Short Lessons on Unconditional Love: Agapé Speaks to Despair

The following is a chat with “SomeNYDude (he/him)”, @somerandomnydudea, a prolific Substack author, who, in this context alone, I called Despair.

Despair

Unconditional love is an interesting point. What happens when a person has no love for themselves, and treats others the same?

Agapé

Agapé works in the singularity of a circle. We receive it and give it, but we cannot focus it on ourselves. Loving oneself is not agapé love but is self-respect. Don’t try to earn agapé. Don’t try to decide who deserves it. Just give it freely as you were given it freely. Once we are part of the circle, we learn how to express agapé in our actions and words.

Despair

I believe it works for most of us, and it’s a good philosophy. I worry about psychopaths, dictators, and sociopaths taking advantage of such a philosophy. I have my peace with my god or God. I told them this universe sucks, and to bring me back when I die for a good while. Too much work to do. and the spirit of agapé makes sense in that regard.

Agapé

God knows the universe in its present state sucks and that is why He put us in it at this time !! For this is the best way for us to learn about the spirit of agapé, to receive it or reject it. No need to bring us home if we don't have it with us.

Despair

Kind of defeats the purpose of god being all knowing, should have expected these problems in advance. It will take human care and ingenuity to solve these problems.

Agapé

You are assuming we were made with the universe. God "cast us out of our home" into it because we already rejected the spirit of agapé. We wake up ignorant of everything only to discover what is in our hearts already. Deceit. But the brain is made to give us the ability to reflect and detect deceit. Then, we have a choice. Quite wise of God I would say, wouldn't you?

Despair

Evil things. And the people doing evil things are powerful and rich. I don’t understand how any just god would do things like that and be considered wise.

Agapé

You’re not taking into account free will. If God stopped free will whenever we made bad choices, we would not have it and never know the value of love. But this is contingent on our real life being spirit, beyond physical life, so that we can keep the results of our choices beyond this life. I’m sure you have considered this. The difference is, I have experienced so many things that convince me that we are spirit and I take it that you have not. If we weren’t spirit, you would be absolutely correct. I wasn’t searching, but one day I had an overwhelming experience. Nothing can change my mind. It can happen to anyone. Can’t explain why it happened to me. Wasn’t a Jesus experience but who am I to say it wasn’t. Don’t know, but I know that agapé love is real, beyond this world.

Despair

Free will is nice, but it doesn’t account for the fact our universe is based on choices made in the past that we had no influence over. Free will seems to be an illusion.

I am glad you have found agapé love, I haven’t. Everything in my life has been hard. Everything a struggle.

How do you tell a disabled person or a homeless person or a child raped by a man about agapé love?

Perhaps the spirit is pure. This world isn’t. Yes, we need more empathy and compassion. I firmly believe evil people need to be punished.

Agapé

You are assuming that we were not here before or that God cannot know what we are going to do long before we do it, shaping the world we now live in. Whoever or Whatever created the universe can certainly do something as simple as read us backward and forward. The illusion is trusting only what these senses tell us. They tell us the earth is flat and the sun revolves around us. The closer we look at things the more we see how these senses reveal only an abstraction. Why do we trust in that? Science is partially revealing what spirit has always known in full.

The struggles in my life are no different in general. We all suffer a measure. Nothing stays in our mind and conscience except what we sow according to our reactions and responses. The disabled person, homeless person and child victim of rape are exactly the ones we should tell about spirit and agapé love when they are ready. You see, we don't judge and say they deserved it because we cannot know. Of course, it is possible they could have caused others to suffer the same. But the nature of agapé tells us that the other side is more possible, that they have been able to suffer such tragedies innocently and rise above their circumstances to help their perpetrators change and/or to help those suffering from similar experiences. That is a display of the nature of agapé.

We cannot say which is true, but why do some people forgive and others do not? Evil people are punished but if the world is evil, how does the world know how to punish them, only to protect itself? That is the wrong choice for our collective free will. When we forgive others and offer them the chance to recover, we receive forgiveness in our conscience and see what horrible things we have all done. What things? You see, like the senses telling us the sun revolves around the earth, we think hating and lusting in our hearts is okay, or at least not like killing or raping in the world. But Word (Christ or Truth depending on our beliefs) taught that there is no difference because we are all connected in the spirit. Word taught that the person that such collective thoughts come through in the form of actions suffers in this life, but that does not release those who do it in their minds. He said that such people of his generation were going to suffer the punishment due all those who came before them who made the same choices. We shouldn’t trust eyes that keep deceiving us. We should search for the truth in our minds and hearts in this connected universe. Agapé love is what is shining in us and, if we listen, teaches us how to break free from such things, starting by the simplicity of forgiveness.

Despair

Thanks, I’ll have to stop this here.

Agapé

I wish you well, my brother. Don't let this moment slip away from your mind and conscience.

Despair

Thank you George, I wish you the same. Each of us has a role by the universe in the current fight to save democracy.

Agapé

That’s right. May we all come to see that agapé is the key. Maybe when you get the chance, you can come back and read over the simple teaching of forgiveness. It is part of how we save our democracy.

Forgiveness

The two levels of forgiveness are we forgive each other and Name (God or Life depending on our beliefs on who or what governs our conscience) forgives us after we forgive each other. None of us can escape our conscience.

If someone does not forgive us and we forgive them for not forgiving us, then Name forgives us but not them no matter what we may have done, and likewise the other way around, whatever they may have done to us. Forgiveness is the quickest and only complete healing.

For Word said that all wrongdoing is forgivable except blasphemy against the Spirit of Agapé (the Holy Spirit or Great Spirit depending on our beliefs), the spirit of unconditional love.

The next issue is what we do with forgiveness. We should seek the truth and learn how to break any addiction that causes us to offend anyone.

If we do not, we will offend again and Name sees that we are not seeking or giving forgiveness from our heart.

So we should not refuse to forgive someone because we think they will just do it again. The spirit of agapé in us is unconditional forgiveness, empowering us to hope they receive it too.

But unconditional love means we are not against ourselves either, so forgiving means we do not leave ourselves vulnerable to them again as necessary.

In the end, whoever does not learn to receive and give agapé, all the forgiveness given will be taken away by Name through the law of our conscience.

We know we have unconditional love now if that prospect for the worst offender makes us cry or at least saddens us, for our spirit is eternal while these offendable bodies are not. If you do not have agapé but want to know more about it, then call yourself Hope and not Despair. Start here:

The Eyes of Democracy