Love can be defined as a deep or strong affection.

We all want to be loved. It is a basic and fundamental human need. Without love we are alone and lonely. Often we do not recognize our need to be loved because of the busyness and struggle of our everyday lives, but the need is built into our nature because we were created by God.

God tells us to love others in the way that we would like to be loved. This is called the Golden Rule. This simple instruction does not take into account how we are treated (or loved) by others. In other words, the Golden Rule requires love to be given without conditions or reciprocity. This type of love is called unconditional love.

Unconditional love was called Agape love by the Ancient Greeks. The term is still used today.

Unconditional love is true love. It expects nothing in return. It is a much higher standard that merely loving those who love us, or who can provide us with some kind of benefit.

The great paradox of unconditional love is that the reward for giving unconditional love is so much more than the reward for giving conditional love could ever be.

The Golden Rule tells us to love others as we love ourselves, so it assumes that we love ourselves. Loving yourself is not a bad thing as long as it does not result in selfish behavior. Loving yourself means that you should take physical and psychological care of yourself.

The ability to give unconditional love is an attribute of a very advanced and loving soul. Very few incarnate souls have mastered it. We agreed to incarnate into a physical body in order to learn to do this.

God loves us unconditionally. He does not give His love in proportion to how we behave, how we treat Him, or how much love we return.

Unconditional love is the most wonderful kind of love to experience as the receiver. Think of the times when you have experienced unconditional love. They may be rare, but they are unforgettable. You instinctively know if someone loves you without judgment or conditions. Authentic happiness comes from unconditional love.

Unconditional love is not fragile, it is long lasting and durable. Earthly feelings of love are a very pale shadow compared to the unconditional love of God that we experience in the spiritual dimensions. Those that have felt this love say that there is no way to properly describe it in words.

Some souls who have learned to love unconditionally agree to an earthly incarnation so that they can teach us. Jesus was one of these souls.

Loving your neighbor means loving all others. Jesus went to great lengths to make sure that we understand that this includes loving God, strangers, our enemies and particularly the poor, the sick, and the distressed.

Our ability to love unconditionally is the key factor in determining where we will end up in the spiritual dimensions when our bodies die. We get a huge reward from learning to love unconditionally, but the benefit is generally not fully experienced in this physical incarnation.

The state of unconditional love is a state of being, it does not represent an emotion that is present at some times but not others.

Unconditional love lasts for eternity. Fear, anger, pain and sorrow all eventually melt away.

Unconditional love requires empathy. You need to be able to imagine yourself as somebody else, and be able to answer the question “How would I want to be treated if I was that person?"

People who are capable of unconditional love are in control of their emotions.

In order to treat others the way that you would like to be treated you need to give them the benefit of the doubt. You do this by always making the most generous interpretation of their behavior.

When we love unconditionally, we are driven to serve others.

Do not get discouraged if you think that giving unconditional love is too difficult. You deserve great credit for your willingness and courage to try. We all know subconsciously that love is the answer, but for many of us this lays hidden deep within us, and we need to awaken.

We cannot give unconditional love unless we are able to know the world and ourselves as we really are. When you love unconditionally, you love someone despite their faults, not because they do not have any.

If you find it difficult to think in terms of loving others, being kind to them is a great start.

Conditional Love

We are practicing a significantly inferior kind of habitual or limited love called conditional love if we restrict our acts of love to those of our own race, nation, or close knit social network of family, friends and community.

The Golden Rule does not mention loving friends and family for a good reason. Loving friends and family is relatively easy to do. The intent of the Golden Rule is to love all of God’s creation as you love yourself. This is difficult, and it is a much higher standard than just loving those with whom you have some kind of relationship.

Conditional love is given with the expectation of benefit to the giver. This expectation of benefit can be conscious or unconscious. Conditional love is frequently withdrawn when benefits are not forthcoming, or the giver does not get what is expected from the relationship. This is because the trade-off or “barter” associated with conditional love is viewed by the giver as too expensive or one sided.

If you withdraw your love because you no longer get any benefit from giving it, you were giving conditional love.

Practicing conditional love is relatively easy, because most of the time we personally benefit from it.

Love that is restricted to your own interests or community will often result in behavior that is in conflict with the Golden Rule.

If you only love what is yours, you are not practicing unconditional love. You are just protecting your own selfish interests.

When we love conditionally, we may retaliate when we feel hurt, humiliated, dis-respected, or judged. Often this “retaliation” is mild and unexpressed, but it manifests in many ways that are poison to a relationship. Conditional love may lead to a cycle of fear and recrimination.

Somebody has to forgive first, and the Golden Rule says that somebody is us!

Often, we give conditional love because of feelings of duty or obligation, rather than sincere compassion or empathy for others. There is nothing wrong with being motivated by a sense of duty, because this motivation can develop into unconditional love if it invokes behavior which is in line with the Golden Rule. We all need to practice turning conditional love into unconditional love.

God is love in its purest form ... To be in his presence and share his love, we must become as he is and learn to love without judgments or conditions.
Betty Eadie

God's standard is pure love. Our lives will be compared to this standard in the light of God. Pure love is serving God and others without any self-centered motives. Self-centered motives are what makes our acts (as the scriptures say) "dirty rags" before God.

Daniel Rosenblit

Love does not inquire into the character of the recipient but it asks what he needs. It does not love him because he is such-and- such a person but because he is there. In all this it is quite the opposite of natural love: it "does not seek its own". It does not perform the characteristic natural impulse of love and life. Therefore it is basically independent of the conduct of the other person, it is not conditional but absolute. It wants nothing for itself but only for others. Therefore it is also not vulnerable. It never "reacts" but is always "spontaneous", emerging by its own strength -- rather, from the power of God. Love is the real God-likeness of man for which he has been created. In so far as love is in man he really resembles God and shows himself to be the child of God.

Emil Brunner

The great secret is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: In short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third- class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

George Bernard Shaw

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

Mother Teresa

To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.

Oscar Wilde

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

Antoine de Saint - Exupéry

Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.

Leo Buscaglia

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get–only with what you are expecting to give–which is everything.

Katherine Hepburn

Love, true love, is that which can give the most without asking or demanding anything in return.

Mazie Hammond

Love… What is love? Love is to love someone for who they are, who they were, and who they will be.

Chris Moore

Truly loving another means letting go of all expectations. It means full acceptance, even celebration of another’s personhood.

Karen Casey

In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.

Margaret Anderson

The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.

Stephen Kendrick

Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don't need more arguments on behalf of God we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God.

Robin R. Meyers

Self-righteousness is much like a spiritual egocentricity. It constitutes a secular type of love that thrives under conditionality, one in which is only existent after an individual meets the adopted standards of the condemner oppositely, unconditional love is a holy love.

Criss Jami

The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.

William Somerset Maugham

If we have built on the fragile cornerstones of human wisdom, pride, and conditional love, things may look good for a while, but a weak foundation causes collapse when storms hit.

Charles Stanley

Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.

James Earl Jones

If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.

David Harkins

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease where there are tongues, they will be stilled where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

We can only learn to love by loving.

Iris Murdoch

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Lao Tzu

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.

Lao Tzu

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved... loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Victor Hugo