St.Valentine 'Post Mortem'
Dear Hearts,
Now is officially the day after the Valentine's, and the physical heart as well as it's mind can get back to 'normal'.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the flowers, the chocolates, the CD.......but not the anticipation of receiving something,anything that preceded those blessings. I remember as a school girl in England counting how many valentine's I got, and then comparing that with how many the other girls got. It seems such a shallow waste of time and energy.
My boys when they were in Middle School at Ananda'a Living Wisdom School were taught to give everyone a valentine. In a school of around 50 students that was possible. It meant that they had to write each person's name down which would have no doubt come with a preconception of what that person meant to them. Positive or negative, inspite of giving them a Valentine.
"Isn't it easy to love the lovable?" I can hear my guru saying.
Tarun, the youngest was 'gobsmacked' as a High School girl friend (the blank space is important), gave him not one but 3 heart shaped packages of assorted chocolates along with a fluffy white bear hugging a pink heart. "I feel terrible", he said. "I didn't get her anything."
Along with that sentiment, he felt guilty as the shock rendered him incapable of uttering the simple words, "Thank you."
In his tender Piscean heart, he will be feeling awful for some time but no doubt will either try and avoid her for the next few days, or be really nice to her in an empathetic gesture to make her feel like she has not cut out a piece of her physical heart and so is somehow lacking something.
This feeling state is really important is it not? We either feel loved and appreciated or we don't, and it has nothing to do with any one else outside of our mind.
How many super models really feel beautiful ? not many. They can never be thin enough, young enough or pretty enough in their mind. We come full circle to the Valentine's I received as a child and how it somehow validated what I thought I looked like more than anything. I wanted to feel accepted deep down.
We really do need to feel worthy of love, and this is why an inner practice is vital in becoming more self-aware of the silliness of our (my) mind.
You see we are love and have been all along. We have just forgotten. Life coats our tender soul with fear of losing what we think is ours (a lover),or fear of never having one in our lives and being alone forever.
We are never really alone, and funnily enough it is usually when we are that we finally recognize that we are indeed 'a spark of the infinite', and so can never really be alone in the womb of matter. We are functioning within this cosmic womb and are happy and fulfilled, or we are sad and unfulfilled. No one can make us feel anything.
That really does have to be a good thing. We learn to become independent and responsible for our own lives.
On a lighter note;
One of my dear students told me that he was going to get his beautiful wife a new socket set for Valentine's (they have been married a long time) when another student piped up, "that is to tighten your nuts!"
Funny but true!
Now he knows his wife, and what she gets excited by.
Flowers, chocolates and the like are a projection of the mass marketing minds of mankind.
....and they have done a superb job!
Let me now what you think.
Om Shanti
