Love

Ever-present, misidentified, and wholly unavoidable

This will be a long post, and deservedly so. Love demands depth.

We hear a lot about love in our existence, loving others, loving yourself. Love, love, love. Conditional love, unconditional love, romantic love, brotherly love, sisterly love, love for our pets. It almost seems as if it is unavoidable.

But beneath all of these terms, a question lingers:

What actually is love?

What is this thing, this force that we continue to not-so-casually run up against in the midst of our messy existences? How do we recognize it? What does it feel like? Why are we capable of loving and then not loving, sometimes in the very same breath?

Where does love live? Where is love right now? What is love up to?

A Loveless Definition

Google "love definition" and you'll begin to understand why I am writing this post:

Love - noun. "An intense feeling of deep affection."

Got it? Take "affection," turn up the volume to 10, and you get "Love." I remember what it was like to love french fries, but now I'm not sure if I loved them or if I just held great affection for them. Hmm...confusing.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

Some people spend a lifetime trying to identify and define love. But the eyes that search for love will only ever find its material expressions: gestures, words, behaviors. Where we look for love, and why we don't find it, has to do with our human definitions, our intellectual thought of what we think love really is.

The truth is, love itself cannot be seen. Love does not live in the intellect. Love cannot even be defined. Love can only be felt. Love resides in the space beyond definition, the heart space.

Love in Death

When I passed to the "other side," I felt love—not a romantic, sentimental, or fragile kind of love, but a love both deeply familiar, warm, saturating, and infinitely deep beyond anything I had experienced during my physical incarnation. A love that was not only foundational but endless. Unmistakable. Complete. All-encompassing. Divine. Beyond explanation. This love was constant, present in every moment of the experience.

During my life review, I did not feel judgment. I felt unconditional love no matter what I had done. At the end of my experience, before returning, I felt what I can only describe as the "Embrace of God", a love on a scale that is beyond description.

In death, there was no veil, no fabricated self, constructed of beliefs, fears, and attachments standing between me and the direct experience of love. Love wasn't something I only felt; it was what I was. What everything was.

When we incarnate, we build the veil. Not as punishment, but as protection, shielding us from the full intensity of divine love until we're ready to perceive it without losing ourselves entirely. Through the veil, we fragment that complete love into forms we can hold: romantic love, conditional love, familial love. We forget. We create criteria. We withhold.

So what makes that love different from the way we often experience love here? The difference is "The Veil" we've placed between ourselves and direct knowing.

Recognizing Love

Love is the binding force that allows creation to exist. It is an infinite force without definition. It is the field in which consciousness recognizes itself.

Can you love others for simply existing? Without judgment, expectation, or projection of what you believe they "should" be?

Yes. That is unconditional love. It arises when the fully realized being within you recognizes itself in the other.

Love everybody not for "who" they are but for what they are, infinite beings here to experience an existence just like you.

But somewhere along the way, we learned to treat love like a checklist:

• Are they worthy of my love?

• Do they meet my conditions?

• Have they earned it?

We call this "love," but it isn't love. It is fear dressed up as protection.

The Divine loves you in the midst of your "worst" moments, without condition, without hesitation, without needing you to earn anything.

Only the intellect creates criteria. Love never has.

You Cannot Work On Love

We often say we're "working on love," but the truth is this: You cannot work on love. Love is already whole. Unblemished. Complete.

You can work on yourself, your fears, your patterns, your resistance, your communication, your patience, your empathy.

But you cannot improve love. All you can do is allow it.

Love is not difficult. It is your most natural state. Only separation is difficult. Love is not work.

Carrying conditions and releasing the conditions for love is where there is work. Love will always be a choice.

The Fear of Love

We don't actually fear the absence of love. We fear the presence of it.

True love dissolves the fabricated self you've propped up your entire life. When you love, you cannot be anybody. You can only be love.

And that is terrifying to the part of you that believes survival requires a story, an identity, a mask, protection.

This is why saying "I love you" can feel strange or vulnerable, it threatens the illusion of separateness.

Love Is a Choice

To love or not to love? Love is not something that happens to you. Love is a choice. Always.

Some encounter love through spiritual awakening, mystical experience, or divine intervention—but even then, it is still a choice to recognize it, to open to it, to live from it.

Free will is the doorway. Love is what waits on the other side.

Love vs. Fear (How to Tell the Difference)

How do you know when you're in the state of love?

• It seeks nothing in return

• It expects no outcome

• It requires no recognition

• It simply is

When you love someone because you want a different outcome for them, it is sympathetic love, beautiful, but still conditional.

Love someone not because of their circumstances, but through their circumstances. Love them because they are, not because they are becoming something you prefer.

Love everyone where they are. Not where you wish they would be.

That is acceptance. That is surrender. That is love.

What Love Is Not

Most of what we call love is actually:

• I love you if...

• I love you because...

• I love you but...

This is not love. This is attachment looking for a reason to justify itself.

Love needs no justification. Love is not something that needs to serve you. It doesn't require reciprocation. The thought "I love them but I don't feel it back" reveals that what you're calling love is actually just a transaction.

Making the Shift

So what do you do when you realize you're not in love, when you've caught yourself in transaction, condition, or fear?

You pause.

You don't berate yourself for being in fear. That's just another judgment, another condition. Instead, you recognize: "I'm afraid right now. I'm attached to an outcome. I'm withholding love because of X."

Then you ask: "Can I love anyway? Can I love through this fear? Can I love without needing anything in return?"

Sometimes the answer is yes immediately. Sometimes it takes time. Sometimes you can't, and that's okay too. You're human. The goal isn't perfection; it's awareness.

The shift happens not through force, but through choice. You cannot force yourself to feel love. But you can choose to stop withholding it.

This looks like:

• Releasing the demand that they change

• Accepting where they are without needing to fix them

• Recognizing that their journey is not yours to control

• Choosing presence over outcome

• Letting go of the story about how things "should" be

The more you practice this shift, the more natural it becomes. Eventually, love stops being something you "do" and becomes what you are.

However, this shift isn't a one-time event. It's a daily practice. A choice within the moment. You will find yourself back in fear, back in transaction, back in condition. This doesn't mean you've failed. It means you're human, falling every ten steps on a 100 year walk.

The question is always the same: when you notice you're not in a loving state, will you judge yourself for it, or will you love yourself back into love?

Accepting Love

Can you accept love from somebody else without judgment? Knowing it is not complete? Knowing that it is just where they are?

That is love.

The Foundation: Loving Yourself

Before you can truly love another, you must love yourself. Not in the narcissistic sense, but in the divine sense of self-acceptance.

Most of us have spent lifetimes judging ourselves, measuring ourselves, finding ourselves lacking. We love others more easily than we love ourselves because we know our own darkness intimately. We've witnessed every failure, every fear, every petty thought. We keep detailed records of our shortcomings.

But the divine loves you in your darkness. Can you do the same?

Self-love is not:

• Conditional ("I'll love myself when I achieve X")

• Transactional ("I love myself because I did Y")

• Performative ("I practice self-care rituals to prove I love myself")

Self-love is the choice to stop withholding love from yourself. It's extending to yourself the same unconditional acceptance you would offer the divine, or that the divine offers you.

You will make mistakes. You will fail to meet your own standards. And in those moments, you have a choice: judgment or love. Most of us have spent our entire lives choosing judgment, believing that self-criticism will somehow make us better, that withholding love from ourselves will motivate improvement.

It doesn't. It only deepens the fabricated belief that you are not enough.

When you truly love yourself, through your failures, your fears, your humanness, you stop projecting conditions onto others. You stop demanding they be perfect because you've stopped demanding it of yourself. You stop looking for them to fill the void you refuse to fill within yourself.

This is why self-love is not selfish. It's foundational.

You cannot give what you don't embody. When you withhold love from yourself, you inevitably withhold it from others, no matter how much you claim to love them. Your love becomes transaction: "I'll love you if you make me feel worthy. I'll love you because you validate me. I'll love you but withdraw it when you trigger my unworthiness."

Loving another is not to be at the expense of loving yourself. The two are inseparable. Truly loving yourself is what makes way for you to love another without condition, without need, without the burden of requiring them to complete you.

Because you're already complete.

Love and Boundaries

A common misunderstanding: unconditional love means accepting everything, even harm.

This is false.

You can love someone unconditionally and still set firm boundaries. You can love them exactly as they are while choosing not to remain in a relationship with them. You can love them through their circumstances while protecting yourself from certain behaviors.

Love says: "I see your divinity. I recognize your struggle. I accept where you are."

Boundaries say: "And I also honor myself. I will not sacrifice my wellbeing to prove my love."

These are not contradictory. In fact, boundaries set from love are some of the purest expressions of love, for yourself and for the other person.

Boundaries set from love feel clear and peaceful. They don't require justification or defense. They simply are. "I love you, and I cannot be in this dynamic anymore."

Boundaries set from fear feel defensive and rigid. They require explanation, come with resentment, and often disguise themselves as punishment. "I love you, but you've hurt me, so now I'm withdrawing."

Learn to tell the difference.

The question is never "Should I have boundaries?" The question is "Are my boundaries coming from love or fear?"

When you love yourself, truly love yourself, boundaries become natural. You don't need to defend them because they're not attacks. They're simply honest expressions of what you can hold while remaining in love.

You can love someone completely from a distance. You can love someone you'll never speak to again. You can love someone whose presence in your life would harm you.

Love doesn't require proximity. It doesn't require relationship. It doesn't require anything.

That's why it's unconditional.

Remembering Love

Love is found in the quiet recognition that you have always carried it.

And just as importantly: You have always been loved, by something infinite and divine, since your first breath.

Love is unmistakable when it arises because it feels like home. It feels like truth. It feels like the part of you that never needed to be built.

You know love when you feel it because it is your truest nature.

Conclusion

Love is not out there waiting to be found. It is not something you achieve or earn or work toward.

Love is what you are beneath every layer of fear, every fabricated identity, every condition you've placed on yourself and others.

The question has never been "How do I find love?" or "How do I love?" The question is: "Am I willing to choose it?"

Choose love. Become love. And love will find you everywhere.