I am sat here at my computer, pondering what I can write about, considering it is the, what I like to call - the red season. This is the time of year, where every Made in China product, starts to turn red. Red flowers, red teddies, red rabbits, red ribbons, red roses, red chocolates, red cheeks, red lace lingerie, and so on and so forth. So I have decided that this article is dedicated to St. Valentine’s, but in a different way. It’s not about how to celebrate a day with sappy couchy, mouchy, love stuff. It’s not about how to influence the mind of consumers by making them feel that Feb. 14th is a day where one is obliged to show their partner how much they are loved. Well, what if on that exact day, one doesn’t feel like love. Are people supposed to force themselves to love on that very day, just because it’s Valentine’s Day? Is it something you can control? Consequently, should people sub-consciously feel guilty if they don’t love their partner today? I find the whole concept so awfully strange. What happened to loving every day, or on any day? Isn’t it merely a way of forcing people to consume and abide to some invisible social law that is dawned upon them? 

Today I write about love from a different perspective. Today I write about how to love yourself, and the importance of loving yourself, because frankly speaking, if you do not know how to love yourself, then you will never be able to truly love anyone else. So Mr. St. Valentine’s here is what I have to say about love. How about we start with finding bliss – inner bliss.

Finding bliss in your life requires you to understand the workings of the mind. We encounter stress and depression when we allow our thoughts to take hold of us. When we become liberated from the mind, we experience bliss. To become liberated, you must stop connecting thoughts. 

The true nature of the mind is to create random and independent thoughts. We don’t know they are random because we have become accustomed to connecting them. Test this out. Sit for 10 minutes watch your thoughts and write each one down as it occurs. One second you’ll be thinking about what you had for breakfast, the next you’ll focus on work, and finally you’ll remember something your friend said to you two days ago. You see how they are un-related? 

Once you begin to build upon a thought, you are connecting separate un-related thoughts into what you believe to be a truth. We connect independent moments of sadness and convince ourselves our life is full of suffering. 

We connect thoughts from the past and the future, but rarely enjoy the present. As soon as you find yourself connecting two thoughts, stop. Allow thoughts to come and go with ease. 

We create an image of ourselves based on things others have said to us. After a few people compliment us on a certain trait, we believe ourselves to be that. For example, we connect all the times anyone has complimented our gardening skills then label ourselves a good gardener. The minute the garden dies, we become sad. The same holds true when we are repeatedly insulted. We take that as our truth. The reality is that those instances are completely unrelated and independent. We continue living and existing without a certain label. 

Our outlook on life works in relation to our perspective. We choose to gather and connect positive moments in our lives and believe we have a great life or we gather and connect the negative independent moments in our lives and believe our life has been miserable. Neither of these is true.

Take for example the person who is recently promoted in his or her job. This person’s outlook on life is marvelous! He’s in a wonderful mood and everything seems brighter. Now imagine this person getting laid off. How do you think he’s looking at the world now? He’s probably miserable and convinces himself that life is full of suffering and nothing good ever comes to him. The world hasn’t changed from one instant to the other. Only his perspective has changed. He begins to connect all the negative instances that have occurred in his life to build his argument that the world is cruel. In reality those instances have no relation to each other. 

Keep your thoughts separate and simply watch them as they come and go. Don’t connect two thoughts. You’ll find resistance at the beginning, as your ego will do its best to convince you otherwise. The greatest Masters and Gurus live blissfully and in the moment. They have discovered and shared this proven method to blissfulness.

Once you manage to control your thoughts, you will then be able to understand yourself. Once you can understand yourself, you are then able to control yourself. And once you can control yourself, you are then able to manage various different situations, without any regret. You can become free of the world controlling you, you start to control your world. That is the start to bliss. As Morgan Freeman says in the movie, “Invictus,” acting as Nelson Mandela, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

Love yourself, and have a blissful Valentine’s. Got something to say, email (editor@sinaiweekly.com).