The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty nine, Unconditional Love is a deep and abiding respect

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty nine

Unconditional Love is a deep and abiding respect.

So never misunderstand love for something else. If love is really love … . What do I mean when I say “really love”? I mean that just being in the presence of the other you feel suddenly happy, just being together you feel ecstatic, just the very presence of the other fulfills something deep in your heart … something starts singing in your heart, you fall into harmony. Just the very presence of the other helps you to be together; you become more individual, more centered, more grounded. Then it is love.

Love is not a passion, love is not an emotion. Love is a very deep understanding that somebody somehow completes you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The presence of the other enhances your presence. Love gives freedom to be yourself; it is not possessiveness.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. P.65

In A Course In Miracles there is a teaching about “special relationships” and “holy relationships.” Special relationships are the work of the ego while holy relationships are the work of the Spirit. Special relationships are about conditional love and holy relationships are about unconditional love.

Osho, in the above passage, is describing a similar phenomenon. “Love” the way Osho is using the word is the same thing as Unconditional Love in a holy relationship wherein the two are experienced as one. In our modern world the closest we get to describing this is “kindred spirits.” It is described as a deep and abiding respect.

Kindred spirit ship is not possessive, is not clingy, is not symbiotic, is not enmeshed, but is experienced as separate together. There is a conscientious consciousness of each other’s well being. There is an awareness that what one does for another one also does for oneself.

This awareness is rare and precious, but can be achieved by the spiritually mature. It is this Unconditional Love in which a spiritually mature person puts their faith.