Let’s Talk About Love… the day AFTER Valentine’s Day
If you like to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and for you it is simply a sweet reminder to openly state and show your love for the one(s) you adore, then good for you, Enjoy it!
If you are flying solo and happy to be in love with yourself and want to get yourself a Valentine’s gift or make yourself a special meal, then good for you, Enjoy it!
Valentine’s Day is the outgrowth of the older and arguably more fun pagan holiday called Lupercalia that was more openly about lust and sex. February comes from the Latin word “febris” or “fever”, and we aren’t talking about the flu, but about sexual fever, partly brought about, no doubt, by keeping each other “warm” during the cold winter weather, at least in the northern hemisphere.
For many, though, it is a manufactured holiday,
fraught with expectations & tension.
It’s that special time of year when Madison Avenue pressures people into over-spending and over-chocolating (is that possible?) and generally suckering us into believing that the most precious and beautiful gift we can experience as a human being in this world is a commodity.
The pressure to buy into it is enormous, because if you don’t do the right thing, or give the right gift, your wife, husband, beloved(s), new lover, or whomever might feel hurt, or angry, or conclude you don’t care enough about them to make a big display of your love and affection... and then who knows what might happen?
Sigh.
Let’s talk about Love
Unconditional Love is not an oxymoron,
but it is a redundant phrase.
Love is unconditional
Or it isn’t love.
That conditional, needy feeling that we sometimes mistakenly call love may be supremely enjoyable; It may be powerful affection, or adoration; Or a burning desire that sets your body shaking and quaking, or a quiet sweetness you feel in someone’s presence... and believe you can only feel in their presence...Or it might manifest in some of the more challenging aspects of being in relationship.
Like possessiveness and jealousy, judgment and criticism, disappointment and boredom, an empty feeling of something missing...
(I love him/her/them, but... but... but...)
Love is generous.
Love asks for nothing.
Demands nothing.
Love is our natural state.
Now relationships: That’s completely different.
Love is unconditional, but Relationships DO have conditions.
They must, in order for them to be healthy.
When those conditions are clear and agreed upon, how you will treat each other, talk to each other, be there for each other, etc.,
Then deep relationships of all permutations can and do flourish.
They become a container for love.
If behaviors that are unacceptable to one person are not addressed, then relationships and the people in them turn sour.
But love itself is not dependent on anything
Love is not an emotion
It is the essence of our Nature.
It can’t be bought and sold, like sex can,
It can’t be earned, like brownie points
Our hearts know the Truth
Love simply is.
I received word last week that my first beloved husband passed away, shocking me and everyone who knew him. We were together for 13 years and divorced 25 years ago. I’ve since loved and life-partnered with and lost (to the scourge we call cancer) another beloved I thought I would be with for the rest of my life. Yet, I still love my ex-husband — a phrase I never actually use when thinking of him; I just think of him by his name — much as I did when I married him. Much as I did when I asked him to leave, absolutely certain we’d work out the relationship because we loved one another. And yet, we didn’t work it out.
Love remains.
It is present and timeless. It is huge and takes up no space. In fact, love creates space, it opens Space. Love brings about spaciousness and peace, and that helps people feel safe enough to be who they really are, to accept themselves, which in turn inspires growth and transformation.
As the beautiful teacher Stephen Levine once said, “You can throw someone out of your house without throwing them out of your heart.” That is a profound teaching.
As the divisiveness of the outside world grows louder and crazier, we must listen to the still quiet voice within, to the guidance of our inner and outer guides and guardians, to the wise, loving people in our lives, especially our elders and children. It is time to awaken to our heart’s intelligence to a degree that we never have before.
Life breaks our hearts... again and again... and the invitation is to allow our hearts to break... wide... open.
So many plants on Earth have heart shaped leaves. The metaphor is everywhere for us to see if we will take the time to look.
If we rearrange the letters that spell
E-A-R-T-H, they also spell H-E-A-R-T
We have favored our intellects over our hearts for too long and are missing aspects of our own intelligence we need for the times in which we live — these times of profound breakdown and breakthrough, of dissolution and evolution, of chaos and transformation!
Coming into close touch with the Earth, sitting on her, lying on her, walking barefoot on her, are all ways to allow the Earth to help you open your heart. Putting your hands in the soil as you garden or harvest is another. Becoming intimate with the Earth, opens us to becoming intimate with ourselves and others.
I recently observed someone I care about shying away from allowing his heart to speak and it inspired me to write this haiku:
Inching Toward Intimacy
Having been hurt
We hide our hearts
Until loneliness cries,
Risk it, please.
One of my favorite heart-opening, heart healing herbs, of so many herbs that I love, is Linden.
Linden (Tilia spp.)
My apprentice, Nicla, in her plant ally project this year, concluded: “My journey with Linden revealed the medicine and magic I possess are both the lock and the key to the wild love of my Heart.”
Yes, linden will do that for you. And the smell and taste of her blossoms lures bees and children to her. She exudes a uniquely divine feminine sweetness like no other plant I know.
Below are a few suggestions to get to know Linden and let her reveal her magic to you:
Stand under a linden tree during all the seasons
When the tree’s branches are bare, When heart-shaped leaves unfurl, When linden is in full flower and past flowering.
Let your heart, guided by linden’s magic, teach you to accept that all stages of your growth are necessary. Valuable. Not just the parts where you are shining brightly.
Take a ritual linden bath to soothe your heart, or to celebrate it.
Make a strong infusion by placing two cups of dried blossoms into a soup pot or half gallon jar, covering them with boiling water and letting the herbs steep for an hour or two.
Pour the infusion through a strainer into your bath tub. You can make another pot of tea/infusion with those herbs, either steeping them in cold water overnight, then bringing that to a boil for the next day, or simply pouring boiling water over them a second time.
A linden bath can be a soothing, sweet experience, or a multidimensional experience where doorways open between the worlds. It depends where you’re at, what you are looking for, and/or what you need.
Linden always brings more peace of heart.
Lift Your Heart off the Ground
Infusion or Bath
Magical Gifts of Linden — grief-relief after death or divorce; expands perception of multidimensional magic.
Spiritual Gifts of Linden — Dance into other dimensions and other worlds; protective, comforting, and magical guide through times of grief.
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon dried linden blossoms
1 teaspoon dried rose petals, blossoms, or buds
1⁄2 teaspoon dried lavender flowers
Cover the herbs with a cup of boiling water and steep for 15–20 minutes. For larger amounts I use 3 parts linden, 1 part rose, and 1⁄2 part lavender. This one is lovely and soothing as an infusion or a bath. It is like a tender touch that lifts your heart when it’s on the ground.
