by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

I grew up with this song. I believed in it and did my best to make it happen.

I tried to look perfect and be perfect so I would be loveable. I failed at it again and again.

Then I found how to love. Instead of looking to receive love, I loved with all my love, hoping that all I needed was love. To love without motive, love without need, unconditional love — that’s the love I wanted to give. That’s what I thought Valentine’s Day was about. 

Despite St. Valentine’s life and legend, the day in his honor is actually not about love. It’s about romance. And romance is about desire, even infatuation, with a whole lot of idealism and lust thrown in.

The problem with this is that love makes you desireless. When you experience love, you are overflowing with incredible fullness and joy. There is no space for desire in there. You only experience desire when you feel empty and needy.

Unfortunately, this describes the human condition, anava mala in Sanskrit. When you look inward, you bump into an inner block that hides your own Divine Essence. “Anava” means full of emptiness. It used to wake me up in the middle of the night with an overwhelming loneliness and despair. I’d eat ice cream.

Yoga says there is a better way. Shaktipat gives you freedom from anava mala, so now you can see all the way inward. Finding your own Self, your own Divine Essence, you are filled from within. As you turn inward again and again, your filling gets fuller until it overflows as love.

Now my experience of love is completely different. I started with looking for love from others. I grew into giving love to others, wanting them to reciprocate. Then I found Baba Muktananda, who gave me my own Self.

Now I live in that fullness and revel in the overflowing. And I see the same fullness in you, even when you don’t see your own Self. Yet your Divine light shines through, making you loveable even when you’re not perfect. 

For this Valentine’s Day, give yourself an extra meditation. Dive inward and tap into the source of love. Now let it overflow through your heart, through your eyes, through your actions and words. Do it again the next day, and the next, and the next. It’s a glorious way to live!