You know, each year Valentine’s Day rolls in right on the heels of Christmas and my usual reaction is not exactly loving. It’s not my favorite holiday, just a manufactured opportunity to buy more stuff. I admit I don’t hate it all. I do like chocolate, flowers, and dinner out. Last week I needed to get a few greeting cards and found that if I bought three I could get a free stuffed bear, one whose heart glows red from within when you squeeze it. Pretty corny, I know, but cute.  In a round about way it’s led me to try a new approach to Valentine’s Day this year.

Like everyone else I want to be more aware of the flow of Spirit in my life. I yearn to feel my oneness with the pulse of the universe. Often I vacillate between drawing on my own energy reserves to get things done and then needing down time to recover, and drawing more energy than I can handle and feeling out of sorts. There is just nothing like striking the right balance. Guy has a globe that’s held in place by a magnetic field. To position it you need to put it close enough to the top to hold, but not so close that it jumps up and sticks. A shift takes place when it’s there, much like the shift you feel when in the flow. It’s that feeling that all’s right with everything, everywhere. There are many ways to get closer to this state. Expressing gratitude, practicing yoga, and praying are but a few.

When I began writing this month’s article, I planned to write about the importance of the energy people give each other through small gestures and acts of kindness. How giving a little more than you get is the grease that keep the gears of society from seizing up. I just couldn’t get it to come together. Though society certainly does need our energy (who wants to live in a place where no doors are held open, no smiles are shared between strangers, and all drivers cheat at stoplights?), the truth is it’s just as vital to us as individuals. We are meant to give out energy, not in the sense that we dole it out from a closely held bag, but in the sense that we allow the energy of Spirit to flow through us and into the world. I love the image of an endless reservoir feeding a beautiful fountain.

So, back to my plan. Instead of letting the sight of Cupids and candy get me all cynical and snotty this year, I’m thinking of using them to remind me to be conscious of Spirit moving through me as I go about my day. I’ll let Valentine hearts remind me to take a breath and give love out to this planet that I’m so fond of. The message of those little candies will be that rather than draw from a small pool of energy that can be used up, I have the abundant energy of the cosmos flowing through me and at any time I can choose to open the tap a little wider. I will strive to see the truth of all those I meet, that they are whole and beautiful, and they all have hearts that glow when you squeeze them.