How can we possibly receive a Valentine from Life when increasingly we take issue with how life is? We should not be destroying our remaining old growth forest, my mother should have been more available for me, my father not such a tyrant, Russia should not be threatening to invade Ukraine, vaccines should/shouldn’t be mandatory … the list goes on and on. Our distrust of how life presents keeps many in a constant state of judgement, fear, and condemnation. Hardened social fields begin to collude with life’s perceived injustices and more division is created. Life feels pressured, and seems to be forcing us to take sides, and to push against.

Divided, confused, and entangled, humanity has created a collective impasse—a crisis calling out for attention on every level of life. We have no inner peace because our resistance and “pushing against” creates division in our own heart.

We are life though. Are we not? Are we really so separate from the chaos and the crisis of life evolving itself in the form of you and me? Aren’t we also agents of the life we are condemning? Our collective resistance to seeing and feeling life’s wounds is strangling life and her evolution. Each individual “no” to feeling life’s shadow grows a little more shadow, swept under the proverbial shadow-mat of our collective. Until finally, it appears that life itself is teetering.

Denying life keeps us life-victims rather than life-agents. How do we transition from one to the other. Do any of us consciously choose to be a victim?

One small ray of light at a time, the tender eyes and arms of individual consciousness shine a light on shadow’s dark recesses. Each moment we engage in aware contact with the ignored/exiled parts of our ancestry and collective, our heart learns to trust life’s unfolding, rather than resist and push against. The broken heart of received and acknowledged pain becomes a tender heart that is not afraid to feel, to be available. There is another life just beyond fear’s desire to control or numb from life. Mystics and saints throughout time have whispered encouragement from this place. They have willingly received Life’s Valentine and it changed them irrevocably.

Life’s Valentine calls us from across the great divide of our wounded separation. Her beauty is waiting discovery just beyond the tangled web of our wounded habits—for centuries swept under the unstable shadow-carpet of our collective. Life looks scary like this for a hardened heart; for a heart broken open, life is evolving.

On this Valentine’s Day allow your heart to receive Life’s Valentine by being with life as it shows up in you one breath at at time. That is all it takes. Nothing could be more simple–or challenging. Paradoxically, staying with life creates room for life. Something magic happens as life begins to evolve and take shape within us in new ways. We discover hope and love where fear and contraction once lived.

Accepting Life’s Valentine is like receiving a divine heart-kiss. It turns a fearful heart into a grateful heart as we experience the joy of life evolving through us, within us, as us! By receiving Life’s Valentine we discover that we actually belong to life just as it is. In this place and with this deep understanding, we gratefully find room to breathe right where we are.

Happy Valentines!