesson, and ultimately everyone has to be the one to choose their own love, no one can do it for you. The only true form of healing is for someone to choose all that they are.

     1. harrywhite wise words indeed ” ultimately everyone has to be the one to choose their own love,”

        1. And with this understanding it is much easier to let go of any hold we have of wanting to protect others or not wanting to see them get hurt. As the nudges that we need to remind us/bring us back to love ourself are always there and for everyone that what is needed.

     2. ‘The only true form of healing is for someone to choose all that they are.’ Absolutely Harry – very well said! We cannot take on others hurts or try to protect them from feeling their own stuff, it doesn’t work and doesn’t serve anyone. It may be painful to watch the ones we love stagger and struggle but ultimately they must own their choices and learn – all we need to do is allow that space and support for them to come home to.

        1. “all we need to do is allow that space and support for them to come home to” Super powerful Rachael, thanks for adding.

     3. Indeed Harry, it is not always that easy to allow someone to choose a path where they will fall or have failure but we have to learn to understand that this is only because we are emotionally attached or attached to a certain outcome based on an ideal or belief we are carrying with us of how things should be. But love is much bigger than that and and can also see through that. Although it is sad to see someone making these choices I know they are still held by the same omnipresent love I am held in and that in that there is no separation whatsoever and are equal Sons of God.

        1. Totally agree Nico, am totally loving this learning process and am really open to the possibilities.

     4. I agree Harryjwhite, when I first heard that there are times when it is more loving to let someone fall so that they then can choose the healing for themselves – I found this very hard, but now I can see the wisdom behind this. It has been my experience that the change is more long lasting and has more impact if the person chooses to do it for themselves and not to please someone else.

     5. Absolutely Harry, I agree, choosing to be the love that we are, is definitely the only true form of healing!

     6. Sums it up beautiful Harry ~ ‘The only true form of healing is for someone to choose all that they are’

     7. “The only true form of healing is for someone to choose all that they are.” Thank you Harry. So simple.

417. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away”, thank you for this timely reminder. I am doorknocking and meeting a lot of people at the moment and what you write here is the way forward. I hold them in love, express what is there to be said and then that is it. Thank you.

418. MIchael this is a beautiful blog, I feel a quiet expansiveness simply from reading it.

419. Michael, everything you have expressed is exactly what I needed to hear. A recent disharmony in an intimate relationship caused a slight separation, but only until we realised that it was just our own hurts getting in the way of our love for each other. Also we spoke about the knowing that we need to expand the love we have for ourselves to then share it with each other. I realise and can clearly see the control I have (or think I have) in this relationship and how that affects how I feel about myself and my partner – this is not love or care (like I tell myself it is), it’s down right imposing of the freedom we both have and I must allow that freedom of choice to be able to learn and have no judgment over what another choices to do. Love is supportive and not controlling.

     1. Beautiful Rachael and as always, I love your honesty.

     2. I love your comment Rachael and can feel the release of tension in my body through the understanding you offer.

420. Each time I read this a new message is delivered. This time it is about the simplicity of love and how much we are able to gracefully accept love the more we accept our own love, it is a beautiful thing to open our hearts to the love we already are..

421. I love this invitation: “If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?”
     What a different way of looking at things. It does ask me to let go of the ideal that a relationship is only good when there is ‘no stuff going on’.

     1. I agree Monika. Michael’s invitation here is profound – learning to appreciate challenges with people as opportunities to deepen our relationship with ourselves and the other.

     2. ‘a relationship is only good when there is ‘no stuff going on’ ….. that’s a classic ideal I feel many people share, Monika. In truth a great relationship is always evolving, so there is always movement, which at times will promote healthy discussion! If we’re not being challenged, we’re not moving.

     3. A very good point you highlight Monika, bringing this to my awareness too; to let go of the belief that relationship in only good when there is ‘no stuff going on’, which can then make it easier to learn to appreciate the challenges with people or family as opportunities to go deeper with ourselves and others as Anne mentions.

     4. I love the way you have put this Monika that the challenges we face in our relations are an invitation to build more love instead of making it an argue for being wright or wrong in protecting ourselves from evolving. If we choose for an intimate relation to evolve in we are in a true relationship, otherwise we are just in an arrangement in which we have agreed to not address certain ways of being and to not evolve. And when we in this agreement accidentally do address some issues the argument is born as we are breaching the contract so to say. Therefor a true relationship would be not true at all when the is ‘no stuff going on’ and no evolution being aimed for. So indeed a redefinition of what a ‘good’ relationship actually is is needed for sure.

        1. Definitely Nico and Monica, what is deemed “a good relationship” by the standards of our time is a relationship at best as is based on the ideal of fairytale romance, that does never consider aspects like having to move forward or work on a relationship. A true and responsible relationship on the contrary has love for ourselves and each other as its basis and with that will naturally bring up stuff as in the harmony we than feel it is possible to open up more and more and by that clear more and more stuff, which at times can seem challenging, but is not as the love is there to protect and guide us.

        2. ‘the challenges we face in our relations are an invitation to build more love’. I have just recently come to understand this in a whole new light. A beautiful way of expressing it Nico, thank you.

     5. Thank you for highlighting this Monika, it is true and that is a great question. I recently have had someone close revealing a behaviour in me that I have really struggled to get honest with. And i have had moments of deep appreciation for this, and then other moments of not wanting to see it. The more I welcome the invitation and just let myself feel it, (knowing that the behaviour does not come from the truth of who I am), I am slowly breaking this old pattern and I can feel so much of the real me will be at the other end.

     6. Yes, a very gorgeous invitation indeed. Relationships are here to offer us evolution not comfort and that is something to embraced.

     7. You make a really great point Monika. If there was no stuff going on/coming up, how could we evolve together? My understanding is that it is how we respond to ‘the stuff’ that makes all the difference. Or as girlfriend once expressed to me, ‘its all in the approach’, that is our ‘response – ability’.

        1. Great point, Anna, and yet sometimes I know this is the case and I can struggle with this phenomena. Especially in a new relationship every time stuff comes up I can go: ‘oh maybe this is not the right partner for me’ instead of accepting the gift of evolution.

422. “The only thing love promotes is to support each other, as best as we can, and in everything that we do. Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else. It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.”
     I have tried too often to not express or not express certain details that I feel, but have to realize how stuck things get in my body and in the relationship. Expressing to the detail makes it flow again and offers the opportunity to deepen the relationship. I deprived both me and the other from deepening the love we are and feel by not expressing it all.

423. We often love with conditions – “I’ll love you if you do this”, “I’ll love you if you’re like that.” ” I’ll love you if you do what I want” etc. But none of that is Love at all and this conditional Love can be hidden, where we’re not consciously aware that we have these limits, but it becomes obvious if our behaviours are observed. Unconditional Love can only be when we Love ourselves and others, no matter what. In my experience, Love means no judgement, keeping our hearts open to that person and not shutting down.

     1. Beautiful Shevon. Unconditional love is completely free of need and I can feel how natural this is.

424. Love is the quality of our true essence, and love is the quality of God and the Universe. This has been useful to remember that love is the quality of God. So – I can start to ask questions such as: If God was walking on earth right now like me, would he express a truth with such harshness? Would he have me be so disregarding of myself? Would he feed me that drink or that food which upsets my body? Would he lie even a little bit to make himself feel comfortable? If he came across something that needs to be said to break a moment of lovelessness, would he stay silent to avoid getting flack for being the only one stating the truth? It is possible to be playful, yet the answers are as clear as daylight. Easy to know which choices come from love and will build love in my life and which ones clearly won’t.

     1. Great questions Golnaz and as you say, the answers are ‘clear as day’.

425. When I came across Universal Medicine my understanding of ‘love’ turned on its head I thought love was something I could give someone or send to another person. But I started to realise that love was a quality and someone expressed love it was kind of infectious, like laughing from the heart. There was nothing to do but everything to ‘be’.

426. I see “eruptions” all the time where people have held back and held back and then suddenly there is an eruption leaving people around them surprised and sometimes the person feeling silly and embarrassed and often their very valid point get lost in the reaction to the way it was delivered.

     1. I know what you mean Nicole.. When there has been a build up of emotions the reactions are wildly out of proportion to the actual event that triggered them.

        1. I have also experienced “eruptions” and in reflection you can feel absolutely ridiculous, sometimes surprised and little out of control. Which to an extent is true….At this point there has always been the opportunity to be honest about what has happened and understand where my reaction is coming from or move further into justification and defence.

     2. Thanks Nicole, it is very true, when we are expressing from a place of anger, frustration, resentment or the like, there is always more to it then that, more underneath, and often a hurt unexpressed. I find that if I remain in a reaction to the way another is expressing, especially if it comes across aggressively, it washes over this, and I cannot hold them in the true love and understanding they need, so that I/they can see the bigger picture of what is really going on. This for me is something to evolve. How amazing to hold others without reaction no matter what – pure inspiration.

     3. I am really inspired here. Reflecting on a more personal level since my last reply, I can see how I do this with my children. I react to the aggression at times, when I can feel that this is a cry out, there is a hurt there, or a frustration. If I can truly hold them, feel and read the situation, they may be able to really go there and feel that hurt, taking the steps needed to heal, but if I trample them in their anger or aggression, it doesn’t give them this space. This is why I feel it is so important that we speak to our children about the power of expression. Expressing all that we are feeling, without holding back. Suppression can only lead to destructive emotions. This is ever evolving for me.

        1. Ever evolving for me as well Anna – especially with the kids, they can provide many opportunities to show where we need a little, or some time a lot, more development.

427. So true Katie, in letting go of that judgement, we allow others the space and grace to make their own choices, at their own speed, rather than carrying the burden of expectations and the disappointment when these are not met.

428. ‘To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.’ This encapsulates the responsibility we have to love ourselves and each other too the bone whilst also confirming that responsibility is an expression of love.

     1. ‘This encapsulates the responsibility we have to love ourselves and each other to the bone whilst also confirming that responsibility is an expression of love.’ This is a powerful invitation to feel the expanse of what true love actually offers us by way of responsibility – thank you Abby.

        1. ‘…responsibility is an expression of love’. I absolutely love this Abby. I can often feel responsibility as something heavy or onerous. Less so these days but even so, I can be very serious about responsibility. Feeling and understanding it to be an expression of love has changed the way it feels in my body. Thank You.

     2. Absolutely beautiful Abby. Without loving ourselves love has no foundation. And in the words of a great song “Love is our greatest responsibility”.

429. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there” Is this not a wonderful analogy of the care we are to take of ourselves in order that others receive the reflection of who we all are: Love

430. So agree Brendan.

431. I struggled with the meaning of love for so much of my life and often wondered why “falling in love” always seemed to end up being a very painful process. It was not until I realised that the person at the top of the list to love was me that I began to understand that until I developed a loving relationship with myself first any other relationships would suffer from the same lack of love. I now know that I am naturally love and that love is within me always; no seeking, no wishing, no falling, just being the love that I am; that we all are.

     1. Beautiful Ingrid. It came as quite a shock to me when I realised that the love I felt for another was not about another but was actually the love that I am. When we make the love about another it can indeed be very painful. Yet when that love is simply love, it is for all and is very expansive.

     2. It’s even strange love has ever been associated with falling. It’s always going to be painful if we fall!

432. This is a super important point Katie – if we try and learn the lessons others need to learn for them, then how are they meant to develop and move on from the problem? I definitely take things on and can become judgemental sometimes, however I do experience the power of understanding when I choose to step back from the issue rather than try and ‘fight it for them’.

433. ‘It does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.’ It is a beautiful realisation that the anger or rage we feel is not caused by another person but our own choices in not dealing with those things which affect us and then accumulate over time. Very empowering in returning to love and dealing with this issue from that foundation.

     1. Very true Michael. Once we honestly observe why we feel certain emotions, we will realize, that our choices are the reason for this. Blaming someone else for it is just trying to avoid our own responsibility.

        1. True Michael, I feel it is not only trying to avoid our own responsibility but also trying to deny what we know deep inside and not live.

     2. Quite a different way to look at life, to recognise that anger is always caused by our own hurts, that frustration with another is a result of the choices we have made and the reflections that are coming to us that bring up such feelings.

        1. Yes, and how powerful to live with this understanding that we are in fact the creators of what we meet in life and we bring these experiences to us. What a great opportunity to heal any un-dealt with issues from a loving understanding. How different our world would be if we all took this level of responsibility in our lives.

        2. Isn’t this in fact the only True way to empowering ourselves? To Love and Appreciate ourselves and by chosing so, we accumalate more and more Love which feels amazing in the first place and secondly makes it possible for us to deal with other layers of hurt as we’re expanding our foundation of Love. Beautiful science to me. I simply Love it.

        3. It’s pretty shocking to acknowledge that when we feel anger towards another, we’re actually projecting the deep sadness that we’re feeling towards ourself, which comes out as anger, because we’re trying to deflect responsibility, to blame someone else so we don’t have to feel bad about what we’ve done/said/how we’ve been. If we’re angry I feel we already know we’ve been irresponsible, but we’re trying not to admit it.

        4. And it needs quite a lot of willingness to see life like that…by my own experience I can say, that I do not like so much taking responsibility for all my emotions – only step by step I start to really take this and start as well to realize how much more empowering it is to live like that. The moment I want to say “but you/he/she/it have…” is still hard to turn sometimes. But I learn more and more that IF I am able to turn and take my part – life changes in a beautiful way, I feel more connection to the other and my body and mind becomes more light. So. Not so bad. But still…not so easy.

        5. Its looking at the world through the lens of responsibility.

     3. There are moments, where someone acts in a way that hurts us, because we can feel, we deserve to be treated different. And it is great to feel that hurt – where love kicks in is the reaction to it- if we personalize the person and fight back or if we don´t accept any hardness in the body and stay connected and vulnerable. It is indeed a challenge sometimes, but these situations show if we are truly in love with ourselves.

     4. I agree Michael. I often find that if I feel anger, frustration or some other emotion about or towards another, it is pretty much always because those things I am feeling emotional about are behaviours I too might dislike but I do them too, so basically I am looking in a mirror and not liking what I see. It’s the most amazing feeling when we look into the mirror and the reflection is us in all our glory. This can only happen if we start to polish our own mirror, ie. make more loving choices, which reflects to others their glory and so in turn we see ours in their reflection. Love it!

434. A beautiful blog. Thank you Michael.

435. This is indeed profound – a guide to life – there is so much in your words, Michael, for example, ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes.’ These words can apply to parents, friends, colleagues, people in all walks of life. And when you go on to say ‘It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.’ I know that you are a living example of that, and the absolute love that is in you and through you can be felt in your words. Beautiful, humbling, deeply touching, thank you.

     1. I agree Carmel – to let others be and not impose is love through and through. Often we think it is about changing people or needing them or wanting them to be something, but this only serves to imprison that person and place conditions on them – not unconditional love at all.
        For us to have taken the simplicity of what true love is, and have turned it into something quiet complicated and almost competitive, shows we all know absolutely what true love is but we have tried to find ways to avoid living this.

        1. If I see a friend who is angry then I often find it quite difficult not to intervene and try an reason them out of their anger, yet I know this is just looking for a solution when in fact I should just hold the space and let them figure out for themselves what they are feeling. It really is the case that loving someone is not about changing them or fixing them but giving them space to be and letting us all live from the choices we make.

436. Love is “equality in its truest sense” – and see what we’ve made out of it: “I love just my partner, just my friends, just my family, ..” and all because we gave up on the love we are first and then searching for it in the outside to get it back. Thereby it is waiting for us all the time like the dearest friend, welcome us back with warmth and light as soon we turn around and choose to accept and embrace it again – who we are: Love. To reconnect with ourselves is indeed to reconnect with all of you, is to reconnect to connection.

     1. Sandra you description of the love that is naturally within as ‘waiting for us all the time like a dearest friend … as we choose to accept and embrace it again ‘ is beautiful. Befriending ourselves allows us to embrace all others for who they are. When I feel a holding back from someone else I see there is an aspect of myself that requires more loving.

        1. I agree hartanne60. We only hold the world and the people in it at a distance if we are holding ourselves in judgement and contraction. Our dis-connection in relationships comes from our dis-connection with ourselves; without a foundation in our body of what true connection is there is a very small chance of knowing how to identify it in true relationships and express it too.

437. Love that image: “We are a mirror for each other” and so we have the responsibility to be as clean as can to reflect in a legit way and to serve others to clean and polish their ‘mirror’ so we and others around get a beautiful reflection as well.

     1. We are very strong mirrors for one another and these days I am beginning to appreciate with fear or judgement, how people reflect all of who I am back to me. Their reflections support me to see all my beauty and all those areas of expression that need a little bit (or sometimes a big bit) of polishing. How glorious that we cannot help but do this for one another and when we really get it, the huge responsibility we have to reflect back all our love to the world that restores true purpose to our lives.

438. Thank you, Michael, this is a beautiful reminder of what Love truly is…”We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there; no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.”

     1. Nothing, than just being who we are. So simple and yet so profound.

439. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.”

     At times I still find this challenging particularly when someone with whom I am very close, such as a child, is living in a way that one perceives as being detrimental to his or her health. However, I have learnt that there is far more likelihood that the other will look at their behaviour if I do not attempt to persuade them but by the example I live.

     1. Hello Jonathan, I agree, it is very challenging as a parent as our natural instinct is to protect our children. However, I can really feel how damaging it is to interfere when someone is very capable of making their own choices. If we perceive the choices to be wrong/damaging/, maybe that’s showing us that the other person clearly has some ‘learning’ for them to understand the consequences of that choice. We can offer our thoughts, however, without them feeling the outcome for themselves they will continue to make the same ‘mistake’ over and over again. I can clearly remember saying as a child that what I was being ‘told’ may be correct, but I wanted to find out for myself!!! When we have the space to make our own decisions, it’s sometimes surprising what we choose. When we feel someone ‘forcing’ us to make a certain choice, it’s possible we will want to make the opposite choice!

440. Love is always there inside us, beautifully expressed Michael and the honouring and acceptance of this is the first step and way forward to being that love with everyone. True love is not the emotional kind we are lead to believe but something so much more. It is unconditional and to truly be met and feel this is the greatest gift in the world we can receive and offer to another by simply being ourselves. It allows an equality, joyful and profound way of living.

441. Michael we often see the differences between one another, look for what is unique to us instead of allowing ourselves to feel what is the same. As you say “This essence, common in everyone, is love.” Unlike everything else we are taught to be this naturally is meaning its there for everyone.

442. I agree Michael, we are a mirror for each other and what an amazing gift it is to have that reflection. Even at times it may be uncomfortable and we don’t always want to see straight away what is being offered but the beauty of it is that the reflection will always return until we get it – like having a best friend we ignore until we are ready to pay attention.

443. To ‘be love’ without any expectation of outcome or want for something in return feels so freeing compared to the loaded love that comes piled with expectation and almost always disappointment as it never marries up to the image we have created.

444. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes’. We can want to dictate to another or give our advise when we feel they are making an ill choice but the more I commect to the love that I am the more I appreciate how holding another in love and giving them the space to make their own choices is so much more empowering for the other person and it leaves them with an opportunity to evolve.

445. Michael, I love this article, reading it this time what stood out for me was, ‘Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else. It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.’ I can feel how important this is in relationships, that it the unspoken things that can cause tension, bitterness and resentment to build up. And that it is very loving to be open and honest in relationships and if two people can be gentle, listen and allow each other to express without reacting that this can allow the relationship to evolve.

446. So very true – everything we do not express does not simply go away, but sits in us either building or being buried deeper. It is unresolved and so the potential is always there that someone will push the button and there it will be – a reaction out of all proportion, fuelled by a different situation and therefore so much more difficult to pin down. Being honest about these feelings when they come up is critical to a healthy relationship.

447. On second time reading this it is against profound in its message. A message about love and incredible support offered as a natural medium. Something we don’t have to strive for but something that is inherent within all of us.

     1. Beautifully said Natasha Ragen.

        1. Thanks Adam, heavenly sent.

448. The idea of ‘falling in love’ with someone conventionally makes it sound like there is one that is held more in love in our lives than another. It is never like this, because love is for all, equally so. So if we feel truly in love with someone then is this not a pull to express more of the love we are to everyone else also?

449. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on’ and that is because love is who we are, therefore in truth we are to all eventually express the qualities of love and nothing else. If in doubt we can ask the question ‘what would love do?’. It’s very black and white.

450. ‘Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible’, Michael I am wondering out loud whether we are evolving to a time when every person will provide us with the opportunity to go deeper in love and that our concept of ‘special’ will simply be our permanent way of being with everyone.

451. The gift of equality – something absolutely every being has in common – the love that is in our essence. It’s impossible to have a harsh thought when we know and remember this is true.

452. Michael I feel that in the future the term ‘falling in love’ will be used to alert people of a ‘false state heightened by the body releasing chemicals which usually occurs as a result of either a heightened state of sexual arousal or the prospect of getting needs met, other than sexual (or a combination of both)’. Falling in love will be a warning that something is missing rather than a desired state.

453. I love what you have shared here, Michael, as it confirms how I have felt inside me. It was always a strange feeling for me that there should be only one person to fall in love with. I have fallen in love with many people, men and women, ‘ to feel a pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold.’ If we do not reduce love to something sexual or familyorientated it provides us a potential to deepen our love with everybody we meet.

454. Thank you Michael , what you have shared reflects so much truth and the part that stands out the most and has always felt strong in my body too.

     “Just being, observing, learning and walking on, realising that there is always a deeper level to move on to. Not by running, but by walking there with graceful steps that honour our bodies. If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight? If you feel something is not in flow, why not speak up, instead of holding back out of wishing to protect ourselves from getting hurt, pretending that there could not be greater harmony”.

455. This is a beautiful reminder of the love we possess and the importance of living and expressing it without imposing on another’s choices no matter how disconnected they may be from the love they are or can choose at times to reject.

456. When we have expressed love truly to people we meet, there is no need or expectation and no hurt or attachment, as love feels complete with its own expression. Any hurt felt exposes where we still have an attachment to emotional love, which is not true. So thank you to any hurts felt, appreciation to our sensitivity and awareness, life just keeps evolving us in deepening our return to what is true.

457. It is true that this world has absolute freedom and their right to choose, it is also true that most of what we have accepted in this world to be normal is unnatural. To love humanity unconditionally, calls for an awareness to pick up everything that is unnatural and express it when appropriate, as accepting what is unnatural is first and foremost not loving to ourselves. Without a foundation of love built in the body, it cannot be expressed to another, and every moment the world is asking for this reflection in love. What is being asked of us in love, is tenderness and appreciation to ourselves every moment, to express out the truth we already know, to keep expressing with every person we meet, to read all that we are able to, to feel deeply every hurt, and to give ourselves even more tenderness and appreciation, and to truly enjoy what is imperfection.

     1. Thank you, Adele! You added a great point here. You talk about vulnerability. And to show myself vulnerable stops abuse. In myself and in others if they choose. This is part of unconditional love.

458. Very beautiful Michael I love it. ” A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to.” now this is our true essence expressed with appreciation and allows us to feel a great joy inside.Thank you for sharing this amazing under standing.

459. Beautiful Michael, once again you have encapsulated the beauty of true love and how we can through diligent care and nurturing love ourselves so much that loving another is the most natural and obvious choice in the world. Building true relationships does mean being willing to face our hurts, run the risk of rejection and allow others to do what they wish, within reason of the law. Once we learn to hold ourselves in love, accept all we do without diminishing ourselves, learn by our experiences and mistakes, our ability to hold others in love can only deepen, as we learn to see through the barricades right into another’s essence.

460. Holding others in equal love – is something I still find challenging. I was just at a meeting where everyone was offered a chance to express and I noticed how the host was giving everyone equal attention and respond with a comment. And far more than what was being said in response, but the holding in itself was an expression of love that came naturally from the loving foundation they live. It really was a very beautiful and inspiring moment for me.

461. Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices”- giving them space to choose what is right for them, and not i“mposing upon their freedom of choice. Yes, this is so true and at times can be challenging especially when we are concerned that their choice is not a loving one.

     1. It’s so vital that there is space in a relationship, space to learn, space to grow, space for all the love that is still unlived.

462. I have been experiencing lately a breaking down of the old saying, it takes to two to love. I have noticed it only takes one to open up fully to another, in love. As stated by Michael, there is no lessening of that love from what the other or others choose afterwards. I would add there is no less healing in it either, for others get to feel their choice either way and that there is always space for change.

463. “Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else. It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.” – Well said Michael, I agree – we can support each other (and ourselves) through appreciation and also lovingly being honest about what is there that does not feel like it belongs.

464. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away” So true Michael this is something we don’t always do as there is usually an expectation or need to receive love back.

465. Reading this blog today, I am seeing how there are still so many ideals and beliefs that I hold around what love is and I pick and choose the various aspects to suit whatever situation I am in. Thank you Michael for so clearly spelling out what true love is.

466. “Supporting does not mean to blindly admire everything, but to be honest – with ourselves and everyone else. It means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.” I certainly have held many ideals around what love is and this particular sentence has stood out to me this morning and has been as aspect of love that I have been afraid of because I haven’t wanted to cause a reaction in others. In my own development of unfolding deeper in love, this is an aspect that I realise that I need to bring more of me to.

467. This is an article with so many great points that I know I will return to again and again.

468. “This essence, common in everyone, is love….This is equality in its truest sense.”
     Indeed Michael – we are all of and from the same love, therefore we are all equal.
     This wipes out all excuses for fighting, war, competition, comparison, nationalism – pretty much everything our societies and way of living are currently based on!

469. The quality of our way of living is constantly there for all to see and feel…are we reflecting our self-loving choices or are we reflecting our self-harming ones?

     1. You ask a great question and one that I rarely consider as if I did I would then realise the level of responsibility I have to make loving choices in all that I do. This is a great reminder to feel into the impact of our choices and whether we are truly taking responsibity for our actions.

470. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide … no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.” When we have expectations of another then there is control, rather than simply allowing another to have the journey that is true for them.

471. If love is who we are and we share ourselves in different degrees with others, does this mean that there is always an unspoken condition in place which shapes how much love is shared with another? This is a question that has come up to be pondered on and I have come to realise that whilst our interaction with others varies for many reasons (partner, child, friend, stranger etc), it is each of us that choose the quality of the interaction, the love we hold ourselves in whilst interacting with that person or situation. This quality exists all of the time – I loved your comment Michael – ‘We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide…’

472. “Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible.”
     That is exactly how it feels for me: like a door opens and there is more love to feel and not just for that 1 person but for everybody.

473. I love the start of this article: “how on earth can we fall in love? Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else.”
     We are always (held) in love and we can only choose to not connect to the love we innately are and have inside us.

     1. Agree Monika, as well as the falling into a muddy puddle! There is a ridiculousness sometimes in what we pretend is love and it’s good to show it up.

        1. The expression ‘falling in love’ really exposes itself because most experience a thud from the fall when the reality of everydayness comes into a relationship. There is no fall with ‘love’ – it just is.

474. When I think back to what I used to think love was it was all about romance and gushing, which was often coupled with heart ache. Then there was the love for my family which was laced with judgement, expectations and neediness. Now since embracing and feeling the real truth of love that resides inside of me I can see how far from the truth I was.

475. Yet again you write another beautiful blog Michael. Thank you for the eloquent way in which you talk about love… True love… The love that we are all from and that we will all eventually get back to.

476. “This essence, common in everyone, is love.” This sentence allows me to feel that it is not difficult to ‘be love’. I am love and I simply need to connect to this.

     1. ‘it is not difficult to ‘be love’. I am love and I simply need to connect to this.’ …. reading your comment, Leonne, I realise how I have shied away from claiming the fact that I AM LOVE. It’s not something I have to build, it’s already there and it’s about allowing myself to feel and appreciate the depth and richness of this gift, to bathe in it, enjoy it and bring it with me where ever I go.

477. Realizing that everyone can only choose for themselves and that the greatest thing we can do to support others is to make responsible and loving choices for ourselves, i.e. support ourselves. Trying to interfere with the choices of others or wanting to carry what we identify as their burden will lead to nothing.

     1. This morning I chose to express how something someone is doing is affecting me, it’s a sensitive point and has come up before and I know I shy away from sharing how I feel for fear of the reaction. However, it was beautiful to feel how when I spoke, without any blame, it created a space for the other person to show their love in their response, or not. There wasn’t a need or an expectation, just a space for them to choose whatever felt right for them.

     2. I fully agree Michael, we have to give people space to come to their own choices and decisions. This is what I have experienced love to be, a beholding energy which allows me to come to my own answers rather than an imposing energy or force which wants things to be or look a certain way.

478. This is a beautiful blog, Michael. We all could use more reminders like this one of what love truly is.

479. Very beautiful Michael, so much wisdom so simply presented. A clear reminder of what true love is.

480. Love is unconditional. It is our essence. It just is. Simple. Your blog exposes the complexity it encounters and its consequential dilution when transposed onto the plane of life we reside in as human beings.

     1. Well said, Fumiyo, it’s as though we can feel we have some control over love, in terms of who we can love, turning it on or turning it off when we are hurt. True love just is, it’s not something we control at all, rather something that’s innate in us all that we can allow to flow in our every word, movement and breath.

481. Nowhere is it taught truthfully except in The Livingness that to truly love another starts with loving ourselves. When we see what happens on the planet we need to deeply question why it condones the opposite of this truth.

482. Thank you Michael, I appreciate the reminder to not hold back – equally with myself and with others “If you feel something is not in flow, why not speak up, instead of holding back out of wishing to protect ourselves from getting hurt, pretending that there could not be greater harmony.”

     1. Yes such an important sentence to highlight Hannah, thank you. It is so beautiful to discover that high lighting the blockages in the flow brings about the most amazing learnings and awarenesses. It really does support our confidence and connection the more we call it out and although there may be some challenges involved, it certainly builds deeper connection and respect in all relationships.

        1. Yes Rowena, expression really is where it’s at – and I’m learning this more and more. Not only is anything not expressed held in the body, it then makes it so much harder to express in the next instance, as though that initial holding back stems the natural flow.

     2. Yes I agree Hannah, we can easily shy away and not speak up for fear of another’s reaction but by holding back we are in fact already hurting ourselves.

        1. Yes fionachocran01, in my experience, holding back in the hope of not hurting or upsetting another, actually creates the very situation you are trying to avoid because if you hold back, you are not expressing the full truth, you compromise and clear communication and connection goes out the window.

483. What a gorgeous blog Michael. I’ve experienced lately how I have felt deep love for people I barely know, and in this, knew that I can feel this for everyone if I allow myself to, and it is only my own protection that stops this.

     1. Beautiful Sandra, isn’t it just a choice to let people’s Love in? When we drop into our hearts we can always feel people’s Love. This is such a different place to be in and receive people. Of course, I can only see people’s Love if I see my own Love. No one’s perfect, no one’s only Love, but this doesn’t mean that anyone is not good or not good enough. Yes, there might be parts in people that are not so loving, but it’s up to me to give (only) attention or focus to these parts or to all the parts that are actually loving. I’ve grown a lot from people truly appreciating and meeting me in who I am instead of who I am not.

     2. Yes, there is so much love just waiting for us all when we drop our guards, our protection that only serves in holding in our love and holding out love offered by others…crazy when love is what we all crave the most!

        1. What’s crazy is that we go looking for it outside in our family, partners, friends – everyone and yet all along, it is all there inside of us.

     3. Sandra, I love your comment as it reminds me that I too can feel deep love for everyone if I allow it. I constantly put up barriers of protection and pick and choose who I will be love with and who I will not. This is love based on conditions. I feel it is time for me to let go of my wall of protection to allow the love that I am to be expressed as I know without doubt that if I did I would feel so much lighter and more vital. Holding back is exhausting and feels burdened with a heaviness which is not who we are.

        1. Holding back our love is exhausting fionacochran01 – it actually takes energy to hold back and keep our guard up.

484. I just love this para — I can read it again and again: “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.” We’ve been robbed of this profound truth in our world today and we forget and dismiss caring for ourselves thinking it is selfish and not the ‘right thing to do’. It is the most loving thing to do because when we are in deep love with ourselves we can share this deep love with all others too. That is brotherhood and love in billions of spades.

     1. You’re spot on Katerina, we have been robbed of the profound truth that to love another we must first love ourselves …. ‘when we are in deep love with ourselves we can share this deep love with all others too’ …. simply gorgeous. I had never heard this from anyone before discovering the teachings of Universal Medicine.

485. Michael, I love this article, it is so utterly beautiful. I can relate to most of what you have written, particularly with letting some be, loving and not judging them and how in relationships it is about supporting each other – really lovely, thank you.

486. What you describe here Michael is absolute truth of love, simply being all of who we are not expecting anyone to be anything else. It’s a holding, a stillness of being, a knowing of ourselves that does not move when any force comes. It is rock steady and something I can always return to. It’s a very different feeling from the romantic version sold to us.

487. So many pearls of wisdom here – “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes. It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.” Let live and let love.

     1. ‘Let live and let love.’ – you’ve nailed it to the point Sue.

     2. Deep inside them they know they have received absolute love:-) True Mary and it is for us to see through the behaviour and feel their essence no matter what. To accept, allow and understand are keywords in this.

488. ‘If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper, instead of starting to argue and fight?’ …. this is beautiful Michael. We all have sensitive areas that we are quick to react to from past hurts. Whenever I react to something, it’s an opportunity for me to stop and feel into what my hurt is. Rather than become defensive, I can recognise that I’ve just been offered a gift, an opportunity to heal another hurt, close off that hole that I’ve been carrying around with me and seal it for good. I may even choose to start the conversation with the other person, especially if it’s someone close to me. The more ‘natural’ and commonplace we make these sorts of conversations the more normal they will become in our every day and in turn we will be more loving and supportive with each other rather than combative and defensive, as we are allowing ourselves to be who we truly are.

     1. Very well said Alison. I think a key part in the process of making these types of open conversations normal, is first accepting that every single person has things they need to address in their lives and certain areas that require development. This would then change talking about our issues from a ‘taboo topic’ to an everyday point of discussion.

        1. So true Susie, knowing and understanding that everyone has things to address takes away the judgment, we’re not the ONLY one and we don’t stand out as we’re all in the same boat. We can help and support each other so we can all move on.

     2. That’s so lovely Alison – we are offered so much love and support by the Universe when we reach out and do not react to life in a way that is defensive and self defeating – and as you say these moments are opportunities to heal our hurts and let go when we decide to opt out of the ceaseless cycle of self abuse.

489. ‘Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes’ …. this applies equally to ourselves. I have always berated myself and felt that I’ve failed in some way when I’ve got things wrong. In actual fact, it’s an absolute gift as I’m being shown something that I’ve not yet learnt and from this learning, it will prevent me from making the same mistake again. ‘The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing’.

     1. I agree Alison…berating ourselves for ‘getting it wrong’ only adds to the hurt we are already feeling, whereas seeing it as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves, and to grow from, is more self-loving and offers the potential for true change and healing.

        1. I know this to be true and I still so appreciate this reminder. Thank you Paula Steffensen

490. ‘It is not for us to judge what another needs to live and go through to learn and move on. Our job is only to express what we feel and then let the other be and choose. Staying with them, holding them with love, but never trying to impose on their absolute freedom.’ ….. wise words indeed and something I have really struggled with, as a parent. I have found it incredibly challenging to allow ‘mistakes’, ‘interesting choices’ and just plain stupidity to occur …. however, I can deeply appreciate that I am not the one to decide what another needs to live and go through to learn ….. and this is the only way that we do learn, from the consequences of our choices. It’s equally important to allow others to feel the consequences of their choices, rather than trying to protect them and provide a nice soft pillow for them to land on, thereby taking away the fullness of what there is to feel and learn from.

491. A lovely expression Michael Kremer thank you. To remember that Love is a beingness that lives eternally within us is a life changing revelation, but also an awareness of something so deeply familiar that we know in truth we have never lost. The search for Love ending with the knowing that it was and is always here. It has to be unconditional in truth because it is a beingness and not something we switch on and off according to who we are with. If it appears we have managed to switch it off, then we have simply managed to create an unloving situation that masks a truth that is in reality unchangeable.

492. “how can you fall in love” this question debunks all the illusions we have built around what love is. Love is a quality, a state of being, a beholding of another and not something we can give and take. Love simply is, holds and has no demands, no expectations, no judgement and no need. It is what I am and how much I love is determined by how much I am willing to open up and show all of me to everyone equally.

493. Thank you Michael for a very beautiful blog that so profoundly encapsulates the true meaning of love when it comes uncluttered without the emotional baggage that is so often attached to this simple word that expresses forth from our very essence.

494. “Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else.” This is a ground-breaker sentence Michael. I know that to learn and begin to feel that we are all at our very essence, love was something that changed my life. It changed my understanding of who I am and of the true nature of all of us. I found that if I am love then the way I live, relate, eat, sleep, work and exercise must therefore be done with this in mind, it was a whole new learning curve, but one which showed me that connection on that level works miracles.

495. Being truly loving ‘means speaking up and expressing, even if we feel the topic might cause a reaction.’ This is an important part of being love and for me it is probably the most difficult. When we see a friend acting in some kind of abusive way and accept it, this is quite the opposite of being loving as it is allowing the act to continue without giving the friend the awareness so that they can then choose if they want to stop it or not.

496. ‘Well, we can fall into a puddle of mud, but how on earth can we fall in love? Love is always there, inside of ourselves and everyone else.’ This is so funny, and clearly illustrates the illusion that so many of us are or have been living in. I for one certainly thought that I had to seek out love most of my life. That was until I started having Esoteric Healing sessions and going to Universal Medicine events, when I had the blessing to feel and know that I had been looking in the wrong place. Love is part of me, it was inside all along patiently waiting for me to connect to it. And now that I have discovered the love that I am, I can see now what love is truly about.

497. We cannot give to another that which we have not first claimed for ourselves – our love.

     1. So very true Liane.

498. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating – we are the love we so desperately search for. What we go looking for in others is merely a reflection of the light that lives within ourselves, for we are each born from the flickering flame of love that forever burns deep within our heart. Thank you Michael for confirming the beauty of this truth.

499. It’s crazy, Love is our most natural way of being and we all love being love and being loved – so why do we fight it and resist it so much? Could it be that in being our true divine omnipotent love we would have to take full responsibility and be accountable for every action, word and thought? There would be no room for individual or self, or to deny or avoid the fact – that we all one – that everything we do affects the all – and everything would be about humanity.

500. Whoo hoo I love this line, ” If something challenging comes up, why not thank each other for this opportunity to learn and go deeper,” too many people argue and fight, or end relationships, (divorce rates are on the rise) when in truth life could be so simple and loving. This isn’t just about partner relationships, this is about families, siblings, friends, strangers, work colleagues – people everywhere across the globe.

501. This is a truly gorgeous blog Michael. Totally inspiring and encouraging us to all realise we are all Love and that no matter what the situation our innermost is Love.

502. It seems that we have been sold the lie that self-love is selfish for too long, when in fact it is the opposite. How different would the world be if as a child we were brought up to self love first and hold onto what we know as Truth.

503. So beautiful to read this this morning, thank you Michael.

504. If we didn’t impose on one another we would return to being the love we know ourselves to be and are much quicker.

505. Brilliant what you say here about ‘falling in love’ Michael.
     Wow I thought that was the only way to do it – fall head over heels for someone, we hear ‘fall in love’ everywhere – songs, movies, articles, people sharing their stories. But you are right, how can we suddenly fall in love? The only way is via an emotional change but then is this really love? Love isn’t emotion – it is a constant steadiness, a beholding, an openness we have for all, not a big dramatic plunge. This is a great topic to discuss and break this ideal of what falling in love even is.

506. “If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.” When a relationship breaks up we can often feel devastated, but what I have learned is that people can reject the love they are presented with, not the person. It may be that they are not willing to go there, to take love to where or what is being offered. And in that case the most loving thing to do is to allow them to go their own way, for to try and persuade them only builds up more resistance or harm to their body. This is a reflection of all relationships, be it family, friends or partners. The fact is we are all going to return to the ginormous, all encompassing one unifying love we all know deep down we already are, so no need to put any pressure on anybody.

     1. Least of all our selves.

     2. Yes, Gyl, definitely “the most loving thing to do it to allow them to go their own way, for to try and persuade them only builds up more resistance or harm to their body”. Not all are ready to commit themselves to building the level of love in their body that we know is so precious, and it is best to let them take the path they choose. And it may be that they will be drawn to the path of true love some time in the future, if and when they are ready.

507. ” Love can grow with every movement and breath.” it’s a joy to know and live this through every cell of our body. How can we ever get bored or need someone else, when through every single movement and breath we take, if we so choose, our love will always forever deepen and grow.

508. I have found the hardest thing to do is to stand back and not ‘help’ and just ‘be’. As you have said Michael learning to accept myself is the first step in allowing others to just be and reflecting what I am is all that will ever be needed.

     1. Steve, I can relate to what you’ve shared here, to simply “be” by accepting myself is the first step. The pull to do or change is a way I put conditions on how I am and therefore how others are. Rather than allowing that unconditional love that Michael has expressed so beautifully in the blog.

     2. I can really relate to what you’ve shared here Steve – when we focus on learning to accept ourselves, it is so much easier to accept others as they are. I have found that getting caught up in “helping” was in the long run not much help at all!

509. To never impose on another person’s absolute freedom to not be love if they so choose it, to me is one of the deepest forms of love we can express towards eachother.

510. The fact is that love is the true inner nature of every human being. Some choose to live according to its dictates and others simply do not. And that in a nutshell captures all that we call human life.

     1. Pretty much summed up in that — it’s whether we choose to connect to our inner love, or not.

511. Gorgeous Michael. There is such gentleness and love in your blog.

512. “This essence, common in everyone, is love. A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone.” With emotional love we can fall in love and we can fall out of love but when we feel true love within ourselves it is unconditional of anything we or others do and it is true love that deepens as we feel the essence of another.

     1. And when we connect to our inner most essence and accept this as who we truly are, we are no longer affected by the ups and downs of life. Approval and recognition are no longer needed. We feel our glory, our loveliness, from our own bodies and this is what we can walk and be with every day. So there’s no longer the need to validate self from something outside of us, and this gives us amazing space. Space for enormous love towards others because this is what is living in us. And with this love we then serve our fellow brothers.

513. Anyone who reads this would now be able to see that all the ‘love songs’ in the world are a myth. This is a beautiful read and wonderful reminder to focus on allowing our own love and in doing so, we naturally love others.

     1. Love is born of love, not need.

514. ‘If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away.’ This is the key, to hold someone in love, without attachment or investment. We rarely learn this growing up.

     1. It is our investment in them loving us that undoes us. We invest in loving another person and expect them to love us in return, and if it doesn’t come in the way we want it to, we’re disappointed…this is not love. To hold someone in love and just let them be is something I am learning and it’s quite beautiful to feel, and comes with a fragility and openness with no demands.

515. …”feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible..” This is beautiful as is the whole blog. This is the type of conversation that would support teenagers / young adults as a way of understanding what it means to enter into relationships.

516. “A love that is still and all knowing”. This phrase really resonates with me Michael, I can feel the essence and divinity of love and our responsibility to be love in the world.
     Thank you for the simplicity and power in which you present in this blog.

517. Michael, what a beautiful sharing which is showing how dedicated you are to deeply understand and live true love.

518. Thank you Michael for this account on unconditional love and for the reminder that love is always looking for opportunities to unfold and expand and that we have to learn to embrace and be thankful for all the opportunities that life is providing to us in that. Although to my experience, as I am stil learning the difference between conditional and unconditional love, it is not always that easy to allow the other to make their choices and to not feel myself responsible for that. And in that process I am learning to be thankful for the love that continuously is providing me with opportunities to learn the ‘art of life’ and that is to hold everybody in the same unconditional love I am held by.

     1. I love your expression ‘the art of life’ here Nico van Haastrecht – learning to love unconditionally is an art form indeed.

519. Love is a popular subject, afterall there are thousands of books, songs and movies about love. Everyone loves love… Why is that? Could it be that we all know what love is? It is our natural way of being, yet we have strayed so far away from it? True love can only be found when there is a deep love felt and established within oneself first of all. Without this, the word love is a bastardised version and will forever keep us seeking, looking for something that can never be found outside of ourselves.

520. Loving unconditionally takes effort and daily practise. The practise isn’t about trying to love someone, as love is always there. The effort is in not letting things get in the way of feeling love, and when they do, to work on healing these.

521. A gorgeous blog Michael. The saying “falling in love” always puzzled me, as to me falling was always a painful experience, and that certainly didn’t relate to what I thought love was. So why do we think we need to fall in to something we already are? Is it because our idea of love is something outside of us, something that we need to search for, hope for and long for? To be presented with the truth of what love is, that it is not something that is separate from us, but something that we innately are, is a truth that has the potential to change lives forever.

522. That takes love to a whole new level Michael. I really appreciate from your blog that love is not all about accepting other peoples thoughts, behaviours and actions, sweetness and roses. It can be tough conversations, trusting adventures and a discovery of honesty that has perhaps been unfamiliar. Yet the willingness to go there, to grow together means a potential relationship with love that is grander than what we call normal in our current time.

523. Michael this is beautiful thank you! Falling is love 101… ‘Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible. It is two human beings opening up to let each other feel their essence behind the facade we have often so carefully built to mask what is underneath.’ What a refreshingly appealing thing to allow between those willing… and not something restricted to potential or actual partners, but to everyone in our lives.

524. And as well Doug we’re usually taught that love is something we get from someone else when in truth it’s within each of us waiting to be connected to.

     1. Deborah you are so spot on and it’s so insidious sometimes the teaching that come with that. That we must have a good car, a good house, a good career to get into a position to be a better person to love more and deeper.. Such fallacy

525. Thank you for expressing with such simplicity what love truly is.

526. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide – polishing this mirror in a way that it will simply reflect what is always there; no agenda, no manipulation to make the other feel better or do what we want, nothing needed to be done or achieved.” I love how you expressed that Michael, and what a relief it is to read it, it takes away the need to be planning how to approach situations, it is so simple. So long as we can let go all expectations of how the other is going to behave, react etc., the thing is for me to take responsibility for myself in how I live my life, and let the other make their choices with no judgment. The key is to hold one’s own unconditional love to, to constantly be polishing our mirror to enable it to reflect to the other unconditionally.

527. Thank you Michael for your gorgeous expression of love each time you write. We all have the responsibility to be the love that we are and this is all we need to do, no pushing, no trying, no forcing – just love. This is how love works, through the power of felt inspiration.

     1. Well said Katechorley love naturally inspires..

528. Reading this I realise how often we are sold half-truth about love and what often gets missed out is holding ourselves in love first. We often hear how it is love to let another be and do whatever they want, and many of us end up being a doormat.

     1. When we are called to live what is love, it exposes the limitation and reductionism of expressing it with words.

529. Doug I feel that it’s an important point that you raise, when you say that we ‘have been taught from an early age that love is an emotion’. I grew up being very influenced with Disney films and books from a very young age that presented love as being something that swept you up. Dancing, swirling and swishing around in beautiful dresses and long tresses! Love was portrayed as fanciful and oh so romantic and of most significance I was conned into believing that it was something that ‘was produced when 2 people came together’. What a sinister set up as it lead me to believe that I needed the ‘right person’ to come along before I could feel love ! Jesus wept (and he probably did!)

530. Michael, yet another fantastic article. What really struck me when I read this was how clearly you made claim to the fact that unconditional love is completely independent, in that it needs nothing at all from anyone or anything else. That to me feels like the definition of freedom. Your wisdom and clarity are greatly appreciated.

531. This is love and how love can truly be between people, thank you Michael. It always bamboozled me as a young child seeing couples abuse each other, manipulate, hold each other back and do the opposite to love but then come out with… ‘but I love him’ or ‘she knows I love her’ or vice versa. Crazy stuff! The first time I felt unconditional love was when I stood in front of Serge Benhayon, and then when meeting his family. It only takes one to reflect back to the world again the love we all are and start a ripple effect.

532. The amount of love we experience and express is deeply connected to how truthful we are ready to be – even at the first meeting of a potential partner or especially then. Truthfulness under difficult conditions can be extremely rewarding – there are few if any better things in life than a long term, wonderful relationship with a partner.

533. Simply stunning, Michael. A blog to return to as a reference and reminder, reading like a definitive text on Love – how to be it, be in it, do it and live it. An exquisite and comprehensive description of something that has been bastardised away from its purest meaning by the romantic version of love.

534. When we truly hold ourselves in love, love sustains us in a solidness and stillness that does not change, even in the busiest places, the most dramatic situations, the coldest weathers, the most disconnected cultures. Love is the deepest inspiration and I say yes please.

     1. ‘When we truly hold ourselves in love, love sustains us in a solidness and stillness that does not change’ …. yes, Adele, it certainly does. I was recently challenged by a very stressful situation and as I felt my anxiety levels creep up, I could also feel how incapacitated I became. I was allowing the situation to completely dominate how I was, until I chose to come back to my truth, the love that flows through my body. Feeling anxious isn’t going to change the situation, but it does change me, it stops me from being the love that I am. My foundation is my love.

535. So true Michael, learning to be the love that is sought even craved, is first found within oneself to create this as a default foundation, when there is no (self) love, there is only the ideal or picture instead.

536. how is it possible to ‘hold another in love’ and “let another make choices’ and how is this love? because love is a presence, it is a way of being that one embodies. one person in love + another person in their own love = making love

     1. Well said harry, love is a quality and when lived and expressed with another this is making love, and this is what expands the universe as 1+1 becomes more then 2.

     2. That equation certainly rings true for me harryjwhite!

537. that bit about the volcano eruption is SO true. If we let things build up and then let them all go in a volcanic like eruption then it might come out not the way we want it to, or by that time it cant be loving. And loved your description of how it takes time for the tender new shoots take to come up again. Holding back and not expressing creates so much complication in relationships, and really starts to make things go backwards.

     1. Harry, love what you share. It really shows how important it is to be honest and express how we feel, and to be in touch with that at all times, otherwise as both you and Michael say it erupts and in that it can’t be loving. And reading this today I can feel how we short change ourselves through a lack of commitment and consistency, after all how can I be the love I am if I’m not connecting to and feeling how I am all the time. It’s simple when we connect and express, anything else is indeed an unneeded complication.

     2. ‘If we let things build up and then let them all go in a volcanic like eruption then it might come out not the way we want it to, or by that time it can’t be loving’ ….. so true, harryjwhite. To compound this further, the whole time we’ve been holding in our feelings and choosing not to share them, all the frustration that we are allowing to build up inside of us is felt by the other person anyway. They are receiving the consequence of our choice NOT to say anything …. so everyone is losing out the whole time and it most certainly isn’t loving for anyone.

538. Thanks for this gorgeous blog Michael! I love this “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices, no matter how absurd they may seem to us sometimes” you can say that again. This really has been something that has been hard to accept, but in time I am starting to learn how this is a great aspect of love.

     1. I am with you on that Harry, the hardest part for me is to learn to truly let others be and hold them no matter what choices they make. It has been very revealing to see how I have invested in people and how this is not love.

     2. How true Harry, it has been a difficult learning curve for me also. Especially when my hurts feel so deep and l lose my perspective. This one is a constant work in progress. To remember it is a choice to go into reaction. A choice to not choose love.

539. “Love …does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.” This is very revealing Michael, and when I look at the times I have been angry within a relationship, there is always something going on with me. It is more about where I am at than anything else. This is taking responsibility to another level.

540. Another truly beautiful piece Michael, and a foundation from which true relationships can be built. Thank you.

541. Michael, this is beautiful. So very very beautiful.

542. Love is indeed always there. Sometimes we can be unsure on what being unconditionally loving is. This confusion only arises when we place a task on how to maintain the love we think should be there.

     Unconditional love has no form and no image. Love is love and it is a quality to be felt and expressed. There are a million ways to expression love but only one way to be love.

     1. Thanks Luke I have learnt a lot by this.

543. To be on the receiving end of unconditional love is as if the yearning for recognition ceases, like wet and cold clothes dry in the sun.

544. To be on the receiving end of unconditional love is the greatest gift in the world. I am met as I am and this is the end of searching outside. From thereon it is about learning to surrender deeper and deeper.

545. To be on the receiving end of unconditional love can be challenging. No hiding behind masks is possible, because all of me is mirrored.

546. Understanding the choice to be with a person in an intimate relationship, to be in friendship with another or even to remain as an acquaintance and the relationship to love, has hindered my connection to and knowing what Love really is. Your comment Michael – ‘Meeting someone and feeling a special connection or pull towards that person simply means that we have allowed a space for more love to unfold and become tangible’ – has opened up an opportunity to go deeper in my understanding of Love. I have come to know love as the essence that exists in me and in all others equally, and it is a choice I make everyday regarding the degree to which I open and allow. Is it trust, time and reciprocal response from another that fuels the degree to which the love we are, is shared? Is it our tightly held perceptions of Love and relationship that hold us back from what is possible? Thank you for this blog – reflecting on your words continues to unfold within and the richness that comes from this supports more honesty in all the relationships I share with all others.

547. Another pearler from you Michael. I love you and what you share with us all. These lines I felt deeply today – “Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano. Like the eruption of a volcano, this is highly likely to erase everything that has been there before. This does not mean the end to life, but it will take a large amount of time until the first new, tender plants will grow into the abundance that existed before.”. So true, it wipes so much but when we express as we go along, it allows space for the plants to grow (or die), what ever is necessary. The explosion is not that allowing.

548. Michael I love how in one blog you have blown away all the misconceptions, and the ideals and beliefs around love. Love is not something we need to find or “fall into’, it is who we are.

549. Agreed Doug, so often it is that our experience of love is that which comes with conditions, this being emotional love devoid of our true essence.

550. Thank you Michael for sharing that we all have love at our core as an essential quality, and that we can develop this love within ourselves and with another. That we need to first love ourselves before we can truly love another really resonates with me. I feel as though I need to know love first before I can hold love for another and that the depth and quality of love that I can hold for another is limited to that which I can hold for myself. How can I love another more than what I have experienced myself?

     1. Well said Lee, to think I can love someone more than the love I have for myself is simply not true, and I would be kidding my self to do so.

551. Thank you Michael. Since coming to the work of The Way of The Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon and his Relationship Workshops, I have come to understand Love in a totally different way to any I have known before. This has opened my eyes to the fact that we are Love at all times, even if we present or act differently on the outside. That Love is not conditional, no expectations of another, and allowing each of us to grow in the way and time that is appropriate for each of us. Love is for all equally so.

     1. Yes great point Roslyn, my understanding of what love truly is has been turned on it’s head. I now know love to be who I am and not what I do or receive.

552. Falling in love doesn’t make sense and nor does looking for love. If we are love and come from love then how can we look for love when we have it all along. Our language that we have built around love is askew. It will be so beautiful when we all realise the love that we are and love all equally. Then being with a partner will be such a celebration of love and a confirmation for everyone.

     1. I agree Amanda- I never understood the concept of’ falling in love’. It makes you search outside of yourself to look for ‘prince charming’, wanting another to fulfil the emptiness you feel, or make up what you lack. This is emotional love with conditions attached.
        True love is the essence of who we are. When we express love it is from our inner heart, coming from truth, honesty and respect for another; not needing anything from another, just confirming the love we are equally .

553. That way ‘falling in love’ means falling (back) into ourselves, into the very essence that is love.

     1. True Alex and Ariana, no matter how astray we may lead ourselves, in a moment it is we can return.

     2. I like this definition of falling in love Alex, not something to fall forward into someone else but falling back into ourselves.

     3. Love that Alex, falling in love, is a falling back into ourselves/our own love — from the reflection of another great love shining towards us like a beacon. To make even greater love.

     4. I LOVE this Alex, the true meaning of falling in love.

554. Choosing love over hurts and protection is the greatest revolution I know.

     At some point, everyone will need and want to realize that it is the only way out of the misery we have created.

555. When I hear unconditional love, I cannot help but think of dogs and how they are often in our lives to remind us of this kind of love. No matter what you do or say to another or how your day has been, when you come home, your dog is always content to just be with you – it does not judge you nor love you any less if you made some mistakes in your day. Of course we can question whether we offer them back conditional love or unconditional love, but hey, what an awesome way to start practicing allowing another to be and allowing ourselves to be and knowing that this is true support. Thank you Michael!

556. Beautifull and very apt with Valentine’s Day coming up. How can we ‘fall’ in love when it is already there within us ✨

557. Recently I’ve been feeling and seeing the conditional love that I hold with myself, having pictures of how my love should look, and also having ideals or needs of how I should be or look when I am claimed in my sacredness and in all my glory. Conditional love is actually just a set up to not be love, because it means we will reject the love that is actually already there and on fire. Not only do we reject it in others, but we reject it in ourselves. So I’ve seen the need to be aware of every tiny thread of pictures or ideals that I hold onto, which could also be called conditions, because holding onto these it doesn’t matter how much I want to be love or how much I commit to being love, it won’t be able to be activated as long as the conditions/ pictures are alive.

558. Gorgeous Michael. I love what you wrote about how each and every one of us are a mirror for the rest of humanity, and that we have a responsibility to make this mirror as clean and shiny as possible so that others can see exactly what choices they are making, and what it looks like (on the other side of the mirror) to live true love. I also love, ‘if we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away’, and I have experienced this sense of completeness when not needing them to be anything or having any expectation of them ‘getting it’ when I show that I love/care.

559. “We can all fall into a puddle of mud, but how on earth can we ‘fall in love” this puts into perspective what a ridiculous expression ‘fall in love’ is. Love simply is, we come from love, it is the essence of every human being, therefore we can all love, this is what I am coming to truly understand and accept that you can’t put conditions or hold back being love, for then it is not truly love. But this doesn’t mean we have to accept or dismiss behaviours that do not come from love.

560. As long we need or want something from the other, our love is conditioned.

     1. Yes, and it is beautiful to put it into practice. Every time I notice by myself that I feel I miss something or that I want something from somebody, to just notice it. There is nothing wrong with wanting something but it is a great adventure to just observe where the needs come in. I have been single now for a year and this is a big learning for me in developing the relationship with myself. With interactions with men, I can see clearly what comes up for me. Great playground, relationships…

561. I agree Ariana and a revelation in itself. We often go ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’ and now to have it revealed as being a constant terminal inside us and everyone equally really stops everything in it’s tracks. The responsibility is held always by as and as you say, “It never goes, it’s only us who walk away”.

562. A redefining of ‘love’ Michael, thank you.

563. So many search for love like a lost treasure, a holy grail, a mythical destination, only for the chosen few. Yet the simple fact, as you show Michael, is that love is the natural rhythm of our soul, pulse of nature and the world. If only we stop searching for this false vision we have made, we can find Love is right here within us all.

564. So true Brendan, I agree. Any relationship that is based on expectations and needs gets weighed down and crumble. It simply doesn’t work because it is not based on true love but a false version of what we think is love that can trigger reactions and conflict.

565. When we truly express love, it is never just about us but about everyone. ‘…natural to just ’be’ love, irrespective of what anyone does, or a desire for what would have seemed like the perfect outcome for us, and irrespective of whether others listen to us, understand us or love us in return. It will not matter what the other does, the love will always stay the same.’ This reminds me to be love regardless of what I received back, remembering to not make it about expectations, the need to be heard or understood. To express truth and love, and allow things to unfold naturally.

     1. Where true love is lived miracles naturally occur without fanfare.

566. Thank you Michael for this absolutely amazing blog about love. In reading it highlights how simply love is and when we truly live it, life is full of joy without complications or conflict, just pure and simple love that encompasses everything. It is also an awesome blog for me to reflect on my relationship with myself and others.

567. To be able to hold ourselves in love and as equals in a relationship can be so challenging. Imposing on another is very common in many “loving” relationships but I have observed this to be so damaging. The more I am able to hold myself in unconditional love, the more this is reflected equally to others. I feel this so deeply at times.

     1. Anne this is so beautifully expressed and shows how much we still have to learn about true love. I too am learning on so many levels to refine how I hold myself and how I am in my relationships so that I am not imposing and not putting expectations on another. And at the same time as I learn to ‘be’ more love, I then get to learn about how another reacts or responds to being left to be – some will love it and expand in the love that they are, whilst others are more familiar with a dependent kind of love and feel at a loss without it, and hence can think that you are distancing yourself from them when in fact you are allowing them more space. Either way it is a learning for both parties. And as we learn we get to grow the love that we are.

        1. I like the point you make Henrietta about how some can misinterpret you giving them space as distancing yourself from them. It’s as though they feel abandoned and I can relate to this happening to me and then coming to the understanding that I only feel this way because I’ve abandoned myself and then when I realise they are actually giving me space what I feel is appreciation for them for allowing me to come to things in my own time without judgment and from there is the opportunity to come back together and deepen the connection.

        2. So true Deborah! When we are caught in our hurts it is so easy to personalise and reinterpret another’s behaviour.
           In addition, we could say that there are times when people are actually a little distant – but do we ever consider that something might be going on for them, perhaps they are having a bad day or that something has happened to them and they are deeply hurting and have retreated from the world? Often we end up just ‘writing them off’ and taking it personally which only perpetuates the distance in between. It is these games we need to stop playing, and come back to more understanding for ourselves as well as the other. What a blessing to discuss such things here in the blog and blog comments and to bring and share this understanding!

        3. I agree Henrietta – bringing understanding to ourselves and each other in each situation is key.

     2. To not impose on another is something that I am working on myself, but when I slip the challenge is to hold myself in love and then true learning and evolution can occur.

568. ‘Everything that we do not express will sit with us, accumulate and one day erupt like a volcano.’ And sometimes we are not capable even more to distinguish what was the cause for the eruption because many things may have been buried. So it is always better to have the heart to say what is not in line with our feelings.

569. Thank you Michael – ‘ … equality in its truest sense.’ Absolutely. Our world would be a very different place if this true equality were lived by all, however there are a number of people who are living this way. They make a real difference for everyone.

570. This really is a beautiful Blog Michael, we are all love and that is where we are from and that is fact, but how often love gets twisted into the emotional version and is selfishly about self and all that goes with that, instead of the true connection to self first so that the connection with another can truly shine.

     1. I find love can be thrown around as an excuse to be a certain way with others, especially parents to children. Not in the true expression of love but more in a I don’t want to be with myself and feel what is there. I have parented this way with lots of conditions. Realising I had many conditions on myself and that I need to love myself first has helped change that. Now I see and feel love in a completely different way.

571. Understanding is the biggest form of love we can express to each other!

     1. True understanding to me means the world as this means that I’ve let somebody in or somebody else has let me in. Something that I’ve found is still very rare in our society. And for letting somebody in, we’ve got to feel them which mean having open hearts. Being with someone with an open heart and being received with an open heart are both very precious, very delicate, very natural. Profoundly beautiful.

     2. So true Rachel, understanding is essential is all relationships including the relationship we have with our self.

     3. Yes it is Rachel beautifully said.

572. “We can fall into a puddle of mud, but how on earth can we fall in love?” Love this sentence, so true how can we “fall into” something we already are?

     1. I giggled as well when reading this sentence. When you really think of it, the literal words don’t make any sense, do they? Falling in love says everything about the illusion we’ve made love to be in the sense that we will never truly find love anywhere else than inside of us. Appreciating ourselves is the key here and than from that lived love with ourselves it is amazing to share this with someone else. Be it in a romantic way or in a friendship, it’s both very precious.

     2. When the love of self commences, the falling ceases. And the joy of coming back to our own love the greatest ever love.

573. Michael, your blog had me smiling today, and showed me how erroneous we are in our language. We can indeed fall into puddles, but fall in love? – how can we when actually love is what we are already, and all we do with another is feel that connection to them as an expression of our love. You highlight something for me in how love truly is ‘If we truly hold someone in love, it does not matter if they express love towards us or just walk away. The only thing love promotes is to support each other, as best as we can, and in everything that we do.’ – this breaks all expectations or any frames on how love should be, it’s just an expression always and ever and we provide a mirror to another when we express the love we are, which can remind them if they have forgotten or so choose that they too can express the love they are – job done, nothing further is needed. And that’s what we’re all here to do, to express the love we are and learn from each other how to be and live that love in each and every day.

574. Thank you Michael Kremer. An absolutely beautiful blog exploring love and what it is not. The simplicity of the truth of love through our commonality in our divine essence, makes us all equal in brotherhood, whether we accept and live this way or not.
     “This essence, common in everyone, is love. A love that is simple, still and all-knowing. It is something I can always come back to, as it will always be there – inside of me and of everyone. It is a point we all have in common, a point we all can connect to. This is equality in its truest sense”.

575. Michael this really resonates for me deeply..”Love can grow with every movement and breath. It does not have room for anger or rage against another, because when these emotions come up, we will instantly feel that, in fact, we are just angry with ourselves and cannot cope with the hurt that we feel within us.” If we take this into our world we will evolve naturally.

576. Love is a great subject to write about as most of us have an idea about love but do not really know what love is. How could we as there are very few true role models. The only couple I know that are living in a truly loving relationship is Serge and Miranda Benhayon. They love all others as equally as they love each other. This is unheard of in humanity and not very easily understood as most people say they love their partners more then they love others. So how can you love one person more the another given we all come from the one God and are all family? This realization has been dawning on me over the last few years and I am slowly understanding that we can love all equally.

     1. I have come to this understanding too, that we can love all equally, and this has been a great revelation for me and makes so much sense as we are all equal by our essence. But really loving all equally is something I still experience as a challenge, which just reflects the false ideals of love I am still holding. To know and live love equally with everybody is so groundbreaking in a world were individualized love is treasured as the highest form of love, turning a blind eye to all the abuse and violence occurring around our false ideal of romantic love.

        1. Yes Rachel so many of us have a notion of love and with in this ideal we put up with all sorts of abuse and violence. I know woman who say they love their husband and all the while putting up with being beaten. We need to understand what love is truly about and how we can love a persons essence but they may not be living this day to day so therefore we do not have to put up with their behaviours as this is not loving for ourself. Love begins with ourself.

        2. I found I didn’t want a bar of romantic love, rejected it in full because I saw it as a mask for not being that love every moment of every day, in every interaction. I have had to learn that just because someone does something nice for me it is not always done to make up for an argument or something else which could be deemed far worse. The thing is I got all these pictures and these fears from watching what happened to other people, abuse I saw out in the world when they were supposed to love one another. How we cannot see each other as one and the same is as illogical to me now as it was when I was a child. So yes, it is, as you say, truly ‘groundbreaking’ to live knowing we can all love equally and indeed we are all love equally.

577. So true Michael if we do not express what is there to be said at the time we bottle it up and then it comes out loaded with all our hurts and emotions. We are better off saying what needs to be said in the moment no matter if the other may react to it, we are giving each other an opportunity to evolve.

578. Thank you for sharing the truth about love here Michael.

579. “Love means letting the other be who he or she is and allowing them to make their choices.” This is a way of being that I am developing within all my relationships, I have become aware that I have an investment in people “getting it”. The more I observe this I am able to let them be and make there own choices with out them feeling a pressure from me that they should be different.

     1. True marylouisemyers, I am so with you on that. I find it hard to watch the mess I can see people get into sometimes particularly when I have done the same and with post experience wisdom can see a simple way out. Then I remind myself that I was once in that mess too and might well be again, I might even be in one now and don’t know it! Part of the learning came from learning it for myself – the moment I stop the pictures and the expectations a whole load of space opens up around me, I am sure I am less imposing know than I was 10 years or so ago!

     2. I also realize that most of my frustration, disappointment or simply reacting to people and feeling hurt in some way are based on wanting them to be a certain way. Letting them be the way they are is also accepting myself thus, both parties can just be and we meet each other without the unnecessary tension, imposing expectation and reactivity that otherwise burdens a relationship and is the clear opposite of unconditional love.

580. “We are a mirror for each other and this is the greatest gift we can provide” – love this michael, I guess the question is what do we reflect…love or a conditional form of love.

     1. Yes I loved that too Joel, so simple and no expectations or needs to be fulfilled, just a presentation we all make all the time to each other.

     2. Agree Joel, and the reflection known with honesty, and also that great quality of – Acceptance. No condition required.

     3. In a conversation with a friend these days, we both were reminded that we are always, even when we consider ourselves to be unobserved, reflecting our state of being and way of living and thus cannot avoid affecting the well-being of us all – that kind is the responsibility we cannot escape.

        1. And whether we accept it or not, that’s the truth – we are constantly reflecting our quality of being which is felt by all 24/7 – love or something less than love, it’s felt by all.

        2. You are offering a powerful level of responsibility here Alex. The fact that even hiding in a cave somewhere, we are still reflecting something to the world.

581. “To truly be able to love someone, I first have to hold myself in love and appreciation by accepting myself just as I am and committing to truly care for myself. Not because I am egotistic or a narcissist, but because I deserve that love and care, like we all deserve it.” Being there – with love – for ourselves first – is so important. Then we are not looking to another to fill us up – and can give more, whether it is reciprocated or not.
     Beautiful blog Michael, thankyou.

     1. Very true sueq2012, if we don’t want anything in return we don’t have expectations. We then don’t load what they say or do with our presumptions of what they are going to say or do to confirm that we were right that they were going to say or do that in the first place … phew … what a complicated scenario!!!

582. Hi Michael. In reading this blog, I really enjoy feeling how committed you are to bringing love to your relationships – VERY inspiring.

     1. Yes, me too Abby. I am deeply inspired by this blog and to truly understand love is to live it.

     2. The commitment is very much felt and very inspiring – when it comes to love we need to be lovingly ‘merciless’, otherwise it is not love.

     3. Agreed Abby and Chan, to feel the level of commitment to love Michael speaks from is power-full and so very inspiring.

     4. I agree. It is very inspiring and beautiful to feel Michael’s deep commitment to love in all his relationships – with himself and everyone else.

583. Loved what you have explored here with your blog Michael, it really makes you consider our relationship with love and how truly conditional our love can be. I feel it is a blog I will revisit again as I allow myself to go further into exploring my own connection with the love we all equally and naturally are.

584. Beautiful blog Michael, you have so simply laid out what it truly means to unconditionally love someone. It is all about allowing, understand, not imposing, just being with someone. We do find that very challenging as we tend to want to over complicate things all the time, take things personally and the like, but what you have shared is just wonderful.

     1. I find that is a key – unimposing, allowing and uncomplicated. Know when I am bringing my hurts into a conversation – where I have laced what they said with a tonne of assumptions. Michael’s blog really illustrates the joy or letting it be and experiencing unconditional love.

585. Accepting that love is who I am has been the first step in feeling that truth in my body, and then I am naturally able to express from it. Likewise with other qualities I am, for example by connecting to my delicacy, I am delicate in how I am.

586. Absolutely gorgeous summary of Love and I love the line that we are all equally love from the beginning so how can we ‘fall in love’. We are finding our way back to love from that initial place that we blocked ourself from because of our fear of being hurt. Incredible philosophy!

587. All the romantic novels and magazines talk about falling in love but it is true Michael, we don’t fall in love, we are already love, our true essence is love, it is who we are, and if we live by this then all we do is expand this love out to everyone else. If we come from love in everything we do, love will naturally be there, no falling no expectations no need just Love

     1. Absolutely Alison, love is love and love brings an even greater love that then builds even more love. Actually our free will allows love to forever expand by our own choice!

        1. You are so gorgeous Greg 🌸

        2. I agree Greg profoundly said as love is profound in its unfolding nature.

588. The love you describe here Michael challenges every other dictionary definition of love, and at the same time makes pure sense. To feel unimposed on, accepted, cherished, honoured, even accountable, are all ways to define love as you do, and these terms feel much more empowering than other commonly held descriptives like thrilling or sexual.

     1. So agree Suzanne, we’ve been sold a massive furphy when it comes to what love encompasses. Michael has brought it back to the simplicity of what it is by energy, and in action… as you say unimposing, cherishing, accepting, accountable and honouring. I know which one l subscribe to.

     2. So true Suzanne. Michael’s definition of love also blows out of the water all the fairy tale images we are sold as kids and through the media as teenagers and adults.

589. Love loves, this is unconditional love. Regardless of what it is faced with or choices that have been made, love simply loves. If there is a condition or expectation, excuse, blame or justification then it is not love. Thank you Michael.

     1. A perfect summing up Leigh!

     2. Thank you Michael and Leigh, absolutely, love leaves no stone unturned in the way it is there for all of us equally. It is only this human existence our spirit, that quickly wants to turn the stone back over and deny there ever was a true love in the first place!

        1. I love this Greg, but once the stone is turned over our bodies have a register of what was underneath! it becomes harder to fight with a body that knows what love is.

        2. True Leigh and Greg, when there is love we have registered in the body there is free will whether we choose it or not. It is always more harder when we resist what we have already felt. In truth we all feel it too.

     3. Love can only love. It is a fool’s game to call anything that is not love, love. It is the greatest game we play on ourselves and one another to think that we can label as love anything that we wish. As you have said, Leigh, “If there is a condition or expectation, excuse, blame or justification then it is not love”. Simple as that.

     4. Leigh what a powerful couple of words, ‘love loves’. It really calls out the fact that what most people use the word love for is not actually love because what we normally say is ‘love loves if’……………..

     5. Leigh thank you for simplifying what unconditional love is.

     6. So true, if there is judgement or blame etc then it is not love. we have to both/all be willing to own our own hurts in order to be able to love without any of these limitations

     7. Beautiful and simple Leigh. Love loves. Always. Nothing less.

     8. Well said Leigh – ’Love loves’ – it can’t get more simple than that.

590. Exactly Michael, where do we think we are if it is that we ‘fall’ in love? As you have beautifully outlined, we can choose to allow more love to unfold or not, holding our bodies in rigid protection, either way the fact remains – the love we are is forever there waiting to bloom.

     1. I love the imagery of equating falling in love to falling into a puddle of mud. As you have emphasised Giselle, we are love, it is a matter of how much of this love we allow or accept.

        1. Indeed Lee, instead of us ‘falling’ into a puddle of love, perhaps we should consider how much love we are ‘allowing to come out’ of us, and whether or not we are ‘putting a lid on it’ (pun intended)…. 😀

        2. And we drop the protection or our guard our love is innately there. The question is how much guard do we want to drop and let ourselves be vulnerable.

Comments are closed.