Exploring the yoga of sacred relationships: Shiva and Shakti, and what they teach us about the relationship within ourselves and with those we love.
I love you. I have love for you. It took me many years to understand the difference.
I used to associate love with ownership: I love you, now you owe me this. Not only in relationships with others, but with myself as well. A sense of ownership in a relationship creates expectations. Have you ever imagined what you wanted your partner to say or do in a situation, and then found yourself disappointed? Some of us meet this daily in our relationship with ourselves. Have you ever shown a hairstylist a picture of someone else’s hair and said, “I want this exact style”? Most of the time we wind up dissatisfied, not because the stylist didn’t do a great job (though we may blame them at first), but because we are trying to change our exterior on a never-ending search for love.
It can seem like an endless battle, and for me it was, for a long time, until I found my yoga practice. Yoga has taught me that love is not something that can be created. It is all around us, at all times.
Shiva destroys, Shakti flows
Love is in everything. My first step toward surrounding myself with love was to break the chains of idealistic views that once seemed permanent. The shedding process began. The exhausting routine of shaping our identities to be loved by others and approved by ourselves can then come to an end.
Like Shiva, we are responsible for change in the form of destruction. We begin to destroy old habits, rid ourselves of attachments and tame the ego. Shakti, the vibrant life-force energy that runs through us all, is limited by the molds of the mind. As Shiva destroys these molds, Shakti flows freely through us to heal, bringing creativity and love into our lives.
Love as a choice
How does yoga teach us all of this? I could go on forever, but the meaning of the word yoga says it all: union. We unite breath, body and mind, with delicacy and openness, to accept all that we are.
This leads me to my favorite definition of love, from M. Scott Peck: love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is an act of will, both an intention and an action, and will implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
This is the essence of sacred relationships: to be a mirror, a witness, as those we are in relationship with change. In honoring their growth, catching their tears and supporting their practice of letting go, we allow them to spread their wings and take flight.
When you come upon a flower, you do not pick it, grasp it tightly and hope it stays the same forever. You nurture the flower, water it with love and watch it blossom. Once we embrace the love around us and choose to live in love, everyone we know begins to blossom before our eyes.
Choose love.
