Finding Calm, Clarity and Inner Peace

Thank you, Joan, for inviting me to be on your program.

It is always a, a pleasure to speak with you.

And as I said in the introduction, the world feels more anxious, polarized, and disconnected than I believe ever before.

Why do you think cultivating inner peace is so urgent today?

You know, there's not much choice, because we either cultivate inner peace, uh, become more accepting of differences in opinion, or we will in fact devolve into a cycle of continued violence.

So, you know, love, as Martin Luther King said, "Love brings peace," and there's no other way to it.

Uh, it's that inner peace, that sense of harmony with something larger than ourselves that's so important, and that's what this book is all about.

Can you explain how research supports the idea that love, unconditional love, can lead to inner peace?

Well, I refer to it as unlimited love, because unlimited love is even a bigger term than unconditional love.

What is love? That's, I guess, one of the first questions.

I define it in the introduction, uh, when the security and the wellbeing of another is as real or meaningful to me as my own, or sometimes even more so, I love that person.

Now, that's a definition that doesn't go into ancient Latin or Greek, but is just kind of commonsensical, sitting down with an old friend or being in the hospital with someone who's fallen ill.

You want their wellbeing and their security to have a priority in your own consciousness, and that's the beauty of love.

So, uh, what is pure unlimited love? Well, that means that a lot of times our human love is limited.

It can be unwise.

Even parental love, which is a beautiful thing, can be unwise.

We can overindulge our kids, and they can turn out not to have much of a sense for a shared humanity.

Also, human love tends to kind of flicker a little bit.

Strong today, weaker tomorrow.

It tends to be myopic a bit.

And so pure unlimited love really states that if we can rely a bit on some sort of higher sense of consciousness, we can do better and we can love more, more perfectly.