This Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to taste the magic of true love, Ayurveda style.

Most of us choose gifts to commensurate what we believe our recipients deserve. If they have been awesome lately, we go out of our way and give a really nice gift. If they have been in a funk lately, then a modest gift would seem more fitting.

Maybe this is a carryover from Santa’s threat to leave coal for us if we were naughty and not nice. Perhaps we have been conditioned to give only to those deserving, and we find ourselves weighing and balancing our love with the value of a gift.

Has love become such a commodity that we can trade, borrow, hoard or withhold it?

The Vedic premise, “as in the macrocosm, so in the microcosm,” offers some credibility to my favorite analogy, which says that we are like the sun. The sun gives light, warmth, life and you could say love, to everything at all times—it cannot not shine.

Let’s say the sun took offense at our chopping down the trees it gives light and energy to, or our killing of the livestock that it so graciously gives its precious vitamin D for survival. What does the sun think about the moon? For billions of years the sun has shined light on the moon and nothing—not even a sprout! Let’s say that the sun decided that we, Earth, didn’t deserve its gift of light. What would happen to it?

If the sun decided not to shine its light on the moon, the earth or even into the deep space of nothingness, I imagine the sun would implode on itself. In the same way, when we decide that someone does not deserve our love and hold it back from them, we implode.

The thought process required to hold back our love from one person, and give a little to another and a lot to someone else, but only when they all deserve it, is an incredible stress. That stress is processed through the gut, wiping out healthy intestinal microbes, which control the neurotransmitters governing our state of mind and overall health. (1)

Our goal should be to become the source of love—be like the sun, who never stops shining, and shine bright! Do you love your wife, partner or husband? If you do, act on it—love them fully. Love them with no expectation of receiving anything in return, and love them not only because they deserve it. Love them because it is your nature to love, just like it is the sun’s nature to shine, and when you act on this truth, you cannot stop, buffer or control it.

Shine on,
Dr. John

References:
1. WWW.APA.ORG/MONITOR/2012/09/GUT-FEELING.ASPX

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Editor: Rachel Nussbaum

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