Something No One Told Me About Meditating: Falling In Love
How I accidentally stumbled into bhakti through consistent meditation
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NOTE: I originally wrote this May 19th, 2025 for the HealthyGamer Memberships platform for the group of folks on there interested in spirituality and what was fondly referred to by the community as “The Weird Stuff”. Over the next few days be working through my backlog of posts I’ve either made on there or saved in draft and never actually got around to publishing. Anyway, on to the content!
This definitely falls under the “weird stuff” category, so buckle up. I want to share a realization that I had which helped validate some complicated feelings that have been making me question my sanity for the past year and a half as I’ve been meditating daily. I’m not sure how common of an experience this is, but I wanted to bring it up regardless in case it does help someone else.
So last night I had one of those, “OH, that explains a lot” kind of moments. I was going through my YouTube watch later list and ended up stumbling on a meditation channel. I watched a couple videos from it and the teacher was saying in one of them that one of the secrets of tantric meditation is that as the spiritual journey deeper within continues, a romance unfolds. To quote:
We start to realize that that Supreme Consciousness is not just a source of bliss, but also a source of love. The closer we get to it, the more love it is showering over us. It is a never-ending wave of unconditional love. And as that spiritual journey deeper within continues, that bliss or that love becomes more and more intense, and you know how it is when someone loves us unconditionally. We simply start to love them back. That’s natural and that’s when the romantic parts start, that cosmic romance. This is the most exciting part of the spiritual journey without doubt, and this inspires us to do more meditation and go even deeper within and eventually the world around us start to disappear.
It struck me because I first encountered these feelings a year and a half ago. I journaled about them as they were unfolding because it felt so strange. I didn’t understand what was going on and thought I was slowly going crazy. People usually fall in love with other people, things, experiences, etc. It’s a really strange thing to fall in love with something you can’t even define. I felt like I was falling in love similar to how I felt early on in my relationship with my partner of over 9 years. We grew closer over time with repeated exposure in college, and I think this was similar in that regard with meditation.
When I first started meditating 3 years ago, it didn’t feel like anything was really happening for a while. Gradually these feelings of being in love started forming, and the “recipient” wasn’t even a person, a corporeal entity, or even really an idea – which was really weird. I felt like I was going quietly insane inside. There would be nights that I would feel this inexplicable longing for some unknown beloved that would keep me awake and sometimes even crying. It felt like something inside was howling like a wolf at the moon. This lasted for several months on and off, but the painful aspect of it has largely subsided as I’ve continued with my meditation practice. I can’t say if it was time, yoga, diet, or a combination that helped.
As crazy as this is, I thought I’d share in case someone else is going through a similar strange experience. I don’t really feel like it’s talked about a lot, likely because of how unusual it is. I was originally going to make a post about this a few days ago but got sidetracked, but that video I mentioned felt like it resonated with some of the notes I already had written down. A couple excerpts:
I’m realizing [sadhanas] are impotent without the love. Think of love as the fuel or the energy that powers the machine. Without it, the practice falls flat. Anything done without love to move towards the Divine is ultimately futile and a striving of the ego.
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The mind did not choose this path, the heart did. The mind wanted definitive action, a set of defined practices, and measurable progress. But that’s not what true spirituality is. Behavior arises from being, to continuously wrangle with the behavior without addressing the root is folly.
To summarize, I think the mind can help get you started with meditation (diligence, understanding technical and philosophical aspects), but with repeated exposure and consistent practice, a love slowly begins to form that will help carry you forward, or rather pull you inwards. Just be aware that it might be a bit of a roller-coaster though – it was for me, anyway.