To what does our modern culture fixated on materialism and instant gratification lead us?

To anxiety. Greed. Discontent... With no lasting fulfillment, the outer satisfaction of pleasures and acquisitions has a limited place in our lives. The empty metrics of want and desire, profits and losses create a vacuum. We are constantly kept on a treadmill in the never-ending race to be on top of corporate, professional or social ladders. There is also the strain of social networking and voluminous input of trash from media, which turns our happiness and peace into ashes with its untamed fire. It arrests full engagement with our inner life and leaves us spiritually deformed.

Good thoughts. Good words. Good deeds. Practiced on a daily basis, this is a tremendously effective way to live life. Working from such a bandwidth of goodness irradiated with love and light, let us be the power that will heal us and the world. Our universe constantly strums the sublime music of interconnectedness. We must move in step with its divine unity. Others will gradually join us in this salsa of ecstasy beating drums of compassion, playing the flute of joy. Our inner happiness, the source of inborn bliss, does not ebb and flow with surface experiences but it needs to be nurtured with care and wisdom.

Life is a blessing! Its goal — awakening, through awareness! Can we focus on that? Sure. We have mundane chores to complete day in and day out; as we execute them, we can set our sights on the higher principles in life; search for a deeper meaning and try to permeate even our most ordinary tasks with a bit of divine vitality. Progressively, every activity will become a spiritual steppingstone.

Each day will be Valentine’s day for us to spread love and sunshine through innate kindness. I don’t know if this can take us to heaven but I know we will create a little bit of paradise wherever we go on this earth.

May each of us be spring, love, sunshine, light that makes this world an Eden for all creatures!