Studies Reveal Unconditional Love Causes Freedom

Theme song: Could You Be Loved

Some things are hard to separate out.

What, really, are the fundamental differences between:

• Unconditional love
• Freedom and
• Enlightenment

Few of us regularly experience the feelings of peace and contentment that come from loving a person (or yourself) for everything he or she is -- and isn't. I'd say most people are lucky to have felt it a few precious times.

I have felt it. I felt it just last weekend. I went on a run with Hank, Jonjo, and Laura. We all did our own thing -- ran at our individual paces, had our individual experiences. I did not want things to be different from the way they were -- no one needed to run faster or slower or together or apart.

I in fact felt joy because we felt like family. I hadn't been sure, following my divorce, if I would ever feel the warm, soft family feelings to which I had aspired for so long; I was ready not to if that was what life demanded. But it didn't. So I sat on the edge of my bed for a few minutes and felt. I let myself sink into these welcome feelings of peace and contentment and naturally it felt good.

Being ready to let things go is definitely one facet of unconditional love. One needs to be ready to let go of demands and expectations, to let situations unfold as they inevitably will. That is what freedom is, too.

That is why the Buddha said that freedom from attachment is enlightenment.

How can one be free, or enlightened, if one is hanging onto how things need to be? Or need to not be?

You pick: would you rather love unconditionally, be free, or be enlightened? You choose, but pick one today. . . .right now.

It's the first step.

{Photo credit: Yogesh Kumar Jaiswal}