Are We Supposed to Love Everyone?

“Are we just supposed to walk around loving everyone? I mean, aren’t there people who we should distance ourselves from as a matter of doing what’s best for our own growth?” a woman asked when I finished giving a talk this past weekend.

This question stems from a place of deep resistance to changing one’s current perspective of a particular person or situation that is causing them pain on some level. And, of course, this resistance is rooted in ego.

Ego equates extending love in situations like these as condoning something you disagree with, which creates an inner conflict between how you feel inside and the action you’d be taking outwardly. This inner dissonance also means that your outer action wouldn’t be backed by an energy of love. Instead, it would likely be soaked in resentment.

And it’s true; none of these actions would be based in love. In fact, they’re not doing either party any favors. In order to truly align with love, we’ve got to be willing to change our perspective of the original person or situation.

The reason we feel pain is because our personal ego is somehow wounded by the other person’s actions. This is indicative of coming from a place of incompleteness (ego)…we need the person or situation to be different in order to feel whole, fulfilled, peaceful, happy, saved, etc.

This is a clear indication of where our personal inner healing needs to take place. We have to take full responsibility for our own ability to feel whole, fulfilled, peaceful, happy, saved, etc.

Placing that responsibility on someone or something being different in our life effectively gives away all of our power­­, which is exactly what ego wants us to do. For in doing so, we remain at its mercy.

This is the depth of ego’s game…in leading us to believe that wholeness, peace, happiness and salvation lie outside of us, ego has something to pull us by the nose with. Ego is so good at doing this that these emotional patterns feel normal…so normal that we never realize it’s ego who’s actually running the show.

However, the moment we see the falsity that is at play, the entire pattern is dissolved and removed from our awareness, leaving us with none other than pure love and light. This is how we truly align with and extend love…“we remove all blocks to love’s presence”, to borrow a phrase from A Course in Miracles.

It’s always ego that keeps us from seeing and aligning with love. Ego operates off of one thread of consciousness, whereas love operates off of another. The inner journey is about letting go of the thread of consciousness based in ego and reaching for the one based in love.

When this happens, everything changes. Inwardly, we gain depth of mind since we’re no longer consumed with fear and all of the emotional cycles that hold it in place. Our minds become more meditative, which aids in problem solving on day-to-day practical level as well as a journey into self-discovery.

Outwardly, our action springs from a space of clarity since our mind is no longer bogged down with anxious thoughts about the future or regret over the past. We live life with a new vibrancy…one that was previously clouded and suppressed by ego’s heavy emotional pulls in our awareness.

All this becomes possible when we’re willing to leave the familiar—all that ego leads us to believe is true—and open up to a new reality…one based in love.

When this transformation of consciousness occurs within, we don’t walk around loving everyone because we’re supposed to; we do so because it’s our natural state of being.

We move from a state of seeking love to realizing that we’re overflowing with an abundance of love. Instead of looking to get love in all that we do, we’re able to turn to someone who hasn’t yet realized this within themselves and say, “here, have some of mine”.

When we offer love to someone, it might be simply accepting where they are in their journey (ego and all). Or it might be in forgiving them for some outer expression of their ego that previously hurt our ego.

We can more easily accept and forgive another person’s ego when we’re no longer identified with our own, because we’re no longer in a state of consciousness that can be personally affected by their ego’s actions. Again, we’re operating from a new thread of consciousness.

I realize that it’s much easier to extend love in these capacities when you’ve completed your own healing, so there may be things that you need to do to foster your own inner healing like ending certain relationships or removing yourself from certain situations. This is fine and can be done from love.

If you’re in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, do what’s best for your own healing by ending the relationship and getting out of the situation. Then, get to work on your inner healing knowing that the goal is to leave the situation or relationship without carrying any unnecessary emotional baggage forward.

You can allow them to be where they are in their journey and you can forgive them for the pain they’ve inflicted on you. Don’t poison yourself by carrying that suffering forward. You deserve to be emotionally free.

We all deserve to know the thread of consciousness based in love…and that only becomes possible when we let go of the one based in ego. Be willing to leave the known in favor of knowing this transformed state of consciousness.

Be willing to be so full of love that you’re whole life is lived from a state of saying, “here, have some of mine”.

So to recap my answer to the opening question…

When we start with the mental understanding that love is our truth, every situation becomes an opportunity to move us towards that conscious realization. Along the way to this realization, it may be prudent to end certain relationships or remove ourselves from certain situations as a way to foster our own inner healing.

However, when our healing is complete, we naturally extend love to everyone. We may still remove ourselves from people and situations, but it will be done as a course of right-action for that particular moment or situation…not out of our ego being affected.

If you found this post helpful, be sure to sign up for email updates below.

If you know of others who could benefit from this post, please share it using the social media sharing buttons below.

If you have any questions that you’d like me to address on the blog, please submit them here.

To aligning with love,

Shanna

P.S. If you’d like to book a one-on-one coaching session, click the graphic below: