Category: Love Class

I have read certain fractions from the notes given and understood some points to what love is not. I believe Love is a personal perspective that differs from person to person. The definition of love given by M. Scott Peck, “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”, sounds practical as it focuses on the selfish nature of the love as nurturing spiritual growth of one own’s  as well as selfless nature wherein we are working for spiritual growth of others. However, when I introspect, I feel its important to understand that the author is a psychotherapist, where he has categorized the elements of love into some groups and his case studies only revolves around these basic elements. I believe the concept of love is really unique to oneself and to how one would like to or rather believe to attain spiritual evolution. This is because I personally feel no one can explain or generalize or even set a benchmark of how the  “spiritual growth” is attained. So how is it possible that we generalize what love is and what love is not?

Nevertheless, I respect and applaud the way how Scott Peck has brought together his experience and knowledge to relate and help us understand what his perspective is towards the concept of love.

Hi all.

I would like to share my understanding till now about Love after 4 sessions of Love class.

The very first thing that was cleared well is, Love is not a mere feeling, neither an affection nor an attraction.

As Scott Peck explains, Love involves Risk, Love involves Independence, Love is Selfish, Love asks at times for Self-sacrifice, Love grows with Confrontation, Love is Desire + Action.

To understand Love, one needs to Love with Discipline, one needs to Love with Courage, one needs to Love with Understanding, one needs to Love with Knowledge.

One can truely Love only if one allows the spiritual growth of the entity whom we Love. To attain and be able to truely Love one needs to attain the same Maturity continuum about which Stephen Covey insists upon in his theory of Seven Habits.

Regards,

Percy Elavia

Love- Epsilon (2017)

At the outset, I would like to thank our facilitators Nandini ma’am and Priyanka ma’am for their efforts and patience. They both have been really kind and warm to us which actually helped us to open up and share without hesitation. I also want to thank the school and the management for conducting such trainings where an individual gets a platform to grow professionally as well as personally.

The best part, of these platforms,is that you are encouraged to share and be yourself. You are not judged but respected.

As for the sessions, I attended I got to know various perspectives of love. Like others even I have a thought process. But my experience of love in life is different. Love just comes, it is a feeling. You cannot categorize, plan or decide when to love, whom to love or how to love.

So for now I will go with my way of love as I do not really agree with Scott Peck on his perspective towards love. But I am open to more learning,more sharing and exploring.

Love classes provide a platform where we actually take a pause and redefine love. What is love and what is not love- these questions we tend to miss out, due to our busy schedules and these classes make us think that are we really in love or just bound by duties which we anyway have to do, for the sake of doing it in the name of love, care, and affection.

In our last sessions, discussions were extensively based on the book, ‘The Road Less Travelled’ by American Author- M. Scott Peck. The book was published in 1978 and was one of the best-selling books. After reading the examples and the kind of discussion that took place, I feel, indeed it’s one of the best books to understand love or real love.

The facilitators led healthy and meaningful discussion along with activities on both the days. Both Priyanka mam and Nandini mam were supportive throughout the discussions and answered our questions with utmost clarity and calmness. There was not even a single moment where I felt that the sessions were not worth.

The points I can recollect from the love classes: Falling in love is effortless which eventually fades out and one has to seek for real love which is eternal and leads to the complete well-being of an individual including spiritual growth. We, humans, long for oneness, which gives us assurance of safety, happiness, and belonging. But from the very initial stages of our life, we tend to form ego boundaries which isolate us from rest of the world and create the feeling of loneliness. Once we reach our mid-adolescents we again tend to drive for oneness and our rescue is the one we feel, we’ve fallen for. But that is very much temporary. The realization comes when arguments and expectations differ and again the ego boundaries are raised. Real love starts only when the falling in love phases out. We also discussed The Risk of Loss, The risk of Commitment, The risk of Independence and The Risk of Confrontation. So when we surpass all these risks we actually discover real love.

Love is – Will / Action/  Desire

In other aspects Love can be an amalgamation of the following abstracts:

• Responsibility
• Risk
• Trust
• Care
• Understanding
• Knowledge
• Respect

Love is not :  

• Self sacrifice
• Dependency
• Romantic
• Ego boundaries
• Cathexcis

According to Scott Peck :

LOVE – The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

Scott Peck also states that :

• The first extension is difficult, it causes anxiety but once done we have evolved in the process.
• To love humans means also to love our-self /myself.
• Love is effort-full :- Its the choice which we make.

The sessions were interactive and the sharing of group members made it easy for all to understand how different situations impact our understanding and decision making process if the meaning of love is understood and kept in the centre of these process.

Overall, fun filled sessions along with engaging activities.

Thanks to our facilitators !

It has been a great journey for me till now to attend Love Class. I got to introspect about life, love and what it actually means. I entered this class with my own perception of love but I got a very different mindset about it and I’m glad. The only thing that is certain in our life is uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important thing in love because you never know what’s going to happen in the next second.

I have always seen people around me being lovey dovey all the time, texting and talking over the phone, exchanging pictures and meeting for coffee or dinner but that isn’t all there is to love. Love actually is to truly care for someone, feel for them and do things that make them happy but not at the cost of sacrificing your identity or your happiness.

Let go of the relationship if it is demanding you to suppress your happiness. Love is beautiful but it needs some separateness. Love is like a river – it keeps flowing along. The stability of your love is as secure as a wide raft on a wild river ride. Your love will always be tossed about, cresting waves and plunging down the trough but you stay together and make the most out of it- that’s a step towards happiness. Life is going to be difficult at every stage but it does come with a choice of being an optimist and seeking things positively. Also, we discussed about marriage and parenting. Being unmarried, I am yet to experience that part but listening to others, I got a gist of how your life changes but it’s in your hands to manage things.

Love class taught me to delay gratification and also to forgive people and let go of past. Another thing that I learnt through love class is confrontation. There is always a better way to confront something. The appropriate language to be used for confronting can make things flow smoothly.

I would like to thank my facilitators Krishna Ma’am and Brinda Ma’am for making me realise what really love is and how to keep patience in every mode of life. I’m looking forward to learn much more from them in future.

 

Juhi Arora.

It was a nice experience for me as I came to know the true meaning of “LOVE”. It really changed my perception for love. It was really a nice and wonderful class for life which helped me to grow personally as well as professionally. I appreciate the facilitators Ms. Nandini Aswani and Priyanka Chhabra for teaching us and listening to everyone with patience.

Thank you Brinda ma’am, Krishna Ma’am and all the participants of love class- Zeta for giving me some knowledge and lots of memories.

Life is difficult.  

I guarantee you’ll never have a flawless life. On the bright side you may find your passion or travel the world. On the downside you may lose a friend or your job. But once you admit that life is difficult, that fact is no longer of great consequence. Once you accept responsibility, you can make better choices.

Accepting responsibility may not come straight away, but for those willing to take the time that’s necessary, they will find themselves cured.

Self-control is the essence of Peck’s brand of self-help. He says: “Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.” A person who has the ability to delay gratification has the key to psychological maturity, whereas impulsiveness is a mental habit that, in denying opportunities to experience pain, creates neuroses. Most large problems we have are the result of not facing up to earlier, smaller problems, of failing to be ‘dedicated to the truth’. The great mistake most people make is believing that problems will go away of their own accord. The take-away here is that sometimes the benefits of lying outweighs those of telling the truth, but we often drastically underestimate them.

Redefining Love.

I tend to think of love as effortless, the free fall of ‘falling in love’. While it may be mysterious, love is also effortful; love is a decision: ‘..the desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does.’

The ecstatic state of being in love is in part a regression to infancy, a time when we felt our mother and ourselves to be one; we are back in communion with the world, and anything seems possible. Yet just as the baby comes to realize he or she is an individual, so the lover eventually returns to his or her self. At this point, Peck says, the work of ‘real’ love begins. Anyone can fall in love, but not everyone can decide to love. We may never control love’s onset, but we may – with discipline – remain in charge of our response. And once these ‘muscles’ of love have been used, they tend to stay, increasing our power to channel love in the most life-giving and appropriate way.

Grateful to the FS and Thank you so much, my facilitators, Nandini Aswani & Priyanka Chhabra

Regards,

Bhumika

 

I am grateful to school that provides such a wonderful learnings to their employees.

In love class, I learned the actual meaning of love. Till now, there was only one definition of love I knew which was ” when we like someone’s company it is Love” but there are many things apart from just liking.

I learned the meaning of the true love, Myths of love and how can we spread our love to others and get love from others. I personally believe that being yourself is the real love to yourself and the world. If you don’t love yourself, how can the world love you? Everything in the world has a specific cost to buy it but there is only one thing that comes free of cost and that is Love. It will never decrease if you spread it, it will be increase instead.

You can not love yourself or others just by being idle. you need to extend yourself for being loved and to love. You need to take care of small things and work on it to understand the actual meaning of love. You must express your love to the person whom you love and care for. Sometimes the person may not realize that you love him/her.

Last I would say: Love yourself, Love others and spread Love. It’s Free… Free… Free…