OVERVIEW
It’s easy to talk about unconditional love but it’s much harder to practice it. The truth is that all of our love relationships, whether with our family, our partner, our friends… begin with us. Our experience of them is filtered through all of our life experiences. Join us this Sunday as we begin to explore what Real Love is and how to create a Path within ourselves to experience greater love for self and others.
TRANSCRIPTION
Good job. Thank you.
Thank you Paige, for singing that song. She probably wasn’t even born when that song was popular. <laugh>. She’s like, who is it? I’m like, SK <laugh>. But thank you for singing that song. I love that song because you know, there must be an angel by my side that led me to you. You know, I think of that as our spirit. And that is true in every relationship in our life. Every person who comes into our life, they’re there for a reason, a season or a lifetime, and they’re there to help us wake up. I, you can also think about it and by talking about giving it to yourself, right? Like this kiss of life, this passion for life, this energy for life that is infused in us through our spirit. And I just wanna embrace this idea as we begin our time together today. Just this idea that this energy, this spark of life is the way that spirit loves us through the things that happen in our life.
So what do we bring to all our relationships? You know, I have this visual, you’re embarking on a relationship, whether it’s your partner or it’s, you know, a friendship or even with your kids. And you’re bringing all your baggage with you, right? You got your baggage. What’s in your baggage? You know, your history’s in your baggage. You know, whatever your story is about that, maybe you got an energetic impression in your body of everything that happened to you, right? You bring your awareness. We bring our spiritual practice here at Cityside, and we also bring our ability to choose how we show up in life, right? We bring all these things into all our relationships.
And so I just wanna share a story of something that happened to me recently. Um, I was away at this conference, you know, my work life outside of Cityside. I’m with an organization called Vistage, and we have this conference every year for the people who do the work. It’s called Chair World. It’s kind of a dumb name, rich. And I laugh about it all the time. So I’m at chair world and I’m chatting with one of my friends and he says to me, how are you doing? And people love to say like, scale of one to 10, how are you doing, right? I’m like, yeah, I’m about a six or a seven right now. And, and he said to me, well, like, that’s not okay. Like, what’s going on? Like a six, really? Amy, you’re a six. And I said, well, you know, I’ve just been feeling a little depleted.
I’ve been feeling a little bit sad, I’ve been feeling a little adrift, and I’ve been feeling like my energy is kind of waning. So this just invoked in me, of course, because then I go and take it to prayer. John was my prayer part. The next take and a test, I was a little bit of a mess and I just sat with myself and I’m like, like, what is up for me right now? Like, what’s up for me? And I realized that, you know, I had some things in my life that I wanted to look at, and there was one of them in particular that I really didn’t wanna take a look at that had to do with my family. And so, you know, I did some work with my practitioner and um, I had a chat with my sister to give me some context, you know, and, and just to be, you know, I’m not going to tell you guys a whole story, but like, you know, I remember when I got divorced, the counselor said to me, is there alcoholism in your family?
And at that time, I said, I said, I, I don’t think so. I don’t know, you know? And, um, but now we know my brother was an alcoholic. And, um, but I, you know, like there was just something about my parents that didn’t make any sense to me. I’m like, what was it like in the home? I’m like, I, I couldn’t put like my finger on it. And you know, my sister said, you know, Amy dad came from an abusive home and, you know, there was a lot of mental illness and that can be a lot the same. Apparently. I didn’t know that, but I’m just sharing that because it’s like, I was so afraid to look at this, but it was deeply impacting me, right? And so just wanna invite you to look at like, what don’t you wanna look at in your life?
We all have those things we don’t wanna look at, right? And those are the things that can just cause us to be unhappy, right? And, and our life and our relationships because there’s something we’re really not looking at. We’re not, you know, for me, I wasn’t being courageous enough to sort of look at it and then to sort of speak my truth and explore it a little bit more. So I’m gonna relate that to love, cuz I’m gonna pull this into our story. So what are we gonna talk about today? We’re gonna talk about the difference between real and conditional love. We’re gonna talk about understanding how we’ve been programmed to react in life, which is why I shared my story. Like I’ve been programmed to not speak my truth and to avoid conflict at all costs. That that’s my family, right? And some people have the opposite family, right?
They have the family that’s like, let’s get in the ring. We’re gonna argue, we’re gonna fight about that. That was not my family <laugh>. But then we’re gonna look at some ways we can use our spiritual practice to help us move through the places that we wanna shift, right? And service to being happier. So as John read to us in the very long reading, I gave him <laugh> real love is a caring about the happiness of another person for without thought, for what we, we might get for ourselves. And when we give real love, we’re not disappointed, we’re not hurt, we’re not angry. Even when people are thoughtless or inconsiderate or don’t give us anything in return because our concern is for their happiness, not ours. And real love is unconditional, but we’re human beings who are spiritual beings. A human experience, right? We like to say that, right?
And so it’s not as easy as it sounds, is it? Like, it’s not easy, right? Like our human self is like, what? You know them, they’re doing this right? But when we’re in real love, then we care how the other person feels. So it’s caring for that other person without thinking about ourselves. And our concern is for them, not for us. And when we experience this unconditional love, what happens? We feel connected to the person, right? There’s like a Greg Bear talks about a thread that is connected to the person that we’re experiencing unconditional love with, and we feel that we’re included in their life and we’re not alone anymore. And you think about the world right now, so many people seem to feel alone, right? But we’re not alone when we’re in that connection and in conditional love, it’s more like, I like how you make me feel.
I’ll look at rich when I say that Rich is sitting in the first row here, but it’s not real love if we feel disappointment and anger, right? And that sounds hard, doesn’t it? You know, because we do get disappointed and angry cuz certainly the other people, you know, they’re not always right. Sometimes they’re just wrong, right? <laugh>, I mean, let’s be real, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t say anything. It doesn’t mean we become like passive little beings when, when something is bothering us. But if we do speak to it, we do it in a way that is not harsh, right? That’s loving. And that we take responsibility for ourselves. Like, this is how I’m feeling right now. It’s not your fault, but this is me. You know? And disappointment and anger are two really big signs that we’re in conditional love. So let’s talk a little bit more about conditional love.
Like we’re born into this framework of conditional love. Like who grew up where you were trying to be a good, good girl, good boy, right? You know, you gotta get good grades. You gotta do your chores when you’re supposed to do ’em, right? And what happens when you didn’t? Right? You know, some families there might have been yelling, there might have been punishment, there might have been whatever, but like, that’s the framework we grew up in for love, right? And so what, what are we doing when we’re doing these things? Like I’m being a good girl, quote unquote. Well, I’m trying to get approval, right? So approval and love become really connected for us. But when we give and receive conditional love, we can really start to feel empty. We can start to feel unhappy and we can feel frustrated. So again, we’re looking for like, where am I angry? Where am I frustrated? It’s a place to realize like I’m experiencing conditional love right now. I’m angry and frustrated.
Does this feel confusing to anyone? Because it, it’s hard to balance it, right? Like it, and, and in human reality, just to be real, it’s hard to balance it, right? Because you don’t wanna allow you yourself to be in something that’s so outta whack, right? And we can become so defensive, right? Like, oh my God, this is outta whack, right? But we need to do a reframe when it’s happening. I remember, I’ve had the same practitioner for a long time, Angela, she’s my, my gale. I love her. And I remember I had, um, before I met Rich, I had many years of dating unavailable people. And I remember her saying to me like, where is that in you? Right? Like, where are you unavailable to yourself, right? So when we’re experiencing something, we need to take it into our own work, right? And that’s really, I think the way that we move through the part of this that’s confusing.
It’s like, okay, what is in me? Like I was feeling this un you know, sadness, whatever. It’s like, okay, well what in me needs to shift here? I need to find some courage, right? To be able to move into a more productive place instead of living in that place of sadness. So when we’re unhappy in any relationship of any kind, it doesn’t matter if it’s your partner or your kids or your boss or whatever, don’t look at the other person. We, you need to start with being unconditionally loving with yourself. And that’s really hard for people cuz I think the person that people are usually the harshest on is themselves. Like something happens in our life and we’re like, why is this happening to me again? Right. You know? And it’s easy to blame our parents. Like I think about my parents, you know, I have so much empathy for my parents because they didn’t know how to work through their problems.
Right? Did it impact me? Yeah, it did. But I don’t blame ’em anymore. It’s like they, that was what they learned, right? And I actually feel a little sad for them cuz I think they really loved each other, but they just let themselves get disconnected. And so we don’t wanna dwell on the past either. You know, we don’t wanna live in this place where, you know, we’re a victim of our past experience and it’s never gonna change. Like today’s a new day. You can choose something different, right? It doesn’t mean that we don’t, you know, that’s why I said when I started, like we kind of carry energetically with us, the things that happened to us in the past, you know, and things like poke the wound, right? Like, you know, you’re not really mad about what’s happening now. You’re mad about what happened in the past.
And what we need to do to be in a healthy self-loving place is to fix our foundation first, right? Fix the foundation within ourselves that we’re coming from. And so we need to explore a couple things kind of in how we’re interacting with the world. Greg Bearer says the signs of imitation love. That’s what he calls it. Our praise, power, pleasure and safety, which we use these things for substitutes. Let me break this down. So the first one, praise that can be flattery, it can be gratitude, it can be the need for approval. Um, it can be money, it can be s it can be all these things outside of us that affirm us. And we can confuse that for real affection, right? And we’re trying to earn something, right? When we’re trying to get praise and like approval for me, I gotta tell you, praise and approval.
It’s my achilles heel. I get trapped, right? I get trapped. Like I, I don’t wanna be, I know better. And I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s my little approval thing happening again, right? So that’s my personal achilles heel. The next one is power, which we get from manipulating other people. And it’s easier to understand that when you’re like thinking about your boss. I’m looking at Nora over here if you’re looking, wondering why I’m looking off screen. You know, like it’s easier to think about power when we think about our boss. Like our boss has authority over us and, but there’s a lot of things that we use to have authority, right? And in relationships, like as women, you know, we can be manipulative with how we look or being all sexy or whatever, you know, flattery, um, you know, really pushing, trying to persuade somebody, trying to control people, trying to influence them.
And when we do that, we’re kind of creating a false connection, right? And so just think about, does that feel like what I do? Oh, am I, is that something I do? Am I, you know, am I using, you know, manipulation and authority to try to get people to do what I want ’em to do? The pursuit of pleasure is the next one. Like, we distract ourselves and think about our world today. Aren’t we really good at distracting ourselves? Our phones <laugh>. I’m so guilty of that, right? Rich, um, social media, the television substances, you know, there’s lots of ways we, we, um, we can distract ourselves, but really it points to like, something’s missing here. I need to take a look at this, right? If I’m just distracting myself, what’s that about, right? What is that about? And the last one is safety. You know, avoiding anything that’s gonna be painful for us.
Sometimes it comes up with people like, you know, I’m just afraid of change, right? Because I feel safer. It doesn’t change. Sometimes it’s like, for me, when I think about safety, I think about like avoiding disapproval and God forbid anyone should yell at me cuz I am gonna run the other way, right? And that is safety, right? So just ask yourself, what’s your default? Which of these is your default? And you know, the gift to realize it is just simply awareness. Like, if you notice that it’s happening, you can just say like, oh, okay, here goes my praise thing again. It’s, it’s happening. Like, how do I need to shift it within myself? Or here’s my, you know, here’s my distracting behavior. I need to look at myself, right? Just look at it like, what do I need to give myself right now? What does my spirit need?
Your spirit is always speaking to you. It’s just a question of whether you’re tuning it out or whether you’re slowing down enough to listen. And then there’s a couple kind of behaviors that all of us do, which are not very helpful. And he calls these getting and protecting. So again, as you look at these in yourself, don’t blame yourself. Blaming yourself is completely unhelpful. Please don’t do that. <laugh>. And I just wanna say, as I look at these, I’ve done all of these, right? I’ve done all of these. And so you have a clean slate. If you’ve done all of ’em, you’re fine. So the first one, at first when I read this word, I’m like, I don’t know if I like that word. The first one is lying. And I’m like, you know, I, I don’t think I lie, but it’s also about lying to ourselves, right?
It’s about and trying to hide our mistakes and flaws and just not being who we really are. Cuz we think we’re not gonna be accepted for who we really are. And it might be modifying our behavior to please another human being, right? Um, and we could dig a lot deeper into it, but I think a good question for reflection is, where in my life am I not being completely authentic? Right? Pull out your Brene Brown, take a look at it, right? <laugh>. The second one is attacking, which the most common kind of attacking behavior is anger, right? If, if you’re not giving me what I want, then I’m gonna wear you down by yelling at you or I’m gonna berate you or I’m gonna do something else. So the second kind of getting behavior is attacking. Then there is, um, the third one is acting like a victim.
So how do we know when we’re acting like a victim? Like, look what you did to me. Look at the thing you didn’t do for me that you should have done for me. You know, hey, not my fault, this happened to me, right? So where in your life are you acting like a victim or where do you feel victimized? I think is another good question. You know, in this community, like, we’re like kingdom one of consciousness is, you know, I’m the victim. God forbid any of us should ever be there. <laugh>, right? But in truth, sometimes we feel like we’re being victimized by something in our life, right? So we just have to catch it, right? Okay, how do I shift this? And the last one is running. We run away from something. I’ve decided to call this quiet quitting. And I have a confession to make.
I’ve done a lot of quiet quitting in my life because I was afraid to have a conversation. I’ve probably, I definitely have quiet quit relationships. There’s no question about that. You know, we do it when we would draw, when we avoid people. Um, and you know, there’s other ways to run. Like, you know, having a few too many glasses of wine at the end of the night. There’s lots of ways we run, but it’s just really to be aware, like, am I running right? Like, what, what conversation could I step into instead of running what authentic way of being could I step into instead of running, just noticing it in yourself. And then the last one is clinging. And that looks like, you know, excessive flattery, great gratefulness. Telling people we love ’em, giving them gifts just like really hanging on to something. Um, and, and why are we doing that?
We wanna get affection in return, right? That’s why we clinging, right? And I know I’ve done that too. So I’m saying I’m just making my confession here. So whatever you’ve done, it’s fine <laugh>, but just bring it into awareness. Where in my life am I clinging? And then we take it into our spiritual practice, right? We take this into our spiritual practice, put it into prayer, get some prayer. You know, sometimes the only place you are is being able to say a prayer of help me. You know, when I was feeling sad, not that long ago, I was like, okay God, just help me out here cuz like, I got nothing. I’m not, I don’t even know what’s going on with me right now. I’m just feeling sad, right? And saying a prayer that is just like, help me spirit, help me. Help me see where I need to shift.
Help me become aware of what’s going on, help me. That’s a perfectly great prayer. You don’t have to affirmatively pray everything. Sometimes just, you know, asking for a little help and give yourself some space. You know, meditation, sitting with it. You know, don’t, I was thinking about this, it’s like sometimes we just wanna slap our spiritual bypass bandaid on something, don’t we? Like? No, I’m good, I’m good. You know, it’s all good. God is good. But sometimes we just need to sit with what’s actually happening in our life and just until we get a sense of it. And I really do think if we sit with whatever’s going on, spirits gonna step in and help you if you get quiet enough. That’s been my experience in life. And of course we can work with a practitioner, we can work with a therapist or some kind of a counselor. You know, you have to check within yourself like what is of you? If you’re having a bad moment or a bad period in life and give yourself some grace, right? Give yourself some grace. There’s a lot of hard things that happen in life, you know, and I’m not gonna go down that rabbit hole. I could name a number of things that people in my life are going through right now that are hard, but just give yourself some grace. You know? Where do you need to love yourself today?
So I’m gonna close with a story. There’s a rich and beautiful kingdom that stretched behind beyond the horizon. But the prince who lived there was very unhappy cuz he had warts all over his face. And people were very unkind to him. They would laugh at him, they would ridicule him, and his father was ashamed of him. So he would stay in his room and he was very alone and miserable. And when his dad died, you know, he was the king. So he declared, no one will ever ridicule me again or they will be killed. But the truth was, he still stayed in his room alone and ashamed. And when he did go out, he would put a bag over his head so no one could see his face.
But after many years he heard about a wise man who lived at the top of the mountain. So he puts his bag on, he climbs to the top of the mountain so the wise man could help him. And when he gets to the top, he takes his bag off. The wise man studies his face and says, you have warts on your face. And the king was enraged. He runs out of the building, he puts his bag back on his head and he tries to run quickly down the hill. And he tumbles and he slides and he lands in the lake. And the wise man came down and pulled him out of the lake and took his bag off so he could breathe. And the horrified king said, you’re laughing at me. Not at all. Said the wise man looking down the king said The boys in the village laughed at me and my father was ashamed of me.
The wise man said, I’m not those boys and I’m not your father. That must have been really hard for you. King said, yes it was with tears in his eyes. And you can see I’m not laughing at you and I’m not ashamed of you said the wise man. The king began to feel differently. He looked into the lake and he saw his reflection and he said, I really do have a lot of warts. I know the wise man agreed. And don’t you find them disgusting? Said the king. The Wiseman said No. And I don’t find mine disgusting anymore. For the first time the king looked at the wise man and saw that he also had warts on his face. Why do you not wear a bag over your head? The old man replied, I used to but I couldn’t see and I was lonely. So I took it off.
Didn’t people laugh at you? Yeah, some people laughed at me. But gradually I found people who didn’t laugh at me. The king was thrilled. He said, I don’t think my bag, I’m gonna wear my bag anymore. When you’re around, will I find other people who you, who won’t think I’m disgusting? Of course you will. And with the love of those people, you are not gonna care when other people laugh. The king dropped the bag on the ground and went back to his kingdom, which was far more beautiful without a bag over his head. And he did find people who didn’t mind his warts at all. And for the first time in his life he was very happy. So where do you need to take the bag off of your head? It’s really the first step on the path to real love. You know, examine where you’re at. Where do you need to beef up your foundation in your life and rebuild it? Where are you doing the getting the protecting? You know, just build your awareness so you know where your work is, right? It’s not bad. You’re not wrong cuz you have work. And take it into spiritual practice. Get support, get prayer. And just trust that that spirit, which is the angel by your side, that that is gonna guide you, it’s gonna direct you and that is gonna bring you to this path of real love. Let’s take that into prayer.
Ah, so we all take a deep breath together. And in this moment, I just know the presence of spirit. This infinite, eternal, loving grace of spirit that always and everywhere is surrounding us, this source of goodness that is our life itself.
And I know that I am one with this divine source of love and goodness and grace, just as I know that this is the truth for each and every person hearing my words, that we are all one with this loving presence and power, this grace, this goodness, this divine energy that is guiding and protecting us in all things. So from this place of oneness, I just declare that there is a transformation happening in within each one of us. That our awareness of what real love is, is growing. I just know and claim for each of us that we take responsibility for giving it to ourselves, this loving energy, this essence, this life itself lives in you and it is the truth of who you are. So I just know and claim a deeper realization of that for every one of us in this moment, by the power of this word. And I just know as we transform within whatever is around us, transforms on the outside. I say yes to this infinite loving presence, this unconditional love for each and every one of us. I just know that spirit is present right where you are. And I’m so grateful for this. I’m just so grateful for the inner transformation that is happening. I’m so grateful for this loving connection that unites us all. And I’m so grateful to know that spirit is present guiding and protecting each and every one of us. And with so much gratitude for all of this, I simply say, and so it is. Amen.