{"id":14,"date":"2011-01-21T19:20:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T19:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/prophetormadman\/2011\/01\/unconditional-love.html"},"modified":"2011-01-21T19:20:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T19:20:31","slug":"unconditional-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/2011\/01\/unconditional-love.html","title":{"rendered":"Unconditional Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">It was once said that God&#8217;s Love<br \/>\nis never changing and Unconditional but what is Unconditional Love? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">A few years ago, a friend of<br \/>\nmine was reading a book that she believed spoke of Unconditional Love and asked<br \/>\nme to take a look at it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Almost immediately, I ran<br \/>\nacross a line that said we should love unconditionally except when&#8230; I then<br \/>\ntook a moment and asked myself, if unconditional means without conditions, can<br \/>\nthere be an exception? It did not take long for the answer to come to me. The<br \/>\nanswer of course is no, there can be <b>no exceptions<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"> to Unconditional Love or it becomes something else. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Obviously, once an exception<br \/>\nis placed on Unconditional Love it is transformed into conditional love.<br \/>\nLooking at this world or even your own life it is not hard to see that most<br \/>\ntimes we live with and place conditions on love.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Most people spend their<br \/>\nentire lives trapped in the never ending search for love and never find a true<br \/>\nand lasting peace. What they find instead is a moment where one of their<br \/>\naddictions to the things of this world is temporally satisfied. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Whenever someone is addicted<br \/>\nto or places a value on money, sex, alcohol, control, or even the acceptance or<br \/>\napproval of others, it is <b>impossible<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><br \/>\nto experience Unconditional Love.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">As a Christian, I heard that<br \/>\nJesus said in order to truly be one of his disciples one must forsake<br \/>\neverything and everyone including yourself. Today I understand, he meant, in<br \/>\norder to experience Unconditional Love you can not entertain thoughts and<br \/>\nbeliefs that are limited and tied to our human or ego mind. Likewise, Buddha<br \/>\nonce said, all our suffering is derived from our resistance to life. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">If we were to look at the<br \/>\nmessages these two masters presented and tried to find a common denominator<br \/>\nwhat do you suppose that common denominator would be. I would say each of these<br \/>\nmasters was trying to get us to see Unconditional Love and to discover how to<br \/>\nexperience it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Understanding on an<br \/>\nintellectual level however, will not necessarily bring you the experience.<br \/>\nUnderstanding brings you to the door but you must be the one to open the door. By<br \/>\nopening the door, I mean seeing the reality of the moment and without a<br \/>\njudgmental mind. What is discovered from this wakened state is only Love is<br \/>\nreal. Our ego thoughts rooted in judgment cannot share the same sacred space. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><span><\/span>To me, that is what Jesus<br \/>\nmeant when he said you cannot serve two masters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">God not only allows us to<br \/>\nentertain thoughts that come from our ego or spiritual minds, but he has<br \/>\ncreated a system that prevents any interference in our freewill to remain<br \/>\nasleep.<span>&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">My hope and wish for all of<br \/>\nhumanity is that someday we can move past our petty differences and help our<br \/>\nfellow man wake up to Love. Not conditional love where me and mine must come<br \/>\nbefore you and yours but Unconditional Love where we are all one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Regardless of your path or<br \/>\nwhat religion you practice, if you wish to awaken yourself and live awakened in<br \/>\nthis world you will have to struggle. More to come&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Love and Light,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Brother Bruce<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><i>Prophet or Madma<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was once said that God&#8217;s Love is never changing and Unconditional but what is Unconditional Love? A few years ago, a friend of mine was reading a book that she believed spoke of Unconditional Love and asked me to take a look at it. Almost immediately, I ran across a line that said we&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,5],"tags":[69,71,70,67,68,65,66],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enlightenment","category-higher-consciousness","category-spirituality","tag-approval","tag-awaken","tag-disciples","tag-everlasting","tag-jesus","tag-love","tag-peace"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Unconditional Love - Prophet or Madman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/2011\/01\/unconditional-love.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unconditional Love - Prophet or Madman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was once said that God&#8217;s Love is never changing and Unconditional but what is Unconditional Love? A few years ago, a friend of mine was reading a book that she believed spoke of Unconditional Love and asked me to take a look at it. 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A few years ago, a friend of mine was reading a book that she believed spoke of Unconditional Love and asked me to take a look at it. 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He says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So you'd think I'd know a thing or two about these spiritual matters. On the contrary, the deepest profundity I've been able to manage is to try to live my life in accordance with the Golden Rule. So that's what I do and have advised others to do through my social work as a founder of the National Optimists Party. Yet on a personal level, the fact of the matter is that while, over time, I've found myself with an increasing sense of awe and reverence for the magnificence of creation, I've experienced a receding sense of understanding and familiarity with the Creator. Imagine my good fortune to run into Bruce Adams, a fine soul whose ears are directly attuned to the Creator's frequency. I'm looking forward to learning a lot and enjoying myself immensely as I join Bruce and my good friend Steve on our lighthearted spiritual journey all across this great land looking for and ministering to the souls of America.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/author\/cjohnson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prophetormadman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}