The Spiritual Life - Unconditional love

The fifth component of spiritual health is unconditional love.

There are two kinds of love: conditional and unconditional. Conditional love says, “I will love you if ___________” Conditional love is based on the principle of “give to get.” “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Aristotle described these kinds of friendship as based on utility and pleasure.  A Course in Miracles calls relationships based on conditional love as “special relationships.”

Conditional love is useful and normal in society. It is what it is, but do not confuse conditional love which is based on the ego with unconditional love which is based on the Spirit.

Unconditional love is freely given with no strings attached, with no expectations. Unconditional love is given just because the lover wants to give it. Unconditional love enriches the giver not necessarily the receiver. Unconditional flows from the awareness of the non dualistic Oneness in which the lover and the loved are experienced as the same. With unconditional love the lover gets what is given and receives what is extended because the loved is experienced as part of oneself. This is how God loves us and intends for us to extend this love creating a heaven on earth by displacing the world of the ego with the world of the spirit.

Unconditional love flows from meditation. Unconditional love flows from the first component of spiritual health, peace and joy, which was achieved through kindness and forgiveness based on an attunement with the non dualistic Oneness.

In the above paragraph we find a description of how the components of spiritual health interact in a resonating system in which we can put our faith.

The Spiritual Life, Kindness is the measure of a person

Topic thirty eight

Kindness is the measure of a person

The first component to spiritual health is peace and joy, and the second component is kindness.

Kindness is not the same thing as niceness. Being kind and being nice can be two separate things. Kindness is being friendly, considerate, generous and honest. Sometimes kindness is telling people the truth even when it hurts and is upsetting and holding people accountable for doing the right thing. Kindness sometimes requires “tough love.” Niceness often involves avoiding the truth and conflict and just going along to get along. Kindness is made of more courageous stuff.

Kindness can be used as the measure of person. To read a brochure on the topic click here. This brochure can be printed out and distributed if you wish.

The way kindness can be measured simply is to answer the question, “To what extent has kindness been present in myr life in the past several months or year on a scale of 0 -10 with 0 meaning 0% of the time, 10 meaning 100% of the time and 5 meaning 50% of the time?” This is meant to be a self report, and it may be helpful to get a best friend or trusted other who knows you very well like a spiritual director, a therapist, a life partner to rate their perception of the presence of these factors in your life as well.

Once a rating has been identified, this is your baseline. The next question is how can you kick it up a notch over the coming months or year?

The Spiritual Life - Peace and joy come from forgiveness and understanding.

Peace and joy come from forgiveness and understanding.

Peace and joy is one of the components of spiritual health. Rather than fear, anger, resentment, grievance, and/or bitterness does the person experience peace and joy in their life? If this factor is rated on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being 0% of the time and 10 being 100% of the time, over the last month what percentage of the time does the person experience peace and joy in their life? If a person were to give themselves a rating of 3 how could the person kick the rating up a notch to 4?

One action that can increase peace and joy in one’s life is forgiveness. The word “forgiveness” means different things to different people at different times. The definition suggested here is giving up making other people and circumstances responsible for your unhappiness. This means no longer playing the victim but rather taking responsibility for one’s own response to the people and circumstances in one’s life.

While we cannot control other people and often the circumstances in our lives, we can always control the response we make to them, the way we manage ourselves managing our relationships to them.

Deciding to take a nonjudgmental position and stand on the things in our lives or even better coming from a place of unconditional love engenders peace and abiding joy.

Further the development of an attitude of curiosity rather than judgement is a big help. Simply to ask “What is going on here?” and to formulate a hypothesis leads one to research by looking for data to confirm or disconfirm one’s hypothesis. This research is best done when it is done out of one’s own curiosity and not for other motives, and secondly that it is done in a playful way which engenders a sense of fun. The fun is a sparkling interest in learning the truth which enriches understanding. When that understanding is achieved, peace and joy descend from the heavens. The contributor to his experience of peace and joy, is the understanding which allows one to let disturbing and upsetting things go, and surrender to an experience of a Higher Power being in charge,

So to kick things up a notch when it comes to peace and joy, generate a hypothesis about what is upsetting you, collect your data, reflect and increase your understanding about what is contributing to the situation, and when satisfied, let it go.

The Spiritual Life - What is spiritual health?

What is spiritual health?

Spiritual health is not usually named as a thing. Human beings are much more likely to talk about physical health, mental health, financial health, public health, community health, and the health of various systems.

One of the components of the UU A Way Of Life is to improve spiritual health. Before we can improve spiritual health we have to have a baseline, a reference point from which to compare. To ascertain a baseline we have to have a description of its components and indicators of the presence and strength of those components we can measure. What are the components of spiritual health? Here’s a suggested list to start:

1. Peace and joy
2. Kindness
3. Forgiveness
4. Attunement to the nondualistic Oneness
5. Unconditional love
6. Mindfulness
7. Felt connection to the interdependent web
8. Freedom from and freedom to
9. Self efficacy

The way these components can be measured simply is to answer the question, “To what extent has this factor been present in your life in the past several months or year on a scale of 0 -10 with 0 meaning 0% of the time, 10 meaning 100% of the time and 5 meaning 50% of the time?” This is meant to be a self report, and it may be helpful to get a best friend or trusted other who knows you very well like a spiritual director, a therapist, a life partner to rate their perception of the presence of these factors in your life as well.

Once a rating has been identified, this is your baseline. The next question is how can you kick it up a notch over coming months or year?

You can use this model right now to rate your level of spiritual health. Let's say over the last six months to what extent has each component been present in your life?

After you give yourself a rating on each component determine one component you'd like to work on for the next month or so and make a plan to practice. Start small, review frequently, learn as you go, and re-rate in a month's time.

In subsequent articles we will provide more detailed descriptions of each component and ideas for improvement.

The Spiritual life, When holiness abounds and is contagious.

Topic Thirty five

When holiness abounds and is contagious.

“Love is not as valuable as freedom is. Love is a great value, but not higher than freedom. So one would like to be loving but one would not like to be imprisoned by love.” p.79

Osho is referring, in this passage, to conditional love and conditional love is always suffocating in the end once the transaction is complete or no further transactions are desired by one of the partners in the relationship.

“I’ve fallen out of love. They are a good person, but I don’t love them any more, I’m sorry to say.” What has happened? The relationship no longer meets the person’s needs and desires and so what’s the point, what’s the purpose? At this point continuing the relationship is done out of duty, obligation, responsibility and abandoning these things engenders guilt. When is guilt the basis of love? Never.

Osho teaches that freedom is a higher value than conditional love.

But what about unconditional love? Unconditional love as compared to conditional love is already imbued with freedom. Unconditional love is shared, no strings attached. Unconditional love is not transactional but the opposite. Unconditional love is always one-sided. It flows from abundance not scarcity. Unconditional love is freeing in and of itself.

Unconditional love is rare and is practiced with intention and a purity which is precious. The person radiating unconditional love does not possess it themselves but is merely a conduit for a magnanimous source. People who radiate unconditional love are “old souls”, very mature, very wise, full of peace and joy. When you are in their presence you know there is something special flowing which is empowering and liberating. Holiness abounds and is contagious.

The Spiritual Life - Rising above the ego on the path of unconditional love.

Topic Thirty four

Rising above the ego on the path of unconditional love.

“Love gives you glimpses of meditation, reflections of the moon in the lake - although they are reflections, not the moon itself. So love can never satisfy you. In fact, love will make you more and more dissatisfied, discontented. Love will make your more and more aware of what is possible, but it will not deliver the goods…..The person who loves is bound to become religious sooner or later. P.78

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

Love is the path but not the destination. What we are after is enlightenment, to become one with the All. Jesus told us this when His disciple asked Him how they could find HIm and get to where He was going, and Jesus said, “Love as I have loved.”

Love is the way but enlightenment, Oneness is the destination, to return to that from which we have separated ourselves when we were born.

This way of love, though, means that we have to give up the things of the ego. We can’t cling to the idols which we have attached ourselves to which society has told us will make us happy. Money, power, status, special relationships may give us pleasure and temporary happiness, but never abiding joy and bliss.

Embarking on the path of love to enlightenment requires a purification, a renunciation, a liberation from the things of the ego. The spiritual path is paved by the purposeful and deliberate intention to free ourselves from the things of the ego world which encumber us. To love unconditionally is to cut any strings of attachment and to achieve joy and bliss within ourselves.

In what do you put your faith? Is it in the world of the ego or the world of the Spirit? Do you believe in feeding the ego or in rising above it to transcendent majesty?

The Spiritual Life, Topic Thirty two, Forgiveness in parent child relationships.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Thirty two

Forgiveness creates miraculous healing in parent child relationships.

“The love relationship starts with the parents and it also ends with them. It comes full circle….One feels tremendously happy when one can communicate with one’s own parents. That is the most difficult thing in the world to do because the gap is so big….And man is like a tree, which needs both the earth and the sky.” p.76-77

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



The most important classroom during one’s stay on earth is the relationship between the parent and the child. It is what A Course In Miracles calls a “special relationship.” The “special relationship” is formed usually in the world of the ego and not in the world of the Spirit.

Do parents facilitate the spiritual growth of the child or hinder it? In 95% of cases they hinder it because they create relationships based on conditional love and these conditional love relationships operate in both directions, between the parent and the child, and between the child and the parent.

Both parents and children feel victimized by each other. “I could be happy, I would be happy, if only you would………” This “give to get” isn’t love, is a transaction. Resentments, grievances, anger, fear, guilt are endemic in parent child relationships. Not until both get out of the victim role can there be Unconditional love which is the blossoming of both parent and child.

Immature adult children whose parental relationships are based on conditional love and a sense of victimhood will go on to repeat the scenario with their own children. This may be why Osho teaches that it is so important for one to come to terms with one’s own parents. The “full circle” Osho refers to may be the leaving victimhood and entering into the realm of Unconditional Love which is heaven on earth.

This move to Unconditional Love does not require both parties. Only one party has to exercise forgiveness to move out of the victim role. With forgiveness at least one party of the relationship is miraculously healed..

The Spiritual Life, Topic Thirty One, Seeking is the best religion of all.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Thirty One

Seeking is the best religion of all

A child who is not conditioned is in many ways embarrassing to the parents. But if they love, they will be ready to do anything. Even if it brings embarrassment, there is no harm. Their child is growing into a unique being. They will help him to remain free, to remain open, to remain available to the unknown future. 

They will help him be a seeker, not a believer. They will not make him a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, because all these religions have done so much harm—it is more than enough. It is time for all the religions to disappear from the planet. Unconditioned children can make that miracle happen because tomorrow they will be young people, mature, and they will not be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. They will be just seekers; seeking will be their religion. That’s my definition of a sannyasin: searching, seeking, inquiring is his religion. Beliefs stop all inquiry.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. P. 73

Many religions have their creeds. They have their beliefs. There is no need to be curious and to search further because their texts, their clergy, will give you the answers. Unitarian Universalism is a unique religious tradition because it encourages seekers with their curiosity to explore ideas that can give their faith and lives meaning.

Francis David, the Unitarian pioneer back in the 16th century, said that we need not think alike to love alike.

The fourth principle of Unitarian Universalism affirms and promotes the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. And so we socialize our children and grandchildren differently in the UU faith tradition than in other religious organizations.

Osho never identified with Unitarian Universalism and may not have known what the faith tradition involved but Osho taught one of the fundamental principles of Unitarian Universalism which is to question, to seek, and that this curiosity is foundational for a spiritual life.

Seeking implies a religious literacy among Unitarian Universalists which may or may not exist. It is incumbent on UUs to educate themselves about the beliefs, traditions, vocabulary, practices, and values of major world religions. Ignorance does not indicate spiritual maturity, but rather an awareness of  multiple religious ideas and practices, and a discernment leading to a faith one can call their own.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Thirty, Make Love Not War

The Spiritual Life, Topic Thirty

Make love not war

There are a few things that you have to understand—I cannot give any proofs for them, they are beyond proofs. Only your experience will give you the proof. For example, the biological organism is capable of transcending itself. It transcends in certain moments. Those are the moments most cherished in the human mind, because in those moments you have known freedom, an expanded self, an utter silence and peace; love without its counterpart, hate, following it. That moment we call orgasm. 

Biology gives you orgasm; that is the most precious gift from blind biology. You can use those moments of freedom, melting, disappearing, for meditation. There is no better space from which to jump into meditation than orgasm. Two lovers feeling one soul in two bodies … everything has stopped for the moment, even time has stopped. There are no thoughts, the mind has stopped. You are in your simple isness. Those are the little spaces from where you can get beyond biology. All that you have to know is that this is what meditation is: timelessness, egolessness, silence, blissfulness, an all-pervading joy, overwhelming ecstasy.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. P 66-67

Osho points to a human experience that most religions not only avoid but condemn and that is sexual orgasm. Osho teaches that sexual orgasm is a small taste of meditation.

Ecstasy can be achieved in other ways but the most biologically fundamental is sexual arousal and then orgasm. Why are most religions so prudish and judgmental when it comes to sexual activity? It is because religion can’t control the experience, and the experience takes one away from religion into the realm of spirituality if one is awake and aware? With the ecstasy of altered consciousness who needs religion? Who will leave the conjugal bed and go to church? Spiritual experience is in the conjugal bed not in a building listening to a clergy person drone on about mundane religious concerns.

Back in the 60s there was an expression, “Make love not war.” If this were actually true, wouldn’t the world be a better place?

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.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty eight, I"m gonna make you love me - NOT!

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty eight

I’m gonna make you love me - NOT!

Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.

Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That’s why in India, the ultimate we call moksha; moksha means “freedom.” Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped, freedom has to be saved—freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy, it is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman—utter freedom, absolute freedom. So anything that becomes destructive to freedom, one starts hating

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press.p.60 - 61

How can love be a bondage, a domination, a possession? It can’t of course. But fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, leads one to imprison, to manipulate, to cling, to threaten. This conditional love is described in A Course In Miracles as “special relationships.”

Special relationships are the creation of the ego which teaches people that they are the source of ultimate happiness. Our culture is saturated with love songs, movies based on romance, and the promise that we are to “fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after.” We have made idealized romantic relations our greatest idealization and our the source of our greatest demonic forces.

Osho teaches that freedom is more important than conditional romantic love. Osho could have authored the poster of the dove flying from the gilded bird cage with the slogan, “If you love it, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it never was.”

Instead of conditional love, shift to unconditional love. You love just because you feel like it no strings attached. Unconditional love likes giving people freedom. Giving freedom is nurturing, empowering, facilitative of their agency.

In what do you put your faith: conditional love or unconditional love?

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty seven, Fall in love or rise in love?

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty seven

Fall in love or rise in love?

In fact a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love. The word fall is not right. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand—they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have the integrity to stand alone. 

A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it—he simply gives. When a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it—no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. 

And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much so that they are almost one, but their oneness does not destroy their individuality—in fact, it enhances it, they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate.

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

The key to mature romantic love is to be oneself and to maintain a connection. In mature romantic love partners are conscientiously conscious of each other's well being. They are alone and together, a witness to each other’s intimate life, a mirror that illuminates one’s blind spots that helps the unconscious become conscious.

The paradox is that in taking care of oneself, in facilitating one’s own growth and development, the person is able to become more loving, more generous, more compassionate, more available emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually to one’s partner..

This taking care of oneself is not egotistical but compassionate and nurturing, and merging with the Oneness of existence.

This taking care of oneself is based on forgiveness. Forgiveness is giving up making other people and circumstances responsible for one’s unhappiness. One realizes that they no longer wish to play the victim but take control over how one chooses to respond to the people and things in one's life.

In what does one put their faith, in the world of the ego with winners and losers, and victims and victimizers, or in the world of the Spirit with the Unconditional Love of the Universe permeating one’s consciousness?

As Osho teaches, a person does not “fall in love” but rises into love.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty six, The freedom to be who you are.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty six

The Freedom to be who you are.

The moment you depend, you start feeling miserable because dependence is slavery. Then you start taking revenge in subtle ways, because the person you have to depend upon becomes powerful over you. Nobody likes anybody to be powerful over them, nobody likes to be dependent because dependence kills freedom. And love cannot flower in dependence—love is a flower of freedom; it needs space, it needs absolute space. The other has not to interfere with it. It is very delicate.

When you are dependent the other will certainly dominate you, and you will try to dominate the other. That’s the fight that goes on between so-called lovers. They are intimate enemies, continually fighting. Husbands and wives—what are they doing? Loving is very rare; fighting is the rule, loving is an exception. And in every way they try to dominate—even through love they try to dominate. If the husband asks the wife, the wife refuses, she is reluctant. She is very miserly: she gives but very reluctantly, she wants you to wag your tail around her. And so is the case with the husband. When the wife is in need and asks him, the husband says that he is tired. In the office there was too much work, he is really overworked, and he would like to go to sleep.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. P. 54

The fear of domination begins in childhood when the child says defiantly, “You’re not the boss of me!” and so it goes on throughout our lives in the world of the ego.

As the philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, has pointed out, there are two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. In many instances in order for there to be freedom to, there must be freedom from. Unconditional love only works with freedom from. There is no possession, no domination, no control issues, no power struggles.

The first step in embarking on a path of Unconditional love is to give up control, give up attempts to make the loved one do anything, and give the gift of freedom, the space to be one’s self. This is scary especially if the loved one is likely to make mistakes that have negative consequences. A warning is enough, but then the tongue must be bitten. Mistakes can, sometimes, be the best teacher. People don’t learn from words unless they are desired and willingly received. Most often people learn from consequences.

It is in freedom from our dominating, and controlling, and possessiveness that we put our faith. We give up the illusion of making anybody do anything. As they say in Twelve step programs, “You take your own inventory, don’t be taking everyone else’s.” And so we surrender our desire to control and give the other person the freedom to be who they are.

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty Five, In which world do you put your faith?

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty Five

In which world do you put your faith: the world of the ego or the world of the spirit?

Man becomes mature the moment he starts loving rather than needing. He starts overflowing, sharing, he starts giving. The emphasis is totally different. With the first, the emphasis is on how to get more. With the second, the emphasis is on how to give, how to give more, and how to give unconditionally.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. P.53

Like so many ideas in the spiritual life, they seem paradoxical.

“We get by giving.”

“We learn what we teach.”

“Love is an overflowing not a sucking up.”

These paradoxical ideas are not difficult, but to the ego they seem counter intuitive.

So today whatever you need give some away. Share. See what happens.

Jesus points out this paradox when He teaches that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Jesus is not talking about things in the ego world but in the world of the spirit. Jesus teaches that we have to be “in” the world, but not “of” the world.

So where do you focus your attention and effort? Your experience is heavily influenced by what you think, the thoughts you pursue and cling to. In which world do you put your faith: the world of the ego or the world of the spirit?

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty four, Conditional and unconditional love

The Spiritual Life, Topic Twenty four

Conditional and unconditional love

Man becomes mature the moment he starts loving rather than needing. He starts overflowing, sharing; he starts giving. The emphasis is totally different. With the first, the emphasis is on how to get more. With the second, the emphasis is on how to give, how to give more, and how to give unconditionally. This is growth, maturity, coming to you. A mature person gives. Only a mature person can give, because only a mature person has it. Then love is not dependent. Then you can be loving whether the other is or is not. Then love is not a relationship, it is a state.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press.p.52

Love is not conditional. Love is unconditional. You love just because you feel like doing it.

Unconditional love comes from abundance not from scarcity. One loves unconditionally
when joy is overflowing.

The mature person is past “give to get” and “one or the other” and “me or you.” There is only “we.” The “I” is gone.

Unconditional loving comes from having one’s priorities straight. First comes God, then comes me, then comes you, and then everyone and everything else. Putting God first, the circle expands naturally as everything is part of Godliness.

Unconditional love is an awareness of nondual Oneness. It is born from cosmic consciousness. It is in cosmic consciousness that we put our faith.