A wounded person carries shadows, and the shadow-self is the fearful, the anxious and the depressed or something else that makes loving oneself more complicated than it has to be. The shadow parts are all that is preventing a person from loving him or herself. To extend this metaphor out in the world, I believe that in today’s climate, more and more people are gaining the awareness that we can’t really keep our personal love just to ourselves anymore. The world needs your love, and it needs it badly, it even demands of you to spread the light of love in the dark places of our system.
Looking at the world today, we can humbly accept that we all need to come together and bring whatever light we hold to the table. We are beyond the illusion that one hero, that one person only will save the world. We are stepping into the awareness that to make love conquer this world, we need to see the love in one another and let it shine as brightly as it can. Urgently, we need to bring forth all our torches for the benefit of the whole, for the benefit of humanity. We can do that by illuminating the unchallenged, the fake and the corrupted. In favour of all that is true to nature, the life-giving and the authentic.
It is only together that we can call forth the true, the beautiful and the good. It is only by guarding the light in our hearts that we can let love win. Take this opportunity of St Valentine’s to deeply cherish the light within yourself and within your beloved. And, at the same time, extend it outwards to become a beacon in this world. No matter what you do or where you are, there is always something that you can do to make this world a better place. Sometimes, it may be an extreme act of courage calling on the fake and the corrupted, but at other times it might be in the smallest little action that you make a contribution to this world. A smile at an old lady in the supermarket, a helping hand across the street, the joy in starting a conversation with a stranger, or giving somebody flowers.
Whatever you do and wherever you are, I am convinced that it is the small everyday interactions with other human beings that provide meaning to our existence. We are not made to live isolated and separated from each other, we are not even made to fight one another – that is a human construct to divide and conquer. A concept that keeps us from love itself. Love is wholeness, love is to illuminate the shadows of yourself and the shadows of our world. To help humanity heal for the world to heal, we need to spread our personal and intimate love out into our societies to make this world whole. Remember that the original intention for life is not destruction but creation, and with all our loving lights combined, we can make that happen.
Let us just take one little step for love, one small step for humanity as we keep our candles lit even brighter the darker it gets. Start by loving yourself, then your neighbour, then a foreigner, then the whole of humanity. That is how universal we need to become if we want our species to keep cherishing the gift of life. The Earth is strong and beautiful – she is hundreds and thousands of times more powerful than any man on this planet, and she will definitely survive. That is not the question. The question is, do we love ourselves enough, do we love life sufficiently to make it universal, to make saving humanity a state of the heart – a universal art? Together.
