Journey to love class

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.

The Power of Forgiveness

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..!! 🙂

Oh Love!

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”

We talked about love between parents, friends, siblings and lovers. We also talked about how the relationships are and how they are supposed to be. The important ideas that I can recollect are Unconditional Love, Forgiveness and Parenting. I can strongly connect to these 3 things that we  talked about in the Love class.
Forgiveness is the thing I have been working on since a few years but I believe I need to take it to a deeper level.
It was a good experience attending the Love class. Listening to experiences of different people is a thing that I enjoy and is also very helpful to me.I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my experiences too!

Love Class 2016-17 “It’s Dear Zindagi”

Hi Friends, 

This year being a facilitator for Love class was an enriching experience and I felt it was more of learning and sharing. This opportunity once again gave me a platform to share my experiences with my colleagues.
To begin with. the first statement of the book ( The road less traveled- Scott Peck) sums up the essence of the Love class. The statement is “Life is Difficult.” Personally, I always had this question “Why me?”
Truly speaking, accepting and understanding the essence of this statement that life is difficult is one of the greatest truth that helped me to accept the challenges I faced and become disciplined. There is no growth without suffering. Here I would like to mention this statement which has impacted me the most  -: “When we grow, it is because we are working at it, and we are working at it because we love ourselves. It is through love that we elevate ourselves – Scott Peck.
Secondly, you have to actively work on solving your own problems else they will always remain barrier in your growth. Being disciplined is a key to solving all our problems. Self-love helps in building lasting relationships. Personally, the most important lesson I learned is “The feeling of being valuable” which forms the bedrock of self-discipline. This sense of feeling valuable is an essential component for mental health. Pure love is an extension of self rather than sacrifice for the self, helped me grow as a parent. 
To sum up, the lessons learned so far, love is about working to nurture and understand another being. It is just because of the problems, we grow mentally and spiritually.
Hasina Saifee

Love class – A challenge!

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.

 

Reflection on Love class

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.

Love Life classes

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.

Love class- Sharing helps…..

I wonder sometimes, am I doing it right? It may be parenting or relationships or work. There comes a time because of some minor ups and down where we question our paradigms and actions. Love/Life class has always that impact on us (whether we agree or not), may be even temporary one but where we go back and introspect on our life and relationships and how we can change them.

As a love class facilitator, I got an opportunity to revisit the things which we learnt earlier (for me it was 3 years back) the ones we forget or ignore in our busy schedule. Every time when you read something or discuss with other facilitators while preparing for the class, you learn and understand something new.

When participants share their experience, you learn, connect it with your life experience and then reflect upon it. You again go back from a silent mode to an active mode. I recall giving my daughters a tight hug and saying I love you after the recent love workshop without any reason. That felt good and maybe that memory will always stay with me.

We do hear participants saying that these workshops are a waste of time. But from my personal experience, whether it is parenting or relationships it has definitely brought a positive change in my life. Earlier when I had a fight with my husband, usually it was followed by a cold war- (no talking for days) which was very frustrating. One thing I learnt after the workshop and now try and implement is, communication (of course I am still working on it). Talk and solve the issue instead of dragging it for days without any reason, which would eventually sour your relation.  

Of course, there are things which I still need to work upon, especially as a parent when we take that illegitimate suffering and anxiety.

I have attended all 3 classes (love, life and integrity)  and have seen life changing after the workshops. Sharing which normally does not happen in our so called happy life (koi problem hi nai hai) is done during the workshops and has made a difference in the lives of the participants too. It makes you feel good and you don’t feel guilty about it, as once we start sharing, we come to know that everyone is same and has same set of problems.

Thanks to Hasina ma’am and all my participants for sharing their experiences with us and hope that they witness the positive change in life using these amazing tools.

Falguni

Forgiveness….A small word with a deep meaning

I never knew what actually ‘Forgiveness’ meant till I attended the last session of Love class. I always thought of forgiveness as an obligation for the opposite person who commits the sin. For me, it was always an action or process of forgiving someone or being forgiven. After reading few articles and watching videos, I realized that forgiveness helps us more than the person whom we are forgiving. It helps us to overcome the pain and start afresh. This was a WOW learning for me (though I took time to understand and accept this fact). It is rightly said by Mark Twain, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the rose sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

Thank you Nayna ma’am and Anita ma’am for sharing this with us!!

 

Way to learn is to teach: Love classes 2016-17

In our school we have this practice of taking reflection from students after a major task, we all know the purpose of it, to know their understanding!!!

But when we ask the adults (us) to reflect on their learning or any take-aways (from life classes), there is always a pause. And then, after a push, some of us start hunting down all those thoughts, related to the topic, which runs everywhere except in our mind and brain.

Well, for a change, I am not feeling that way!!! Yup, you read it right. And, no, I have not lost it. I really want to pen down my thoughts. And not about anything else but my experience as a facilitator of love classes. You must be wondering…… what was Mariyam ma’am thinking and what was I thinking???

But honestly, I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for giving this opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life (hope so) for better.This year was really a great year for me. Everything was new, I took a leap in my profession (as you all know) and along with that I was GIVEN the task to facilitate the love classes. In this dive, I was not alone, I had Nayna ma’am with me. We both had a good rapport and we complimented each other so well that most of the sessions were a great learning experience for me.

During each classes, while explaining the topics like: life, pain, love, problems, suffering, marriage, parenting; I revisited all my life’s instances and I reflected whether I had followed any of these principles as I was preaching. And the truth was NO. Not all.  And that was a reality check. Because when you are learning something new, it’s very exciting and we make lot of commitments to ourselves to follow, but as time passes in our busy schedules we forget all these learnings, at least few, if not all.

And that’s where my courageous self comes into picture. I grabbed this opportunity to LIVE my commitments. I not only shared my experiences but also accepted my mistakes and along with the participants wrote the forgiveness letter which was pending for a long time. I finally got around to writing a forgiveness letter to my family members for an incident that had been hurting me for 11 years! Believe me, it was hell of a difficult task. But because I wanted to be the person who is “ Do as I do” and not as “Do as I say” I did it. And it was worth it.

Many times we feel that these classes are just waste of time and energy. But frankly speaking, it’s not. I think we feel this way because we lack courage. And its ok. But “ek try toh bunta hae, boss!!!” Because no gain without any pain!!!

Anita.

 

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