Category: Love Class

These are some of my favourite things: the colour pink, strawberries, and love. But what exactly is LOVE ?

Most of us are pretty sure we know love when we feel it. Yet the emotion, the state of mind, is more complex and varied than any one of us, even a specialist, can describe fully. What you experience depends on which part of the elephant you touch.

Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words. One result of the mysterious nature of love is that no one has ever, to my knowledge, arrived at a truly satisfactory definition of love. I define love thus “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” And this is what the “Love Class” has taught us!!

Loving someone can be hard. You have to learn to accept everything that they have to offer, the good and the bad. But, most importantly you have to learn how to love them back in the right way, even when you do not understand why they have not accepted the love you have given so far. If you are giving love in the solely the ways you enjoy receiving it, your relationships could be hindered. Once you learn the two ways in which you and your partner most like to receive love you can begin to foster an even stronger and more in sync relationship.

It’s a tragic reality that far too many people walk away from solid, healthy relationships with partners that they truly love because their experience doesn’t match the cultural expectation. Don’t you think it’s time to change the expectation, to bring it down from the realm of stars and fantasy and present young, formative minds with an accurate and realistic depiction of love, romance, and marriage? It’s time we change “you complete me” to “you inspire me to become the best version of myself” or “with you, I will grow and evolve in my capacity to love.” It’s time to dismantle the fantasy so that people on the threshold of marriage can create the healthiest possible foundation on which to begin their lives together.

I never imagined I would be having a PD on Parenting during LOVE class !! The best part of it was, I got an opportunity to validate my parenting (some part of it) through various discussions and others’ points of view on the same. I also learned many new things.

Kids always imitate you. They often want to grow up fast and be like you. After this session, I can now connect how much I think alike or behave alike my parents. This has really helped me to cope up with several issues pertaining to my marriage and family. I am at least able to console or pacify myself when I get furious on someone. A thought pops in my mind – LET IT GO. Maybe, s/he has a bad day or its his/her upbringing. Through this, I learned to give space and show acceptance and empathy towards everyone.

I am happy that I got a chance to attend this session to improve in this journey called LIFE!!

“Life is easy when you accept that Life is difficult“. This is by far the best take away from this year’s Love classes. This statement stays with me during the tough times. This has helped me stay calm all through. Not just me, it has also helped my closed ones by giving them the understanding of the essence of this statement.

Forgiveness is not an emotion but a decision that we make for our own peace which helps us grow spiritually. Myths of parenting were an eye-opener for me. Vision of parenting showed me a lot of ways how I can be a better son and also work on learning to be a good parent. One thing that I would take away from my childhood is respecting child’s individuality and involving them in decision-making in early stages which will help them grow.

I would genuinely like to appreciate my facilitators, Nayna Ma’am and Anita Ma’am, who strived hard to make us understand the concepts when they went overhead, when we didn’t agree to the definition of Love and contradicted them.

No matter it is parenting or marriage, it has brought about a lot of change in my life. During a conflict with my husband I discuss and try to solve the matter instead of arguing and not talking to each other for days.

As a parent I tried to understand my daughter’s perspective and have change my way of parenting from DO AS I SAY to DO AS I DO. I also have started giving her space and time and give her the opportunity to  explain. I tried to convince her with the logical reasons for doing the right things and that helped in improving her attitude towards life and our relationship.

Why do we find it so hard to ‘Forgive’?

One reason we resist forgiving is that we don’t really understand what forgiveness is or how it works. We think we do, but we don’t.

Most of us assume that if we forgive our offenders, they are let off the hook and get to go about their merry ways while we unfairly suffer from their actions. We also may think that we have to be friendly with them again, or go back to the old relationship.

The first step to understanding forgiveness is learning what it is and isn’t. The next step is giving yourself permission to forgive and forget, letting go of the bitterness while remembering very clearly your rights to healthy boundaries. And this is what the “Love Class” has taught us!!

I really liked this quote “Forgiveness is the scent the rose leaves on the heel that crushed it.”

Moreover, true forgiveness is a choice. Hurting is not a choice but hating is. We don’t get to choose how people treat us, but we do get to choose how we respond. The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest and the first to forgive is the happiest.

However, forgiveness is a continual process. Its not a one time choice; its an ongoing decision. Some people feel guilty when feelings of anger or bitterness toward someone begin to arise after they have already forgiven them. These feelings don’t mean you didn’t forgive them; it means you are simply being tempted with that same temptation again. Don’t feel guilty just resist the temptation by renewing your forgiveness.

Let’s choose forgiveness today. Let’s commit to keeping no record of wrongs.

You will be amazed at the joy and peace that will flood your heart..!! 🙂

A lot of us have the impression that Love is for Lovers. But it is important to realize that the word “Love” is much deeper than we think. In the recent few years I came to know, that love is Friendship.  Osho says, “Friendship is the purest form of love. It is the highest form of love where nothing is asked for, no condition where once simply loves giving”

Hi Friends, 

This class has delved deep into, with profound insights, on what really causes unhappiness in our life. It asserts that it is precisely in avoiding our problems and hurdles that we suffer in our life; it is the pain and suffering caused by difficulties in life that we have to meet in order to grow mentally and spiritually. We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them. We so often view love as a noun instead of a verb… as something that just happens to us or doesn’t happen to us, instead of an ongoing task we must work at…that work, that action-is love.

Though there were some concepts which I did not agree with, and some discussions during the classes were disturbing for me and contrary to my beliefs, I would still like to thank and appreciate our mentors Nayna ma’am and Anita ma’am for this journey of love that we all were a part of.

The love class defines love by its aim: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth,” which also results in one’s own spiritual growth. Love is intimately associated with self-discipline rather than with passion or feeling, uniting love of another and of self. The class connects love with development from infancy to maturity, rejecting the myth of romantic love, asserting instead the necessity of individuality and clearly rejecting as forms of love both dependency (which does not foster growth of the other) and self-sacrifice (which can be masochistic tolerance of abuse). Love is attentive, courageous, and willing to risk loss, independence, commitment, and confrontation..

My best learning has been Parenting. I realised the mistakes I do while handling kids. Love class taught me how to treat a child. It helped me as a teacher and i am sure it’ll help me in my personal life as well.

Our last session was on forgiveness and parenting. I have learnt so far that forgiving needs a lot of courage and plays an important role in one’s emotional well being. Basically to my point of view, life is an experience between birth and death, if we consider it as a whole. On the other hand, experience is different with every passing moment. We are always working or trying to make these experiences good. Our feelings are always under our control if we wish to. Yet, most of the time we get carried away by the expression of others and that impacts our feeling for good and bad. Our tomorrow is based on our actions of today, yet we procrastinate, which gives us pain, perhaps with a hope that action would not be required in future or we are not certain for the result of our action. In fact we need not be worried for our actions. If we review our action plans on regular basis and learn to transform, our experience also gets expanded towards the journey of life with sweet memories, a robust history to get followed or repeated. We need to act in best manner to every moment of life and refrain from the situations which gives us negativity. For that, we need to engage ourselves to the actions which we like. I believe human behaviour is a joint function of the personal behaviour and the properties of environment. Hence we always need to keep a balance between self and the environment. And for that we need to sometime forgive some situation which affects the balance of emotions and surround.