Today is Friday... a word derived from "Freya,"the Norse goddess associated with love, fertility, and beauty... the day of the week dedicated to Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. We are in the month of February... derived from (Latin) februarius mensis: "month of purification"... februare: "to purify"... februum: "means of purification, expiatory offerings"... from Proto-Italic *f(w)esro-, from a PIE word meaning "the smoking" or "the burning" (possibly connected with fume: a sense of purification by smoke or burnt offering). This particular Friday in February is February 14... "Valentine's Day."
I am not intrigued by the controversial history surrounding St. Valentine nor in the etymology of the Hallmark holiday. I am interested in the underlying invitation - on a Friday in the middle of February - to dip into the heart space and explore "Love."
I have been holding a ritual circle for a three-week "Love Challenge" at my place here in Chania. It has been an intimate opportunity to explore our individual and collective heart space through shared meditation... to feel into how open our hearts are, where we wish they were more open, what the challenges are that keep us from opening more, and how to strengthen our ability to safely walk into the world heart-first.
On the first day of the Love Challenge, we met on the beach. On the second day, because the weather turned cold and rainy, we met inside the cafe. We then decided to meet in my apartment, just a block up the street from the cafe and beach. It was warm and cozy and we ended up meeting there every day since, even when the weather turned drier and sunnier.
Today was Day 11 of the Love Challenge. It was also Friday, February 14th.
I woke into stretching while in my bed and then in a hot bath. I thought about how people (especially young people) make heart shapes with their fingers and hands, and how my hands are too awkward to form "pretty" hearts. I thought about this while trying to shape hearts from my fingers and hands. It felt uncomfortable. I wondered, through my body, what heart shapes my body could make that would feel more comfortable. I was in a very hot bath and the process was slow and relaxed, meditative.
I noticed that when I found a comfortable position and held that for a while, my emotions stirred, bubbled up, boiled off, and moved. Making heart shapes with my body pushed me through not only physically awkward and uncomfortable positions, but also emotional places where my heart was, to some degree, closed.
I brought this idea of a moving meditation using the heart shape into our day 11 of the Love Challenge meditation group circle. At the end of our 20-minute private experience, when the three-gong alarm went off, while we all still had our eyes closed, I instructed the group to "Allow your body to form itself into a heart shape, hold the shape, and open your eyes."
There were five people in today's circle: four women and one man. The man was bent forward, head down, with the base of one of his hands at his forehead, fingers into the circle's center. All four women were holding our arms above our heads, elbows wide and rounded, fingertips of one hand touching the fingertips of the other hand, in the center of the middle of the chakra above the head, pointing down to the crown. All of us. Exactly the same. We all laughed.
After our meditation, we had our ritual writing time, and opened up two "sharing circles."
During our second sharing circle, the man, who had shared that something was stuck in his neck, expressed that what was expressed during the first sharing circle was so moving, he felt a release from his neck and an opening of his heart.
His sharing was reflective of what was going on for me. During our writing time (between meditation and sharing) I had drawn a heart shape - representing my body. I had drawn a dot on the top part of the heart, where the two sides meet in the dip. I had drawn a line from the dot and wrote "neck." I had drawn another dot in the center of the heart, and a line pointing to the word "heart."
I appreciate the significance of doing "self improvement" and meditation practices with others. Today was a clear example of the magical level of synchronicity and connection that can happen sitting in a circle. This level of magic also happens in our online Meditation Family. Even though we are each sitting in a room by ourselves, the rooms situated in a variety of countries around the planet, meditating with our eyes closed and often videos off, and opening our eyes to tiny faces in little boxes on a computer screen... that magical level of synchronicity and connection still happens.
No matter what you are doing or not doing today, please consider that, even if we are physically halfway across the world from each other, or energetically in different realms of existence, we are as close as sitting in a circle.
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