With Valentines day fast approaching we have been asking some members of the Ultimate team for their thoughts…
Love, the Yoga perspective – Patricia our Ultimate Yogi
Our senses, mind, and ego, are hardwired to give us the experience of separation and division, set us up to think that love is outside of us and that some people, places and things are loveable and others are not. We think that love has different flavours: mother love, romantic love, love of movies, love of nature, compassionate love, sexual love, love of the cozy feeling of being under the covers at the end of a long day.
In short, if Real Love is naturally unifying, our individual, human experience of love is dividing. It is subject to change and loss, moods and tides, attachments and aversions. It doesn’t matter who or what we love; at some point, the object of our love will disappear from our life or disappoint us or stop being loveable, simply because change is the nature of existence.
In conclusion, individual love is always touched with suffering, even when the love we feel is “spiritual”.
As long as we think that Love comes from outside of ourselves, we are going to suffer. The kind of love that we experience throughout our lives is linked to attachment, and therefore creates pain, when it goes.
The practice of yoga (not only poses but Yoga philosophy) is about removing the filter, closing the gap between our limited experience and the experience of greatness (Real Love) that we all hold inside.