How to Meditate on Love
The heart is both physical and spiritual, the center of our being which connects us to everything. Our spiritual self longs to connect with divine love. That longing for connection creates a vacuum and if we are not careful, we will attempt to fill it with things that dont belong in the heart. This is toxic and causes our hearts to become seemingly blind and deaf to everything around us while attaching to worldly distractions.
Instead of finding joy and love in helping a stranger in need, some find that to be a burden and would rather seek joy in spending money or career. Nothing wrong with being successful or wealthy, but that is not the root of happiness and it can distract us from what really matters.
God is the ultimate love and ultimate light, that light is in everything all at once. The trees, the wind, the difficult and the easy; one can find The Light in everything if their hearts are listening. Love can act as your compass in life if you allow it. This doesn’t mean blindly go after other humans you are attracted to. While companionship love is important and will be used down below in the meditation exercise, it is not the ultimate love which I am referring to.
No matter what name you assign to God, no matter if you are agnostic or unsure about faith, most can at least agree something deeper and larger than ourselves puts a spark in your heart sometimes and you feel it. THAT, that something, is The Light, The Fashioner of Forms, The Forgiver, The Protector, The Most Loving, The All-Encompassing. Call it whatever you like, I call it God.
Mental Health Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is used by a variety of belief systems and often advocated for in the use of mental health. It is a universal concept that connecting to your internal self and becoming more mindful is beneficial.
Here are a few benefits of meditation, but please understand many more exist.
- Stress reduction
- Mindfulness
- Lessen anxiety and depression
- Increased attention span and focus
- Greater bond with ones heart leading to a greater understanding of the self
- Develop deeper trust in your own abilities
- Less internal chaos promotes order
Meditate Upon the Heart
Often people talk about quieting your thoughts during meditation/prayer or focusing on your breath as a way to quiet your mind. The simple fact so many talk about quieting your mind should raise the question of what are you listening for if not thoughts? Is it the tranquil and serene feeling that comes from silence? That is not nothingness, that is your heart listening and connecting to divine love. That communication is not with words, often words cannot give this experience full justice.
Meditating upon the heart means to focus on love. We were created out of love, we were designed to love and we will be unfulfilled and searching for more when we deny ourselves a connection to divine love. In the simplest explanation, God is love and love is from God. God/Love encompasses all and can be a force of healing.
Steps for Meditating on Love
- Find a comfortable position and location. Indoors or outdoors, whatever feels most inviting.
- Take 3-5 deep, slow breaths with your eyes closed. Feel yourself expand as you inhale then gently push the air out.
- Visualize someone or something you love. Not a casual love, a deep love such as the connection between child and parent or love for a spouse. It is easier to begin this using a very close family member. Read More
30 Famous Greatest Romances
Photo: Getty Images
True love in the spotlight is a rare, precious thing. Even more beautiful: when celebrity couples talk about finding it. Below, 30 famous women share the stories behind their greatest romances — on meeting their partners, working to stay together, and for some, loving each other even after they decided to be apart.
Scroll to hear from Beyoncé, Yoko Ono, Ellen DeGeneres, Meryl Streep, and more below.
10 Ways to Love the People in Your Life
“At the end of life, our questions are very simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?” ~Jack Kornfield
We all grow up with some healthy stories about love and some unhealthy ones.
By Tara Sophia Mohr — Tiny Buddha
I learned some beautiful, life-giving ideas about love, ideas like these:
Loving people means believing in their potential.
Love means treating people with kindness and gentleness.
Loving the people in your life means celebrating their successes and cheering them on.
But I also grew up with some stories about love that I came to see weren’t so helpful. Those ideas about love bred problems in my relationships.
One of those stories was: Loving someone means always being available to them. (Turns out, it’s not true, and living as if it is breeds resentment.)
Another was: Loving someone means always having space for what they want to talk to you about. (Turns out, not true either!)
Another myth about love: If you love someone, you do what they are asking you to do, out of love, even if it feels difficult. (I can tell you, that doesn’t work so well.)
I’ve developed my own guidelines for loving the people in my life, guidelines that express how I want to relate to the people around me.
These are some of my guidelines for loving:
1. Tell them about their brilliance.
They likely can’t see it and they don’t know its immensity, but you can see it, and you can illuminate it for them.
2. Be authentic, and give others the gift of the real you and a real relationship.
Ask your real questions. Share your real beliefs. Go for your real dreams. Tell your truth.
3. Don’t confuse “authenticity” with sharing every complaint, resentment, or petty reaction in the name of “being yourself.”
Meditate, write, or do yoga to work through anxiety, resentment, and stress on your own so you don’t hand off those negative moods to everyone around you. Sure, share sadness, honest dilemmas, and fears, but be mindful; don’t pollute.
4. Listen, listen, listen.
Don’t listen to determine if you agree or disagree. Listen to get to know what is true for the person in front of you. Get to know an inner landscape that is different from your own, and enjoy the journey. Remember that if, in any conversation, nothing piqued your curiosity and nothing surprised you, you weren’t really listening.
5. Don’t waste your time or energy thinking about how they need to be different.
Really. Chuck that whole thing. Their habits are their habits. Their personalities are their personalities. Let them be, and work on what you want to change about you—not what you think would be good to change about them.
6. Remember that you don’t have to understand their choices to respect or accept them. Read more
The Science Behind Why Love Is A Powerful Drug
There’s a certain type of love we all crave and chase. We want it to be all-consuming. We want to think about our partners all day and night.
We want to be love sick to the point of nausea. We’ve seen that type of love on television, and we’ve been moved by songs written about it.
Blair Thill on LOVE HURTS | Elite Daily on Facebook
Once we experience love our desire for it only increases. We remember the euphoria of being intimately tied to another human being, and we want to recapture that feeling. It’s difficult to articulate what, exactly, that feels like. Well, it’s almost as if love is a drug, and you want another hit. That sounds crazy but, believe it or not, there’s science to back it up. Falling in love stimulates the same part of the brain as an actual drug. In the moments immediately following the use of an illicit drug like cocaine, the brain’s levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine skyrocket, causing feelings of euphoria. The ‘high’ of the high. Yet it seems that the initial stages of love offer a similar (albeit legal) kind of high. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist whose work focuses on relationships, has studied this phenomenon. Her research has found that, when you fall in love, serotonin lifts your confidence levels, norepinephrine boosts your energy and dopamine enhances feelings of pleasure. In simpler terms: You feel like you’re on top of the world when you’re falling in love. Read More