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Early last year a good friend and colleague, Marci Shimoff, contacted me and told me she was writing a new book to be titled, Love For No Reason. She said she had read a post I had written about my unconditional love for my wife, Shelly. Marci asked if she could interview me for the book and use what I had written. Of course I agreed.
Her book has just been published and I want to strongly recommend that you read it, because she explains, in a way that I had never thought of, how to create a life of unconditional love. Because I’ve been able to love unconditionally, I know how incredible that experience is, so anything you can do to have that experience yourself is worth doing. http://www.thelovebook.com
The book opens with an inspiring story about love for no reason that sets the tone for the entire book. I was hooked from the start.
Early on Marci uses part of her interview with me, where I described my experience of unconditional love.
When I married my wife, Shelly, almost twenty-nine years ago, she asked me why I loved her. I answered, “Just because I do.”
She didn’t like this answer. She wanted to know which qualities about her made me love her. But I kept insisting that I simply loved her, not for any particularly reason.
I explained: “If I love you for specific reasons, then my love is conditioned on you being a certain way. If you stop being that way or you aren’t that way at a given time, I may not love you. But if I love you ‘just because,’ then my love is unconditional and I can and will love you no matter what you do or don’t do.”
If I don’t feel love toward Shelly at any given moment, I realize that I’m not experiencing love inside myself and that it’s up to me to figure out why and to start experiencing it again. I’m not blaming her for anything and I’m not waiting for her to change in some way. This gives me complete control over the way I feel about her. In other words, there’s nothing she has to do to make me love her, and there’s nothing she can do that will lead me to not love her.
Marci’s book is filled with many inspiring stories about love and she also offers some useful tips regarding what it takes to learn to love unconditionally.
For example, she points out that you need to be able to experience self-love before you can truly love another.
Almost all of us carry around this same underlying belief of “I’m not good enough”—or some variation of how we are flawed or inadequate. Yours might be “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m not worthy,” or “I’m not loveable.” It really doesn’t matter which edition of the “I’m not Okay” manual you have, when you don’t love yourself, you hold yourself back from receiving life’s richest experience: Love for No Reason. It’s like having a winning lottery ticket and not showing up to claim the millions.”
Marci describes a meeting she attended with the Dalai Lama, who radiates love for no reason:
Just sitting within ten feet of this great spiritual master was transformational. His presence was incredibly calming, bathing the entire room in an aura of quiet, unconditional love.
The Dalai Lama graciously welcomed us to the meeting, and before taking our questions, he shared a few words that put us instantly at ease. He said that whether he is addressing the president of a nation or a homeless person on the street makes no difference to him, because he treats everyone the same.
“Differences in religious beliefs, politics, social status, and position are all secondary,” the Dalai Lama explained. “When we look at someone with compassion, we are able to see beyond those secondary differences and connect to the primary essence that binds all humans together as one.” (Emphasis added.)
He added that when we are in this state of being, we feel love for ourselves and others, not because of what we do, but simply because we are.
Marci identifies one of the biggest barriers to unconditional love:
One of the biggest blocks to experiencing Love for No Reason is being judgmental, which is different from exercising good judgment or voicing an opinion. Being judgmental is condemning another person or situation, which creates tension and separation in our relationships, effectively cutting off the flow of love.
I was excited that she also discussed love for no reason at work. She quoted from an interview she had with another one of my friends and colleagues, Stewart Emery.
When you’re living in a state of love, it automatically brings the ability to “be a good one” to whatever you are doing. It’s love that causes that to happen. Without love for your work, you can’t get good at it.
What’s interesting is that if you ask people who love their work why they love it, they’ll invent reasons, because we’re socialized to have reasons for everything, but the truth is that the love we’re talking about “passeth all understanding”: it’s beyond reasons. And it’s this love that produces the greatest artistic, scientific, and business achievements.”
Near the end of the book Marci has a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that is especially relevant in today’s world, where there is conflict wherever we look.
Though it’s tempting to reject or even try to destroy the people we feel are hateful, Dr. King said that returning hate with hate “only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe … It just never ends … The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil … and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.”
Although these words were spoken more than fifty years ago, we still face the same challenge today: to love people we don’t agree with and who don’t see the world the same way we do.
There is nothing like the experience of loving for no reason. I’ve had that experience many times and it usually is accompanied by a feeling of bliss. If you want to know more about it and learn how to create it yourself, read Marci’s book. To order the book on-line, please click on the following link (I don’t earn an affiliate commission, I just think you should read the book) or go to your nearest book store. http://www.thelovebook.com
Please share below your thoughts and quest
ions on unconditional love.
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copyright © 2011 Morty Lefkoe
Thank you!
I discovered at a young age, 16 that when you stop judging you start loving, this includes to stop judging yourself. Love does not take any force or effort. It is just letting go of judgments. It’s like removing the dirt from a buried treasure. You dig, and there’s the treasure.
When you are always looking for some evidence to back-up your old beliefs you will always find it….. in every situation. But then you get instances where you find out the truth about an event and it can be so enlightening.
I have had glimpses of being in the moment and not labelling peeps or events and i have had such great times and really connect with complete strangers…..very cool.
Love your work Morty……Happy B’day….. you don’t look 75!
Cheers
Shaun
I enjoyed your blog on unconditional love, and, after years as a practicing Buddhist, can attest to the life-changing power, as well as the bliss you describe associated with unconditional love. Even growing your ability to love unconditionally a small amount is absolutely life-changing. Dr. King did an amazing job exemplifying the power of meeting hatred with love. The Dali Lama, I am sad to report, does not treat everyone the same. His actions, particularly with regard to religious tolerance, do not accord with his words. More information, and a wealth of third party references on the matter, can be found at http://www.westernshugdensociety.org/.
I have similar feelings like W Gill’s comments.
But I know, something (meaning) is causing this ‘certainty’ that ‘we’re not good enough’ and all negative, destructive thoughts and feelings.
In some weird way, I KNOW (I’m sure) I love myself, at least, at some level, because I didn’t stop searching for solutions. It’s a hard pull-push situation. We human are very weird…
However, I DO think there is a reason EVEN to love unconditionally, that might not need any explanation or justification for someone else, or plain, you don’t want to explain, it might be only: ok, I CAN love someone unconditionally because I choose to, because I like to catch myself doing great spiritual things, and that makes me feel great, and for sure someone else will notice it and appreciate it probably, and that will be awesome!, so you do it.
I believe Gandhi, Mother Teresa and all great people thought and felt in that way and it was a huge driving force for them.
At the end, everything is: about to feel good and loved.
But what about you do great things every single day for everybody else (in my case it IS my choice and I fell great myself, means the first part of the deal), but you don’t feel FEEDBACK for long time? As it happening to me. And yes…catching yourself doing good things for others IS great, but I NEED (condition?, well yes) to feel the feedback too.
I NEED someone else appreciation and love. This is a NEED, I can’t go alone for others and not receive nothing. And I’m not talking 1 to 1, I can give 100, but I need at least 1.
I’m not saying I’m not receiving, some kind of love or appreciation, yes, but NOT at the level I need. I want to give more and better to see if it is my part that I’m not doing good enough, but I’m just shut down on the same pattern.
In my experience, the “amount” of feedback in the form of love and appreciation you receieve is in direct proportion to how much you love yourself. Unconditional love, of course, has no levels; it is what it is. I am in an extended family through my husband that rarely gives any feedback, positive or negative, on the poems I have written from my heart for them at various occasions including birthdays and funerals. I felt hurt much of the time because they didn’t say how great my poem was or how much it meant to them. When I went through the Natural Confidence program and learned the tools in the Occurring Process, I realized that I don’t NEED other’s appreciation or love. It sounds like this is difficult to understand; what I’ve learned and, more importantly, realized in my own heart and mind, is that my own love and appreciation is where it all starts. Children are born with unconditional love; of course they want their parents to recognize that they’ve learned something. I believe a long time ago you absorbed the message that you need other people’s appreciation and love in order to feel validated as a human being. The first time I had an inkling of this was when I wrote a memorial poem for a good friend who died; he had a huge funeral with over 200 people attending. I was nervous as hell when I stood at the podium and realized, in that moment of fear, that I was sharing what was in my heart out of unconditional love and not whether they were going to appreciate or even like what I recited. I felt unconditional love for them and myself and their appreciation didn’t even matter. When you feel such intense NEED, you may feel “great” initially, yet you’re wondering when others are going to feed you their love and appreciation so you can feel good. You’re depending on others to make you feel good. Approval and appreciation are wonderful(and this is coming from someone who used to be an approval junkie to validate my existence). When you love yourself unconditionally, love and appreciation from others is the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.
Love and Light from someone who’s been there,
Lauren
Unconditional love for others and loving ourselves unconditionally are interesting ideas, but what if a person just can’t do it. I feel really insecure about the way I look and that’s based on years of experience – other people treating me a certain way that let’s me know I’m not good enough.
It has nothing to do with my parents or my family. I can say that ‘I attibuted meaning to events’ and ‘the events themselves had no meaning’, but the truth is, as long as people treat me a certain way I will always feel a certain way about myself. Therefore, I can never love myself unconditionally and so can never love anyone else unconditionally.
Morty,
I have a proposition for you.
I feel that i am unable to truly eliminate my beliefs, through some DVDs and streaming video. This is not because i am not correctly following your process, because obviously a session with you would be far more beneficial, or because i don’t have parents, because i do, or because I’m weird mix of visual and emotional kinaesthetic, because even if i am, i don’t believe that that, specifically, would impede successful subconscious reprogramming via your method; I believe i can not achieve success with the tapes because i am not able to criticize and contrast my viewpoints against yours in order to come to a new ‘true’ belief. For this reason i feel stuck. I know you can sympathize.
I experience things very differently from other people. I would even go as far as to say that i experience things that others do not. Now that i think about it, its probably because i made the distinction through experience, then understanding, then creating it. Let me give you an example (you tell me if its true, or at least was true at the time of when you wrote this article):
THE FOLLOWING IS:
Your Conscious and/or Subconscious Mental Processes:
(100% accurate, plus or minus a few details)
-You would like to be able to love unconditionally, as you may or may not once have.
-In order to love unconditionally, you must first love yourself.
-Since you do not love unconditionally, you must not love yourself.
>Trigger emotional pain
-You recognize this consciously, and want to change it.
-You do a subconscious search for how to fix the problem
-Your subconscious tells you that the way you’ve previously fixed problems of this sort, is to use the method you created.
-You consciously go through the method by yourself, trying to fix the problem; Perhaps, you do not wish to reveal these thoughts to anyone; Perhaps, there is no one you feel you can trust.
-After failing many times, you conclude that either:
1. The method is incomplete and/or doesn’t work.
2. The method does work, because you know it does, and you’re just too stupid to figure it out>leads to creating the belief: ‘I’m not good enough’
3. Makes you question the meaning of knowledge.
more likely, you conclude all of the above.
-this conclusion sends you down a spiral of negative/unwanted behaviors and feelings/emotions, which lead you to create more negative/unwanted beliefs along the way
Cue current date.
At the very least, you know that i am able to see things about you that you are not able to see consciously about yourself, without having ever met you. My problem is, i believe, i will have significant difficulty reprogramming my beliefs, without speaking directly to, the creator of the method.
my email is DaveSerna@gmail.com
if ANYTHING about this message was perceived as negative, you may understand the reason why I’m sending it in the first place.
Hi Dave,
I’m not sure what your proposition is.
The on-line programs work for over 90% of the people who try them. If they doesn’t work for you and you think you need to talk to a certified facilitator, we offer one-on-one sessions. The fee is $200 for a one-hour session.
We can help you identify the beliefs and conditionings that cause any given problem and then help you get rid of them.
To sign up you can call our office at (415) 506-4472.
Love, Morty
I did the program, spent 15 hours or so, processing, and was part of the 10% that it did not really work on. Some things were insightful, I’ll give the process that. When it was asked ” can’t you just see the negative thought out there (like it physically exists)?”. And the answer for me was always no. I couldn’t see anything, and I could only rarely identify an early memory that created my negative belief. I found this insurmountably frustrating. I also asked to make good on the money back guarantee. Nobody got back to me.
You may try “the work” by Byron Katie. The process is similar, but more for me, I find it more effective at eliminating negative beliefs. Good luck.
Stacey
Hi Stacey,
I’m sorry that you did not have a successful experience with our Natural Confidence program. I’m not sure who or how you asked for a refund, as payment is usually made within a week. In any case, if you call us at (415) 506-4472 we will be happy to refund your payment.
If you were unable to “see” the belief, you are probably emotionally kinesthetic, whihc means you “feel” the belief rather than see it. Most kinesthetic people are successful with the program, I’m not sure why you weren’t.
Also, I’ve written extensively on this blog on how to find the source of beleifs if you are having difficulty in doing so. I’m sorry it didn’t work for you.
I look forward to hearing from you so we can refund your payment.
Love, Morty
A few things come to mind when I read your excellent blog; I learned a long time ago that I am love, I don’t have love…I am love, which is an energy, an invisible life force that weaves its way through the fabric of my experiences. And being me is being love. It’s easy to become confused about love when we were children. The same people who told us they loved us at night when they tucked us in, could also provide the spankings when we didn’t behave the next day. So we may have taught ourselves that in order to be loved, we had to obey and do what was pleasing to those in authority called parents. And later in life, we establish similar rules or criteria for us to love others. I’d like to offer that, in my opinion, unconditional love is a sincere, genuine concern for the welfare of another without expecting anything in return. No hooks. Like you said, you don’t have to have a reason and I’m finding the less I expect in return the more free I feel. Finding and expressing my genuine concern has been a lifelong passion for me and it’s been worth every challenging experience to reach it more consistently. I’m still practicing. I enjoy your work Marty, always keep going! Will Hamilton
Hi Will,
Thanks so much for sharing your experience with love for no reason and contributing to the conversation.
Love, Morty