by Dr. Alberto Villoldo: Love is the most powerful emotion we will ever experience—even greater than fear…
From infancy, many of us learn that love is something that we have to earn. To survive our childhood, we learned the tune we had to dance to in order to receive approval and recognition. As we grew we were delighted to hear our father say, “I am proud of you,” and we worked even harder to hear those words again. And that felt good. And then we wanted more.
Because love is such a powerful force, when we learn early on to associate it with approval, we will do almost anything to get it. We will do things we do not truly believe in and compromise our values in ways we later find despicable, just to get approval from those we look up to or are attracted to, because we equate it to love.
It happens to all of us. Our love becomes conditional, satisfying a need to know that I am real, that I exist, and that I am okay. We later discover that we can control others by withholding our approval, and to demand exacting payments in exchange for a loving glance or word. It’s amazing how early babies discover they can control their world by throwing a tantrum. Have you ever met a friend’s three-year-old who is the bully of the family, and whose frown or laugh sets the mood of the entire house?
Love that is accompanied by a long list of conditions—often lying just beneath the surface—has shaped our upbringing. The love you learned from parents who were not in touch with their own feelings, and from adults caught in the dream of “I am angry, lonely, hungry, or afraid” is not real love.
When you no longer need to experience love through a lover or a mother or a child, when you can love the people you disagree with, and when you can celebrate yourself with all your gifts and faults, when you no longer need to barter for love and can bask in the love of Spirit, then you have unconditioned love. Then you no longer need anything to make you happy. You can be happy for no reason at all.
Then love simply is and you recognize it as the warp on which the fabric of the universe is woven. You are the weaver, Spirit is the wool, love is the weft. Long before we used the metaphors of science, of vibration and frequency, we used the metaphors of weavers. The weft are the long threads on a loom over and under which the threads of the warp are passed to weave a fabric. Even the Greeks personified the Fates as weavers who spun the threads of your destiny.
Are you weaving Love with Spirit?
