For Love’s Sake
I was introduced to the different paths in yoga during a yoga retreat. It was there I realised for the first time, that my general approach towards life had a proper term, and was a yogic approach no less - "Bhakti Yoga". For those of you who know me, you might know me as hopelessly romantic, spiritual, and an ardent believer that we are all essentially the same. I’m all “follow your heart” and “listen to your heart” and “focus on your heart, it knows best”. In all honesty, I consider myself a logical person. I am quite science-y and will look for reasoning and structure to most things. But I am also very spiritual, having had my own journey and understanding with religion, theism, and atheism over the years. I lasted as an atheist for under a month when I was 14 years old. I couldn’t dismiss theism, and atheism just didn’t work for me. Why? Because I am happy and content to accept things as destiny and I usually act upon intuition when everything rational suggests otherwise (and it has worked pretty fantastically for me so far!). I’ve always said it’s ignorant to reject the possibility of the existence of things and beings.
Since I was young, I’ve always been fairly spiritual and I have always lead with my heart. Religion wasn’t forced upon me and I was encouraged to make my own choices. And since young, my driving force has been a sense of love. To the world around me, and not particularly in the form of any organised religion. Somewhere along the years, this sense of love and my spirituality started intertwining, to form a new sense of love. Over the years, I have come to perceive this love as a form respect, understanding that we are all equal, and compassion beyond flaws. I believe it’s this love that has and continues to define me. And that is why I also describe myself as hopelessly romantic. Because I don’t just mean the whole kissing in the rain, watching old time-y soaps and crying at weddings. I’m talking about a certain love towards life in itself, in the value of emotions, and in the past. Much like the Romantic Era! And what would you know! While “Bhakti Yoga” essentially means taking a path of devotion towards a personal god, the teachings include leading with your heart, the value that we are all equal and maintaining a more permanent form of love towards something or someone rather than humans. I was gobsmacked. Because to me, love feels like my purpose and the meaning to my being. I didn’t even have to make a conscious choice that “Bhakti Yoga” is the form of yoga for me, I had just known it all along.
So, why am I rambling on about this? Because I wanted to take a minute to capture and translate this knowledge to you. Because I wanted to share about love, my guiding force, with you, dear reader, who I love at the moment for taking the time out of your day to read this. And because regardless of who we are, we all love something or someone.
I mean there’s plenty of research that shows how love can be an antidepressant, how it makes you physically and mentally healthier, how it improves your self-esteem, etc, etc, etc. I’m sure if you’re reading this, you’re at an age where you know you are the most vulnerable when you love. People say this because love cannot exist without loss. To open yourself up, to love willingly of all things around you, is the willingness to accept failure, rejection, and loss again and again. It’s going through the storm of negative emotions, because you know there’s so much positive emotions like joy and gratitude once you find love again. It’s the hope, that makes it beautiful. That shows you, you can be happy and that you can create your own sunshine. And each time you fail, each time you are rejected and each time you lose, you learn a little more about yourself.
This is why we should incorporate love in all elements of our life. Okay, maybe not all. I mean, how do you exercise love when you’re washing the dishes? We can, however, start somewhere – by loving ourselves, respecting ourselves and being compassionate towards our own faults. If we don’t exercise love towards ourselves, it’s not going to be easy to respect or be compassionate of the faults of others. Look internally, before you externally, something I constantly talk about on this website. You can genuinely take a minute to mean it when you tell someone to take care, or when you wish someone good luck. Exercise the compassionate connotation to the words without simply tossing them at the recipient. If you have feelings of jealousy, or sorrow, remember that it’s perfectly human to feel so and set them aside for a minute, before you say what you want to say. Make sure it’s coming from the bottom of your heart. You can work on those emotions later in your own time.
If there’s only one thing that you can take away from this article, I suppose it should be as follows: Love is all around us, and it’s truly in your hands to give it. So that you can, and will, receive it.
I just want to take a quick minute, to thank you guys for getting me to my FIFTIETH article! FIFTY! I’ve been writing here for nearly six months! Clearly, all the messages that you guys have sent my way was from a place of true love because, how else could this have lasted? So, thank you.
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