Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Unconditional Conditions

What is unconditional love?

My definition would be loving someone inclusive of their shortcomings, not excepting those parts. Being able to still open my heart and soul, and life to a beloved knowing full well that they don't measure up to my perceived needs. Taking responsibility for the shortfall and working to find ways to fill in the blanks myself.

Are they blanks? I think the absence of what we desire in a beloved is more an opportunity to grow a missing aspect of the self.

Hindsight being 20/20; I can now look at the opportunity I had to see just how complete I really am in and of myself - and - that there is room in my world to allow for more. I had an opportunity - at which I did not succeed - to be in the present moment and cherish what I had without trying to make it something else.

Osho writes at length about loving without fear. His writings are not easy for my Americanized brain to digest, let alone live, but the concept of allowance seems to me to be the true gift of unconditional love. Loving what is - in it's totality which encompasses what it is not.

I think it's important to know what I'm looking for. But should I be so inflexible that anything short of that becomes unacceptable? As am I, the other is perfect in who they are - AND - the rest of what I'm craving will have to be fulfilled some how/some place else.

Is it unconditional love for these beings that allows me to let them be? Maybe it's myself that I'm learning to love unconditionally. That two souls want something different does not make either wrong. At what point do you stop railing against the night and simply wait for dawn to arrive according to it's own schedule.

I frequently pull The Fool card from the tarot deck. The description speaks of innocence, simplicity; the neophyte who journeys for the sake of the journey, not for the outcome. Contrary to what I would feel if someone called me "a fool" I find I welcome the opportunity to be open-minded and non-judgmental; open to possibility; being in the land of "and" rather than either/or. I suspect the Fool is a master at unconditional love, dancing in the moment, and living life according to natural rhythms; all things I strive for.

All that said, I still want to know what time dawn is expected.

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