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What is the one thing that people immediately associate with the month of February? Love!
With February’s focus on love, it felt so appropriate to make this month’s joy book all about it-but with a twist.
Give it a read—and see if it increases your sense of love (and joy!) this month!
Introducing the Book
Philosophers have pondered on love for centuries. An immeasurable amount of songs, shows, movies, center around the topic of love. Authors and playwrights have on wondered about such a thing as love for lifetimes.
But—what really is love?
In Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Mastery of Love, he offers us an invaluable take on this hard to define word.
Ruiz— through short stories and his own reflections gained from his Toltec background—gives us such a refreshing and pure look into what the feeling and word of love actually is, and it honestly is not what so many have defined it to mean or look like for centuries!
Love is not about being saved by another. It’s not about being wholly dependent on another. It’s not having someone who will completely eliminate all pain and suffering from your life.
Rather, love is living so deeply from a place of wholeness and loving from that place within you. And that goes for self-love, love for a partner, love for family, love for friends and a love for humanity as a whole!
“The normal frequency of humans before domestication is to explore and to enjoy life; we are tuned to love. ” -Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love
Questions to Ask Yourself
Consider these questions while you read the book. I’m personally not a person who uses guided reading questions—feels a little too school-y for when you are reading for fun. I kept that in mind when developing these questions with the intention and hope they are useful and fun to think about!
A Final Note on Joy
On the Emotional Guidance Scale which scales our emotions from the highest ones to feel to the lowest ones to feel- love- along with joy, empowerment, freedom, and appreciation are listed as the very highest feelings felt.
Have you ever felt pure love for someone, something, for your life or for life in general? Whenever we have caught those glimpses into pure love, it is indescribale. There truly are no words, just love.
Love and joy go hand in hand, because joy is part of love. And what love looks like to you, is entirely up to you. That’s part of the joy in love, you get to define it for yourself!
Love is truly all around us, we simply have to make the effort to notice it. So, this month, let us try to notice the love of family, the love of pets snuggling with you, the love of your friends, the love of a higher power, and the love of getting to live life… they are truly amazing things to experience, and remind us to be filled this month (and all year long!) with LOVE!
Happy Reading!
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Joyfilled Book Club: February’s Pick