Valentine’s Day: romance and relationships, a spiritual view

Ah, l’amour. Spring is in the air (in the northern hemisphere any way). I felt I should do something for St. Valentine’s day, that feast of chocolate, fizzy alcohol, food, and I’m sure there’s something else… Oh. yes, meditation, that’s it!

meeting people and community

how to know if it is a good idea to get into a relationship

karma, love and relationships

Work with your higher self to feel good about yourself

For FAQs about meditation, click here.

If you would like to know about online meditation and courses that are available, click here.

A Spiritual Warrior’s Guide to Life

Occasionally a person’s spiritual guides will interfere and precipitate a crisis in their life. They do this to create a shift in focus, and a change in direction, to get that person onto a new and more spiritual timeline. This means there are issues or problems for the person to deal with. Dealing with them brings about learning and development, including development of skills that can then be used to help others. Lifestyle and interests also change and become more spiritually orientated.

But after that, then what?

Before writing this I had been thinking about how I used to avoid reading newspapers during my own early involvement in what I considered spiritual matters. I did this because I thought I was not buying into negativity.

I had caught a song on the radio with the lyrics “I am a rock, I am an island, an island feels no pain”. It was a song about avoiding life in an attempt to avoid pain. I thought this was silly as no one is an island and no one is a rock. We are all connected. We are all part of humanity, of groups and society, often part of a family. It is other people we buy things from, that help us travel around, make goods, help us when we are not well or to improve well-being. What happens in one part of the world, and in one part of humanity can and does affect us. Even if someone lived off-grid, they still breathe the air and drink water that can be affected by the activities of others, and they are still subject to the laws of the land they live in.

The avoiding part or the ignoring part took me back to when I felt strongly I needed healing, different therapies, and self-help. I was very self-centred, focusing on dealing with my own issues, getting the help I felt I needed, and living a lifestyle I thought would help me be healthier and happier. I didn’t feel I had anything to give (apart from money for therapists and workshops), I was needy.

Dealing with my “problems” (really just areas for growth), I found I had more understanding than before, and I had learned skills and developed abilities which I could use for the benefit of others. This is probably common to a lot of healers and therapists.

There came a time when I stopped feeling there was a hole inside me that needed filling, and instead I felt like giving. I stopped feeling so delicate and sensitive. Instead I felt stronger and more robust. Whereas I had used spirituality to escape from life, I felt now I could live, using spiritual ideas to involve myself with life.

I knew that one approach to spirituality was to avoid life for fear of being contaminated by negativity, or, and I’m not sure by what process, adding to the negativity. I recognized that this approach was fear based. I think it’s far better to look at the problems and issues of humanity from a position of love and compassion.

A spiritual idea I had learnt was that the time for practicing spirituality in the cave or ashram was gone. As well as being inside us all, God is everywhere, in the world around us and in everyone. God is Life, God is Love. So to learn about God, to learn about Love, and to develop spiritually, living in and being involved in the world is the way to do it.

In the changes going on in the world as spiritual energy brings about that change, there are plenty of opportunities for loving, spiritual people to be practically loving and express their spiritual natures in practical ways.

With the Buddha it was the suffering of others that propelled his spirituality. Jesus taught about loving people. He gave us the parable of the good Samaritan. Other spiritual teachers have taught about loving others, often by doing work to alleviate people’s suffering and to help them have the basics they need for life. Going further, they help people live productive and fulfilled lives. For such spiritual beings, part of being spiritual means being involved in life, and being loving to others.

Within spirituality, it’s OK to care about issues and people. It’s OK to feel strongly about things. Being detached to deliberately avoid negativity, is not the same as being loving enough to care. To care enough to do something about a situation. There is a different kind of detachment where you can be cool-headed and emotionally detached enough to be truly helpful in difficult situations, rather than be caught up in the emotions. Though there might be a need to feel the emotions later. It is OK to get your hands dirty.

Thinking of helping other people, it may be the case that a spiritually inclined person, particularly if they are sensitive to energy, is concerned they might put themselves in a situation where they experience negative energy. It is sensible to think ahead like this, and it is possible to prepare and build up to such a scenario. A key point to bear in mind is that life is a spiritual training. We experience all kinds of energies, negative and positive, and learn by being in them about energy. We also learn how to deal with energy, and about ourselves. We learn by doing, and put on spiritual muscle by dealing with energy. Spirituality is to do with growth, and growth comes by experiencing new situations.

Some people are sensitive and some people aren’t. For the more thick-skinned amongst us, getting into situations where the energy is tough is straightforward. I have seen some people who are really energetically tough with big hearts doing amazing work with difficult and needy people. Their own training in life is often tough so they are prepared for the work they do; making a difference in people’s lives. (Plus they shift a lot of karma, gain a lot of spiritual points and work their heart centres. People don’t have to think they are spiritual to do real spiritual work.)

How to prepare for potential negative energy if you are sensitive?

A basic point is keep smiling and positive on the inside. A real smile on the inside, perhaps matched by one on your face, will help your heart centre open, and get your centres or chakras firing. It will help keep your thoughts positive which raises your vibration. As energy follows thought, a smile and matching thoughts keep negativity at bay and help your centres process any negative energy should it come into your aura.

Secondly, button-up or close up your centres, and seal your aura. There are meditations available to help you do this. A lovely one is to use one with a Native American flavour of wrapping yourself up in a protective animal spirit energy of something like an Arctic owl, or bison. Make sure to have your roots firmly down into the earth as this helps you process energy, also if you are rooted in and grounded, you make better decisions.

Thirdly, try to gain a sense of when you have absorbed more than enough negative energy, as it is time to clean up. At least the negative energy is being picked up doing something worthwhile.

If someone picks up negative energy they might find they feel emotionally low, or their thoughts are less positive. When I have overdone it, I might find the energy accumulates in my head (being positive:”Thank you God for the headache.”). Or I might have a stomach ache as I have been too involved to pay attention. My “gunk” level is too high and is way over my ankles. Fortunately, there are ways to shift the energy, emotions and thoughts, though. Some ways are practical and some are energy based. What suits depends on the individual.

In a physical way, washing hands (and feet) has a great effect. Showering, and having a bath with salt works. Physical activity will shift slow frequency negative energy out of the body. Walking in Nature, walking somewhere windy, and swimming in the sea or swimming pool works to shift energy as will yoga and sports. Generally, being healthy and fit means looking after your own energy, which makes you more effective in helping others.

There are meditations available to clear energies from the body, centres and aura. The energy can be shifted from the physical, astral, and the mental levels. With more and more practice, the meditations work quicker and quicker.

For an energetically sensitive person then, there is help available. What is also useful is to do a meditation in the morning to fill up with energy for the day, and receive energy for all the people you might meet. So it really is possible to have what is considered a spiritual outlook on life, and be involved in it in a practically loving way.

When someone is loving towards another person, and carries out an act of practical love, they balance negative karma, and gain positive karma. This can be a motivation to be involved with doing something for others. The most beautiful love though, is love freely given, free of desire for gain or recognition.

There is so much to be done, looking after and expanding the potential of people of all ages in our communities, helping them to find a voice,  to look after their basic needs, then empowered  them to be creative and economically independent. There are more hard core issues to be involved in, such as helping people who have been trafficked, who are recovering from drug addiction and countering the drug trade in communities, helping people exploited by some businesses, and helping people in other parts of the world supressed by dictatorial governments. There are a host of issues to do with people.

Then there is the environment. There is much to be done to clean it up. There is a need to protect it from some businesses, business people, criminal organizations and some politicians who value their profits and wealth above all else, and who care very little about the environment or people, though they might pretend to do so. One way for lightworkers with money to help, is to buy land to protect it. That really helps. It may be that some lightworkers’ skills lie in politics where it is really needed, in lobbying, business or finance, or also science and technology. There are lots of ways which give lightworkers their own unique powerful and practical way of expressing their spirituality through action, and of being the spiritual warrior. There is much to be done to gain and create the kind of world we want, based on love and spirituality.

For FAQs about meditation, click here.