Happy Valentine’s Day! I love Valentine’s Day. Today I woke up and wrote a love note to my love and then we went to our favorite cafe to drink coffee, chocolate, and eat croissants. So lovely!
I want to talk about love notes and chocolates today but before I get into a story I hope you will enjoy, I want to express my excitement about co-hosting a yoga and mindfulness workshop this Sat., Feb. 19th, 10 am to 12 pm MST, with my friend and rock-star of a teacher, Rachel Posner. Together, we are going to explore lasting resources to ease anxiety by sourcing tools like poses, breathwork, and meditation to feel safe through exploring the present. Rachel is a genius and will bring her many years of experience of yoga therapy, meditation, and neuroscience. I’ll be bringing my passion for relaxing poses, pranayama, and Yoga Nidra to add my two cents and together, I hope you’ll leave feeling happy, calm, and ready to face your world. Please consider joining us.
Onto Love notes and chocolates …
On Valentine’s Day when I was 11 years old, I was seriously in love with Brooke Anderson, a shy, grinning girl with pigtails and glasses, and shaking in my sneakers, I walked over to her house in the dark and drizzle, alone—our entire relationship consisted as a nervous exchange of tepid love notes—to perform what was to be, up to those brief years of my life, my most courageous act I’d ever performed which was to actually knock on her door, actually see her face, and actually hand her the token of my love, a Valentine’s present of yet another prepubescent love note, but this time, one that was also attached to a simple, heart-shaped locket on a cheap chain which opened to reveal a Polaroid cutout of my face.
She gave me chocolates.
Our young love didn’t last. But several decades later, my adoration for love notes and chocolates still lives strong. Decades later, love notes and chocolates have become an incredibly rich metaphor which has given flavor to the very meaning of life and existence, one that grows deeper and more nuanced for me as time passes.
Love notes and chocolates are serious business and I’m not exaggerating when I say that they live at the center of our entire human experience. They imbue every object and moment of every day.
Love notes and chocolates are absolutely everywhere, but many of us haven’t learned to see them. And beyond learning to discern them, perhaps the more difficult task once they’ve been revealed is learning to savor them.
To learn to see the love notes and chocolates in your life, you might appreciate hearing a little of the back story. Or at least one of the stories ….
The story I want to tell you is even better than young Scottro quaking in his Converse to deliver a Valentine to his 11-year-old crush, but perhaps you’ll see some similarities between the two.
What I truly hope is that with this story, you’ll begin to see a few similarities between this story and your own love, your own life.
I love a good myth/story as much as I adore love notes and chocolates. I absolutely soak them up, in part because stories and myths relay truths which are larger than facts.
The story I want to tell you comes from the ancient Hindu tradition and is many thousands of years old, yet is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago and I find it very applicable, whether you are Hindu or Christian, agnostic or atheist.
I love this story and it gets updated almost every time I tell it. Originally, I heard this story from a Sanskrit scholar many years ago, but in the age-old spirit of myth and storytelling, my version evolves with almost each telling of it because good stories don’t just portray facts or events. Rather, they illustrate truths which are constantly blooming, just as the flowering lotus of the very Universe itself.
You may have heard this story before, it’s well known. You may have heard it from other people or perhaps, if I am lucky, dozens of my previous recitations of it. Yet, like I’ve said, each telling makes the story new because the place we are speaking and listening from is constantly changing. Updating. And if you have heard me tell this story, this version will be undoubtedly different.
One of the things I love about this story—I’ll get on with it in a moment— is that stories like this often illustrate abstract concepts which are at the center of everything but sometimes need a few characters and a driving storyline to help them stick the landing.
Here goes … I like to call this story: The Greatest Love Story of All Time: Shiva, Shakti and YOU.
Before the beginning of the Universe, there existed Purusha, the Universal beingness of all things. This beingness was complemented perfectly by Prakriti, Universal energy, substance, and change.
In this story, Purusha takes the form of Shiva, a being characterized as sitting constantly in meditation, but with a lidless eye, his 3rd eye, in the middle of his forehead and resting in constant Awareness.
The Yin to his Yang, the Yoko to his John, is Shakti who represents Prakriti. Shakti is a dancer who is all things form, energy, and movement.
Shiva and Shakti existed in a most perfect love. They absolutely lived for each other. As pure Awareness, the only thing Shiva desired in all of his beingness was to give all of his love to his beloved by giving her what he did best, by pouring his complete attention upon her. Not a single hair could move on her head, neither a single twitch of her finger, nor a single breath could escape her body that Shiva didn’t witness it with his complete and rapt attention and adoration.
Likewise, Shakti was pure change, form, and movement and only desired to give Shiva her greatest gift and deepest love by dancing just for him, by constantly changing and creating for him. Her every moment was spent enticing the gift of his eternal awareness. One day Shakti would appear wrapped in the mist of a docile spring morning, sunlight kissing pink petals, and the perfumed scent of apple blossoms carrying kisses on a gentle breeze. The next day she’d rage through the room as black as a hurricane, thundering, bursting, and destroying everything in her wake. For Shakti, it was silk and sandals one day, leather and stilettos the next.
Shiva lived for Shakti’s movement and breadth of change. He simply couldn’t get enough of it. Shakti lived for Shiva's absolute and unyielding presence. She also couldn’t get enough of it. And together they danced like this in perfect and simple balance for eternities.
Everything was simple then. It was the honeymoon stage of their relationship. They lived very tightly but comfortably in a shoebox studio apartment. It was their entire Universe. It was all they knew. Though small and compact, they felt as if their world together was perfect. And while they felt that things could never get any better, that they were as happy as they could ever be, a love like this can only grow and thus they were constantly blossoming into higher and higher lovemaking.
Whether they knew it or not, their love would soon outgrow this shoebox apartment. And whether they knew it or not, Shiva and Shakti shared an immense destiny.
Each day their love grew and grew until one day, they looked at each other and without fully understanding exactly what it would mean, they both said in unison, “Let’s go cosmic!”
Shiva smiled as his bright 3rd eye gleamed, following Shakti’s lythe movements. Though Shakti’s entire gig is change, this time she really wanted to shake things up. This time, she wanted to do something to Shiva he’d never experienced before, something he’d never expect.
So on this day, as she was dancing for her beloved, she happened to dance around him in circles and once behind him, she had an impulsive idea to cover that 3rd eye. There had never been a moment when Shiva’s 3rd eye wasn’t always watching. It had never been closed before. Oh, the implications! As part of her dance, Shakti casually slipped her hands over Shiva’s eternally-open 3rd eye and as she did, for the first time ever in the history of the Universe, there was a split second where there was no longer a balance between energy and consciousness. There was only energy. The sheer volume of Shakti’s energy was so immense, so powerful, so absolute—something that Shakti didn’t even fully understand— that in that brief moment of pure energy, the entire Universe exploded into what we now call the Big Bang.
In an instant, everything went dark for Shakti and when she opened her eyes, she found herself reeling through space, terrified, and alone for the first time. In pure animal terror, she opened her mouth and released a desperate cry evoking the Oneness of herself and her beloved. It was first sound of the Universe, the sound, “Ooommmmmmmm.”
As the fundamental creator of matter, substance, and energy, Shakti did what she does best and began to create. She danced and made the light and darkness. She danced and made matter and space. She danced and made time. She danced and made the notion of opposites. All this she made in an attempt to create something to hold onto so she could unite again with her beloved.
She made this world with its elements, its flora and fauna, and its seasons and wandered the world ever searching for her beloved, as she cried, “Shiva! Shiva, where are you?” Shakti wandered the world constantly searching for her beloved with what felt like a stone where her heart used to be.
One day while wandering and searching for her beloved, she became very thirsty and passing by a very pleasant brook, she leaned down to quench her thirst. As she filled her mouth with the sweet, cool water it seemed to fill her soul, not only the taste of the water on her tongue but also the fluid cool against her skin, and the mineral smell in her nostrils. She closed her eyes almost in a trance and soaked up the dulcet sounds of the brook lolling over stones, a gurgling which almost seemed to speak to her. And as she listened more intently she began to indeed hear a voice … a very familiar voice. It was shiva!
She raised herself from the brook, looked around in every direction with wide and crazy eyes, and began calling out desperately to her beloved, “Shiva! Shiva, where are you? Come to me! I would have never done such a foolish thing as to close your 3rd eye if I’d have known it would separate me from you …. Shiva?” But there was no response and despite calling out many times and looking in every direction, Shakti did not see her beloved and became even more disconsolate.
Another day, Shakti was strolling through the forest, tears streaming down her face in pain as she longed for Shiva, when suddenly a gale-force wind swept through the trees, causing their trunks to sway, their boughs to dance, and millions of leaves to scintillate and rustle in the tumult. All of Shakti’s senses came alive and behind this cacophonous din, again, Shakti heard the whispering voice of her beloved.
“Shiva!” she cried out, “Where are you?!” and she began climbing the trees, looking around each trunk, and peered through the dancing limbs of the trees. Yet, as much as she cried and searched, she did not find her beloved and she sank into an even greater despair.
Finally, one day she was walking through a beautiful glenn. On this day, the sun was shining it’s magical first rays of morning sunlight and everything they touched seemed to come alive and sing. As the first rays burst over the mountains, she felt their warmth embrace her skin. The birds began chirping, the insects started buzzing, and soon the flowers were in bloom. Even the earth herself seemed to open up, offering shakti the sensuous scent of her intoxicating, earthy musk. And as the symphony of her senses was soaring, yet again Shakti began to hear the voice of her beloved whispering in her ears.
But this time, instead of calling out to her beloved, instead of searching, she decided that she would do something different. This time, instead of looking outward for her beloved, she decided to look where she hadn’t looked before—she looked inside herself.
She sat herself down on the earth and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths of the earth’s grounding scent while feeling the caress of the dewy grass on her skin, and hearing the arias of songbirds tickle her ears. She sat for long moments relishing in the sheer delight of her senses.
And to Shakti’s great joy, the more she receded into her own being, the more she listened, the more she became aware, the voice of her beloved became louder and louder until finally she could hear his voice very clearly.
“Shakti? Shakti.” he said. “I am here. I am here, Shakti. I never left you. I have always been with you. Remember, nothing in the Universe can exist without me, the same way nothing can exist without you. We have never been nor can we ever be separated.” Finally, with awe in his voice, Shiva said, “Seems like we’ve upgraded from our small studio apartment. Look, babe. Look what our love has created ….”
At this, Shakti opened her eyes. She no longer saw trees, birds, and sunlight, nor did she see any object in the entire Universe as singular or separate. Instead, she could only see herself and her beloved dancing in the form of trees and birds and sunlight as well as everything else in the Universe.
In an instant, Shakti’s entire being was quickened. She was delivered from this dark night of longing and loneliness and reborn through the fire of love. Her entire being felt as if it would burst with incalculable joy.
Rising to her feet, she again felt the sunlight on her skin but this time, felt herself wrapped in the warm and loving arms of her beloved, an embrace she knew would never cease and finally realizing herself to be in the eternal, familiar, and loving gaze of her beloved, Shakti continued doing the thing she does the best—she started to dance to entice Awareness.
Shakti is still dancing. Her dance is the rise and fall of the sun each day. It’s the change of seasons. It’s the spinning of the earth. It’s the birth of galaxies and the death of stars. It’s the breath of the smallest insect and the expansion of the Universe itself.
Everything in the Universe is the product of this cosmic embrace, including and especially YOU. Truly, you are the love child of this union and the divine is reaching new levels of expansion by experiencing itself through and as you.
Shakti’s dance is everywhere but perhaps it’s seen as the beautiful choreography that is your life with its ups and downs, it’s ebbs and flows, it’s unending changes. Shakti is doing what she has always done: enticing Awareness. Specifically, she’s enticing your Awareness, the Shiva Nature that is inside of you. Everything you can see, touch, smell, hear, and taste, indeed everything you can sense, feel or perceive, is Shakti dancing before you inviting you to wake up to the truth that all is one.
With practice, you’ll recognize that everything in existence is love notes and chocolate. When we learn to notice these love notes, we begin to recognize that Shakti is simply writing the same message in every possible language. Eventually we’ll learn to read the words, “Here,” and “This,” written in the language of the waddle of a penguin, the birth of a season, or the death of a loved one. You’ll read it in every sunrise and every bee dancing on every flower.
With practice, you’ll start to recognize each object in life is but one of the chocolates in Shakti’s box of chocolates and each is offered in love. Some of these chocolates are sweet and some are bitter, some contain honey and others contain cayenne pepper. You can never guess what you’re going to get until you take a bite but you must know each one comes from love and each one is made just for you, enticing your awareness as you too wake up to the truth that there never was any separation between you and the Oneness, that your life exists as the dance of the divine.
May we all learn to see the beautiful movement of our lives, as well as every object in our world, as Shakti’s enticing dance to help us wake us up, like she did, to the fact that we have never been separate from the divine. On this Valentine's Day, may we all begin to see and savor our world full of love notes and chocolates, no matter how bitter or sweet. And may we all wake up to the truth of this divine embrace of Oneness knowing that all of it is somehow wrapped in love.
