I realized something today.

So much of my life is spent trying to earn love.

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Opening my heart and writing these blogs… Sharing a message with a podcast… Working hard, being a reliable, hard-working, honest, faithful employee… Spending money wisely, carefully… Not saying how I really feel all the time… Heck, even trying to “do good” by saving sex and stuff like that.

The list goes on and on.

It’s not like they’re bad things. Most of what I do to “earn love” really is good for me. It’s good to be a hard-working, honest and reliable employee. That’s probably why my boss gave me a raise. It’s good to spend money wisely. That’s probably why I can still pay rent. It’s good to share messages with blogs and podcasts — it’s a great way to grow and connect with others.

But I realized today that, deep deep down … buried in the dark murky depths of my subconscious … I’m being driven by this desire to earn love.

That if I’m good enough, smart enough, hard working enough… If I accomplish enough, do enough, touch enough people, am worthy enough… Then I can deserve and receive love.

Then??

What about now?

Aren’t I already a loved and loveable person?

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Aren’t I loved and loveable, even if I wasn’t all those things?

Do people love me because I’m a writer, blogger, and podcaster? Do people love me because I have big dreams and big goals for my life? Do people love me because I’m hard-working, determined, focused, and driven?

Maybe. Some.

I gotta be honest. I don’t really understand “unconditional love” yet. I have hope that some day I will. But to be honest, right now I don’t. I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense.

Why love someone? Why give someone — anyone — your love? How do you pick who gets your love? Why do you love one person more than another?

Some people, (I believe and can understand only conceptually at this point), love “everybody” unconditionally and equally. Maybe they really do. That’s a powerful person there.

I don’t love everybody.

Not unconditionally. Not equally.

Most people, yes. But it’s different. I have a “general, everybody’s my automatic friend” perspective for most people. I have “unconditional love” to a point — I don’t judge them, I accept them as they are, and we can get along and be friends. Is that unconditional love?

What about the people closer to me? The people I feel more of a connection with? The people I’m more emotionally vulnerable with?

Is our love stronger, deeper, more special somehow?

Are there different levels, different degrees of unconditional love?

And what about the people I once loved, but who hurt me too deeply far too many times… maybe never even ever apologizing for it or even recognizing they did anything wrong… what about them? I don’t love them — at least, not the same I do for everyone else.

I won’t expose myself to them — I trusted them and they VIOLATED that trust, numerous times. I’m no idiot. If you hurt me once in a while, you’re human. If you hurt me every day for months or years — you’re evil.

At least, that’s how I feel sometimes.

Probably not something you expected me to say, huh? I feel like people have this image of me being some great, spiritual, inspirational, universally unconditionally loving guy. I have feelings too. I get hurt and angry and frustrated and disappointed and angry (I know I said it twice) too.

Some people I just don’t like.

Some people I just don’t want to continue to hang around.

You have to pick your peer group carefully. Those you spend the most time with, you become the most like. Surround yourself with who you want to become. You can still hang out with everyone/anyone else…but watch how much time you spend together. We really do influence and rub off on each other. Probably more than we realize.

Some people I just don’t want to become.

I don’t want to become judgmental, critical, narrow or closed-minded, depressed, or angry and bitter. I have my moments where I’m like that. I guess we all do at times. But someone whose defining personality trait is that? No thanks. I don’t want to become that too.

Does that mean I don’t love them — or love them less?

I guess I have a general kind of love for everyone — everyone — even George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, and Mother Teresa alike. I have a general love for all people, because, well, we’re all people.

I love even the people I don’t want to be like.

But the people I do want to be like, the people I grow close to, the people I have joy and love sharing life with — I feel like I love them more somehow. I certainly enjoy them more. I want a relationship with them and want to expand and grow that relationship even more.

I want to spend time with them. I want to talk and communicate with them. I want to be influenced by being around them.

Is that love — or maybe something else?

Is that “liking” — how much I “like” someone?

So what is “love”?

Does love mean I can trust someone — and they can trust me? Does love mean I can count on and depend on someone — and they me? Does love mean we both desire to grow closer to each other? Does love mean we look out for each other, tell each other the truth, and do it in an honest, non-judgmental, encouraging and uplifting way?

Does love mean seeing the best in others — focusing on what’s good and right about them, not dwelling on or focusing on what’s wrong or broken or imperfect?

What is love? Real love?

I mean, how do I recognize it?

Everyone says “I love you” — but do they mean it? What do they mean?

Men say “I love you” just to get a girl in bed with them. Women say “I love you” because they’re afraid of being left alone. Parents say “I love you” because they feel a connection to their child. Children say “I love you” because their parents feed, cloth, and shelter them!

Granted, yes, I know those aren’t the only reasons, nor are they true for everyone or at all times. I’m just giving examples.

What is love?

Why do we say it? What do we mean?

How do we get it?

Why does one person get it, and seemingly not another?

We say love is unconditional — yet somehow, at least I can speak in my own case, some people somehow seem to “deserve” or “get” more love than others.

Is love attention and affection? Is love support, faith, encouragement, time spent together?

Is love when someone takes care of you, buys you stuff, takes you out to dinner and stuff?

What is love?

How can I recognize it? How do I show it and express it?

According to several great teachers on the subject, we all have different ways of expressing — and receiving — “love.” For some people, spending time together is how they show — or feel — love. For others, it might be gifts, or doing favors and other acts of service. For some, it’s verbal — what you say, when and how you say it.

But when we say “I love you” — or show it in some other way — what does that mean?

Does that mean I trust you, believe in you, support you, will take care of you if you fall and hurt yourself? Does it mean I will always be there for you, be a friend you can confide in, someone you can and will build intimacy and deep meaningful connection with?

What?

Does love mean I am careful, and have no intention of, ever hurting your feelings?

Is love an energy, something spiritual, or is it a physical act or promise of one?

And back to how I opened this blog … why do I have this deep, previously-unconscious need and desperate drive to find, earn, and keep love?

Have I never felt, never really known true unconditional love? Has it just not been explained or shown to me in a way I can relate to or understand?

I can think of only one example, at the moment, of what I’d call real unconditional love.

God did it.

And no, I’m not talking about some story about a man who died on a cross 2,000 years ago. For some people, that’s all it takes for them to know they’re loved. For me, well, I needed something more.

A few years ago, I was having a walk & talk with God. My life sucked at the time. I won’t get into the details, but no area was acceptable. I was barely even surviving. If you can call it that.

I went out for a walk and started talking with God. I expressed my frustration, honest anger, disappointment, and confusion with him. All my life, I had sought God’s wisdom, advice, and direction first. I did whatever I felt him leading me to do. I read my Bible. I prayed daily. I resisted pride, ego, rebellion, and all those other humans traits I was warned got in the way between me and God. Sure, I wasn’t perfect — but I could honestly say to the best of my ability, I did everything right, I did everything I was supposed to do and be.

So why was my life suck a mess?

If God really was guiding me, why was I so empty, miserable, broken, and full of suffering in every area of my life at the time?

You know what God answered to me?

“You’re right.” He acknowledge my pain, my frustration, my suffering. “You have always sought Me and My guidance first.”

He said he had let me down.

I know many people are going to have trouble reading or accepting that. God’s perfect and can’t let us down, right? God’s all powerful and in control, right? That’s what we’re all taught. At least, that’s what I was always taught, and many of my friends were too.

How could this all-powerful, perfect God have let me down?

Maybe he was just being sympathetic and understanding. Maybe he was simply acknowledging my viewpoint, perspective, and experience thus far. Maybe he had, in fact, somehow been unable to reach me, unable to help me, unable to give me the life he said I could and should be enjoying.

Maybe it’s not God’s responsibility to make us happy or make our lives work anyway. Maybe that’s our job. Maybe it’s our responsibility.

Either way, he related with me, compassionately, understandingly. He asked me not to give up on him yet. Give him another month, he offered, another chance to turn things around.

But, he said, he loved me — and that meant, he wanted me to be happy.

He wanted me to be happy, fulfilled, enjoying life and truly being alive.

Maybe, he suggested, that my constant pursuit of him and seeking of his guidance was not giving me that happiness or fulfillment. Maybe it was just misunderstanding, or my inability to hear him accurately, or his inability to get through to me even if I couldn’t hear him accurately… Maybe I had some old beliefs that weren’t accurate or healthy about God, or about how I should think or feel, or how I should be living my life. Maybe some human traditions and understandings in my religion were working against me, instead of helping me…

Whatever the case, it appeared that I was doing everything I thought I should be doing, and receiving only more pain and more failure and frustration. My life was continually falling apart and getting worse.

He wanted me to be happy. He wanted me to be alive. He wanted me to be fulfilled, joyful, at peace, in love, and so many other wonderful experiences life has to offer.

“Give me one more chance,” he asked me. “But if I’m still unable or unwilling to make you happy, regardless of who’s fault it might be –”

How do I say what he said next?

“When you love someone, you want them to be happy.” Okay. “Even if … it’s not with you.”

He quickly added, “I hope it’s with Me. I love you and want to be with you — but your life is short, and full of pain … If you can be happier in some other religion, or no religion, believing in some other god or gods, or no god… I will give you that permission to leave me, to explore that possibility. MY HOPE IS THAT you’ll explore all those other options and find that none of them can make you as happy or fulfilled as I can. But out of love, I need to give you that chance to find out.”

Suddenly it reminded me of that old quote, “If you love someone, let them go. If they leave, they were never really yours. If they come back, they’re yours forever.”

I had never honestly explored any other options, any other paths or possibilities. I had just assumed that the religion I was raised in was the right one, only one, and only one I could be happy in.

Life is tricky sometimes.

Long story short, my life did NOT improve, at all, over the next few months. In fact, it got even worse.

Even though God gave me permission to explore other faiths and other spiritual possibilities, I didn’t. I had been conditioned and raised with only one truth: this was God, this is how things are.

It wasn’t until a couple months after that, life circumstances beyond my control really put “God” (or more accurately, my beliefs and assumptions about God) to the test.

And that test was not passed.

My world crumbled.

The God I thought I knew obviously wasn’t real. I still knew there had to be a God. I had too many incredible personal experiences to suddenly become an atheist. lol. I knew there was a God.

I just learned, the hard way, that much of what I assumed and believed about God wasn’t entirely or always accurate.

That was perhaps the toughest life lesson I ever had to go through.

Even harder than being disowned by my parents.

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Who was God? What was real and true about God?

I had to start completely over, at ground zero.

Figures. I asked for it. Less than a month before all that happened, I had asked very honestly and earnestly in my heart, to know the truth — the full truth or as much of it as possible — about God.

I guess when you ask for the truth, you will find it — but sometimes you have to forget everything you know and had always assumed first.

Sometimes it’s easier to start with a clean slate, rather than spend a lifetime correcting misconceptions, misunderstandings, and simple human error. Sometimes it’s best to let it all go and start over, clean and fresh, no pre-conceived notions or biases.

That’s where I was for a long time. Even angry at God for “letting me down” after everything.

But in time, with healing, I started opening up and talking to “God” again — whoever and whatever “God” actually was. I still don’t have all, heck…barely any… answers. But we’re getting closer again. I’m learning. Many old truths are being reaffirmed, being confirmed… some new truths are being shared and revealed, too.

The ironic thing, painful as all this was …

perhaps this was the first time I felt totally and unconditional loved.

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God wanted me — but was willing to lose me, for the chance for me to find happiness.

He said he was willing to let me go, even though he didn’t want to lose me and hoped that I would come FREELY back to him — because I needed the freedom to find out what’s true, and what other options and possibilities exist.

It’s like this: think about it in easier human terms. Say you met someone, you fall in love, and they decide to marry you. Aww, congratulations! :) But wait … your spouse-to-be has NEVER, ever dated ANYONE else, ever.

Maybe they really do love you … but, I wonder, how do they know they really want YOU? They have nothing else to compare it to.

Suppose, on the other hand, your spouse-to-be had dated OVER A THOUSAND different people. Hmm. I might question their ability to commit, but that aside, think about it… Out of thousands of people they could potentially be with, they picked YOU.

Wow.

Now that says something.

That’s how I was with God. I had never known ANYTHING else. God loved being in relationship with me … and hoped and eagerly awaited for my return to him …

But it was something I needed, for me. I needed to be let go, to be made free … so I could explore, taste, experiment, and experience all of life’s other possibilities.

How much more beautiful would my relationship to God be, if after all that, I still came back and chose Him?

Hmm.

That’s love.

God put my happiness above His own.

…In a way I had needed most.

My parents couldn’t do it. I’m not here to rag on them or anything. They’re human and I was their first-born. So, whatever. I don’t judge them any more. But, bottom line, I was growing into an independent adult — my own thoughts, beliefs, desires and plans for my life — not all of which they supported or approved of. Nothing bad, mind you, just different.

I needed more space, more freedom — they tightened their grip.

The more they tightened, the more I tried to get away.

Until finally the vicious cycle killed us, and severed our relationship … no communication for years.

They couldn’t let me go.

But I needed them to.

So God showed me love in a powerful — and deeply emotional, extremely personally relevant — way.

He let me go. So I could be free.

So I could come back to Him, if and when I wanted to — because and only because I wanted to.

That’s love. That’s real love.

It’s because God loved me that way that I’m able to return to Him now.

If He had tried to hang on, insisting that I remain true and loyal to Him… and then the shit hit the fan… my relationship with God would not exist today.

If you love someone, let them go. If they’re really yours, they’ll come back. If not, they never really were.

That doesn’t mean push them away. It means give them the freedom to decide for themselves.

It means let them be them, do what they need to do, explore what they need to explore, test what they need to test, be who they need to be…

When they are free, and they freely choose you — wow, great and real love is here.

But that kind of love scares most of us.

Because what if they don’t choose us?

We have our own fears and insecurities. Our own doubts about our own loveability and worthiness.

Am I good enough? Will I be loved as I am?

Most of us fear discovering the truth to those questions so much, that we settle for half-love, for conditional love. We settle for “I love you if…” We settle for receiving love as long as we’re good workers, good performers, or at least, nice people.

Elizabeth Kulber-Ross once said we were raised as prostitutes, receiving conditional love, “I love you if…” We don’t know any different.

But if we can learn to love each other unconditionally — not only would we heal, not only would we transform — but so would the world at large.

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I’m not sure what I just shared in this blog. But I said it. I needed to say it.

I hadn’t really realized it before. But I was acting as a global prostitute. If I helped enough people, offered enough value, did enough good, said the right things, didn’t say or do or even desire the wrong things… If, if, if… Then I was deserving of love.

Does that mean I should stop doing all the good things? No. But now I’m aware why I’m doing many of them, and can choose to do them for a different reason in the future.

Maybe I can share my blogs and podcasts because it’s a source of joy and fulfillment for me, and only for that reason. Yes, writing and podcasting and many, many other things I do are rewarding and fulfilling. But beneath that, deeper, it was initiated out of a desperate need for love, recognition, approval, and acceptance.

But if I can release that need — let go of that fear that I’m not enough or won’t be loved — how free I would be.

How free I would be…

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Thanks for reading. I really do appreciate it.

I can’t say I’ve overcome this, that I’m not still driven by this deep, deep subconscious fear… but I’m aware of it now. And maybe, in time, and maybe with help from others … I can overcome it, I can know I’m loved no matter WHAT, and be free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, be free at last! :)

Amen.

Namaste.

Your friend,
David Michaels

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blog.spiritualsmarts.com

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