This article is in response to one of my sweet students who wrote to me asking, “Is it OK to use mantras to get a romantic partner? You may say it’s rājasic (wrong use of mantra), but I am longing to meet someone special as soul mate and get married. Please advise me!”
The yearning to experience union is one of our most driving urges, and it’s natural to consider using the power of mantra to hasten the satisfaction of our romantic wishes.
I generally advise against using mantras to get what you want, and here’s why: what you want, and what you need, might be two different things. Using mantras to get what you want materially may satisfy you temporarily but lead to suffering in the long term. Instead, focus on being the person you want to be, and surrender to the highest plan for your life. Then, you’ll set yourself up for sustained contentment.
However, there ARE some lovely and intelligent ways to use mantra to remove obstacles to you experiencing the fullness of your glorious inner nature. We all have unique mental knots that obscure our happiness; using mantra to loosen them works on multiple levels! (Read more about these levels in the free e-book!)
In a romantic context, you can use mantras to remove obstacles in various ways:
- To remedy self-esteem problems. If your self-esteem is low, your identity is probably based primarily in either your body, or in your personality/ego/mind, which are inherently unstable. You can use mantra repetition to firmly establish your true Self-esteem (note capital “S”! ). If your identity is merged with the indestructible glorious Self, there’s no chance for fear or doubt or self-loathing to creep into your psychology.
- To expand your capacity for love. Devotion to the innermost Self, via pure energy/sound itself or your favorite name/form (Kṛṣṇa, Jesus, Allah, etc.), will increase your capacity for self-love and love for others. If you think about it deeply, love is an entirely internal experience. You either feel it, or you don’t, regardless of whether the apparent object of your love is physically present, and regardless of whether he/she/it is behaving the way you want or not. If you have cultivated an abundantly loving relationship with your innermost Self, you can decide when you are “in love” and give that love rather than grasp for it outside of yourself.
- To give you the mental power to suspend judgment and choose empathy (instead of your knee-jerk stories and reactions). On a practical level, a happy sustained partnership with another human being depends heavily on this skill!
- To increase your radiance and attractiveness. It’s easily observable that regularly chanting mantra and singing devotional songs makes you glow from the inside.
- To sustain the state of union with the beloved. Chanting mantras for union (Radha/Kṛṣṇa, Śiva/Śakti, for example) gives you a chance to saturate in the dynamic pulse of union, which, if you believe in “the Secret” or the Law of Attraction, sets up a powerful forcefield to attract the experience on the physical plane, if that serves your highest destiny.
- To transcend needing, and enter celebration. If you chant a mantra from a whiny, lacking state of mind, it won’t feel very good and will increase your desperation. If you chant mantra to celebrate what is, surrender to love for love’s sake alone, and praise it wholeheartedly, an abundance of goodness will flow your way.
Please note that I did not include specific “mantras for this and that” in this article, because the selection of mantras is a highly personal thing. Read “Is it OK to get mantras from the Internet?”
Once you and your teacher have determined the best mantra for you at this point in your life, I wish you happy chanting! Please contact me if you’d like personal assistance.
Post Script: I heard back from this student several months after she wrote this question, and this was part of her reply. Beautiful!
I still love to chant mantra and do all the time in my mind. Particularly, “cidanandarupah, śivoham śivoham” and then I feel happy for no reason! Also when I pray for happiness to everyone and everything in the world, I feel unconditional love is radiating from my heart. So I am happy 🙂
