UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, or how to not raise our children

Recently we have started a so-called pod about Evolutionary Enlightenment on Zaadz (http://pods.zaadz.com/evolving) *. We are having a lively discussion about unconditional love there. I have to say, I always thought these kinds of online forums didn't work, I thought all one could do there was superficial chit chat, but I am hooked now. Discussing the subject of unconditional love on this forum is starting to change the way I think about what love is and I wanted to share that with all of you.
I usually don't think very deeply about love, most of the time I simply assume that I know what it is. But creatively trying to find out together what unconditional love is and what place it has (or should have) in our lives I am finding that there is a lot to be discovered, a lot!

Let's start simple; many spiritually oriented people speak about unconditional love these days, what do we mean when we say that? I think we mean that our love stays unaffected whether the other person behaves like an angel or an a%$hole. Firstly; I wonder how many people in the world can actually do this, and secondly I would like to make a case against it because it strikes me as uncaring and unevolutionary.

Now as we started to discover in the pod I mentioned earlier, a certain level of unconditional love seems to be the foundation of everything, much like the inner posture meditation where nothing gets rejected or judged, from that point of view everything is perfect and nothing has to change. Yet on the other hand, how we relate to that perfection, whether we live it or deny it, seems very, very important.

In the pod I gave the example of raising my 12 year old son; I am his father and I love him, I think that will probably always be the case. Yet the more significant part of my love for him, the part that makes him develop and hopefully guides him to become a caring, happy person, is deeply conditional. It is not enough to just tell him to live life fully, freely and care for his fellow humans, my feelings about him in every moment are his guideline.

I remember the day this started, it was after several conversations I had had about this with Andrew, my teacher, I suddenly started to see my son differently, the perfect picture of him I was carrying in my mind and that I was protecting from reality by avoiding so much of my own experience, started to break apart and I saw he wasn't happy, he wasn't strong, and he didn't know where he was going. It broke my heart to see him that way and it was awful to see my own lack of care for who he was becoming. In that moment I saw him as part of the evolutionary process (which he actually is). I decided to take him on and give him direction, not just ‘love him unconditionally'. As a result I became aware that I loved some of his choices and I hated others. The price I paid was that I don't carry the romantic pictures of him being a great kid and me being a loving father anymore, but I believe I care for his soul now, and I could never do that if I loved him unconditionally in such a way that there would be no relationship between the choices he was making and my feelings for him...

* This pod, as we are just starting it up, is still private, we are going to open it up soon though, if you want to be invited to it already, please email me so we can maybe sort that out.