Practicing Unconditional Love
by Aranya

One of the big impediments to manifestation is judgment, which is not
love.  You think the reason you want something is that you love it so
much that you just have to have it.  That's the kind of intention that
shuts off possibilities rather than opening them up.  If you say
instead, "I want to experience all there is to experience, whatever it
is," now that is love.  You are saying, "Hey, let 'er rip.  Ain't going
to judge it, so just let it come," and then you will be open to more
possibilities.

Love is not placing conditions on how things are going to be or trying
to figure out how to manipulate life to make it come out the way you
want it to be.  Challenging?  Yes, because your whole training is around
figuring out how to control, how to make things happen.

We like to make a joke about how most of the love in the affection pot
is barnacles--things of attachment that you glom onto yourself and
others.  You run your whole life based on barnacle love.  And then you
wonder why you look like an old pier when you get done.  You've lost all
your flexibility, and you've turned into a crusty old character.

Learning to move through life without encrusting yourself and others
with barnacles is a challenge because you are taught to be barnacally.
You are taught that the way you show you care is to place barnacles on
others.  The way you work to manifest what you want is to put barnacles
on the things you want, on the things you like, on the people you love,
on the events you enjoy.

You also place time-bomb barnacles on the stuff you don't like, hoping
to blow them up.  "Maybe if I blow this up enough times it will go away
and I won't have to deal with it."  But it doesn't work.  The barnacles
have got little strings attached to you.  Every barnacle you put on
somebody else is a barnacle on you.  It's the way you bind everybody
together in a big lump.  You go down to the ocean where there are
mussels and barnacles, and everything is this big mass, and you can't
tell where or what anything is anymore.  Society is mined with
barnacles.

It's really hard to see your way out.  It's not that you have to pick
the barnacles off--that's important to realize.  No, you don't have to
pick all your barnacles off.  You must learn to love your barnacles.
Let your barnacles be.  It's not, "Oh dear me, I have to get rid of all
of these barnacles.  Barnacles are bad."  Instead, allow the barnacles.
Allow for the fact that you have been playing conditional love for eons
and eons, and you are very good at it.

How about, "I think I have got it down, and I think I would like to try
something else."  You get the drift?  Now, you are going to try
something else, just what does it look like?  It looks like, "Hmmmm, got
barnacles, got attachments, got good, bad, and indifferent.  Got things
I want to have happen, and got things I don't want to have happen.
Very unreasonable at the moment to consider myself as being capable of
unconditional love."

If anyone walks up to you in one of your seminars and says they are
capable of unconditional love, it ain't true.  First, they would not be
at the seminar if they were capable of it.  Second, they wouldn't be
bragging about it.  And third, it just ain't so.

What you can learn to say is, "I'm practicing."  That's our favorite
deal right now--practice.

God and Unconditional Love
by Harmony

It would be useful for you to spend time imagining what it is like to be
loved unconditionally and  to spend some time imagining being able to
love someone unconditionally.  The way you manifest is by being what
you want to manifest.  Practice the emotion that you want as the output.
If you want to be loved unconditionally, you must practice what it might
feel like to be loved unconditionally.  Don't wait for it to arrive; it
won't ever get here.  If  you want to be able to love unconditionally,
then you must practice what it might feel like to love unconditionally.

If you're going to practice loving unconditionally, you've got to
practice joy, bliss, excitement, and knowing.  I might suggest that the
place to start if you're going to practice loving someone
unconditionally is to practice knowing them-dropping the barrier you
place between you and them, the barrier that you say keeps them from
knowing you.  Hey, it is not a one-way mirror, folks.  It works both
ways.  There is a wall that keeps you from knowing them too.  Don't
worry about their wall.  You can see them if you put down the mirror.

If you are going to practice feeling unconditional love, think about
what being loved feels like: free.  You don't have to focus on "If so-
and-so would just stop putting these things on me."  No.  Just practice
feeling free and unfettered.  You don't have to practice being
unconditionally loved for half an hour and then switch to
unconditionally loving.  They are reciprocal, and they are free.  If you
work on having an unfettered heart chakra it becomes contagious to the
rest of you, and you will feel free but also supported and secure.
Imagine what it would be like to sit around practicing for twenty
minutes a day feeling totally supported, secure, and free.

It will feel very juicy.  And this naturally leads to feeling joy,
bliss, excitement, and knowing.  It works both ways. If you work on joy,
bliss, excitement, and knowing, you will feel free, supported, and
secure.  This is the way it works.  How come?  I will tell you the secret.

What do you think God feels like?  Can you imagine what God feels like
by loving unconditionally?  God gets a lot of bliss.

God is not a separate being out past Jupiter.  God is not a planet just
past Pluto.  God is not a separate being.  God is the Isness and the
Isn't-ness.  God is being in a state of loving self.  The way to
practice feeling love like God feels love is to imagine loving yourself
unconditionally.  This is the hardest thing you can do.

How do you do that? You must practice knowing yourself, which is why you
do all those workshops where you muck around in your insides trying to
figure out who you are.  It's not so that you can dissect yourself to
the ultimate level of your mitochondria, but so that you know who it is
you are loving.  It's knowing.  It's acknowledging your totality.

Some of you are good at loving some portions of yourself: the part of
you who does things right, the part of you who is nice, the part of you
whom other people like.  But loving all of you-now that is something
else again!  And that is what we're talking about.  When I said that
this is the hard part, it really is.  This is much harder for you to do
than it is to practice being totally open or being totally free.  This
means that you have to put aside your positions, judgments, and
attachments about you.  And that just seems to be asking an awful lot.

The first step might be to admire the hair on your toes.  Then move to
an even deeper level, and simply acknowledge the hair on your toes.
Love the hair on your toes for being the hair on your toes.  Don't love
it for doing it so well, but simply love it for being the hair on your
toes.  Or for being the ingrown hair on your toes.  Or for being too
much hair on your toes.  Or for being too black or ingrown or all the
things that hair on your toes can be.  Next, love your toenails.  Some
of you have a really bad attitude about your toenails.  They're not
shaped right.  They're ugly.  They get ingrown.  They chip.  They
shatter.  They break.  But the process is not one of coming to
adoration.  It is knowing and letting the energy that is love flow.

God's knowingness of self not only appreciates its existence but
supports it by literally surrounding everything that exists with that
support, with that "Hey, whatever you want."  It is the ultimately
yielding support.  It is not "You must stay in this body because God's
around you holding you into it."  No.  It is not that kind of energy.
It is a totally yielding support.  You want to have four legs?  Fine.
God's energy just goes around it.  You want to leave your body?  Fine.
God goes with you.  You want to go live on another planet?  Fine.  The
only thing you can't do is not exist.  It's not that God won't let you,
it's just that it isn't possible.  You do exist.  So how could you not
exist?  It is one of the epistemological problems.

excerpted from "Spirit Speaks Magazine" Issue #53 ALL ABOUT LOVE.
Copyright 1994, Sara C. Schurr

This material and more is available in the booklet: "Sex,
Intimacy and Love" by Aranya and the Pixies.
For more information about this booklet or other material by
Aranya send a message to Sara Schurr at 76265,2551 or write
to Winterhaven Press, 21413 High Rock Rd, Monroe, WA 98272.

You can receive a sampler copy of "Spirit Speaks" by calling
1-800-356-9104 or by writing:
Spirit Speaks, PO Box 85400, Tucson, AZ 85754-5400.