Middle: When you aspire to a higher kind of love, ego an neediness begin to count for much less. You feel that love can be a healing force that binds everyone. You can love someone else without needing anything from them. Such love begins to be less personal and attached. Your awareness expands, and you feel less insecure. Love becomes more mature and peaceful.

Looking at beginning, middle and end of the path to unconditional love, you don’t need to judge where you belong. All of us have felt at least a few instances where we were perfectly loved and completely lovable. For most people, these times go back to childhood or a first romance. How, then, do we regain such state? By walking the path that lies ahead. The world’s spiritual traditions have provided many road maps, but here I’ll offer a few common elements without religious overlay.

1. Making contact with your inner self.
2. Honestly facing your inner obstacles and resistance.
3. Dealing with old wounds.
4. Forgiving your past.
5. Accepting where you are right now.
6. Forming relationships where you feel loved and appreciated.
7. Practicing the kind of love you aspeire to receive.

If you spend time every day with one or two of these steps, you will find that there is a practical road to love that exceeds what you have in your life today.

Step 1. Making contact with your inner self.

This implies paying more attention to self-care. Through meditation, self-relection, or contemplation, and the experience of a quiet at least a few minutes every day, you make contact with your inner world. You learn to appreciate and enjoy it.

Step 3. Dealing with old wounds.

One could also call this advanced healing. As old residues of negative emotions are release, you find that you ar stuck with resentments, hurts, and  scars that must be dealt with. Beneath the scar, such wounds feel very fresh. It takes help from someone else who understand the situation to go into these dark places – it could be a close friend, mentor, confidante, priest, or therapist. No one can do this work alone, I feel, but I’m not underlining any sense of danger or fear. The work can be done safely, without anxiety, and once you start, there’s a tremendous sense of exhilaration, even triumph in the process. Just find someone who has walked the path successfuly and sympathizes with you fully.

Step 4. Forgiving your past.

You shouldn’t jump too quickly into forgiveness. It’s all too easy to pretend to yourself that you forgive old hurts and abusive treatment, when in fact what you are eager for is to escape the pain.

The absence of pain, achieved through healing, gives you the right foundation for deep, lasting forgiveness. Self-acceptance is required first, and the realization that you – and everyone around you – has been doing the best they can from their own level of awareness. This can be quite a challenge when someone has hurt you deeply, but you can’t fully separate from wrongdoing until you accept that others are trapped inside a reality tehy can’t escape.

Step 5. Accepting where you are right now.

This, too, is a stage you shouldn’t into to quickly. The present moment isn’t free of the burdens, memories, and wounds of the past. They must be attended to before you can look around, breathe easily, and love the movement you are right now. A good beginning is to catch yourself when you have a bad memory and say, ” I am not that person anymore.” For the truth is that you aren’t.

Step 6. Forming relationships where you feel loved and appreciated.

The path to unconditional love isn’t meant to be lonely. You should walk it with people who reflect the love you see in yourself. You are likely to look around at some pont and realize that  not everyone among your family and friends is in sync with your aspirations. Without rejecting them, you have the right to find people who understands the path you’re walking and sympathize with it. They are more likely to appreciate you for who you are now and who you want to become.

I’ve had to abbreviate these points, but the steps to unconditional love unfold naturally once you begin to devote attention to them. You were born to be perfectly loved and completely lovable.

The loss of that status is what’s unnatural, not wanting to return to it.

The return means reconnecting with your true self. The path has been walked succefully for centuries, so I hope you take heart and join the fortunate ones who aspire this high.

There is no better time to begin than now.

Step 7. Practicing the kind of love you aspire to receive.

Long ago, I encountered many people, most of them women, who were constantly waiting for “the one” to show up and sweep them off their feet. But the only way to realistically find “the one” is to be “the one” yourself. Like attracts like, and the more you live your own ideal of love, the more your light will draw another light to you. This single point, I am told, has helped the most people find their love.