One of the things I’ve struggled with most in my life is depression. I’m sure there were several events that triggered this issue, but perhaps the first and most incendiary incident was my mother’s nervous breakdown when I was ten years old. During her hallucination, she stated that the world was ending and this was terrifying to me. I was only a child and didn’t understand that my mother wasn’t in her normal state of mind. I only knew that she was my mother and that everything she said was always true. As far as I knew, parents never lied or made mistakes. I never questioned this childhood paradigm I’d held until much, much later—probably well into my late 30s, and no one ever explained it any differently to me. Unfortunately, this set my life on a course with a very comprehensive and constant fear of the world we live in. Everything was a potential landmine and it became very difficult for me to navigate through life in a confident manner. I never felt safe or supported and it didn’t help that our world seems to nurture war and hatred, greed and killing, starvation and suffocation, over love and peace, healing and mending, and beauty and abundance. Our world seems to be a very scary place indeed. It took me into my forties to start to find the strength within myself to begin living fearlessly.

Each time I meditated on the answers within, I learned something new and amazing. I began to get excited about my credos because the lessons they taught me became my guiding light in the darkness. Almost always paradoxical from a surface-level perspective, in actuality, there was real simplicity in their truth, and I gained comfort from them like no form of outside instruction or set of beliefs could provide.

One night, I meditated on love. I asked myself, “What is the most powerful form of love?” and the answer I received was unconditional love. This became one of the most dynamic and powerful credos I received during meditation because at that moment, I saw that everything is love. Everything. I realized that this is the only thing that can explain all of the suffering and tragedy in the world– all of the senseless death and wars, violence, murders, genocides, hatred, prejudice, greed, corruption, and other ugliness. I began to understand that these things happen because they’re meant to. They occur for a reason. Suffering and tragedy aren’t just a senseless “part of life”, they are here to be our teachers—to show us compassion, to teach us humanity, to connect us, to humble the arrogant, to bring endings and create new beginnings. Yes, we suffer when we’re injured in an accident or when someone dies, but in spite of this, there is beauty within our pain and suffering. Nothing happens by accident. There is always a reason for the horrors we experience, even if we can’t see it or understand it as we’re going through our problems. Ultimately, these things are our teachers.

Another layer of understanding is that unconditional love means that love is available all around us and for us at all times—no matter what. Allow yourself to sense it, to feel it, and believe that it’s yours and that you’re deserving of it right now, just the way you are.