Summary: (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/wp-content/uploads/marty_lefkoe_headshots_053_2-01_edit_235-150x150.jpg)Early last year a good friend and colleague, Marci Shimoff, contacted me and told me she was writing a new book to be titled, Love For No Reason. She said she had read a post I had written about my unconditional love for my wife, Shelly. Marci asked if she could interview me for the book and use what I had written. Of course I agreed. Her book has just been published and I want to strongly recommend that you read it, because she explains, in a way that I had never thought of, how to create a life of unconditional love. Because I’ve been able to love unconditionally, I know how incredible that experience is, so anything you can do to have that experience yourself is worth doing. http://www.thelovebook.com (http://www.thelovebook.com/) The book opens with an inspiring story about love for no reason that sets the tone for the entire book. I was hooked from the start. (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/wp-content/uploads/Photo-for-011111-blog-post-love-for-no-reason-227x300.jpg) Early on Marci uses part of her interview with me, where I described my experience of unconditional love. When I married my wife, Shelly, almost twenty-nine years ago, she asked me why I loved her. I answered, “Just because I do.” She didn’t like this answer. She wanted to know which qualities about her made me love her. But I kept insisting that I simply loved her, not for any particularly reason. I explained: “If I love you for specific reasons, then my love is conditioned on you being a certain way. If you stop being that way or you aren’t that way at a given time, I may not love you. But if I love you ‘just because,’ then my love is unconditional and I can and will love you no matter what you do or don’t do.” If I don’t feel love toward Shelly at any given moment, I realize that I’m not experiencing love inside myself and that it’s up to me to figure out why and to start experiencing it again. I’m not blaming her for anything and I’m not waiting for her to change in some way. This gives me complete control over the way I feel about her. In other words, there’s nothing she has to do to make me love her, and there’s nothing she can do that will lead me to not love her. Marci’s book is filled with many inspiring stories about love and she also offers some useful tips regarding what it takes to learn to love unconditionally. For example, she points out that you need to be able to experience self-love before you can truly love another. Almost all of us carry around this same underlying belief of “I’m not good enough”—or some variation of how we are flawed or inadequate. Yours might be “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m not worthy,” or “I’m not loveable.” It really doesn’t matter which edition of the “I’m not Okay” manual you have, when you don’t love yourself, you hold yourself back from receiving life’s richest experience: Love for No Reason. It’s like having a winning lottery ticket and not showing up to claim the millions.” Marci describes a meeting she attended with the Dalai Lama, who radiates love for no reason: Just sitting within ten feet of this great spiritual master was transformational. His presence was incredibly calming, bathing the entire room in an aura of quiet, unconditional love. The Dalai Lama graciously welcomed us to the meeting, and before taking our questions, he shared a few words that put us instantly at ease. He said that whether he is addressing the president of a nation or a homeless person on the street makes no difference to him, because he treats everyone the same. “Differences in religious beliefs, politics, social status, and position are all secondary,” the Dalai Lama explained. “When we look at someone with compassion, we are able to see beyond those secondary differences and connect to the primary essence that binds all humans together as one.” (Emphasis added.
