By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Love is essential. It is Divine Essence, expressed outward.

Your Divine Essence is found inside, which yoga calls “Self.” When you are experiencing your own Self, your eyes shine with light and your heart overflows. Other people experience it as love, but you know that it is God, shining from within.

The only time you ever have a problem with love is when you look for it outside. When you feel empty and you want someone else to fill you, it never lasts. It might work for a while, but never for long. The reason is that you’re looking in the wrong place.

Getting love from outside is like trying to fill a dry well.  The way that wells work is this: you dig a deep hole that fills with water from underground. The source is called the “aquifer,” like an underground lake that comes from rainfall or snow melt that soaks into the ground.

If your well runs dry, and you have a water truck come in to fill it, the new water will soak in deeper, replenishing the aquifer. You cannot fill a dry well. The water must come up from a deeper source.

Love works in a similar way. It comes from deep within. In yoga, you base yourself in this deeper dimension of your own being, so you are always full. Not merely a well, you are a geyser! Your inner experience is sourced from your own Divine Essence, so you never run dry.  Thus you never look for others to fill you.

A friend recently showed me a photo of his new granddaughter. His face lit up. His voice changed. He giggled. I’ve never heard him giggle before. It was delightful!

What is happening here? The child is not old enough to say, “I love you, Grandpa.” He’s not getting love from the infant. He is tapping into his own essence and overflowing from inside.

Why doesn’t every child make him feel that way? Why doesn’t every person make him feel that way? For him, love is related to DNA. If there’s no shared DNA, there’s no love. It’s like you have to compare your genealogical charts before you allow yourself to feel love.  How limiting!

On Valentine’s Day, let your love expand to include everyone in your neighborhood, everyone in your town, in your county, in your state, in your country. How about everyone in the world? The way you do this is to dig deep so your well is being filled from the inside out.