They both are 4 letter words, both start with an L and end with an E, have 2 vowels each and are dependent on each other. Can you guess what the two words are? It’s LOVE and LIFE, a life without love is like a barren land, and love without life is impossible. You all believe you have love and life, but are you truly in love? Are you really alive?
Today, we have lost the meaning of love and life, we have made it an outcome of external factors. Whereas, both are happening within us. What you call love, is it truly love or attachment? You are made of love, your existence is from love, but you have layered it with insecurity, anxiety, fear, ego among other such negative emotions. A container filled with mud cannot pour herbal tea into a cup. It’s the same analogy.
Look at nature — does it judge any individual? Is it different for different people? Whether you show gratitude or not, it will always be there for you. You survive because of it. Dalai Lama said, “Absence of judgment is love.”
In recent times, I see more attachment than love. One is not ready to give up attachment and try to please other people to get love in return. Thus, I would suggest you to start loving yourself — an empty stomach cannot feed others. How many times have you looked in the mirror and said, “I love you”? How many times have you given yourself that gift which you have been waiting for others to give you? Do you even give half an hour to yourself in 24 hours of a day?
Start doing things you always wanted to do — pamper yourself, love yourself and remove all the layers. Some might call it selfish, but Osho said, “Selfish is at times, Self-Love. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love others?” After all, a magnet attracts another. Be the magnet of love.
Loving-kindness is also called MettaMeditation (Metta is love in Buddhism). To practice loving-kindness meditation, sit in a comfortable, relaxed manner. Take two or three deep breaths with slow, long and complete exhalations. For a few minutes, feel or imagine the breath moving through the centre of your chest — in the area of your heart.
Metta is first practiced toward oneself, since we often have difficulty loving others without first loving ourselves. Sitting quietly, mentally repeat, slowly and steadily, the following phrases: “May I be Happy. May I be Well. May I be peaceful and at ease.”
Repeat the same for: a beloved person (could be a close family member or friend), a neutral person (somebody you know, but have no special feelings for), a hostile person (someone you are having difficulty with).
This is one of the oldest meditations, and ranked as the number 1 way for developing a benevolent heart by scientific journals.
This Valentine’s Day, be your own valentine. As Rumi puts it beautifully, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
The writer is a spiritual seeker and a karmyogi
