As the big day draws closer, singletons and couples alike often dread the pressure of a day supposed to be filled with love and romance. People not already in a relationship put themselves under stress to find a date for Valentine’s Day and those coupled up rack their brains for ways to stoke up the romance and make for a memorable February 14th.
However through all of the commercial value of Valentine’s day there could be a higher need to reflect on the stages of love that each and every person is currently experiencing.
It has been argued by many researchers and authors of mind-body medicine that the stages of Love reflect the stages of spirituality that one must pass through in order to reach a level of spiritual enlightenment.
Starting with attraction for example, Deepak Chopra one of the leading authors in this field, argues that in order to be attractive, someone first has to be authentic and natural. Chopra’s seven stages of love also includes self-surrender and non-attachment; in loosing oneself in another, a person may be better equipped to truly understand existence outside the realms of me, I and the ego .
Though this may seem a touch heavy for a fun and relatively trivial day of the year, by highlighting the importance of being consciously aware of the present state of mind and body in relation to love, one could be well on the way to having that same understanding of the nature of existence.