Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The Healing Power of Unconditional Love

"Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy, and relationships. There is nothing more fulfilling and satisfying in life than the act of loving and being loved. It is the most profound experience we can have. Love is essential for our mental and physical well-being. It is essential for our survival. Love is more than just a feeling, it is a whole body experience and it has a physiological effect on the body. Have you ever noticed how much better you feel physically and how your mood improves when you receive a hug or affection from someone who loves you or when you have expressed your love to someone or participate in an act of love?
Loving and being loved actually improves our level of health.
I have witnessed this truth in my own life over and over. Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for their patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it, yet, we do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our lives. There is a deep spiritual hunger in this country. The real epidemic in our culture is not only physical heart disease, but also what I call emotional and spiritual heart disease that is, the profound sense of loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression that are so prevalent in our culture with the breakdown of the social structures that used to provide us with a sense of connection and community. It is, to me, a root of the illness, cynicism, and violence in our society".

"In my view, being happy and unconditionally loving to yourself and others is the same as loving G-d. If I decided to really take G-d into my heart, to love G-d, what would my consciousness be like? I think I would be accepting and non-judgmental of myself and everyone else. I would just love unconditionally.

"There's a wonderful story which illustrated that. In one part of the Old Testament that was discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there's a different version of Moses receiving the ten commandments from G-d than the one we're accustomed to. In this translation, G-d says to Moses on Mount Sinai, if you take me into your heart, this is what will happen: you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, you shall honor your mother and father, and so on. They weren't commandments at all, but descriptions of how a person would be if he truly took G-d into his heart. And that's the way we are when we unconditionally love ourselves and others."

Barry Neil Kaufman. Autism Treatment Center of America

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