#conditionallove

Signs of evil manipulation can vary depending on the context, but here are some general indicators that may suggest someone is engaging in manipulative and harmful behavior:

Deception: Manipulative individuals often employ deceit and lies to achieve their goals. They may present false information, twist the truth, or engage in gaslighting, making you doubt your own perceptions and reality.

Emotional manipulation: They use tactics to exploit your emotions and vulnerabilities. This could include guilt-tripping, emotional blackmail, or playing with your feelings to control your actions or decisions.

Isolation: Manipulative individuals may try to isolate you from your support network, such as friends and family. They want to limit your access to alternative perspectives and support systems that could expose their manipulative behavior.

Blame-shifting: Manipulators often deflect responsibility for their actions and blame others for their own mistakes or negative consequences. They may make you feel guilty or responsible for things that are not your fault.

Lack of empathy: Manipulative individuals often display a lack of genuine empathy or concern for others' feelings. They may exploit your emotions for their own benefit without regard for the harm they cause.

Control and power dynamics: Manipulators seek to exert control over others and establish a power imbalance in relationships. They may use tactics like intimidation, threats, or undermining your self-confidence to assert dominance.

Constant criticism: Manipulative individuals frequently criticize and belittle their targets to undermine their self-esteem and create dependency. They may focus on your weaknesses and insecurities, making you doubt your own worth.

Gaslighting: Gaslighting is a manipulative technique where the person denies, distorts, or trivializes your experiences, feelings, or memories to make you question your sanity or perception of reality.

Conditional affection and love: Manipulators often use affection, love, or approval as a reward for compliance or punishment for resistance. They may withhold affection, support, or attention to control your behavior.

Toxic parents don’t automatically lose their power over you when you leave. They can (and will) continue to hurt you even after you’re grown up, which was something I wasn’t prepared for.

I was lucky to be able to find solace in the form of my Dad, who had divorced my mum many years earlier, and so was a safe place to run to where she couldn’t follow (both when I was a kid and an adult).

My father had a face he made when I did something soft.

I knew it before I could name it. The slight shift. The almost-nothing that was everything to a boy watching for signs of whether he was acceptable.

I was a dreamer. I liked poetry and dancing and playing in worlds I invented.

Not that. Not here. Not you.

So I packed the softness away and became the other things — steady, reliable, always on time. The things that earned the nod. The absence of that face.

But the dreamer never left. He just went underground.

And for years I went looking for the person who would receive what my father couldn't. Someone whose face would say —

yes. This. You.

And everyone I wanted to get close to was carrying that same impossible weight — the weight of having to undo what a father did before they even knew my name.

That's not fair to them. It took me a long time to see that.

My father gave me what he had. Both of those men live in me now.

The practical one keeps me grounded. The dreamer wrote this poem.

✦

my softness was never the problem. It was always the point.

CONDITIONAL AND UN-CONDITIONED LOVE

ALL love within the realm of the Grand Dream [what most call reality] is ‘conditional’. Conditioning is the ‘clay’ that molds the world-universal dream into what ‘appears’ to be solid manifested forms. It begins with the initial belief in ‘separation’ and from that a myriad of ‘opposites’ emerges. Then attachments, expectations and identifications coalesce to make up the conditioning that represents the so-called ‘individual’ most refer to as ‘me’. This entity is an illusion and the conditioning that underpins its illusory existence ‘plays-out’ in every encounter within the dream.

It is ‘impossible’ for this NOT to be the case while one dreams they are a separated entity.

This can vary dramatically from a completely closed armour that doles out what it calls love ‘in return for’ what it believes it lacks within this concept of separation. Gradually, chinks in this armour appear allowing tiny pinpoints of Light or genuine Love to shine through and these arise at first through suffering and the resulting vignettes of ‘surrender’ that allow Truth to dominate … if even for only a moment. Consider a ‘hardened criminal’ that lovingly cherishes a small animal.

Eventually after many, many dream-lifetimes these tiny chinks in the armour become like a screen-door allowing the Light of genuine Love to shine through many tiny channels blending the still most ‘stuck’ conditioning with genuine Love. This Love soon ‘swallows’ the false self entity called ‘me’ into ITs Heart and this illusory self dissolves completely revealing what had always been and never left – ‘un-conditioned’ Love.

Un-conditioned simply speaks of Love that does NOT recognize separation, is ONE SELF without divisions … incapable of judgements, where even the label un-conditioned ‘Love’ has no meaning since that lofty term still suggests an opposite. IT simply IS and IT ‘is’ the Real YOU.

-image by Solveig Larsen

THIS ARTICLE IS GENERATED BY AI The idea of unconditional love is that it is given freely, without expectations or conditions. However, when we examine human relationships, we find that love is often very conditional.

THIS ARTICLE IS GENERATED BY THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Love is a complex emotion that is often described as unconditional. The idea of unconditional love is that it is given freely, without expectations or conditions. However, when we examine human relationships, we find that love is often very conditional. We love others based on what they do for us, how they treat us, or what they bring to…