Feeling Love on Valentine’s Day

This article is part of my ongoing Series on Love.

All across the world on Valentine’s Day people celebrate love. They celebrate love in its many forms, but most of all they celebrate romantic and intimate love. They celebrate desire, passion and all of the fantasies that have been quietly nourished in the heart of what it means to love and to be loved.

This expression of Love was captured by the poet Robert Frost when he said:

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
– Robert Frost

I have often written about love, but as I review my body of work I note that I focus more on the essence of love than upon romantic or erotic love. Still, in the adventure of life, we are given the opportunity to learn about life, and that means to learn about love.

Romantic love, or as the ancient Greeks called it erotic love, laced with passion and desire is necessary for all that it teaches about life. There are life lessons about love that can best and perhaps only be learned through romantic love. It is to celebrate that passion, that joy, and that sense of wonder that Valentine’s Day is celebrated throughout the world.

Love doesn’t make the world go ’round.
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
– Franklin P. Jones

During this Valentine’s Day experience, let romantic love, with its intensity of yearning for union with a beloved, teach you about all love in a powerful way that allows you to comprehend the meaning of Union of Souls. It is a demonstration of deeper truths that you might never discover if it were not for the passion and promise that falling in love delivers.

When you fall in love may be the very first time you have been able to reach beyond yourself to consider the needs and desires of another. Life, with its infinite wisdom, rewards you with joyful celebration when you make that important step. Passion, fulfillment, and satisfaction are granted as you learn how to merge your needs and desires in cooperation with another.

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What would otherwise be a painful life lesson of sacrifice can become a beautiful expression of joy. To express love, to be generous, to strive to give your beloved what they wish and desire, all provides you with the opportunity to reach beyond the limitations of yourself. Not only is that step rewarded, but it can also be experienced, enjoyed and celebrated on all levels of your being.

At times, I have pondered the incredible miracle of romantic love and sex for the way that it transforms our life from aloneness and a sense of separation and alienation to a demonstration that we are not alone. Also, most amazing is that the fruit of having loved is the realization that we are aware of eternity. Ponder on this.

By loving we are transformed, changed and given the opportunity to be our true self, our best self.

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible – it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.
– Barbara de Angelis

It is perhaps to help us learn and grow that God blessed us with the passion of erotic love, for love expands your heart with compassion and generosity.

Love is a force upon which you can anchor your life. It seems to grow miraculously and develop until you realize that through your love for another you have learned to not only love one another but also to love others. You have come to love life and with your appreciation of what love you have been given you see a world of wonder. You see the world where blessings can come to you when you least expect it.

Once you had loved and been truly loved nothing is ever the same as it was before you were loved. What is most strange and miraculous about this transforming experience is the way that it changes you and changes your life.

The “happily ever after” myths and, “happy endings” of Hollywood’s stories imply that the story goes on and on. And, certainly in life sometimes it does. The happily ever after is not what is most important. What is most important is that you have known what it is to love. Your life has been touched, changed and transformed by love.

The real miracle is that you have received and given love. Somehow, that warms you, nourishes and restores you in your darkest moments. It caresses and calms you and fills you with peace and joy. Having given love and having received the love you have been enfolded in a moment of eternity that is in some mysterious way beyond space and outside of time.

True love is less about the outcome and more about having opened your heart, your mind and your Soul to love. Having loved, you touched eternity. Having loved you created in this particular span of years something that is endless and timeless.

It is ironic to me that when I begin writing about romantic love and erotic love I find myself uncontrollably led to talk about love as the endless, eternal expression. Having noticed this, I find myself wondering and pondering upon how erotic and romantic love ends up being eternal love.

What I realized in thinking about and considering love is that sexual love and romantic love is a portal to love. Once you cross that portal, once you let yourself transcend the selfishness, the exclusive self-awareness that you are you, and I am I, into the unity and unification that loving brings everything changes.

And it changes not just for the moments of passion and sex, but it changes everything. And it is for that reason I call it a portal. It is a portal that it seems that once crossed cannot be re-entered. It is a great mystery in my life that having deeply loved someone; I have never stopped loving them.

That may be inconvenient, especially when life and circumstances converge so that you are no longer with the person you loved. And sadly in today’s world of relationships, that may be challenging.

Yet, with the understanding that the “it” is the lesson and experience of love, that makes the difference. It is the change you can undergo because of having loved that is important. Perhaps that grants a different perspective that helps you avoid the need and attachment that interferes with you experiencing love.

To love, by its very nature, requires transcending that need an attachment that so often disguises itself as romantic love. Loving another requires moving from loving them because you need them, to needing them because you love them. Ponder on this. That shift and transition are significant. However, it also puts you in direct conflict with the fact that loving someone makes you want what is best for him or her.

I recently saw the quote below that I would like you to ponder. Today, in celebration of love and dedication to love on Valentine’s Day, I share it with you.

Dear Human: You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t come here to master unconditional love. That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love. Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love. Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up. Often. You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are. You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous. And then to rise again into remembering.

But unconditional love? Stop telling that story. Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives. It doesn’t require modifiers. It doesn’t require the condition of perfection. It only asks that you show up. And do your best. That you stay present and feel fully. That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU. It’s enough. It’s Plenty.”
– Courtney A. Walsh

As you go through your life’s adventure, I encourage you to open to and explore love in all of its beautiful and glorious forms. Open your heart and celebrate love as a celebration of life.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Namaste,

Genevieve

The Blessing of Love on All That You Do!