Does unconditionally loving someone mean that you accept frequent negative energy from them? What if, despite many efforts to reconcile the situation, there is a recurring pattern of negative energy towards you from the other person (especially if the other person is your spouse)?
—Neil, USA
Dear Neil,
Unconditional love means loving the person on a soul level. You don’t have to approve of his or her bad behavior in order to love him or her unconditionally.
The trick is to tune into the essence of the person, beyond all form, behavior, and personality. That is the unchanging spirit (soul) and you have one also. Then a soul can relate in oneness with another soul, with a love that has no relationship to behavior.
You also work on becoming a channel for divine love, rather than human love. Divine love (if you open yourself to it) simply flows through you from its divine source. It is not particularized to one person or thing. It is all inclusive.
Granted, it is not an easy thing to do – but with practice, it gets easier to do. And the channel is always blessed by what flows through it!
Unconditional love does NOT mean passively accepting negative energy from someone. One should remain calm and centered within – but not aloof and cold. Responding with equal or greater amounts of negative energy never works. And “doormat” consciousness is not what we want to have going on either.
If, after a period of time, intense prayer and meditation, communication, and everything else you can think of to reconcile with the one doing this, then perhaps it is time to think of moving on.
You’d think that Yogananda would have been opposed to divorce; and I’m sure he would never have approved of it, if there were some way of working things out.
But he was also a great realist about these things. He even offers us a prayer/affirmation for those who find themselves in a situation where separation from a spouse might be in the future:
“Heavenly Father, we came together in love. Help us to live together in love, or if it is Thy will, help us to part in love and understanding.”
You might try working with this prayer for a while if your situation seems to call for it.
