Episode Transcript
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Cathy (00:00):
Unconditional love means
that we treat others, how we
(00:02):
would want to be treated, nothow we deserve to be treated,
but how we would want to betreated.
Yet, so often we unconsciouslyplace expectations, limits, or
conditions as you might callthem on how we love others or
how we treat others, includingourselves.
(01:25):
Hey friends.
Welcome to episode 67 of Health,Harmony and Happiness with
Cathy.
Boy, I tell you what, it isValentine's Day today.
And this is not the episode thatI had planned on putting out.
This week, but this morning Isat down to do some.
Reflection and actually somejournaling on, um, inner child
(01:48):
work and just other stuff that Iam working through.
But what came out onto thepaper?
With something much differentthan I expected.
And perhaps it's exactly what Ineeded to also be reminded of.
Uh, today on this day of love.
(02:10):
But it has given me definitelysome.
Food for thought.
And.
Really, this just flowed out ofme in my writing.
So.
I hope that you find benefit init as well.
Because, um, I know it was verytherapeutic for me.
And so I hope that you can feelthat love.
Behind it and feel.
(02:31):
Uh, Just feel the intention ofwhat unconditional love is like,
and what we could consider it tobe like.
It's not always an easy thing.
And I think it's not a topicthat we think about all the
time.
But I want to invite you todayto slow down for a moment.
(02:53):
And just absorb, whatever it isis coming out or coming through
in this podcast.
Before we get to my writingthough, and before we get to
what I would like to share withyou, I want to let you know that
this episode is brought to youby my{Self} Love is in the Air
(03:14):
Candlelight Yoga class that iscoming up next week.
And this candlelight yoga classis going to be, um, involving
movement, meditation, andintention setting around pouring
into yourself so that you canbetter pour into others.
It's a small intimate class.
(03:36):
And, um, It's just really agreat evening when I hold these
classes.
It's a great evening, too.
Remember.
Intention in your own life toremember to.
Listen in to your innerguidance.
And allow that to, to guide you.
So if you're in the Knoxvillearea and you are listening to
(03:58):
this podcast, you might considersigning up.
There are still a few spots openand I would love to have you in
the class.
Let's get to the show though.
Okay.
So unconditional love means thatwe love without condition.
It means to love without saying"I love you, but only when you
(04:20):
fit inside this little box ofexpectations that I've created."
Who or what in your life can youthink of that you can say you
love.
Without those conditions withoutrelying on anything else.
Without putting them into a box.
(04:43):
Who or what in your life can yousay that you love
unconditionally?
It can be a tough thing becausewe are human, and when we get
hurt by someone, or even whenour things get ruined by maybe a
(05:03):
pet or a child a part of usstill wants to have restitution.
Even with an apology illfeelings can sometimes still
linger.
Right?
And sometimes apologies don'teven happen.
(05:25):
And we forget to forgive and tolove.
Having unconditional love meanswe forgive and keep loving, even
though we may have been hurt.
It means.
We treat others how we wouldwant to be treated.
(05:45):
Not how we deserve to betreated.
But how we want to be treated.
So even when you make a mistakein your own life, Maybe you
think you don't deservesomething?
Maybe you don't think youdeserve someone's love in a
certain way, or maybe you thinkthey don't deserve your love in
a certain way, because they'vehurt you.
(06:08):
But unconditional love, myfriends, is loving them how they
would want to be loved.
And the same goes for you, whenyou make a mistake you still
want to be loved you still wantto be held and you still want to
have that feeling of tendernessAnd unconditional love means
that we do that, no matter what.
(06:29):
When you make mistakes, don'tyou want someone to draw you in
wrap their arm or arms aroundyou, hug you and tell you"it's
okay", or"it's going to beokay," and that they still love
you?
I hope you do.
Dog's often do this.
They forgive you and love you nomatter what, no matter if you
scold them for chewing up yourfurniture or dragging the
(06:51):
garbage all over the house.
They still come to you andsnuggle and cuddle with you.
They still love you withoutwords.
You know, who else does this?
Jesus.
He doesn't judge you for yourmistakes.
He instead calls you towards himand wants to hear what's
troubling you so he can loveyou.
And so that you can feel hissupernatural peace.
(07:13):
But you know where we often fallshort in this unconditional
love?
With ourselves.
We forget to unconditionallylove ourselves.
Or maybe it's that we don't knowhow to unconditionally love
ourselves.
Believe it or not.
That second one is likely thereason we don't actually
unconditionally love ourselves.
(07:35):
We don't know how.
Remember what I said earlier inthe show about what
unconditional love is?
It's loving something orsomeone.
Without condition.
Without putting them into a boxwith expectations.
And I don't know about you.
But I have definitely realizedover the years that my own
(07:58):
expectations of myself are much,much higher than anyone else's
of me.
You're probably the same andhopefully you can relate.
Unconditional love towardsyourself means forgiveness.
It means turning towardsyourself and offering tenderness
and nurturing physically,mentally, emotionally, and even
(08:21):
energetically.
Even when you think you don'tdeserve it.
Even when you think you don'thave the time or energy to offer
that unconditional love toyourself.
Unconditional self-love.
Isn't selfish.
It's not about beingself-centered, but instead it's
(08:41):
offering love to yourself so youcan live without suffering.
We are the ones who create themost suffering in our own lives
because we unconsciously, aren'tloving ourselves
unconditionally.
This self-love thing though istrickier than it may sound or
appear.
It's not as simple as justdeciding to love yourself and
(09:04):
realizing that you haven't beenloving yourself, then just
starting to love yourself.
Right.
I mean, it would be wonderful ifit were really that simple, but
it's not, it takes work.
Just like any relationship takeswork.
You have to cultivate thatrelationship with yourself.
And that's what self love is.
It's it's cultivating arelationship with yourself.
(09:25):
Not the superficial stuff, notthe, um, you know, doing things
that care for yourself.
Like those things are good andthey are a way of showing
yourself love, but the thingsthat.
Deepen your relationship withyourself.
Or the actual self love things.
(09:46):
And those things take practice.
Daily practice.
And more than just practice, ittakes coming face to face with
the things that have beenkeeping you from.
Loving yourself.
From loving yourself, wholly andcompletely.
Because it's those things thatyou have to shed in order to
(10:09):
actually love yourselfunconditionally.
That's what Jesus, yoga and manyother religions and loving-
kindness practices teach us.
To let go of the walls,blockages, masks, and come as
you are, without judgment, andbe loved.
Whatever you think you"deserve"doesn't matter.
(10:32):
We all don't deserve love ifthere are conditions around it,
we've all made giant mistakes.
When we place conditions aroundit.
It means we shouldn't be lovingourselves.
So we have to turn that around.
And let the conditions go.
And love ourselves completely.
(10:52):
You have to love yourselfcompletely and unconditionally.
Exactly.
As you are.
cause if you put that.
I don't deserve it on it.
That's a condition.
My friends.
That's a condition.
And when you do that.
(11:13):
There's no reason you would everhave.
To actually truly love yourself.
Because we are not perfect.
We are humans.
None of us are perfect.
We've all made mistakes.
We all put these expectationsout there.
That would maybe look like wehave reason to not wholly and
(11:33):
completely love ourselves.
But unconditional love saysotherwise.
When you begin to love yourselfin this unconditional way, your
relationships change, not onlywith yourself, but also with
others.
You begin to approach them witha different perspective and you
begin to heal the woundsinside...
(11:54):
childhood wounds and Wounds thatconsciously or unconsciously
you've created with others overyour lifetime The whole process
of self-love actually involvesthe process that we talk about
here on this show a lot.
With honoring your energeticrhythms.
It involves being intentional.
Creating a plan to begin to beintentional, which might look
(12:16):
like finding someone to help youwalk through the process of
learning to love yourself.
It involves starting to do thework, which quite honestly takes
a while.
Like I said earlier in the show,it's not just about flipping the
switch.
It's a process and you'll havemoments of momentum and moments
of slow learning and growth, inwhich you have to do the fourth
(12:38):
step of the energetic rhythmsprocess, which is letting go of
something before you can, onceagain, move into that rest phase
or that intentional phase whereyou are resting and waiting for
something else to appear or comeup that you might need to learn
to love about yourselfunconditionally.
(12:58):
And the process or cyclecontinues on with each feeling
or emotion that your clever mindhas chosen to push down or
neglect to honor in all fourphases of its energetic rhythm
in your life.
Each time we pull one of thoseexpectations of ourselves out of
the box it's been in and look atit from all angles, only then
(13:22):
can we love ourselves trulyunconditionally.
And that takes work, my friends,it takes practice and it's a
painful process.
It's also a very joyful process.
But it takes time.
But it is possible.
It is absolutely possible.
(13:42):
You see we're masters attricking ourselves into thinking
that we are mentally andemotionally better than we
actually are, until something isrevealed to us that needs to be
addressed.
This is when it's like theuniverse says, okay, this is up
for you.
And you know what, for youlistening to this show.
Maybe you're realizing thatself-love is up for you.
(14:04):
And that's the thing that youhave to dive into.
Maybe it's something else.
But when the universe brings itinto your awareness multiple
times, it likely means thatthat's up for you and you need
to dig a little bit further.
That's just from my experienceor what I have learned over the
years, I guess.
(14:27):
So then the work becomeslearning to love and heal.
And release that part ofyourself that is creating the
suffering.
And by doing so, you cultivategreater health, harmony and
happiness in your life.
because honestly, we can't trulylove others to our own full
potential until we know andexperience that pure,
(14:51):
unconditional love of ourselves.
Okay, friends.
Now, as I was reflecting on allof this and what just kind of
came out of me, Um, I wasthinking what are some of those
conditions that we place aroundloving ourselves or even around
loving others?
Uh, you know, some of them maybearound ourselves would be, we
(15:14):
can't love ourselves completelybecause we did this, because I
made this mistake because I amthis way, or because I was told
something over the course of mylife that maybe I can't
completely love myself And someof those conditions that we
place on loving others, evenwhen we think it's an
(15:35):
unconditional love, we mightsometimes sneak in those
conditions.
Remember how I said that ourmind is clever and it is sneaky,
and some of those conditionsthat we might seem to place
would be maybe things like"whenyou do the dishes, how or when I
want them, then I will love youcompletely or then I will be
(15:58):
kind to you." Or maybe"when it'sconvenient for me to slow down
and work on this relationship,then I'll go ahead and do it."
Those are conditions.
Or maybe"you hurt me, so I'mgoing to withhold love from you
until you fix it." If any ofthose sound familiar, it might
(16:18):
be time to.
Unconditional love and what thatlooks like in your life.
Those are all placing conditionsaround how we love someone and
it is challenging tounconditionally love someone.
And if we haven't been shownthat in our lives, and granted,
I'm not saying this out of aplace that I haven't been shown
(16:39):
it, but I'm saying if we haven'tfully experienced that in our.
And quite honestly, I don't knowthat we fully can experience it
until we can love ourselves.
I don't know it, it is a, it isa tricky one because I do
believe that God loves us inthat way, unconditionally.
(17:04):
And I believe that Jesus lovesus that way.
I, I think here I'm getting on alittle bit of a platform, but I
think that God gave us Jesusbecause he loved us so much and
Jesus says, just come to me andyou be fulfilled.
Come to me no matter what youhave, bring your, bring your
(17:25):
mistakes to me and I will loveyou anyway.
And if you're not a Christian,that's gonna sound a little bit,
out there maybe, or it might bea little bit uncomfortable even.
But that's honestly what it is.
And so it's hard for our mind.
(17:46):
To wrap around that because weourselves are human and have
faults, and we ourselves don'tdo that, generally, for others.
So for what it's worth,unconditional love can indeed be
challenging.
(18:07):
And I think in some ways we haveto learn to love ourselves
unconditionally before we canreally, truly love others
unconditionally as well.
Even with your kids.
Even with your kids, if, ifthat's coming up for you and
you're saying, yeah, but I lovemy kids unconditionally.
And also, are there times thatyou withhold love or that you,
(18:31):
like I said with the dishes,things like,"I want you to do
the dishes now, or This is thetime that I want you to clean
out the dishwasher.
Not later." You know?
Are there ways that you withholdyour lover or that you alter the
love that you give them?
Because, Of their behavior orbecause of their choices?
I don't know.
And I, I don't have all theanswers on this.
(18:52):
Um, those are just all thingsand I, oh, also, I am not
perfect at any of this by anymeans.
These are just the ramblings andthe thoughts that were coming to
my brain today, and I wanted toshare them with you because it
is a day of love and because,uh, we don't remember that we
need to love ourselvesunconditionally.
(19:13):
Even When we make mistakes, evenwith our faults.
And so learning to do that is ajourney and a process, and I
think it's a beautiful one.
All right, friends, that's allI've got for you today.
I hope you have a wonderful day,and I hope that this is received
in your heart and just maybeeven gives you something to
(19:35):
think.
Until next week, I'm CathyStruecker, and you've been
listening to Health, Harmony andHappiness with Cathy.
Cheers to cultivating your ownversion of health, harmony, and
happiness in your life.