Valentine’s Day

5 minute read

Valentine's Day - the day of lovers, the day of love, or the imported rival of the traditional Romanian Dragobete - should in truth be lived every day, throughout the lives of those who love each other. It should not be reduced to a single celebration in which love is briefly made to feel special.

Every day should celebrate what you feel and what has been given to you. If you cannot celebrate love each day, then what you are living may be anything else, but it is not love.

Love should not become routine, yet it does when it is confused with other feelings that cannot approach the lived experience of love. If we do not see what is reflected in love, if we neither respect nor accept the divine reflected within our souls, love becomes an ordinary feeling and gradually loses its radiance.

Love appears to diminish in intensity because we see the person towards whom we feel it, but not the divine within the lived experience itself. The moment you perceive that God is Love, your love acquires absolute and infinite qualities. You no longer perceive yourself as loving only the person. You love what you actually feel, and this is what lifts you inwardly towards heaven.

By raising what you feel upon a pedestal, you can move through many of the difficulties encountered in the lived experience of love, because everything beautiful will always meet obstacles. It is genuinely difficult when only one person sees what they feel while the other retreats inwardly from this sublime feeling.

Many people are frightened by inner change, above all because love brings humility and makes you kneel before the beloved. In those moments, "YOU" no longer exist. The inner "I" dissolves, leaving only the vapours of love rising through the sky of your being.

This is why it is said that, when you love, you can perceive both your own soul and the soul of the beloved more easily. The religious practice of the world's great faiths is founded upon this understanding. The lived experience that lovers feel in their intimate moments comes very close to the mystical lived experience of hermits, saints and all those who devote themselves to inner enlightenment.

This happens only when you do not create obstacles within. If you see the divine reflection in the lived experience of love, its adverse effects are almost non-existent. Love brings both heaven and hell within when it appears. How that inner lived experience develops depends upon those who love each other. Faith in God, and its reflection within love, can therefore support that lived experience.

I speak from my own modest experience, acquired over time, of devotion to the lived experience of love. There were times when love had not the slightest chance of finding fulfilment, yet it did, and it brought sublime moments. Eventually, I understood how I had been able to love different people so deeply.

Each moment was unique and sometimes brought an understanding beyond my human powers. At times, this made me appear mad, but my madness was given by the lived experience revealed within. Often, I wanted to dissolve into what I felt and give the beloved even one moment of what I felt. Yet this is possible only when two people share the same vision. Otherwise, many obstacles and much suffering wait around the corner.

When love does not make you feel fulfilled and you continue wanting more, chasing transient things, a fracture appears within. What connects two people who love each other is not the material realm, but what is reflected in their souls.

I would say that free choice concerns only our inner world, because outside, things are entirely different. Our inner master is precisely what we live and feel through the lived experience of love. If we give ourselves completely to that lived experience, we make the leap into the void.

We may love someone within while that love is never fulfilled outside, or is fulfilled only for a longer or shorter period, perhaps for a single moment of our existence. If we do not destroy our own lived experience, destiny sometimes does so by taking the beloved's life.

It is true that a few lighthouses are left shining in the fog so that we do not despair and lose all faith in love. Our mistaken understanding of the lived experience of love may also be caused by traditions and religion, which suppressed the breath of the lived experience of love between two people. I am speaking about the sexual energy repressed for centuries, whose destructive effects can now be seen in our society.

People move from one relationship to another too quickly today, without realising that in doing so they are losing the struggle for their own inner world. It takes a long time for each person to enter the other's intimacy and to reach the kind of trust shared by friends, although love greatly amplifies what can be experienced between friends.

When a relationship contains great peace, those involved often believe routine has appeared. This is why people invented the idea that a little conflict provides the salt and pepper a relationship needs in order to endure. From my point of view, it means only that the relationship has not yet matured. Two people who love and respect one another, and speak openly about their inner difficulties, can pass through anything.

Those who love each other must see the divine within their experience if they are to face the trials and routine encountered by most couples today. Although many refuse to admit it, the most important difficulty is sexual. Otherwise, there would be no desire for experiences outside the couple.

When you feel inwardly fulfilled beside the person you love, sex should no longer be a problem. On the contrary, it can assist the spiritual path. If you can bring order to your thoughts about it, purify the animal within and master it by subjecting it to the lived experience of love, it will bring happiness to your lives.

This is not easy and certainly cannot be accomplished quickly. The experience resembles the path of those devoted to religious practice. It too requires time, many trials, daily discipline and deep inner suffering before truth is revealed and divine nectar is given.

Treasure every moment in the presence of the person you love. Do not wait for future moments or dwell upon those already past. Rejoice in each moment, because in the future you may no longer be able to experience what is yours now.

Sometimes this will be your fault, sometimes destiny's, and sometimes it will happen because you failed to respect what you were living and, therefore, the beloved. Whatever happens, do not renounce the lived experience of love within. Try to perceive its existence in itself, and your inner "master" will guide you upon the Path without abandoning you for a moment.

This remains true whether you live in suffering, longing for what you once experienced or for the person you love, or whether you are filled with happiness for what love gives you, even if it gives that happiness only within.

First published in Romanian on 14 February 2011. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Valentine's Day.