Is unconditional love universal love?
Universal love is unconditional, but unconditional love is not necessarily universal love.
Universal love is a state of consciousness, experiential awareness, and knowingness. Universal love is love aware of its nature, its singular ground of existence and expression.
Universal Love is accepting and inclusive; it does not differentiate between you and me, and thus, the issues that often arise with other forms of love do not occur here. There is more trust and less fear in this kind of love. It does not see the personality as a barrier but as a part of what exists. Even if the personality feels superior or special, Universal Love accepts it as it is.
Universal Love is also known as universal consciousness or cosmic consciousness. It is a unification of all aspects of essence. It is an action that is loving, gentle when gentleness is needed, firm when firmness is needed, compassionate when compassion is needed, and so on. It is a balanced and harmonizing action that brings forth whatever is needed. It expresses the harmony of the totality, where everything is in harmony with everything else.
At some point, one is suddenly the impersonal Being. One experiences a sense of absolute oneness. One is not the separate individual, but one is the oneness of all that exists. And after this perception, one experiences oneself emerging again as a personal presence. However, one is no more the withdrawn part of the personality. What emerges is the Personal Essence, with its fullness and preciousness. – A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price, ch. 12
Universal love is experienced as a boundless ocean of love and light – awareness lighting up divine love as the ground and unity of all existence.
Universal love is Love. This conscious substance of light is soft, gentle, tender, and sweet. It is loving. It is as if one becomes an ocean of Love that is conscious. So one can call it conscious Love, or loving light. In traditional literature this is sometimes referred to as Universal Love or Christ Love. It is both Consciousness and Love in the same presence. – A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price, ch. 36
Unconditional Love
Unconditional love is open and accepting of what is. Unconditional love does not condone bad behavior, negative attitudes, or misguided beliefs. Unconditional love means that love still exists within the complex world of human relationships regardless of what is happening. There is no conflict between unconditional love and disapproval of bad behavior.
Unconditional love embodies a profound and all-encompassing state of love free from any conditions or limitations. It goes beyond personal preferences, judgments, and expectations, allowing individuals to embrace and accept themselves and others without reservation or restriction. This type of love is a transformative force, guiding individuals toward deep compassion, understanding, and acceptance in all aspects of life. It encourages individuals to navigate their inner and outer experiences with an open heart, fostering connection and unity. Unconditional love is viewed as a powerful tool for spiritual growth, as it enables individuals to access the deeper truths of their being and connect with the world around them more authentically and profoundly.
People often say a dog or pet is unconditionally loving, meaning it continues to love and is open to contact and interaction regardless of your mood in the moment.
Unconditional love can assess what is without judgment toward the being of another. It has a sense of selflessness, a lack of personal positionality, and rigidity.
Now a courageous heart is a heart willing to love regardless of the negativity. The courageous heart is the heart that will love in spite of the badness that is there. The courageous heart is not just the heart that only loves and nothing else; it is the heart that loves regardless of what happens. The courageous heart is the heart of unconditional love: whether the other is good or bad, you continue loving them. Usually, with your friend or your spouse it is easy for you to be loving if the other is loving. But if the other is frustrating or mad, angry or rejecting, right away you shift, and close your love and bring in another reaction. You are hurt, you are angry, hateful, or frustrated, and if you are angry, frustrated, or hurt, you do not let yourself feel your love, at least not at the time of your initial reaction. What splitting does, more than anything else, is close the heart. Whether you are all bad or all good, whether you are all loving or all hateful, what you are doing more than anything else is covering up your courageous heart. You are not allowing yourself to have your courageous heart, to be your courageous heart. You are not allowing your love to be unconditional. Your love becomes conditional. You respond lovingly only under certain conditions, or with certain manifestations of the other. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Four, ch. 11
One Heart
I love you. Really?
Do we love? Is love something that can be given, directed, or withheld?
Universal love wakes us up to the fallacy of these beliefs.
As a separate self, the ego’s understanding of the world as a world of separate discrete objects supports these delusions.
Universal love reveals there is only one heart. There is love recognizing itself in all forms. There is love, loving, dancing, and playing throughout all manifestation. This is the bliss, and it cannot be sent, directed, or given because nothing lacks it.
Universal means it is not restricted to you; it is not individual. When you feel universal love, there is no “I” that loves. Universal love is needed to melt the identity and self-centeredness. When you experience universal love or Christ love, you understand what love really is. Until then, all other qualities of love can be perceived as accomplishments, because the personality will claim them. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Two, ch. 10
Love of Truth
The love of truth is an underlying, foundational tenet of the Diamond Approach. The whole methodology of the Diamond Approach evolved out of this simple orientation.
Curiosity is nothing more than this dance between love and truth, not-knowing and revelation. While we may think, for a while, that curiosity is something we do or apply, at some point, we will see that this dance between love and truth is deeper, more profound, and much simpler than we can imagine.
Waking up from the delusion of separateness, we see that our consciousness, awareness, and lives are riding the wave, being carried into the heart of reality’s deepest, most sublime truth.
The love of truth is an underlying, foundational tenet of the Diamond Approach. The whole methodology of the Diamond Approach evolved out of this simple orientation.
Curiosity is nothing more than this dance between love and truth, not-knowing and revelation. While we may think, for a while, that curiosity is something we do or apply, at some point, we will see that this dance between love and truth is deeper, more profound, and much simpler than we can imagine.
Waking up from the delusion of separateness, we see that our consciousness, awareness, and lives are riding the wave, being carried into the heart of reality’s deepest, most sublime truth.
As you see, we need to investigate even our love of truth. We need to apply the love of truth to our love of truth and find out what it means. We need to find out what love is and what truth is. In the beginning, you probably do not know what truth or love is. Who said love and truth are good? You need to find out for yourself. Truth is one of the elements of reality that, like a thread, goes all the way through all of the levels of reality because truth is what is actuality, what is present. If you want to find out the truth, you can find out everything. So truth becomes the guide. Truth becomes a light that can guide you everywhere. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Five, ch. 3
Some Elements and Principles of the Diamond Approach
- Ego and Soul: The ego is the experience of the personality, our conditioned historical self. The soul is our living consciousness, which includes the ego as a fixated structure within it. The soul also includes our body—the physical manifestation or outer expression of the soul—and how our consciousness informs our physicality. The soul is seen as the bridge between the ego and true nature and between the body and reality beyond the physical.
- Essential Aspects: In the Diamond Approach, true nature consists of three elements: the essential aspects, the diamond vehicles, and the boundless dimensions. The essential aspects are most often the initial entrance into the spiritual universe. They reflect that essence doesn’t manifest with just one quality, and the variations of its manifestations give rise to the many essential qualities, such as compassion, love, will, and truth. Each aspect has precise and definite experienceable characteristics—color, taste, and texture—and has a particular psychological significance.
- Diamond Vehicles: The diamond vehicles are bodies of knowledge, or structures of consciousness, which transmit to us particular dimensions of wisdom needed at different stages of the inner journey. They are like hard disks, each containing amazing experiential information about reality.
- Boundless Dimensions: The boundless dimensions reveal the soul’s true nature as the transcendent ground of reality. Each refers to a particular way of experiencing this ground that permeates all manifestation. There are five of these dimensions, including Divine Love.
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FAQ
1. What is Universal Love?
Universal love is a state of consciousness, experiential awareness, and knowingness. Love is aware of its nature, its singular ground of existence and expression. It is experienced as a boundless ocean of love and light, lighting up divine love as the ground and unity of all existence.
2. How is Universal Love different from Unconditional Love?
While universal love is unconditional, unconditional love is not necessarily universal love. Unconditional love is open and accepting of what it is, meaning it continues to exist within the complex world of human relationships regardless of what is happening. It does not condone bad behavior, negative attitudes, or misguided beliefs.
3. What is the concept of One Heart?
The concept of One Heart suggests that there is only one heart, with love recognizing itself in all forms. Universal love reveals that there is love, loving, dancing, and playing throughout all manifestations. This love cannot be sent, directed, or given because nothing lacks it.
4. What is the Love of Truth in the context of the Diamond Approach?
The Love of Truth is the Diamond Approach’s underlying, foundational tenet. It is the dance between love and truth, not-knowing and revelation. It is about waking up from the delusion of separateness and realizing that our consciousness, awareness, and lives are riding the wave, being carried into the heart of reality’s deepest, most sublime truth.
5. How does the Diamond Approach view the relationship between love and truth?
In the Diamond Approach, truth is seen as one of the elements of reality that, like a thread, goes all the way through all of the levels of reality because truth is what is actuality, what is present. Love and truth are intertwined, with truth serving as a guide and a light that can lead you everywhere.