A message from Sirshree on the occasion of Valentine’s Day

Gazing with admiration, a young man told his beloved, “I love your silky hair and beautiful teeth.” His beloved immediately removed her wig and false teeth, and said lovingly, “My dear, if you like them so much, you can keep them for yourself!”

The young man fled from the spot, never to be seen again. He apparently ‘loved’ his partner. But as soon as he saw her with a bald pate and no teeth, his ‘love’ took wings and flew away in an instant. Love changed to disgust. Love that changes in this manner is not true love. It is fake love; plastic love.

Actually, the gentleman loved not the woman but her external beauty. If your love is for external beauty, it will last only as long as the beauty lasts. Likewise, if you love someone because he or she is wealthy, your love will last only as long as the wealth lasts. If you love somebody because of his six-pack abs, your love will vanish as soon as a potbelly appears. Such love doesn’t need much time to turn into hatred.

Saint Valentine’s Day

Today, Valentine’s Day is famous all over the world, but its purpose is forgotten. Why was it celebrated? How should it be celebrated to know true love?

Saint Valentine was a third-century saint and served as the priest in Rome. The king of Rome had passed an order prohibiting army men from marrying, because he believed that those with families don’t make good warriors as they constantly think of their families back home. Although the army men were very disappointed with the restrictions, they couldn’t speak up against the king. Saint Valentine came forward to help and raised voice against the king’s edict.

Saint Valentine was promptly sent to jail. You may have heard of many instances in history of people rebelling against injustice and getting punished for it. Some were given poison, some were crucified and many were imprisoned. Saint Valentine too suffered due to misuse of power by the king, who gave more importance to safeguarding his interests than allowing his men to enjoy family life.

Saint Valentine died while in jail. Saint Valentine’s Day is celebrated in his honour. A Valentine is a friend of love. When someone is asked whether he or she can be a valentine, it means whether he or she is a friend of love. Whoever is in favour of love is a valentine. The correct way to celebrate Valentine’s Day is to celebrate true love and the Bright relations we have in our lives.

Most people don’t understand what true love is. True love is a divine quality that resides in each one of us. The need of today is to progress from fake love to Bright love.

Understand True Love

It is important to understand what true love is, otherwise people become so entangled in selfish love and waste so much time in it that it becomes difficult for them to come out of it. In this way their life gets polluted and goes to waste.

True love is love for the oneness in God’s creations. The same consciousness resides in each one of us; the same energy expresses itself through each one of us. On the outside we may all look different, but the truth is that we all exist in the same inner experience. There is a famous saying: ‘Do unto others what you want done unto you.’ The basic understanding behind this teaching is that what you do to others is actually what you do to yourself, because you are not separate from others.

It is for removing ignorance and misconceptions about love that the word ‘Bright love’ has been coined. Understand the meaning of the word ‘Bright’ clearly. ‘Bright’ means that which is beyond duality. Bright love is the love that transcends both love and hatred. It is supreme, unconditional, unquestioning, unlimited, unchanging, eternal, true love. It is overflowing love for the Lord and all His creations. The glory of Bright love can be understood only by experiencing it yourself. Bright love is immense joy in itself, irrespective of conditions and preconditions.

If Bright love is such a wonderful experience, wouldn’t we all like to experience it? But what is the method to awaken and experience Bright love? Given below are then ways to do exactly that:

1. Caring and nurturing

Selfless caring and nurturing is one way to awaken and enjoy Bright love. Contemplate and ask yourself whether you can take good care of someone or something without expecting anything in return. Caring develops a beautiful quality in you. For example, when you care for the things you use – like your mobile phone, camera, microphone, etc. – by handling them carefully and keeping them in the proper place, you develop a strong foundational quality. Some people are careless with devices because they don’t know the importance of caring. It is only when they read or hear about the importance of caring that they change their outlook.

A mother nurtures and cares for her little child selflessly and unconditionally. This is true love. If you wish to experience a similar kind of love, start caring for others selflessly and unconditionally. Once selfishness and conditions start creeping in your thoughts and feelings, your love becomes polluted. This can be seen in mother’s love too, as her child gradually grows and comes of age. Hence, take care to remain selfless and unconditional when caring for others.

Some people believe that love is burdensome and involves sacrifice, and hence they avoid taking care of people and things. Remember that in true love, such ‘sacrifice’ of time and efforts does not seem like sacrifice; it happens naturally and effortlessly and you even feel grateful for it. Even in day to day life, when you spend time and efforts to prepare food for guests and they enjoy it, you feel grateful and happy. If this is the joy experienced in ordinary love, just imagine what the bliss of true love must be like!

If you love, you will care and if you care, you will love. Suppose you are very fond of flowers and have many flower pots at home. But if you forget to water them, can your love for flowers be called true? If a mother forgets to give medicine to her ailing child, can her love be called true love? If such things happen repeatedly, it only shows that true love is missing. Hence, from time to time check your feelings towards those present in your life. If you are a sevak (server), check your devotion and sensitivity from time to time. Let not rigidness creep into your feelings and thoughts. Care and nurture from the bottom of your heart and rise in true love. Let the service serve the server, which means, let service help you awaken unconditional love and purity in your mind.

2. Forgiveness

Love and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin. If you forgive, love awakens automatically. If you don’t forgive and hold on to bitterness, love starts evaporating.

To awaken love, you need to forgive and seek forgiveness wholeheartedly, either in person or within your mind. Even if you do so within your mind, your feelings will reach the subconscious mind of the other person. By forgiving and asking for forgiveness, the bondages of karma that have developed between the two of you will start breaking, and true love will start unfolding.

Similarly, if you don’t forgive yourself for the mistakes you have committed in the past, the feeling of guilt starts troubling you and you start hating yourself for your acts. It is not wrong for memories of past incidents to come to your mind, but the associated feelings of guilt and hatred need to dissolve. There is no need to carry unwanted burden on your head. So forgive yourself from the bottom of your heart and you will discover true love for yourself.

3. Give love to receive love

Whatever you give comes back to you in multiples. Bright Love multiplies when you distribute it and leads you to freedom from lowly desires and karmic bonds. If you simply wait for someone to love you, you constantly live in a state of deficiency and despair, resulting in more of it day after day.

When you love someone, honestly check whether you have any selfish desire behind it. Is there any greed or fear? Do you want your ego to be pampered? If so, immediately sacrifice the selfish desire and start loving love itself. Start loving for the sake of love. Love the higher consciousness and sing its praises. This will result in further awakening of your consciousness. This cumulative cycle will lead you to the ultimate state of love – divine, Bright love.

4. Responsibility

Responsibility is another virtue that can awaken Bright love. Like a young father who instinctively takes complete responsibility of his family, develop the quality of responsibility to awaken true love. The desire to take responsibility awakens when we free ourselves from ignorance, unawareness and lethargy. In this state of mind, responsibility does not seem like a burden. A ‘free’ person considers it his duty and means of self-expression to take responsibility for others’ progress. The more free you become, the more responsibility you feel like shouldering.

5. Respecting others

Start respecting others as if there is no ‘other’, because we are all part of the same universal consciousness known as God. This will awaken the awareness of the oneness that is our reality. Once the awareness of oneness rises, you will realize that ‘there is no other’. Start with loving, respecting and caring for your near and dear ones; then the possibility of loving, respecting and caring for strangers too will gradually open up. Accept everyone the way they are. Don’t judge anyone based on their past behaviour because there is every chance that they may have changed over time. Relationships break because people don’t view the present and remain stuck in the past. Allow yourself to view relationships with a new perspective every time. Re-spect everyone.

6. Gratitude and gratefulness

Be grateful to and for the people who have come into your life, no matter how they are – good or bad. They are all part of the arrangement that God has made for us on Earth. Recognize the blessing. Loving relationships are already present in your life. Be grateful to them and express your gratitude to God. Even those people in your life who seem to be bad to you are actually helping you awaken your awareness. They are a mirror to your own mind. You get to view your own mind in these people. Make use of this mirror that God has provided and improve upon your shortcomings and mature. If people around you are playing such an important role for you, won’t you feel Bright love for them!

7. Faith

Faith is very important to awaken and sustain Bright love. Faith is the greatest vibration in the world, a vibration that removes mistrust and fear from love, making it eternal and true. In true love, you don’t fear losing the ones you love. Else in false love, you keep fearing that they may stop loving you. Such mistrust and fear bring limitations in love, resulting in a slow death of love. Hence it is important to have faith in your love.

When love falters due to absence of faith, in order to reclaim it, we may take some wrong steps that reduce its purity. Love loses its essence when there is no faith. Devotion loses its essence when it lacks faith. Lack of faith also results in lack of patience that is required to surmount obstacles in love.

8. Courage, endurance and patience

Courage, endurance and patience are essential qualities you need to develop in order to surmount challenges on the path of Bright love. People who walk on the path of the Truth are often called cowards by ignorant people because they need help from God. But the fact is quite the contrary. Only courageous people can walk the path of Truth. Surrendering to God is not cowardice, but courage.

A mother can nurture her baby in the womb for nine months and deliver it only because she has courage, endurance and patience. She surrenders herself to God knowingly or unknowingly during the labour pains. She does not entertain thoughts that take her away from true love towards her baby.

9. Detached perspective

Feelings of emotional attachment, infatuation, possessiveness, selfishness, jealousy, lust, suspicion, and the need for proofs of love are signs of fake love or plastic love. Bright love is liberation from all such bondages. The feeling of detachment is crucial to awaken and sustain Bright love.

Suppose a little child falls sick and the mother starts crying. If the child doesn’t eat, she too stops eating. If the child has difficulty in sleeping due to the sickness, she too remains awake throughout the night. People might exclaim that the mother has so much love for her child. But is this Bright love? No. This is merely attachment. The mother doesn’t realize that by not taking care of herself she cannot take care of her child to the fullest of her capacity. If she wishes to help her child recover, she needs to be healthy herself. A detached perspective will help her awaken Bright love.

Be assured that sacrificing attachment is not going to lessen your love; it will only ‘Brighten’ it. Hence pray for the state of detachment to lead a free, liberated and Bright life.

10. See the world as one family

Practice seeing the oneness of consciousness in all without discriminating on the basis of caste, creed, country and religion. Throughout life, man accumulates a hoard of misconceptions about “others” through family, friends, colleagues, media, movies, advertisements, etc. See everyone as one and clean the mind of all such misconceptions. The more you grow spiritually, the more it becomes easy to see the oneness in all.

Conclusion: Do not Fall in Love, Rise in Love

Love is the highest vibration on earth. If your love is true, you can only rise in it; not fall in it. There is a difference between falling in love and rising in love. When people fall in love, they slide into lower levels of consciousness. They start loving more of inanimate things and things at the physical and mental level. When you rise in love, you start loving things of higher levels of consciousness.

What is your choice? Do you want selfish pleasure, attention, importance and similar things? Do you want to be with people who pamper you? Or would you like to move upwards into the spiritual plane and love the oneness of God’s creations? Make up your mind.