Pure Unlimited Love features seven mantras that offer a blueprint for living with clarity, compassion, and courage: May You Give and Glow; May You Heal with Kindness; May You Follow Your Callings; May You Raise Kind Children; May You Know the One Mind; May You Cherish the Gift of Nature; and May You Honor the Spirit of Freedom. At its heart, Pure Unlimited Love invites readers to reimagine love as a force for healing the body, rewiring the brain, and reshaping our families along with our communities.
In his moving foreword, the Dalai Lama affirms, “I’m pleased to see that noted author Dr. Stephen G. Post is addressing themes such as consciousness and interconnectedness in his new book about seven paths to inner peace. It is my hope that this book will contribute to the flourishing of humanity.”
You can learn more in this interview.
What inspired you to write Pure Unlimited Love?
I have been doing work on this topic in various contexts for 40 years + and wanted to bring ideas and practices together for the good of all. I just felt that it was time to get more clarity out into the culture to inspire a generation or two with a path to a flourishing life.
How do you define pure unlimited love?
First, what is love? When the happiness and security of another is as real or meaningful to you as your own, you love that person. Human love, however, even at its best, can be unwise, ineffective, myopic, unstable, and impure. Pure Unlimited Love is the perfect love that almost all spiritual traditions and practitioners identify with the “divine,” the “Supreme,” the “One”, “God,” and “Ultimate Reality.” The mystics and spiritual practitioners will feel a oneness with this “godly love,” and even in some instances feel invaded by it to manifest a love that they know does not just come from them but rather through them.
What does this framework involve?
There are seven paths laid out for us all to practice love in its ten manifestations. They are presented herein in the form of a mantra: May you Give and Glow, May you Heal with Kindness, May you follow your Callings, May you Raise Kind Children, May you know the One Mind, May you Cherish the Gift of Nature, May you Honor the Spirit of Freedom. We all can be mindful of these. On each path, we can look for opportunities to manifest some of the key expressions of love, such as compassion, forgiveness, loyalty, creativity, helpfulness, listening, mirth, celebration, “carefrontation,” and respect. We have to prime ourselves in the morning with meditation and visualization, keeping in mind the people we know we are likely to encounter that day, anticipating how we can respond to their needs with an expression of love.
The first path, May You Give and Glow, offers a pathway to well-being & inner peace, and introduces kindness. What do you mean by giving and glowing?
For 30 years, I have been writing about the emotional buoyancy that people feel when they help others with kindness. It is not just the external act of giving, or about how much we give, but rather what is most important is giving with kindness. We human beings are evolved so that when we give with kindness, we feel happier, more resilient, and inwardly peaceful.
How can these tools and mantras help people in today’s chaotic world?
It is so easy to get off course in today’s world. The world around us is often anything but loving, so we have to have an inward steadiness, which is where spirituality, mindfulness, and prayer are our ultimate source of inner peace.
What gives you hope right now?
I am absolutely impressed with young people these days. Our medical students amaze me for their kindness and their love of humanity, more so than ever before. But there is a contrast: the really loving young people do great things, whereas those who are unloving do surprisingly destructive things.
Stephen G. Post, PhD, the Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, co-founded and directs the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. He is the author of several books, including Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Happier, Healthier Life by the Simple Act of Giving and Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer’s Disease, has authored over 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has been interviewed by leading newspapers around the world. Dr. Post is an elected member of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Royal Society of Medicine, as well as a Founding Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is the recipient of dozens of awards, including the 2019 National Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society Professionalism Award. Dr. Post lives on Long Island, New York.
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