Onenessguy's Weblog

Question 170: How can we understand unconditional love while living in duality?

In duality we always see conditional love that is colored by our egos, so it is very difficult for us to even begin to comprehend and live in unconditional love for all. Yet that is what we yearn for.

If we can’t just will ourselves into that state of consciousness, then we need to take a gradual approach of taking one or two steps at a time and fully master them as we move onward to Self-realization.

Here are a few steps to consider:

• Ask your Infinite Self to communicate with the Infinite Self of “others” (people, animals, trees) and bring that understanding of oneness to conscious awareness’
• Be conscious of what labels, old images, and stereotypes you might be possibly holding onto about other people and animals.
• Rise above the duality of attack and defense and see the greater unity. Attacking leads to defense and then on and on it goes.
• Project into the cosmic mirror the knowing that all life is one.
• Give unconditional love to yourself so you can understand it from the inside out and outside in.
• Meditate on the oneness of all creation and the Spirit within and beyond all creation.
• Read or listen to people who write and talk about the oneness of life. Take away whatever inspires and resonates with you.
• Be with people and animals who also want to live in unconditional love.
• Write your own thoughts about the oneness of life. Keep a journal about your experiences.
• Remind yourself every day in order to make steady progress.

In order to remind yourself every day it’s a good idea to have some kind of meditation routine, like 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at noon, and 15-30 minutes in the evening, depending on how much work you have to do to meet all your obligations. If your schedule is packed with activity from waking up to going to bed again, then take a few minutes whenever you can to close your eyes and look up within your consciousness.

Little by little a planetary prayer book is thus being composed by an increasingly united humanity seeking its oneness. Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with ‘divine,’ its transcendence into higher forms of life.

~ Robert Muller

Wherever there has been expansion in love or progress in well-being, of individuals or numbers, it has been through the perception, realisation, and the practicalisation of the Eternal Truth-the oneness of all beings

~ Swami Vivekananda

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities.

~ Emma Goldman