Marci Shimoff is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Happy for No Reason, six Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and Love for No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love. One of the best-selling female nonfiction authors of all time, Her books have topped all major bestseller lists, with 14 million copies in 33 languages sold. Marci, who is featured in The Secret, is also the host of the national PBS television special, Happy for No Reason.

I’d been looking forward to interviewing Marci regarding her new book, Love for No Reason, because my long-term relationship had just ended, and I was hoping she would show me some ways to heal my heart. The simple practices Marci shared have been immensely helpful.

If your heart is in need of tender, loving care — or if you want to expand your capacity to love greater and deeper — Love for No Reason receives my highest recommendation. Visit: www.TheLoveBook.com

Randy Peyser: I think the Beatles said it best: “All we need is love.” Yet don’t most of us practice conditional love?

Marci Shimoff: Yes, people want love but our society has trained us to love conditionally. We think we’ll feel love when the right person shows up. Love in a relationship is a wonderful thing, but I call that kind of love, “love for good reason.” That’s the kind of love that comes and goes.

What I believe people want most deeply is “love for no reason,” or unconditional love, a love that transcends a particular relationship or situation, a love that you feel whether you have a romantic partner or not. Living in love is not only what we want, but it’s also our purpose for being on the planet.

Randy: I once heard that the phrase, “Love is a state of being, not a relationship.”

Marci: That’s exactly what I mean. We generally think of love as a stream of energy going between two people. When we think of love that way we become what I call, “Love Beggars.” We walk around with our little cup, hoping to get our fulfillment from other people. We miss that we’re the ocean of love!

Love is who we are. When we recognize and experience that, instead of being Love Beggars, we become “Love Philanthropists.” We naturally overflow with love and it’s effortless. It’s not something we have to do; it’s a natural outcome of who we’re being.

Randy: When we don’t get back what we’re putting out, disappointment comes up.

Marci: The more we live in this state of unconditional love, the less we have an attachment to how someone responds to us. When we’re giving love and want a response in return, that’s conditional love. That leads to disappointment. As we develop this inner state of love, we’re less attached to someone else’s response. Their response is more a reflection of them, than it is of us. We feel freedom when we don’t have a need for someone to respond back.

In the meantime, if you’re not there yet — which most of us aren’t — then we have the ability to love ourselves so when we do feel disappointment, we welcome that feeling and allow it to go through us. Arjuna Ardagh, one of the 150 “Love Luminaries” I interviewed, said, “Any feeling fully felt turns into love.”

Randy: The people whom I know who are unconditionally loving have all had some kind of transcendent experience. For example, you share the story of Bill Baumann, a popular workshop facilitator who lay down on his stage, experienced a sense of paralysis, and re-emerged as pure love.

Marci: Some of the people I interviewed, like Bill, spent their lives doing everything they could to remove the blocks to love and then had some kind of spontaneous awakening. Bill discovered he was no longer his body or his personality. He was filled with love. That forever changed him. Eckert Tolle had a similar experience. You might think these are random experiences, but in many cases, people set up the circumstances in their lives to welcome in that kind of divine grace.

Randy: How do you think people set it up?

Marci: I identify 7 doorways to setting up this experience of love for no reason. These doorways correlate to our energy centers, our chakras, and each doorway allows us to experience a greater state of unconditional love.

Randy: Can you share an example?

Marci: Sure. One of the doorways is the “Doorway of Unconditional Self-Love.” Our relationships mirror our relationship with ourselves. When we don’t love ourselves we can’t love others. For example, Sally, who I interviewed, was rushed to the hospital just before her 50th birthday. She needed a liver transplant within three days or she’d die. This shocked Sally because she wasn’t a drinker and she’d never had liver problems. Fortunately, an organ donor was found, she had the surgery, and all was well for a year. Then the second liver started failing.

Sally was sitting in her doctor’s waiting room next to an angry, critical woman who was having her third liver transplant. This reminded Sally that in Chinese medicine, all our organs are related to a particular emotion, and the liver was associated with anger.

So she asked herself, “Where in my life am I angry?” She realized she was angry at herself. She was self-critical and never thought she was good enough. That moment, Sally made a commitment to practice unconditional self-love every day. Four months later, her doctor said, “I have no idea what happened. It is a miracle. Your liver is healed.” That was 18 years ago.

This shows the power of unconditional self-love. At the Institute of Heart Math, they found that five minutes of anger suppresses the immune system for six hours, whereas five minutes of love, caring and compassion will strengthen the immune system for six hours.

Randy: If you’re feeling angry, isn’t it good to get it out?

Marci: Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean to express it to the person you’re angry at or to repress it; it means to welcome the feeling and let it flow through you.

Ask yourself, “What is the most loving thing I can do for myself right now?” If you ask this question every day, you start retraining yourself to give care to yourself, rather than to ignore your importance.

Randy: It’s been my experience that the people who do the deep work of feeling their grief develop the greater capacity to experience much more joy.

Marci: I agree. They say that when you’re writing a book you should be careful about what you’re writing because you will be vested in it. No sooner had I signed the contract for Love for No Reason when my husband and I decided to divorce. It was a loving divorce but it was still challenging. Over the next six months, three friends died, we sold our family home of 58 years that I’d been very attached to, and three days later, my mother passed away.

So, I practiced everything that my interview subjects shared. I felt guilt, pain, and grief. But because I was practicing these techniques of love, I got through the experience much more easily. These techniques were a salve to help me experience love in the midst of all the challenges, sadness, and grief.

Randy: Can you share some techniques?

Marci: One of my favorites is Ho’o pono pono, the ancient Hawaiian Kahuna practice that consists of saying these four sentences:

“I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.”

You don’t say them out loud. You feel them in your heart toward anyone you are holding a grudge against — including yourself.

I’ve had miracles happen with this technique. For example, my sister and I had an argument and weren’t talking. Three months later, my family gathered to move my mother into an assisted-living facility. My sister and I wouldn’t even make eye contact. After 3 hours, I felt so uncomfortable I decided to sit in my car and do Ho’o pono pono for her and for me. I did it for only ten minutes and my heart melted. I felt great compassion. I went back inside and within four minutes, my sister reached for my hand. That day, there was a huge shift in our relationship.

Randy: So, forgiveness is always possible.

Marci: Yes. Write down five areas in your life where you haven’t forgiven a person, a situation, or yourself, and practice Ho’o pono pono as an experiment. Then see what shows up in your life.

Randy: Can you share another technique?

Marci: Sure. This is an exercise contributed by author Raphael Cushnir about dealing with difficult feelings. Imagine stepping into a warm bath, and as you do so, your body naturally relaxes. Now feel the feeling you’re resisting and invite it in with you into that bath. In relaxation, difficult feelings dissolve. It’s only when we tense up that feelings get more lodged in our cells. Another simple technique I learned from the Institute of Heart Math is called the “Inner Ease Technique.” It’s a 3-step process to shift you from the Stress Response to the Love Response, which is a physiological state that has its own brain activity, heart rhythm and bio-chemical counterparts.

First, put the palm of your hand over your heart. This simple action releases the hormone, oxytocin, which is called the “love hormone.” It’s what we feel when we feel bonded and connected with each other. Second, imagine you are breathing in and out, slowly and gently, through your heart. This is called heart-focused breathing. On every in-breath, the last step is to imagine you are breathing in care and self-love from your whole heart and infusing it into your being. I do this technique three times every day, and I’ve been feeling an amazing expansion in my heart.

Randy: Most women hate some part of their bodies. How do we love that which we find unlovable about ourselves?

Marci: That is key. We’ve been taught that we need self-esteem, which is fine, but that’s conditional: I love myself or accept myself because I look a particular way, or because I’m a great person, or because I do a great job. Unconditional self-love means “I love myself no matter what.” Most people spend more time every day focusing on how they look, rather than on how they love.

Randy: That’s an important distinction.

Marci: The purpose of our life is love. It’s our job description on earth. During our life review at the end of our lives there’s only one question that’s asked of us, which is, “How much did you love?”

This is the final exam and you can’t cram for it at the end. It doesn’t matter what you do in life; our job is to love and to expand our capacity to love. Love is the truth of who we are. That’s why we’re so hungry to experience it. When we experience love, we’re in touch with our essence. We all know that feeling. Pain, disappointment and heartache are simply the disconnection from the essence of who we are as love.

The reason it’s so fabulous to be around people who are living in a state of unconditional love is that it’s contagious. You want to be around them. A year ago I met the Dalai Lama. It doesn’t matter whether he’s meeting a head of state or a person on the street. He feels the primary essence of each person and connects to everybody with love.

Randy: What are some ways we can express unconditional love?

Marci: Through words and acts of kindness. We can use words to express our gratitude and appreciation. It’s been shown that acts of altruism are physically good for us; they change our physiology — as long as we’re not giving at our own expense. When you give and can’t receive, or over-give, you aren’t in that state of unconditional love; you’re giving to please, to have people like you in return for your giving. That’s not pure giving.

Randy: Can everyone reach a state of unconditional love?

Marci: There is a happiness set point, which is the range at which our happiness hovers. No matter what good or bad happens to us, within a year, we will return to our original set point. This set point can change; it’s 50% genetic and 50% based on one’s habits. You can raise your set point by changing your habits.

I believe we also have a “love set point.” If we start to experience more love, unless we’ve expanded our “container,” we will unconsciously sabotage it because we’ll generally stay at the level we’re comfortable with. But you can raise your love set point.

Randy: How so?

Marci: Practice opening up to receive. If you’re given a compliment, take it in. It takes a full 20 seconds for us to register when something positive happens to us. We have what science calls a “negativity bias” where we mostly remember that which is negative. If you receive ten compliments and one criticism on the same day, you’ll remember the criticism. Reverse this by favoring the positive. Let those compliments settle into your system for a full 20 seconds.

Randy: With so much conflict around the world, do you think we’ll ever create a more loving planet?

Marci: We’re experiencing an enormous planetary shift. We’re in polarity. Many people are living in fear or anger. But lots of people are waking up to recognize that love is where we have to go. This is the one thing that will shift the planet and create the change we’re looking for.

Randy: Do you offer any programs to help facilitate this change?

Marci: I have a Love Ambassador Program where people can learn to teach the Love Course based on Love for No Reason. I want this message of love to go out far and wide because I believe that if each of us feels more love in our own lives, that is how we will help create a planet of peace.

There is a Chinese proverb that says:
“When there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
When there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
When there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
When there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”

My prayer is that each of us feels the love in our hearts and the light in our souls, and through that may we all heal.

For more information about Love for No Reason, the Love Ambassador Program, and many free bonuses, including a videotaped interview with Ram Dass, visit www.TheLoveBook.com

Randy Peyser is the author of The Power of Miracle Thinking, www.MiracleThinking.com She also edits books and helps people find agents and publishers. www.AuthorOneStop.com