Can We Love Unconditionally?

The short answer is, well, I would say no.

To get more nuanced, we need to define what love is. I know there has been many good (and really bad!) songs written about it, but I think we're all still a little confused about this loaded word. James Thurber acknowledged this when he said love is “that pleasant confusion we know exists.”

I believe the ancient Greeks had it fairly right when they distinguished love in the following ways: agápe (divine unconditional love), éros (romantic/erotic love), philía (friendship/brotherly love), and storgē (compassionate/filial love). Freud would probably add a healthy narcissism for oneself, a self-love or positive self-regard, as part of these forms of love.

Eros, philía, storgē, and self-love are all manifestations and gradations of divine agapic love. But unlike agapic love, these forms of love are conditional. There is always a subtle manipulation going on within ourselves (our fears and our desires) in relationship to others as finite beings. And for convenience sake, we have created a false consciousness in which things-in-relation are seen as separate for us.

I know there are some that would say the love a mother has towards her baby child is mostly unconditional. While somewhat true, even the young mother has her challenging moments. And let's not forget that child will someday grow up to be an incorrigible teenager where that "unconditional" love may not always be so accessible. 

I believe that's why Aquinas defined love as “to will the good of another.” He understood that most of us are not infused with the grace of agapic love at all times. As such, love requires a commitment or covenant even when we don't necessarily "feel" it. If the feeling-sense of love is not there in the moment, then we may need to cultivate a willingness of love for the other. (One person told me when she couldn't feel love for someone, she would thank God for loving them. I've found this to be a helpful practice for myself.) Moreover, the practice of love for others can help dissolve some of our self-image and self-importance to make way for more agapic love over time. As such, we can see where faith, family, work, and community are vital to our spiritual growth.

But if I’m acknowledging there is this agapic love, then why would I say we can’t love unconditionally? Here’s the rub: we really can’t do it! 

As long as we're identified with our self-image, then love will always have “to remain a marketing sort of business, something to be given and received, and always with conditionality. It does not know anything of unconditional love because it is only while self-image sleeps that unconditional love is realized. For self-image, unconditional love must remain a matter of faith rather than experience, and it is almost invariably unwilling to risk itself for faith” (Gerald G. May).

This gets into all sorts of notions of what the self-image is. Buddhism nails much of it. According to Dumitru Stăniloae, man is “nothing but a mass of component parts, with no inner unity, therefore there is nothing in the human being that can call for, or make possible, any ultimate love. Altruism of any kind, whatever its tinge, and however ardent it may be, can only be a procedure for getting rid of desire.” Hence, when identified with this self-image, we are always subtly defensive in our self-serving manipulations and unable to open our heart fully.

The way out is the way up. If we can offer up our self-importance as a sacrifice to God, then we find something beyond the self that can love unconditional. May says:

“Agapic love is ultimate, unconditional love. It is a love that transcends human beings both individually and collectively. Because it does not originate from within individual people, it is not influenced by their personal desires or whims. It is a universal “given” that pre-exists all effort; it neither needs to be earned nor can it be removed. It is only agape that is perfect and capable of casting out fear, for it is only agape that cannot be taken away. Narcissism, eroticism, and filial love are all conditional forms of love; they can be influenced by circumstances and by personal whim. ... But agape suffers none of these vicissitudes. It is permanent, eternal, and completely unflappable. The only choice humans have in relation to agape is whether or not to recognize its presence, to “realize” it. We can neither magnify nor destroy it.”

When this is realized, the disparity between an inner longing for unconditional love and an outer experience of conditional love is resolved. We also find our center, and paradoxical unity that can love unconditionally as persons in relationship in God and with others.

I may not always love you

But long as there are stars above you

You never need to doubt it

I'll make you so sure about it

God only knows what I'd be without you 

— Brian Wilson and Tony Asher  

In an erotic “high,” the world disappears in love. In the spiritual “high,” the world appears in love. — Gerald G. May

Know Your (Sacred) Surroundings

In a recent interview, Peter Thiel said we need to look up and not so much around (which just creates a mimetic trap).

He studied under René Girard, so he's aware that the wisdom of crowds can easily devolve into the madness of crowds. It's an easy trap if we don't stand deep and high. So perhaps better to center ourselves vertically, otherwise we just fall into utter horizontal fragmentation that is never unified.

I'm getting this point in another book I'm reading by Jonah Goldberg. His thesis is that civilization is fragile, but works because our pluralism is centered around deeper principles. Once those principles go, we just become pre-modern tribal power mongers trying to subsume or battle everyone else. Watch the news lately?

But maybe there are some things worth being with down here. 

Shall we get a little woo-woo? Well, I suppose this blog often touches on the woo, but hopefully holds on to enough traditional and intellectual rigor to not let the other ‘woo’ come in. We’ll leave that to the Deepak’s of the world.

I found this (white paper)* very compelling. What it shows is how much relational exchange goes on beyond the physical. And not just between us as people but also the objects we come into contact with. We are indeed always transmitting and receiving energy and information with each other.

One profound example, that has been scientifically verified, is that highly-conscious human beings can change the properties of an artifact through focused intention on it. “Not only can properties of inorganic materials such as pH of water be changed in line with the intention, but liver enzyme activity (chemical potential) of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) can be augmented.” This can be tested on any device that is unimprinted to where it becomes an Imprinted Host Device (IHD). This setup is illustrated below, and has been replicated numerous times.

This has huge implications for how we consider sacred relics! Many relics that have been offered virtuous intentions by saints and sages throughout the ages can potentially store and continue to transmit this information to others. I know when I enter some sacred spaces, it's no accident that my state changes immediately. It's as if my contemplation is being done to me.

Moreover, “Another important observation is that the Buddha [sacred] Relics have an aspect of consciousness and one could even say that they have an innate intelligence. It is well observed that relics multiply in reverential environments; they also disappear if kept in what we could consider ‘unholy’ places like trouser pockets! In this sense they are meta-stable. ... A dynamism enters from these higher dimensional intelligences through the Relics.”

The cliché is true: we are all interconnected in more ways than we realize.

We are what we consume, what and who we surround ourselves with, what we think, and who we love, or... 

Mass ↔ Energy ↔ Information ↔ Consciousness

Best to get right with our surroundings above and below!

* All references and illustrations are from the paper “The Sacred Buddha Relic Tour: For the Benefit of All Beings” by Nisha J. Manek, MD, FRCP (UK) and William A Tiller, PhD. Presented at the Annual Toward A Science of Consciousness Conference: Forum on Eastern Philosophy Symposium. University of Arizona Center for Consciousness Studies, Tucson, Arizona, April 9th, 2012.

The Ultimate Confession

In reading Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog post Saved by Weakness, I was taken back at how small our aims are. I'll admit to feeling good about myself when I have not done any recent explicit transgressions against my fellow man. It's the secular bar of being a "nice person". But this hubris comes from a lack of Truth in being, where we lose sight of the ultimate goal in life is to become a saint (i.e. sanctification, deification, theosis). Yet, we either dismiss this as being unattainable for ourselves or we conclude this was never attained for those seen as such (who we believe to being corrupt in reality despite narratives told to us by history or an institution).

If I am to see my brokenness sincerely and with gut-wrenching honesty, I can also come to feel some healthy guilt in all of this. The guilt is there to show there is something inconsistent with my values, my essence, my telos. The point is not to compare ourselves to others in spite of falling short, but to muster the courage to transform the image to the likeness. Spiritual atrophy can easily creep in, and if we're not moving upward eventually we fall downward.

In his post, Fr. Freeman brings in a remarkable passage from The Way of A Pilgrim that elaborates the deepest confessions from the nameless Russian mystic. Here, our anonymous pilgrim offers a vulnerable and courageous self that is not limited by secular treasures. I feel the need to repost these confessions, as a reminder how I fall short by low aims and to inspire me to repent evermore.

“1. I do not love God. For if I loved Him, then I would be constantly thinking of Him with heartfelt satisfaction; every thought of God would fill me with joy and delight. On the contrary, I think more and with greater eagerness about worldly things, while thoughts of God present difficulty and aridity. If I loved Him, then my prayerful communion with Him would nourish, delight, and lead me to uninterrupted union with Him. But on the contrary, not only do I not find my delight in prayer but I find it difficult to pray; I struggle unwillingly, I am weakened by slothfulness and am most willing to do anything insignificant only to shorten or end my prayer. In useless occupations I pay no attention to time; but when I am thinking about God, when I place myself in His presence, every hour seems like a year. When a person loves another, he spends the entire day unceasingly thinking about his beloved, imagining being with him, and worrying about him; no matter what he is occupied with, the beloved does not leave his thoughts. And I in the course of the day barely take one hour to immerse myself deeply in meditation about God and enkindle within myself love for Him, but for twenty-three hours with eagerness I bring fervent sacrifices to the idols of my passions! I greatly enjoy conversations about vain subjects which degrade the spirit, but in conversations about God I am dry, bored, and lazy. And if unwillingly I am drawn into a conversation about spiritual matters, I quickly change the subject to something which flatters my passions. I have avid curiosity about secular news and political events; I seek satisfaction for my love of knowledge in worldly studies, in science, art, and methods of acquiring possessions. But the study of the law of the Lord, knowledge of God, and religion does not impress me, does not nourish my soul. I judge this to be an unessential activity of a Christian, a rather supplementary subject with which I should occupy myself in my leisure time. In short, if love of God can be recognized by the keeping of His commandments—“If anyone loves me he will keep my word,” says the Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:23), and I not only do not keep His commandments but I make no attempt to do so—then in very truth I should conclude that I do not love God. St. Basil the Great confirms this when he says, “The evidence that man does not love God and His Christ is that he does not keep His commandments.”

2. I do not love my neighbor. Not only because I am not ready to lay down my life for the good of my neighbor, according to the Gospel, but I will not even sacrifice my peace and my happiness for his good. If I loved my neighbor as myself, as the Gospel commands, then his misfortune would grieve me also and his prosperity would bring me great joy. But, on the contrary, I listen with curiosity to accounts of my neighbor’s misfortune and I am not grieved but indifferent to them and, what is more, I seem to find satisfaction in them. I do not sympathize with the failings of my brother but I judge them and publicize them. My neighbor’s welfare, honor, and happiness do not delight me as my own; I am either completely indifferent to them or I am jealous or envious.

3. I do not have faith in spiritual realities. I believe neither in immortality nor in the Gospel. If I were firmly convinced and believed without a doubt in eternal life and in the consequences for our earthly actions, then I would be constantly thinking about this; the very thought of immortality would inspire me with wonder and awe and I would live my life as an alien who is getting ready to enter his native land. On the contrary, I don’t even think of eternity and I consider the end of this life as the limit of my existence. I nurture a secret thought within and wonder, “Who knows what will happen after death?” Even when I say that I believe in immortality, it is only from natural reasoning, for down deep in my heart I am not convinced of it and my actions and preoccupations with earthly cares prove this. If I accepted the Holy Gospel with faith into my heart as the word of God, then I would be constantly occupied with it; I would study it, would delight in it, and with deep reverence would immerse myself in it. Wisdom, mercy, and love hidden within it would lead me to ecstasy, and day and night I would delight in the lessons contained in the law of God. They would be my daily spiritual bread and I would earnestly strive to fulfill them; nothing on earth would be strong enough to keep me from this. But on the contrary, even if I sometimes read or listen to the word of God, it is either out of necessity or curiosity; I do not delve deeply into it but feel dryness and indifference to it and I receive no greater benefit from it than I do from secular reading. Further, I am eager to give it up promptly and go to worldly reading, in which I have greater interest and from which I get more satisfaction. I am full of pride and self-love. All my actions confirm this. When I see something good in myself, then I wish to display it or brag about it to others, or interiorly I am full of self-love even when outwardly I feign humility. I ascribe everything to my own ability and I consider myself more perfect than others, or at least not worse. If I notice a vice in myself, then I try to excuse it or justify it; I pretend to be innocent or I claim that I couldn’t help it. I am impatient with those who do not show me respect and I consider them incapable of judging character. I am vain about my talents and cannot accept any failure in my actions. I grumble and I am glad to see the misfortune of my enemies, and my intention in doing anything good is either praise, self-interest, or earthly comfort. In a word, I continuously make an idol out of myself, to whom I give unceasing service as I seek sensual delights and try to nourish my carnal desires.”