Doves by MaryLaura Barkley-Mau.

VALENTINE'S DAY is one of those traditions that is, both anachronistic and compelling. Who wouldn't want to receive a token of love? On the other hand, who is so secure within themselves that they can accept one without flashing on all the aspects of the relationship that aren't working or measuring it against some prior offering? I think this was probably a difficult day for Cupid and his quiver -- in the current energy, I know very few couples that aren't scrapping, redefining or renegotiating their relationship.
 
Me, I'm an independent critter, and glad that I don't have a significant other to tend to at the moment. My first beau gave me a friendship ring when I was eleven -- it took me three days to realize I wasn't happy in the role and gave it back (as gently as I could). It was evidently more crushing for him than I understood, and his life ended early and tragically. He left a note enumerating his disappointments and I was among them (hardly the most egregious, I'm sure, but early and discouraging, I presume.) You never know the harm you do, which is why I try to be scrupulous in doing none that is overt -- your name will show up on the Big Check List in the Sky anyhow. His name was Teddy, by the way, and he was a really sweet kid.
 
For youngsters, Valentine's Day is fraught with peril. It's a popularity contest with psychic fangs. Teachers who insist everybody gets a card if anyone does are the psychologists of the world. Not getting a little envelope with your name on it is like not being picked for the baseball team or the dance squad; rejection's early lessons. For a little one, that's a "you're a loser" message. And if they take their glumness home to the family, they're likely to get a mixed message from their parents. Dad will likely blow it off -- that's the "toughen up" message. Mom will try to pour a little soothing oil, perhaps using the tired old "they're just jealous" rationale (which is rarely rational, but sounds good.)
 
The truth is harsher -- people are constantly pairing up and judging one another by physiological and psychological standards that are relatively uninspiring. How do we look, how do we smell, how 'cool' are we, what do we have? I read a study not long ago about lipstick that I found very revealing. The more prominently displayed a woman's lips are, the more 'action' she will get. Big lips are important as a desirability quotient. Think about our screen goddesses: Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson. Turns out full red lips are the psychological seduction that indicates a willing vagina. Like bees to honey, and all that. Makes me wonder if mothers of tweens should be less concerned about Britney Spears spandex outfits and more aware of the Cruella DeVille red gloss they tucked into the Christmas stocking.
 
Just as Mars and Venus don't have much to say to each other, along comes Valentine's Day. Venus is wandering the last degrees of Capricorn, a bit somber, a tad worried about the future and a lot more grounded than the airy and ever-shifting Gemini Mars. Not much connection there, with Venus most likely impatient with what it may consider frivolousness. If the male animal is a bit flighty at the moment, it's understandable. It is evident that men, on the whole, are stressed in ways that women are not. The old patriarchy has valued them as providers, protectors, and the average male is not able to depend on the structures of the past to help them accomplish that. It's harder by the day for them to play that role with any confidence. Women are more accustomed to responding to their circumstance than establishing it, so they have an ability to flex that they've developed over the millennia to compensate for their vulnerability. In the last few decades, they've begun to break that dependent model so they no longer 'need' a male to define them -- which is yet another blow to the male ego, and a source of confusion for women, as they sort out their feelings. While women may not feel they need that he-man any longer, those default attitudes have been bred into them. Conveying that subtle message is a hard habit to break and an underlying signal to males that clouds the issue. Self-definition is in the cross hairs.
 

From Post Secret.

We're all in flux: who we think we are, what we think we want. We're throwing out the notion of 'roles', but they're still at work on levels we don't even recognize -- think lipstick. As daily existence becomes more challenging, we revert back to models that no longer please us; that's an interim, instructive step in consciousness that usually ends in pain. Being dependent on another is a bond of trust that exists in any relationship, but giving over our 'good' to someone else is a recipe for disaster. Splitting the difference, coming to some creative partnership without coloring it with old models and expectations requires more maturity than many of us have yet assumed. The news that the structure of relationship and marriage is shifting because ALL structures are melting away, is not entirely welcome. We're ready for new definitions, but we're making them up as we go along. This whole "new" thing has us scrambling for context and running for cover.

The analogy that we used in the 60's for the undoing of roles and the actualization of consciousness was 'peeling an onion'. The many layers of role playing, expectation, psychological patterns and worn out rules we made for ourselves have to be stripped before we get to the heart of our personhood. Either because we embraced the concept or because the universe has provided the stimulus...hence, with our permission or without it...we've been peeling that onion for a couple of decades now. We've stripped away the broader, easier layers and now we're working at the inflexible, tighter strata. If this is a mirror, it's revealing -- if it's a wall, we've hit it.
 
Actually, I think that's pretty good news, even if it's painful and makes for a messy situation. Unless we're able to define ourselves, understand what drives us, recognize our fears and begin to take them over, what kind of partner can we be? The spiritual community suggests that relationships are, either, karmic or dharmic -- learning situations that heighten our awareness, or easy, supportive connections. The fault lies not in our stars but in us; what we bring to the table in any relationship will be the focus of what we will experience. When relationships go badly, the only savvy question to ask yourself is, "What am I learning?" A Course in Miracles tells us that the question beyond that, the one that reveals our essential self, is "What do I want?" Those answers, as we find them, will make that layer of onion easier to strip away.
 
Let me add a broader stroke to the understanding of relationship, a larger interpretation -- we are in relationship with people, with things, with systems. We have a relationship, for instance, with money, a way in which we 'handle it' and value it. We are in relationship with government, with our jobs, with our churches and social clubs, our belongings and responsibilities. We are in relationship with everything...and that's why our relationship skills are critical.

Life is simpler than we make it. Try this -- take a fresh sheet of paper and draw a little picture of yourself in the middle; now draw a big circle around it. Sit with that energy for awhile. That's you, there in the middle, all alone with yourself. If you aren't comfortable with that picture, you have more layers to peel. If you still think you need someone else to reflect back your beauty, your goodness, your wholeness then some portion of your essential self is still being covered over by roles and expectations. The little figure in the middle of the page is life, itself -- you, magnificent in your personhood, connected with everything in the cosmos and never, ever 'alone' as you imagine yourself. And yet, because these little water bags we call bodies are born into 3D as unique expressions of spirit, we feel that we need reflections of ourselves in order to experience our essence. Because we haven't been taught by our society how worthy we are, how extraordinary in every way, if those reflections are not what we thought we wanted, then we feel unloved, unappreciated, depressed. We're looking outside of the circle -- we're looking in the wrong place.
 
Keep that piece of paper handy. Stay with it until you can let go of some of the expectations about what that little figure needs in order to feel worthy and loved. Work to let go of what you've blocked and judged.  These are impediments we've sabotaged ourselves with again and again. We're peeling away those layers, working to get to our core. When you begin to understand that you are the universe you live in, when you examine all those feelings and make a declaration to change them to something more functional, you can begin to add some things into that circle you would like to experience. Write them out as affirmations. Fill up your circle, if you like -- or make it simpler baby steps by adding key words like trust, clarity, self-esteem. Post your picture somewhere so you'll see it several times a day. What we focus on is what we draw to us.
 

Dorothy by MaryLaura Barkley-Mau.

Here's another question to ask yourself. If you got a slew of Valentines this year, what does that mean about you? If you didn't get any, what does that mean about you? How much do you care and why? How does that impact the little figure in the middle of the page and why? What is it you think you need from someone else and why? Peel those layers, loosen them up. There's a diamond at the heart of the onion and it's you, shining brightly. Simply, if you don't love yourself, why would anyone else want to? If you don't perceive yourself as lovable, why are you surprised when that's reflected back at you?
 
That's the wall we're hitting. Self-worth. Self-love. Self. The Aquarian energy we're currently experiencing portends the beginning of this Aquarian age, and we must mend our sense of self because we are headed into an inclusive time of 'we' consciousness. We have humanitarian issues to deal with; we have playing fields to level that bring us all into co-ownership of our societies and newly minted structures. We are surrounded by people who need to be lifted up and we can't do that if we can't find our own integrity, worthiness, joyousness. Our hearts are opening and we are discovering the emotional barriers we've erected against our ability to love unconditionally, ourselves as well as others. These walls may be dramatic and obvious -- they may be subtle and obscure. But unless we can FEEL them, not just notice that they're there; they will continue to define what comes into our circle of experience. Unless we come to terms with what we push away, we will continue to occult our essential self and limit what we can experience of our authenticity. I encourage you to keep peeling, even if you have to hold your nose and wipe the tears -- don't give up. There's a diamond awaiting you.
 
We have so much work to do, don't we? A world to heal. An international social fabric to mend. On Valentine's Day, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Saudi Arabia outlawed anything red. They raided stores to confiscate roses, wrapping paper and teddy bears because such secular behavior "encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women." How many centuries of programming and repression must be stripped away from our Saudi sisters before they can throw off their burkas, throw on some red lipstick and celebrate their vaginas? Those of us in the Western world have so much for which to be grateful, so many options and opportunities to grow and bloom. We make wonderfully instructive messes for ourselves. In the coming decades, that must be available for all of us because we are entering a time of the energetic whole. Seasoned hippy that I am, one of my pivotal consciousness changing 'way back' songs was Seals and Crofts "9 Houses" -- it ends with this very Aquarian tag: "But til we all fly together, what sense does it make?"
 
Cupid may have had a little trouble with his arrows, but everything is grist for the mill as far as I can tell. If we learned something this year, all the better. If we're sniffling because we were overlooked, then keep looking at that mirror -- or if we're counting the loot, there's a message there as well. On a personal note, if you didn't receive a valentine this year, or even if you did -- be mine? I think you're swell, just as you are. You're written in my circle. And you don't have to wear red lipstick, either; me, I'm a clear gloss kind of gal, and I have no 'buzzy bee' agenda. Ya know, I don't think love cares. I think love is a whole lot bigger than valentines and roses, than sex and selection, than agreement and attraction -- and I'm absolutely sure it's all that matters.