What Changes When You Bring Universal Love to Work
When we bring love, presence, and consciousness into the workplace, everything changes.
Work becomes more meaningful, relationships soften, and leadership feels natural instead of forced. This piece explores how the wisdom of Aikido and the 25th Gene Key—Universal Love—can transform how we work, lead, and connect
The air in the dojo was thick with silence. My breath slowed. I had just received my black belt in Aikido when O-Sensei’s words echoed through the room:
“Be one with the universe. Be one with love.”
I nodded along, thinking I understood. I had felt the expansiveness of this love in my practice — in those rare moments of perfect flow when technique dissolved into pure connection.
But I didn’t truly understand universal love until a simple question from a client stopped me in my tracks.
The Question That Changed Everything
During a session, I was reviewing my client’s Gene Keys profile — specifically his 25th Gene Key, the journey from constriction to acceptance to universal love.
When I mentioned “universal love,” he paused and asked,
“What is universal love?”
I opened my mouth to answer and realized how small my definition had become. How confined. How personal.
In that moment, I saw what I had been missing: universal love isn’t just about the expansive feeling I experience on the mat or in meditation. It’s about shifting our awareness from ourselves to the whole.
That shift—from me to we—is what transforms not only our inner lives, but also our work, our relationships, and the systems we interact with every day.
What Is Universal Love
Universal love is the experience of unconditional and boundless affection extended to all people, creatures, and the world — without exception or hierarchy.
It’s a recognition of our interconnectedness, a practice of compassion, kindness, and respect for all beings, regardless of circumstance.
Core Principles
Unconditional affection: Love that doesn’t depend on relationship or familiarity
Interconnectedness: A deep knowing that we are part of one living whole
No hierarchies: Seeing the equal worth of every being
Compassion and kindness: Extending warmth and generosity, even toward differences
Self-love as foundation: Loving ourselves first allows love to flow freely to others
Universal love is harmony itself — the awareness that you are part of everything, and everything is part of you.
It is a boundless and gentle form of love that is compassionate when needed, yielding when called for, gentle whenever possible, and firm when required.
There is no conflict within this state of being. To love universally is to love all that is, all that has been, and all that will be — including yourself.
From this place of love, we naturally experience understanding, kindness, respect, happiness, gratitude, and generosity.
Universal Love in Everyday Life
This revelation changed how I move through my work and my days. Universal love means:
Pausing before reacting to a sharp email
Extending kindness to a co-worker who’s having a rough day
Treating vendors with the same respect you’d give a close friend
Noticing the plants by your desk, the bird outside your window
Recognizing that every interaction ripples outward
It’s the quiet movement from me → we → all of us — including the non-human lives around us.
When we bring this awareness into the workplace, we begin to practice spiritual leadership — leading not from control or performance, but from connection, trust, and presence.
When Love Enters the Workplace
Bringing this energy into work changes everything.
Meetings become more spacious. Conversations soften. Clients feel seen. The pressure to prove or protect dissolves, and in its place arises a quiet ease — a sense of cooperation that doesn’t have to be forced.
Work becomes less about getting through the day and more about being in a relationship with people, ideas, and the pulse of creation itself.
Love, in this sense, isn’t sentimental. It’s practical. It’s the energy that makes work feel meaningful and alive.
This is how love becomes a leadership practice. It’s what turns ordinary work into a living, breathing expression of consciousness — where creativity, clarity, and collaboration naturally flow.
The Invitation
Universal love isn’t just a feeling — it’s a practice of expanding our awareness beyond the boundaries of self. It’s recognizing that the kindness we show to anyone or anything ripples outward, touching the whole.
And maybe that’s the real teaching O-Sensei was offering all along:
“When we truly become one with the universe, we discover that love isn’t something we have or give — it’s what we are.”
I’m still discovering what universal love means in practice — in my work, in my relationships, in the small moments of connection with all beings.
What does universal love mean to you?
I’d love to hear about your journey.
