What is the meaning of True Love?

What is the meaning love? Love is what we experience in any moment that we are with someone without having or believing any judgements about that person (“good” or “bad”).

What Is The Meaning of Love – The 7 Inherent Qualities of Love

Love is complete acceptance: When we allow someone to be exactly as they are, without any belief that they aren’t good enough, without any belief that they would be “better” if they were different, this is love.

Love is completely unconditional: Love has no conditions. 

When we truly love someone, we can’t stop loving them, regardless of what they do or say. If our love is dependent upon the other person acting and speaking how we want, then this love is completely conditional. We often confuse this to be love, but this is just positive thoughts about someone. This is just loving what a person says or does, not loving them. Positive thoughts or the thought “I love you” isn’t necessary to love. Sometimes it even gets in the way.

Love is selfless: True love doesn’t want anything in return, because there is nothing it needs. We just love for the sake of love. When we love someone, we don’t look for them to fill our needs, love us back, and all those types of things. If that is what we are looking for, then we are just using the other person. What is the meaning of love? Love is completely selfless.

What Prevents Us From Loving

To understand what is the meaning of love, we really need to understand what prevents us from loving. When we believe our judgements about someone, we can feel anger, disappointment, or resentment, or we can just feel separate from that person. All of this blocks us or prevents us from loving the person we are with.

When we are with someone, and believing our judgements, commentary, or labels about them, this puts up a wall or a barrier between us. We aren’t connecting with them, loving them, and truly being with them. We are just experiencing our thoughts about them. For example, we might experience our thoughts about how they aren’t appreciative enough, aren’t in good enough shape, aren’t a good enough father etc. But these thoughts just get in the way of love.

Love Eliminates The Sense Of Separation or Loneliness

When we believe our judgements about people, it can seem as if we are alone or separate from others. This creates this longing for connection and love. All it takes to have this connection we yearn for is to just be with people without judgement. In the absence of judgement, love is what remains.

When we are not believing our judgements about someone, we are loving them, or in other words, we are being present with them (i.e. living in the moment with them). When we are present with someone, we automatically feel a closer connection to, and more intimacy with, the people around us. Our feeling of separateness from people disappears.

You Always Wanted To Love… Not To Be Loved

If you want to feel love, it is helpful to first understand what is the meaning of love. If someone else loves you, but you don’t care about that person, how much impact does that person’s love have on your level of happiness? You may have noticed, it has very little impact. If receiving love from someone else had the power to make us feel good, then anyone’s love would give us the same good feeling. But, clearly this isn’t how life works.

The reason is because fulfilment doesn’t come from receiving love; the feeling of happiness and completion we have always wanted comes from loving others. When we love someone without wanting or expecting anything in return, we feel free, open, and wonderful.

To read my full blog post all about how the feeling you want in life doesn’t come from being loved, but actually from giving love, please click here

To Live In The Moment Is To Love

Generally, we are seeking love from others to make us happy. When we are living in the moment, we are already happy because the thoughts that would normally make us unhappy aren’t there. Since we are naturally happy when we are living in the moment, there is nothing we need or want from others. We can stop looking for others to make us happy… whether that is looking to them to love us, or just fill our needs.  If there is nothing we want from others, then we are just free to love.

We don’t have to worry about whether other people will love us, leave us, or make us happy, because we are already happy. None of that matters when we are already content. We are free to purely love others, and we completely forget about the idea of seeking love.

It Is Helpful To First Understand What Love Is Not

Here are 7 things that many of us innocently mistake to be love. To read the full blog post of what love is not, with explanations of each misconception, please click here

1. When we look for someone to love us, we are looking for someone we can use to make us happy
2. If we are trying to change or improve our partner, in that moment, we are not loving them
3. Positive thoughts is not love
4. Excitement about our future with someone creates butterflies and nice feelings, but it isn’t based on love
5. If we require our partner to do things for us, in that moment, it’s not love
6. Loving how someone seems to make us feel isn’t love
7. The fear of getting hurt isn’t part of love

Love Has No Limits

We tend to think that the meaning of love is to love one person. But truly, what is the meaning of love? The beautiful thing about love is that we don’t have to limit our loving to just our romantic partner or our family. We can love everyone we encounter. When we are present, we have nothing to fear, so we don’t have to create any boundaries about who can receive our love. When we are with anyone without judging them in any way, we feel love for them. It doesn’t matter if this person is our spouse or our waiter in a restaurant.

Love you all!

Thank you so much my dear Friends.

God Bless !!

Love Yourself

How To Love Yourself

When we love ourselves, we are going to be happy, regardless of our situation or what others think of us. When we don’t love ourselves, we are going to be unhappy, regardless of our situation or what others think of us. Therefore, loving ourselves is quite important. In this blog post, I am going to explain how to love yourself.

The Most Popular Tactics To Love Yourself Don’t Work

Before we get into exactly how to love yourself, I think it is important to address why the most popular and most common tactics for how to love yourself can’t give you the results that you want.

The 2 most commons tactics that I hear for how to love yourself are:

1)      Positive affirmations

2)      Treating yourself to something physically nice

Both of these tactics are fine. There is nothing wrong with doing either of these. But, if we look at these tactics closely, we can discover why they don’t have the ability give us the love that we are looking to have for ourselves.

If I think I am unlovable, then there is a reason why I believe that. If I just tell myself over and over again that I am lovable, it is very unlikely to make me fully believe that I am lovable because this statement doesn’t address the original reason for why I believed I was unlovable.

How To Love Yourself: Why Doing Something Nice For Yourself Won’t Make You Love Yourself
The only reason why we don’t love ourselves is because we believe negative thoughts about ourselves or our situation. These negatives thoughts are what create our shame and sense of unworthiness or insufficiency. When we treat ourselves to something nice externally (spa, vacation, dessert etc.), we are basically saying “I deserve this”, “it is nice that I get to experience this”, “this is something I should give myself because I am worth it”. And that is completely fine. There is no problem with this at all. It can feel enjoyable to do these things. If you enjoy it, continue doing it.

Now that we see why the 2 most common tactics for how to love yourself don’t really work, let’s examine how to truly experience love for ourselves.

The first question you have to ask yourself is “Why do I not love myself?”, “What do I not like myself?”, “Why do I feel unlovable?”, “What do I not like about my situation?”

We are generally so busy entertaining ourselves and distracting ourselves from our thoughts that we don’t allow ourselves to just be with our thoughts. And if we don’t see what thoughts are making us feel unlovable, then we certainly can’t address these thoughts.

Since negative thoughts about yourself and your life are what make you not love yourself, the answer to the question “How to love yourself?” is to address the thoughts that make you not love yourself. In order to love yourself, you need to eliminate the thoughts that make you feel unlovable.

What Thoughts Are Making You Not Love Yourself?

It may seem scary to look at why you truly don’t love love yourself. But, if you don’t look at these thoughts, if you don’t identify the reason why you don’t love yourself, you will just keep feeling the way that you do and going through life trying to make everyone else love you in order to help you love yourself. And that creates a lot of suffering.

For some of us, we might not love ourselves because we believe “I am unattractive”,  “my personality isn’t good enough”, “I am a failure”, “I am not successful enough”, “I am a bad parent”, “I am not fun enough”, or “I am not outgoing enough”. For other people, there is often no specific trait that we don’t like about ourselves. Rather, there might just be an underlying sense of unworthiness or unlovability.

You can have a look right now to see if you can find your reason. You can ask yourself any of the following questions: “Why do I not love myself?”, “What do I not like myself?”, “Why do I feel unlovable?”, “What do I not like about my situation?”

The answers might be very obvious to you, but it also might be very difficult to identify the reason or thought as to why you don’t love yourself. If you don’t want to do it right now, try to give some time toward this discovery process later on. And be patient with yourself. You can’t force it.

How to love yourself: Whatever thoughts are making you feel unlovable or unworthy, these thoughts pop up out of nowhere. You didn’t pick these thoughts. You didn’t choose them. They are not under your control. If you controlled your thoughts, you quite obviously would choose to never think negative thoughts about yourself. So this is not personal issue. Therefore, you can be gentle with yourself.

How to love yourself in this world

An Exercise To Discover That There Is Nothing Wrong With You

We tend to think that we feel insufficient because we ARE insufficient. We tend to think that we feel unlovable because we ARE unlovable. We tend to think that we feel lacking in our life because there IS something wrong with us.

But I would like to help you see how these assumptions could not be further from the truth. This will be the key in seeing how to love yourself. In order to help you do this, I would like to ask you to ask yourself the following questions:

1) Can I Escape My Unwanted Feeling When I Am Being Distracted From Thoughts?

How do I feel when I am being entertained? How do I feel when I am engaging in my favourite hobby? Do I feel lacking, do I feel unworthy, do I feel insufficient, do I not love myself in these moments? In the moments that we are having fun, we don’t feel unlovable or unworthy. In other words, when we are not thinking about ourselves (when we are distracted from thoughts), we don’t feel unlovable, unworthy, lacking, or insufficient.

If your feeling of unlovability was caused by you being unlovable, then you would continue to experience this feeling when you are simply distracted by thoughts. If your feeling of insufficiency was created by you being insufficient, then you wouldn’t be able to escape this feeling simply by distracting yourself from thoughts. If your feeling of lack was created by there being something wrong with you, then would still have this feeling even while you were being entertained.

If all it takes to eliminate your feelings of not loving yourself is to simply distract yourself from thoughts, then it must mean that your feeling of not loving yourself isn’t created by anything about yourself… but only created by thoughts about yourself.

What is the way for how to love yourself

2) Is There Factually Something “Wrong” With Me, Or Does This Idea Only Exist As A Thought About A Fact?

Take a moment and ask yourself “What are the negative things that I think about myself?” Then, ask yourself: Does this exact as fact? Am I factually unworthy of love? Am I factually unattractive? Is my situation factually bad? Is there factually something wrong with me?

Can I touch these concepts? Can I see them? Can I hold them? Can I grasp them and show them to others? If it is a fact, is this something that can be seen by everyone? Where does unlovability exist? Where is my “bad” trait? Am I not good enough factually, or does that idea only exist as a thought? What are the facts, and what are thoughts about the facts?

It is not that you ARE unlovable or unworthy. It is not as though there is something wrong with you or you are insufficient. It is not as though you have any “bad” personality traits or “bad” physical characteristics.  “Bad” can’t exist as a fact. “Bad”, “not good enough”, “unlovable”, and “unworthy” can only exist as a thought about a fact.

Therefore, your experience of being insufficient, not loving yourself, or feeling like there is something wrong with you can’t be created by the facts of who you are, what you look like, how you act or what your situation is. These feelings can only be created by thoughts in your mind. So it is not as though you ARE unlovable, it is just that you sometimes feel this way when certain thoughts pop up in your mind and you believe them.

An Exercise To Discover That Your Thoughts About Yourself Aren’t True

When you discover that your feelings of not loving yourself aren’t created by something about YOU, that can weaken the strength of these feelings, and possibly even free you from them.

But, in addition, once you see what thoughts are keeping you from loving yourself, then you can begin to question whether these thoughts are actually true. And when you stop believing a negative thought about yourself, it stops creating the emotion.

Take a moment to think of your answer to the question “What are the negative things that I think about myself?” Then, based on your answer, you can ask yourself the following:

Can I think of any reasons or examples as to why the opposite might be true? If the opposite could be true, can I be sure that my thought about myself is true?

Could someone else have the opposite perspective? Could someone think that I am attractive, enjoyable to be around, and completely worthy of love? If other people could have a positive opinion about what I think is “bad”, can I be sure that my perspective is true?

Does the “bad” quality about myself exist in every moment? Does it describe how I act or how I am in every moment? Am I always me? If I am always me, but yet this quality or characteristic doesn’t exist in every moment, then am I sure that it describes who I am?

Next Steps for How To Love Yourself:

The next time you begin to feel unworthy or not loving yourself, instead of pushing away or denying this feeling, instead of distracting yourself from this feeling, instead of telling yourself something positive and trying to convince yourself that you are great, look to see what thoughts are creating these feelings, look to see what stories are being told in your mind in that moment. And then question whether these thoughts or stories are true.

Once you see that these thoughts aren’t true, or that they aren’t real and tangible, or that these thoughts don’t mean anything about you, then you are free.

You won’t have a thought that says “I love myself” or “I am wonderful”. But you don’t need these thoughts to love yourself, you don’t need these thoughts to feel wonderful. Loving yourself is simply the absence of negative thoughts about yourself my dear Friends :-)

God Bless !!

Why Positive Thinking Doesn't Work

Why positive thoughts aren’t fulfilling?

In this blog post I’m going to talk about why positive thoughts aren’t enough to give you the happiness and fulfilment that you want. The happiness created by positive thoughts is definitely enjoyable and makes us happy. However, positive-thought happiness isn’t very strong or very fulfilling.

An exercise to help you see what feelings positive thoughts create

In order to help you see for yourself that positive thought happiness isn’t very fulfilling, I would like to ask you to engage with the following exercise.

1) Please take a moment to think back to a time when you achieved something you had really wanted for a long time. This could be the moment when you got a job offer, a promotion, learned that you had passed an important exam, won a championship title, got proposed to, or anything else. Try to remember how happy you were in the first moment when you got what you wanted. Remember how that felt. Think about the all encompassing and intense happiness that you had in that moment. It was pretty great, right?

2) Now, I would like you to think to yourself, “I am in my dream job”, “I am a licensed lawyer”, “I am a champion”, “I am married”, or “I am… whatever else it was that you achieved. How happy does it make you feel when you tell yourself this?

3) Lastly, please tell yourself the story of the moment when you achieved your goal. How does this memory make you feel right now?

Directly discovering how positive thoughts don’t create a fulfilling happiness
Was the quality of your happiness the same in each of these three scenarios? For the vast majority of us, the first few moments after we achieve a goal, we are fulfilled and overtaken with happiness.

On the other hand, when you think about the achievement now, how happy does it make you feel? It generally provides a pleasant feeling, but this feeling isn’t particularly strong. And, it is completely incomparable to the all-encompassing and intense happiness we experienced in the initial few moments when we got what we wanted.

The reason that our experiences of happiness are so different between the moment we got what we wanted, and the moments when we think about it, is simply because they are created by two very different causes. The first few moments of happiness when we get what want are created by the absence of thoughts, while our happiness later on is created by positive thoughts about the present or the past.

The happiness of getting what we want

If we manage to get anything in our life to match our definition of “perfect”, when we get what we want, we often immediately experience happiness. Despite how it seems, this immediate happiness is not created by the new circumstance itself or by positive thoughts. This happiness is actually the direct result of losing the thoughts that were creating our suffering.

If we have a goal, we almost always believe the following 3 thoughts:

1)      “The way things are right now isn’t “good enough”. This creates a feeling of sadness, lack, and insufficiency in our life.

2)      “I (someone else) is to blame for the current “bad” circumstances”. This creates a feeling of shame or anger.

3)      “It would be “bad” if I never achieve my goal.” This thought creates anxiety and fear.

But, in the moment that we achieve our goal (i.e. make things “perfect”), there will be no more thoughts about how this particular circumstance is “bad”, no more thoughts about who is to blame for the “bad” circumstance, and no more thoughts about the possible “bad” outcome of not getting what we want. These negative thoughts created our sadness, anger, and anxiety about this specific circumstance. Therefore, when these negative thoughts leave, we are left with happiness. Happiness is what remains when there are no thoughts to create our suffering. This is the experience of the present moment.

If, in the moment that you got your achievement, the happiness was created by positive thoughts, then you would have the same experience in this moment when you tell yourself the same positive thoughts about achieving your goal (i.e. “I am a champion”). But, yet it doesn’t. The happiness is very different because they are created by 2 very different things.

There are a few reasons why our positive thoughts aren’t very fulfilling and don’t create the all-pervasive happiness that we experience when we get what we want.

In the midst of positive thoughts there are still negative thoughts

By nature, when we think some aspect of our lives is “great”, we also still believe that other aspects are “bad”. Therefore, when we think a positive thought, our happiness is generally being held back by the attention, whether conscious or not, that we’re giving to some negative thoughts in the background.

In other words, when you tell yourself a positive thought about something, that one thing is not your whole life. For example, if you say “I am successful”, “I am a lawyer”, or “I’m married”, it doesn’t eliminate all the other thoughts about how “I’m not good enough at this”, “he is not good enough at that”, “It would be bad if that happened”, or “It would be bad if they thought that about me”. These thoughts are still creating lack, disappointment, anger, anxiety, and worry underneath the surface when a positive thought/story is being told in your mind.

Positive thoughts are not stable or real

When we have a positive thought about something, it is usually easy (or at least possible) for that thought to change so that it becomes “worse”. Therefore, when we rely on positive thoughts to make us happy, there is almost always a constant subtle anxiety that our positive thought might change and we might lose our happiness.

For example, if you think about yourself, “I am attractive”, this would give you a little pleasure. Since you like this pleasure, of course you would not want this thought to change to “I am unattractive”. Obviously, it doesn’t feel nice to think “I am unattractive”. But, once you unconsciously decide that it would be “bad” to think “I am unattractive”, you start to feel a subtle anxiety about the possibility of that thought changing to “I am unattractive”. It’s not as though attractiveness is a real and stable thing, just “I am attractive” end of story. No, this thought can be affected of many different things such as gaining weight, skin problems, ageing, or anything else. In order to maintain your thought “I am attractive”, you may frequently worry about whether your face, clothes, and body meet your definition of “attractive”.

If others were to tell you that you are unattractive, or if you get rejected or broken up with, it would be harder to continue to believe, “I am attractive”. Therefore, you would naturally begin to worry about what others think.

Because positive thoughts aren’t real and tangible, they are not stable. Since they can be relatively easily lessened, worsened, eliminated, there is always at least a subtle worry of losing the positive thought. But, most often, it is a very apparent worry.

Memories are tinged with discontent about this moment

Generally, the most common time we go to memories is when we’re not content in this moment. When we are enjoying ourselves, we usually have no reason to start telling stories of the past. But, when we don’t like where we are, we go to our memories to provide us with a little enjoyable escape.

Therefore, even while we are telling the nice story from our past (the memory), if the memory doesn’t take our full 100% attention, a small portion of our attention is still given to our negative thoughts about this moment. These negative thoughts in the background create a sense of lack, and prevent us from fully experiencing the happiness of our memory (a positive thought). In addition, memories are also often tinged with the anxiety of knowing that we have to come back to this “worse” moment or from thinking that we may never have such a “good” moment again.

For example, if you think about your wonderful vacation on the beach last month, this will give you some pleasure, and maybe put a smile on your face. However, telling yourself this great story will also at least create subtle thoughts about how where you are right now isn’t as “good” as where you were, which creates the feeling that you are lacking something. We usually aren’t aware that the anxiety or negative thoughts are present when we are giving attention to our positive memory, but this is part of the reason why positive-memory happiness is a much less peaceful and satisfying experience than present-moment happiness.

Positive thoughts are pleasurable, but not enough

In conclusion, positive thoughts give us pleasure, but if you really want to be fulfilled, if you really want lasting peace in your life, you need to go beyond positive thoughts. And I welcome you to do it. I invite you to do it.

Thank you so much my dear Friends :-)

God Bless !!