a few thoughts on today...

To live in this culture is to live in a kaleidoscope of scams; the deeper you look, the more you see. However, we can still extract some valuable things on certain days, for example, valentines day:

Some people get sad on this day. Feel whatever you feel, but I’m also here to offer an alternative perspective:
If you are not celebrating in the same way everyone else “appears” to be (I use quotations because no one actually knows what someone else’s relationship is like, so don’t get hung up on optics) let us consider a gift:

For many of us, if we are not in a relationship, it’s often for a reason. I can only speak for myself, but for me, I recently got out of a relationship that would have been lethal had I stayed any longer. To say it was “toxic” is an understatement, it was not just abusive, I also struggled with a special breed of inner-stupid (AKA Stockholm syndrome) within myself; it was very hard to get away from, even harder to stay away from, but it has been done. 🌟 ✅

To those of you who feel like a past hurt may be triggered today, consider this:

Are we not lucky that we are NO LONGER in those situations anymore?
We are blessed to have our freedom, our sanity, our peace, and literally every option in life still available to us, because we are not enslaved (addicted) to cycles of abuse anymore, we do not have to deal with living a double life. Today I practice gratitude for the peace in my life, and for the power in consciously choosing who is in it and who is not. Today I practice gratitude for the beauty, love and kindness in life. If you do not feel like you have any in your life, I understand, it can be a very cold world. In those circumstances, I turn to the realm of the spirit. The outside world cannot be relied on for true fulfillment anyway. Do with that what you will.

We have so much to deal with, it’s so difficult living on planet earth as sensitive human beings, trying to figure out what life is and how to adjust to all things in the total unknown. 

So it’s making sure that we the people are directed well, and that we don’t have to rely on anything outside of ourselves to know what is true or real, and that we care for one another.

The only way in life to be happy IS to care for one another. As soon as it starts becoming this other thing, we ourselves are having the misery. 

But that’s easy to say, very much harder to actualize and embody without a tremendous amount of work, thus, the path of yoga. 

What is that thing? How do you actually go through that process to take away the misery?

Theres no rational way to do it, it doesn’t really make sense, because how can you? How can you take away the miseries? You can’t, if the focus is on the outside world. 

But, what one can do, is go on the inner exploration, and learn how to engage and interact and be a part of this world in that a way that is totally meaningful. 

When we operate from a place that is meaningful, there’s a different type of happiness that comes.

And that type of happiness is INCLUSIVE OF all the calamities and tragedies and catastrophes of life, because part of life is catastrophe. 

So if our idea of happiness is not also inclusive of catastrophe, then happiness is short lived. 

-Jai Dev Singh 

There are more types of love than the romantic one, so if you aren’t celebrating that, celebrrate the others, or simply celebrate the fact that you have a clean slate to invite genuine love in that department into your life now, because that space is no longer being taken up by the wrong match, let’s put it lightly.

However, if we want to actually focus on what the alleged purpose of the day is,

It would be connection, would it not?

If we celebrate the one we love, and go about doing it with honoring them intentionally and spending quality time, technically every day is valentines day, because that’s how it is when you’re in a good relationship.

It can be easy to drift from the principle of what is essentially applied awareness in a noisy world, so whether you’re in a relationship or not, whether you’re grieving someone or celebrating your freedom from someone, or maybe both, let us remember the most important things in life:

Connection and love. That’s it. And even in the face of tragedy, crisis, death, loss, it can still be found.

I haven’t been active on Substack recently and most of you know why, if you don’t then see the post “on the train with no love” (and no it has nothing to do with love). Unless you consider the fact that grief is one of the highest expressions of love, but it’s a pretty dark read, so maybe don’t read it today haha.

I don’t know why I felt called to write this but hopefully someone out there needed to read something in here. I gotta go to work now, but just remember, there’s something to be grateful for, even when things are challenging beyond words.

And as a 6 AM text said to me this morning,

“I have a really good feeling about today!”

So, let us roll with that. I have a good feeling about today too.

May we be surprised by the magick and divine in this world today.