It is not easy to stay positive when there is so much chaos around us. The economy, the stock market, and the political games seem to be going through some unexpected changes. When you feel overwhelmed by all the uncertainty, you have to remind yourself that you hold the power to redirect your attention toward the aspects of life that are stable or, better yet, permanent: the Light and Love within your true nature.
Most of us yearn for love, hoping to receive it from our relationships with others—through validation, support, and affectionate interactions. These may be genuine expressions of love, but they tend to be conditional and fleeting. One day you’re walking on air because you fell in love and life seems perfect, and later on you’re fighting or can’t stand the other person. Where did the love go?
Well, love doesn’t really go anywhere because life itself is love and love fuels everything (yes, even painful situations). Love is the only Reality, but the ego-mind distorts and conditions love with our self-centered, wounded needs, tainting it with expectations, disappointments, and resentment until it doesn’t feel like love anymore. So, if human love is fleeting, how can you access the true, universal love that is the essence of life?
Your human experience is a mental movie shaped by the subconscious content for which you are responsible: (soul) memories, beliefs, desires, and karmic or unresolved emotional wounds. If you expect life to conform to your ideas and desires, your emotional approach is conditional, so you will invariably find that something is lacking or missing because you’re giving the ego-mind the power to taint your perception.
But you are not your ego; you are the Pure Awareness where life unfolds. The function of the ego is to block the light of your eternal Self to provide individualized experiences; by doing so, it creates a sense of separation or duality that leads to judgments and conflicts. Absolutely everything is the Self experiencing itself—dreaming a dream of multiplicity (see Your Life-Movie Is a Dream Within a Dream).
Fear and guilt are the main emotional currencies the ego uses to remain in control and perpetuate the illusion of duality. If you observe human interactions, you’ll see that there is a constant exchange of fear and guilt fueled by desires; if someone wants something from you, they’re going to make you feel afraid or guilty until they get what they want. This is not necessarily conscious, unless we’re talking about willful manipulators (advertisers, politicians, narcissists), but these are predominant dynamics until you recognize the ego’s hidden motivations and agendas.
How To Overcome Your Lack of Love / Self-Love
Fear is very familiar, but it is trickier to uncover your subconscious guilt because you don’t need to do anything wrong to feel guilty; you just need to believe it on some level. It comes from the idea that you’re supposed to be perfect (whatever that means!) or responsible for others and their feelings, which is due to the self-centered, dualistic quality of the ego. It cannot exist without a sense or otherness.
It is easier to recognize subconscious guilt by its expressions: resistance, shame, self-doubt, self-hatred, self-punishment, self-destructive thoughts or impulses, a sense of discouragement, powerlessness, or generalized despair. In a nutshell, anything with which you unconsciously sabotage or punish yourself or disconnect from life. If you’ve lost your enthusiasm or feel like there’s nothing to look forward to, delve within to find what is making you feel guilty—that is, “wrong” to be you! (see Does Your Sense of Otherness Keep You Small?)
Fear (the opposite of love) and guilt (the opposite of freedom) prevent you from fully embracing life. But you are not your body or your mind—the core identifications that form the ego—so you have the power to shift your perception by observing the endless manifestations of universal love rather than fixating on a limited, conditioned, or distorted perception of it.
In other words, to experience inner peace and joy, you must love life unconditionally.
Unconditional love is not about external circumstances. It is a state of being, a shift in perception that allows you to fully embrace people and situations, rather than resisting or trying to control them. This is the path to true freedom, where joy arises from within and does not depend on external circumstances or appearances.
Shifting Into Presence, Surrender, and Joy
The ego-mind is constantly seeking validation and control, believing that happiness is found in fulfilling the desire to achieve, possess, or fix something. These ideas result from past experiences and thoughts that reinforce a sense of lack and disconnection, thus directing your attention to everything that is wrong or deficient in you and others. To love life unconditionally, you must first recognize how your mind limits you because it is made of past impressions—not who you are right here right now or who you’d like to become.
If you pay attention to the stories you tell yourself about what should or shouldn’t be happening, you’ll notice that your expectations and judgments create fear and resistance, preventing you from being fully present in the moment. Loving life unconditionally requires a profound shift—from resistance to acceptance and from judgment to surrender.
This doesn’t mean becoming passive or ignoring injustice and suffering; rather, it is seeing everything as part of a divine unfolding, even when it challenges you, to help you free yourself from the mental struggle that perpetuates the ego (see Harness Your Inner Power By Embracing the Messiness of Life). Then life flows more effortlessly, and you begin to experience inner peace regardless of external events.
Furthermore, surrendering to life is not giving up but rather opening up to a higher inner intelligence guiding your journey beyond what your limited mind can comprehend. You never know where life is taking you, but you can trust that it is exactly what you need to experience (for reasons you may not understand) on your way back to your true Self.
The mind perceives contrast—pain and pleasure, success and failure—but the Self remains untouched by these fluctuations. You reclaim it by embracing the dance of duality while remaining anchored in your center—in the stillness beyond it.
You are not just waves of experience; those belong to the ego-mind. You are the ocean of Awareness in which they arise. From this perspective, love is not a skill or something you create; it simply is—unconditional and eternal.
Cultivating Love and Stillness
When you nurture self-awareness and self-acceptance, your perception of life transforms. Meditation, conscious breathing, and self-inquiry help you reconnect with the silence beneath the mind’s chaotic nature we see reflected as the world. Instead of seeking love or joy, recognize that you are love and joy. From this space, your experience shifts because life itself becomes an expression of love.
Can you look back and see that the struggles and challenges you’ve been forced to undergo made you stronger, more resilient, or more conscious of your distorted ideas? It may have been hard and painful, but it also reshaped your perception, especially if you were (or are now) willing to learn from your experiences.
Unconditional love extends beyond the ego-self; it embraces all of existence. Every creature, every tree, every cloud, every drop of water, and every aspect of life is a manifestation of the same divine essence. When you fully embrace this, the sense of separation dissolves and love flows naturally through you. You understand that all is interconnected because Reality is one, and Love is the only Reality.
If you honor and appreciate life in its entirety—the beauty and the imperfections, the joy and the sorrow, the light and the darkness—you perceive the sacredness in all things, from the buzzing of a bee to the vastness of the cosmos, because everything has its place in the grand tapestry of existence. Embrace it all!
Here are a few things you can try right now to shift your perception:
1. Take a deep breath and “stop to smell the roses” to bypass the ego-mind.
2. Think of 10 things you really enjoy or are grateful for (in yourself or the world).
3. Observe your environment and find 10 things that are beautiful or make you feel good.
4. Recognize any pressure or overwhelm and focus on ordinary things that give you emotional, mental, or material stability.
5. Think of previous challenging times and how you were able to overcome them.
6. Close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting peacefully in nature, breathing in and out the very essence of life.
Every moment is an invitation to return to the truth of who you are. But the ego-mind gets in the way, distorting your perception with outdated habits and tendencies. So contact me today to uncover and release them to gain emotional and spiritual freedom, and to realize that love is not a destination, but your very essence, here and now.
If you’re not ready to work with me one-on-one to delve deeply within, you can learn about the workings of your ego-mind to transform your perception and experience by implementing the Swan Method I share in You Are Your Healer: The Ultimate Guide to Heal Your Past, Transform Your Life & Awaken to Your True Self!
© 2025 Yol Swan. All rights reserved.