I was walking with my cousin yesterday.  We take these long 5 mile walks and talk incessantly.  We both have our issues, and we talk and listen without judgement.  She’s actually my ex’s cousin, lol, and the only member of that family with whom I am still close.

We were talking, finally, yesterday about the lessons we have learned or are learning from our current situations.  She and her family have some serious issues they are dealing with.  I suggested what I thought my lesson was this time, but she has not been able to see a bigger picture with hers.  Though, hers is fresh, and the wounds are still bleeding, she is still reeling from it’s presence in her life.  She was blindsided by it, as was I by mine.  We both believe there is always a lesson we are supposed to learn from every difficult situation.

She expressed a wish that she could just stop for awhile, learning lessons.  And me too.  We both could take a stretch of easy, instead of so difficult.

I said though, “You know there is no growth without pain.  Perhaps as our soul evolves spiritually, the lessons become harder to learn because they are more important.”

I first learned the power of unconditional love when my son lived with my ex, about which I have written a blog, and won’t go into the specifics again.  Let me say though, that that lesson came easily, even though the situation was harder and scarier than anything I’ve ever lived through.  The lesson, to just unconditionally love him, came naturally. I can’t take credit for even thinking of it consciously.  It was just a natural reaction, of a mother for her child, and only after all was resolved did I realize that it was the power of that unconditional love that brought about positive change.

Now, the lesson seems to be a deepening of that lesson, for me.  But I’ve had to acknowledge in the last month that there are people who will reject that kind of love.  People who absolutely don’t trust it, or believe in it.  I am committed to it, regardless.  But I think there will be no reward in the end as there was with my son. So…while this lesson has been devastating to me, in my personal life, it was not as hard as knowing my son was in danger every minute.  But the lesson is harder to stay with.

One might ask, why would I continue to love someone unconditionally who absolutely will hurt me without cause, will betray and disrespect me?  Why would I unconditionally love someone who is incapable of that same emotion?

I suppose that is the lesson for me, to answer those questions.  My only reasoning now is, unconditional doesn’t allow us to pick or choose who we love.  It has to be, unconditional – without limit, without reason, beyond thought or judgement.  As so often has been said, the people who seem least deserving are the ones who need it the most.

So….I will continue to love this way.  My door will be open, not to the hurt, but to extending the love.  If I am true to myself, and what I absolutely believe to be true, in fact, KNOW to be true, that love is the most powerful energy in the universe, then I have no choice.  It doesn’t mean I will expose myself to danger or hurt.  It means I will love.  Always love.

If I ask the person I’m directing it to at the moment, hard questions…it is because I want them to see that there is another way to think, to live, that being fearful of love, and alone doesn’t have to be the way it is.  Wanting connection, love and belonging is the natural human condition. To pretend it is not, is just pretending.

There are other ramifications, if this is the path I choose….because as it trickles down into the cracks and crevices of my life, I have to change myself to fully be that person.  My anger, which can be self-righteous and flare on a short term basis, has to be tempered with the knowledge that what was done to me by anyone was done by someone doing the best they could with the tools they have been given, with their level of consciousness at the time.  And that perhaps over time, someone loving them regardless of their actions, might help them to evolve too.

There are those more highly evolved than me, who say we contract before we are born to learn the lessons that face us here.  We even contract with other souls to join us in the journey.  And if we take this life time and don’t learn them, then we will come back again to learn the same lesson.  That’s karma. It’s not what goes around comes around.  It’s whether or not we open our hearts to learn the hard lessons that allow us to evolve.

Who knows?  The world is a mystical, incredible place, and our journeys are also.  I will go with what has been put in front of me, and find a way.  Live like water…..