Unconditional love requires (some version of) not caring. What?

Paradoxically, what we think of as caring about others is the very thing that gets us into trouble, is the thing that causes a whole hunk of the pain we carry. Here's why.

In each typical, ego-dominant interaction between two people, there are four stories: my story about myself, my story about you, your story about yourself, and your story about me. (Tolle, A New Earth has this somewhere.) Oh my gosh, just think of the layers and layers of fiction that can pop up even in those four story lines.

Even my story about myself, which one might think would have the highest likelihood of being true, isn't: I may behave as if my past is me, as if my outcomes are me, as if my stuff is me, as if my family is me, as if my friends are me. And each past story about me conditioned further by my hopes and fears about those forms for the future. And that's just about me. Never mind, my views of you, or your views of you or your views of me.

And then, there's the way I determined my story, how it was communicated -- talking to each other, in a hurry, in a mood, hungry, tired, excited, intimidated or whatever. Or we're on the phone, or it's email, or I see it on FaceBook or Twitter, in one particular language instead of another one, with that language sitting inside a particular culture. (Helen tells me there's no word for "fun" in Russian.) Or someone tells me what you (maybe) said, or I sense something in your face, manner, or body language. All those communication methods are just further obscuring the first basic forms, the first basic fictions.

But, now, the critical part: we take those four views, however communicated, not as objective facts that just lie there. Nope, we've got to form judgments about them; we decide whether they're good or bad. And, if I've decided that I love you, it can be more pernicious than if I haven't decided that. I make myself believe that it's all in your best interest that my judgment is being applied to figure out whether the stuff that I think is happening is good for you or not, and whether I should try to change it, to convince you to change it, or just to worry about it. My "love" is conditional on outcomes related to the story.

For most of us, we haven't inquired of ourselves as to whether this story is really true, we haven't figured out what pain it causes us to carry the story, nor what would happen to us if we were to drop it. (Byron Katie, of course.)

So layers and layers of fiction, communicated with imprecision (at best), judged as to whether it's good or bad, all under the assumption that I can know what's best. Basically it's me playing God.

Now, what if I'm able to see through that mess in real-time? What if I really love you? The only way for me to express that is to be present with you, to just be. Anything else is applying conditionality to the love, based on outcomes in the stories. Even when you do something that I judge good, and I tell you so, there's an implied dark side -- you'd better keep doing this kind of thing because that's what makes me love you.

Does this make sense? Unconditional love toward another shows up as complete lack of caring about form with respect to them -- what they own, do, or experience.

You don't understand what you perceive. What?

This morning, quiet. Yes.
ACIM took me to Christian Science Bible Lesson (Sacrament), took me to Prose Works, then to a letter from a friend -- then to checking out my purpose and vision, and to (re)writing "Working with Dean" for a new (and amazing) assistant I'll be working with at College Summit. (Mari's first day is tomorrow.)

The path was something like this:

1. ACIM, Chapter 11, VI-VIII.

• "He does not require obedience, for obedience implies submission. He would only have you learn your will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom." (VI, 5)
• "You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to awake is within you. If I live in you, you are awake. Yet you must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto you. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do for you. Yet it is done already, and unless you give all that you have received you will not know that your redeemer liveth, and that you have awakened with him. Redemption is recognized only by sharing it." (VI,9) (After typing this, now, I wonder if this is why a blog decision this morning. I wonder if it will live on?)
• "Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you. ... You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. ... Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept if, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher." (VIII, 2,3)
• "Children perceive frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to let their own interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear goes with them. ... You, my child, are afraid of your brothers and of your Father and of yourself. But you are merely deceived in them. Ask what they are of the Teacher of reality, and hearing His answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not understand reality." (VIII, 13,14)

2. Prose Works

• Q: "Is it correct to say of material objects, that they are nothing and exist only in imagination?" ... To take all earth's beauty in to one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God's creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: 'I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail conception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the immortal Mind."
  

3. Letter from Becca, this Spring

• Becca talks about Eddy's deep work to make her insights hers, really hers. If we accept what she did, that's fine (an Audi A4), but if we work to find our own truth and our own words for it, reinventing it for ourselves (rear-wheel drive Volvo), we'll find ourselves in more danger, but we'll learn faster. (I think I won't quote her, because she didn't expect it when she wrote to me.)

Here's to seeing beauty, not judging it ever, and to learning from it.

New Blog to Share With Some of My Teachers

I find I'm wanting to share where I'm going with a very few of my many teachers. So, perhaps a simple blog. Here goes.

What I write assumes you're conversant with the following wisdom literature:

• Bible
• Science and Health, Prose Works, and other Christian Science literature
• The Tao Te Ching
• A Course in Miracles (ACIM)
• Byron Katie (A Thousand Names for Joy, Loving What Is)

 And I'll use this space to keep track of other literature that guides my spiritual thinking:

• The Arbinger Institute, "Leadership and Self-Deception."
• The Arbinger Institute, "The Anatomy of Peace."
• Bohm, David, "Thought as a System."
• Cameron, Julie, "The Artist's Way."
• Dyer, Wayne, "Change Your Thoughts -- Change Your Life."
• Hofstadter, Douglas, "I Am A Strange Loop."
• Millman, Dan, "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior."
• Pressfield, Steven, "The War of Art."

And my thinking in the physical sciences (often overlapping with spirit):

• Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene."
• Diamond, Jared, "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
• Wilson, Edward O., "The Diversity of Life."