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Unconditional love definition4/7/2023 It is a profound relief to drop our pretenses, confess our worst feelings, and discover that we are still accepted. This is an attitude of grace, an attitude that values us even knowing our failings. Myers neatly describes the importance of unconditional positive regard in the therapeutic process: “People also nurture our growth by being accepting - by offering us what Rogers called unconditional positive regard. Finally, once some level of healing has been achieved, the patient can transform his or her relationships by practicing unconditional positive regard toward others. ![]() Then, the patient must learn the same unconditional positive regard for him- or herself in order to begin to change, which is impossible without sufficient self-esteem, according to the theories of humanistic psychology. This begins with the therapist herself, who must refrain from judgmental response to the inner workings of the patient’s mind, so that the patient can express and examine them without fear, even if these thoughts are destructive or immoral. The idea here is to dampen the human tendency to react negatively to undesirable behaviors in ourselves and others. Humanistic psychologists agree that unconditional love is necessary for personal transformation, but they usually lighten the concept with the more achievable notion of “unconditional positive regard,” a term coined by the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers. But this selflessness - like Christ’s giving his life on the cross for the sins of others - is the self-sacrifice required for true spiritual transformation. To love is to be vulnerable.”Įssentially, a truly unconditionally loving person accepts the naked emotional vulnerability of love and says, “I love you anyway,” even when it hurts like hell. It will not be broken it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries avoid all entanglements. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. But love we must, says Lewis, if we are to find salvation: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Lewis admits, however, that unconditional love runs completely counter to human nature because the latter emotion leaves one vulnerable in ways that are hard, if not impossible, to bear. The other types of love identified by Lewis - affection, friendship, and erotic love - are carnal, self-centered, and worldly by comparison, so agape is the only love through which the human mind and soul may be transformed away from what he called “demonic self-aggrandizement” toward a God-like view of the world. ![]() ![]() Lewis extends that concept and describes it as the central aim of Christianity. Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas was the first to equate it exclusively with divine love, which can only be perfectly demonstrated by God toward sinful humanity. This word was borrowed from the Greek word for “charity” or the “love of a parent for a child.” In biblical texts originally written in Greek, the word agape is used to connote any kind of selfless love, whether between human beings or between humans and God. Lewis identified unconditional love as agape. In his classic treatise on the topic of love and Christianity, “The Four Loves,” C.S. The Western concept of unconditional love is largely influenced by Greek philosophy and Christian apologetics. Unconditional love is a pure, unselfish state of love that defies reason, a state wherein a person continues to love even when the recipient seems unworthy or unloving in return. We like to compare it with the romantic idea of transcendent “true love,” although such physical-bound love is temporary and lustful, and it therefore does not qualify for being unconditional. Psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers define unconditional love differently, but it always involves, to some degree, an ideal state of unchanging love.
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