LOVE

LOVE

Love (which lasts): this is the stuff of actively caring for another and accepting the other as they are. This type of love is a decision. One decides to accept the other totally, without reservation, and with eyes open. The other's faults are both seen and accepted. The true practitioner of this type of love can honestly give their loved ones the Love Story message, "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry" (Segal 1970, 131). For whatever so-called harm was done, the loved one is accepted and known to be OK.

Many of us achieve this type of love only with pets or small children. Active involvement, while not essential to feeling love, is essential to an ongoing relationship; and its absence will typically be felt as a lack of love. In this culture many of us experienced the physically and/or emotionally absent father, who may have felt love for us, but from whom we often did not receive the feeling of love.

Love (the bastardized version most of us give and receive): this is conditional love. I'll love you if you do this, or act that way, or perform in some way that meets my expectations. Most of us received conditional love as children. Most of us needed then to hide our hating, our sexuality, our tears and/or our vulnerabilities because those human qualities were not accepted by parents or society. So we put on a performance by denying those unapproved aspects of ourselves to get the maximum number of strokes. It was not real acceptance of ourselves we received as children, just an absence of condemnation of the aspects we hid. Conditional love is widespread today among adults in most relationships. We couldn't possibly love them if they do this, or they dislike us, or they have the wrong views, etc. If you don't act the way I think you should act, then I'll reject you. You are totally unacceptable to me if you lie, cheat, two-time me, hate me, treat my family wrong, don't agree with me on issues, etc. But if you do jump through my required hoops, then I'll love you (conditionally, obviously). Conditional love created many trauma knots in us as children which we then later as adults need to untie.

Love (the feeling): there are some of us who cannot feel the feeling of love for others. It was trained out of us by the traumas of childhood. For those of us so suffering, (often unknowingly), more men than women, there will be avoidances of (1)close relationships and (2)the words "I love you". If this is your difficulty, then the most important step you can take is to decide you want to feel love. To actually feel loving toward others will probably take some time and perhaps therapy. There are even more of us who do not "get" the feeling of love when it is directed toward us. We slough it off without actually receiving it. A decision is also required here as a first step, the decision to want to be able to receive love.

Love (its verbal expression): the words I love you. Many of us have difficulties with those three little words. Those who have been "toughened" in their childhoods or by life will often be unable to say, "I love you." Some of us will place a huge barrier between ourselves and those words, a barrier such as: "I can't say them until I know the other person is my life-mate." Thus we fail to acknowledge that we have a problem. The difficulty with saying the words I love you without any feeling attached (i.e., caring seems to be missing) is also prevalent, and is particularly confusing to children. For example, children know their silent or angry alcoholic dads don't care much. But their effusive moms, with their thousands of supposedly caring words, can cause a lifetime of confusion. The ability to say the words I love you with feeling is essential. The ability to appropriately express those words in a nonsexual context to men, women and children is a good indicator of emotional health.

Love (its physical expression): hugs. To be able to lovingly hug men, women and children is a part of the repertoire of healthy adults. Unfortunately, many have learned to equate hugs with sex. This leads to homophobic avoidance of same-sex hugs, particularly among men. Often one healthy first step for men is to allow the thought into their minds that such hugs are no more sexual than those given children. (Chapter 5 has more on touching/ hugging.)

Love (its sexual expression): lust. Sexual behavior is usually accompanied by a feeling of significant lust, which may or may not occur within the context of a significant relationship with that sexual partner. The feeling of love (described in an earlier paragraph) may or may not accompany the lust/ sexual behavior. Many of us, because of training and/or trauma, have lost either our lust or our ability to have sexual relations with others. Either loss is much to our detriment (more on such sexual difficulties in Chapter 15).

Emotionally Healthy Adults (with respect to love)
1. are comfortable saying the words I love you to men, women and children in a feeling way.
2. are comfortable hugging men, women and children in a feeling way.
3. "get" (actually physically receive) the feeling of love when it is directed their way.
4. express their total lovingness (emotionally, physically, verbally and lustily) with a particular partner.
5. decide to love another and then do so.

Few of us achieve all the above. Nevertheless, you will be much happier the closer you duplicate the above responses concerning love. Therefore, do you want to make it your personal long term goal to make some changes in how you feel, express and think about love? (I hope you do.)

Barriers to Love

Whatever is in your heart that is not clean, not true, will ultimately  begin to act like a wall, obstructing the natural flow of love. People who say that there is no love in their life,  are being blocked by this wall. Actually there is love, but they just can't accept it. Ego is the clearest example of this. Ego limits the flow of love by placing conditions on the  love you give and receive. Ego uses love to satisfy its own needs and desires. It produces a love which is deceptive, one which brings  only temporary satisfaction. Ego does not allow you to experience true love or share it. If fact, ego is capable of destroying your ability to  feel love altogether.                                              ---- Jignesh Parekh-----

R E L X

When you're feeling completely overwhelmed,

and you know that you'll never get it all done,

relax.

Though your frenzied, hurried actions May generate a lot of activity,

they probably won't create much lasting value If they're done in haste.
You can relax right now, no matter how urgent your deadlines seem to be. 
There's no need to save your relaxation 
For the weekend, or a vacation, or retirement -

-
Experience the benefits today.
 
Being uptight and anxious 
Will not make you any more effective. 
Being calm and focused will. 
You can only give your full attention 
To one thing at a time. 
To pretend otherwise is a waste of effort. Relax.  
Use your energy to achieve rather than to fight. 
Stop worrying and start to calmly work through 
What needs to be done. 
Relax.

When you're enjoying the ride, you'll get to where you want to go. ~Jignesh Parekh~

આ અમદાવાદ છે.‏

અહી પૂર્વમાં ખોખરા છે
ભોજનમા ઢોકળા છે
ને રસ્તા પર પોદળા છે
બૉસ, આ અમદાવાદ છે!

અહી મજ્જાની લાઈફ છે.
ફરવા માટે બાઈક છે.
ને ખિસ્સા ટાઈટ છે
એન્જોય, આ અમદાવાદ છે.

અહીં કોલેજોમાં ફેસ્ટીવલ છે
કાંકરિયામાં કાર્નિવલ છે
ને ઓફિસોમાં ગુલ્લીવલ છે
આવો આ અમદાવાદ છે.

અહીં ટ્રાફિક હેવી છે
દાદીઓ નેટ સેવી છે
ને બધાંને કાર લેવી છે
એવું આ અમદાવાદ છે.

અહીં કચરાની વાસ છે
કુતરા આસપાસ છે
ને ગાયોનો ત્રાસ છે
બચો, આ અમદાવાદ છે.

અહીં ચામાં કટીંગ છે
પરીક્ષામાં સેટીંગ છે
ને બુફેમાં વેઇટીંગ છે
ડ્યુડ,આ અમદાવાદ છે.

What Will Matter: Michael Josephson

What Will Matter: Michael Josephson (Character Counts) Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame, and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear. So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant. So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, or sacrifice that enriched, empowered, or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom, and for what. Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. -- - Jignesh Parekh

The ability to find solutions comes when I know the art of listening.

Listen Negative but Respond Positive - The Art of Listening ! The ability to find solutions comes when I know the art of listening.  I normally get to hear a lot of things and tend to get coloured by all that I hear. The more I hear about negative things, the more difficult it becomes to maintain my own positivity. Yet I can do nothing to ignore the things that make me feel negative. I need to know to listen to people rather than just hearing them. To know to listen means the ability to transform negative into positive. Just as a doctor listens to all the negative aspects about the disease etc and still knows only to give the medicine, I too need to listen in order to give what is required.  ~ Jignesh Parekh

My Friend met Abdul Sattar Edhi, a living saint

The day I met Abdul Sattar Edhi, a living saint
 

Sixty years ago, Abdul Sattar Edhi, 82, gave up everything to devote his life to helping Pakistan's poorest. Here, Peter Oborne hails a truly selfless spiritual sage

In the course of my duties as a reporter, I have met presidents, prime ministers and reigning monarchs.

Until meeting the Pakistani social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi, I had never met a saint. Within a few moments of shaking hands, I knew I was in the presence of moral and spiritual greatness.

Mr Edhi's life story is awesome, as I learnt when I spent two weeks working at one of his ambulance centres in Karachi.

The 82-year-old lives in the austerity that has been his hallmark all his life. He wears blue overalls and sports a Jinnah cap, so named because it was the head gear of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

No Pakistani since Jinnah has commanded the same reverence, and our conversations were constantly interrupted as people came to pay their respects.

Mr Edhi told me that, 60 years ago, he stood on a street corner in Karachi and begged for money for an ambulance, raising enough to buy a battered old van. In it, he set out on countless life-saving missions.

Gradually, Mr Edhi set up centres all over Pakistan. He diversified into orphanages, homes for the mentally ill, drug rehabilitation centres and hostels for abandoned women. He fed the poor and buried the dead. His compassion was boundless.

He was born in 1928, when the British Empire was at its height, in Gujarat in what is now western India. But he and his family were forced to flee for their lives in 1947 when the division of India and creation of Pakistan inspired terrible communal tensions: millions were killed in mob violence and ethnic cleansing.

This was the moment Mr Edhi, finding himself penniless on the streets of Karachi, set out on his life's mission.

Just 20 years old, he volunteered to join a charity run by the Memons, the Islamic religious community to which his family belonged.

At first, Mr Edhi welcomed his duties; then he was appalled to discover that the charity's compassion was confined to Memons.

He confronted his employers, telling them that "humanitarian work loses its significance when you discriminate between the needy".

So he set up a small medical centre of his own, sleeping on the cement bench outside his shop so that even those who came late at night could be served.

But he also had to face the enmity of the Memons, and became convinced they were capable of having him killed. For safety, and in search of knowledge, he set out on an overland journey to Europe, begging all the way.

One morning, he awoke on a bench at Rome railway station to discover his shoes had been stolen. He was not bothered, considering them inessential.

Nevertheless, the next day an elderly lady gave him a pair of gumboots, two sizes too large, and Mr Edhi wobbled about in them for the remainder of his journey.

In London, he was a great admirer of the British welfare state, though he presciently noted its potential to encourage a culture of dependency. He was offered a job but refused, telling his benefactor: "I have to do something for the people in Pakistan."

On return from Europe, his destiny was set. There was no welfare state in Fifties Pakistan: he would fill the gap. This was a difficult period in his life. Shabby, bearded and with no obvious prospects, seven women in rapid succession turned down his offers of marriage. He resigned himself to chastity and threw all of his energy into work.

He would hurtle round the province of Sindh in his poor man's ambulance, collecting dead bodies, taking them to the police station, waiting for the death certificate and, if the bodies were not claimed, burying them himself.

Mr Edhi's autobiography, published in 1996, records that he recovered these stinking cadavers "from rivers, from inside wells, from road sides, accident sites and hospitals… When families forsook them, and authorities threw them away, I picked them up… Then I bathed and cared for each and every victim of circumstance."

There is a photograph of Mr Edhi from this formative time. It could be the face of a young revolutionary or poet: dark beard, piercing, passionate eyes. And it is indeed the case that parts of his profound and moving autobiography carry the same weight and integrity as great poetry or even scripture.

Mr Edhi discovered that many Pakistani women were killing their babies at birth, often because they were born outside marriage.

One newborn child was stoned to death outside a mosque on the orders of religious leaders. A furious Mr Edhi responded: "Who can declare an infant guilty when there is no concept of punishing the innocent?"

So Mr Edhi placed a little cradle outside every Edhi centre, beneath a placard imploring: "Do not commit another sin: leave your baby in our care." Mr Edhi has so far saved 35,000 babies and, in approximately half of these cases, found families to cherish them.

Once again, this practice brought him into conflict with religious leaders. They claimed that adopted children could not inherit their parents' wealth. Mr Edhi told them their objections contradicted the supreme idea of religion, declaring: "Beware of those who attribute petty instructions to God."

Over time, Mr Edhi came to exercise such a vast moral authority that Pakistan's corrupt politicians had to pay court. In 1982, General Zia announced the establishment of a shura (advisory council) to determine matters of state according to Islamic principles.

Mr Edhi was suspicious: "I represented the millions of downtrodden, and was aware that my presence gave the required credibility to an illegal rule."

Travelling to Rawalpindi to speak at the national assembly, he delivered a passionate denunciation of political corruption, telling an audience of MPs, including Zia himself: "The people have been neglected long enough.

"One day they shall rise like mad men and pull down these walls that keep their future captive. Mark my words and heed them before you find yourselves the prey instead of the predator."

Mr Edhi did not distinguish between politicians and criminals, asking: "Why should I condemn a declared dacoit [bandit] and not condemn the respectable villain who enjoys his spoils as if he achieved them by some noble means?"

This impartiality had its advantages. It meant that a truce would be declared when Mr Edhi and his ambulance arrived at the scene of gun battles between police and gangsters.

"They would cease fire," notes Mr Edhi in his autobiography, "until bodies were carried to the ambulance, the engine would start and shooting would resume."

Mr Edhi eventually found a wife, Bilquis, but his personal austerity was all but incompatible with married life. When the family went on Hajj, a vast overland journey in the ambulance, he forbade Bilquis to bring extra clothes, because he was determined to fill the vehicle with medical supplies.

Reaching Quetta in northern Baluchistan, with the temperature plunging, he relented enough to allow her to buy a Russian soldier's overcoat. Later on, when their children grew up, Mr Edhi would not find time to attend his daughter's marriage.

But Mr Edhi's epic achievement would not have been possible but for this inhuman single-mindedness. Today, the influence of the Edhi Foundation stretches far outside Pakistan and Mr Edhi has led relief missions across the Muslim world, providing aid at every international emergency from the Lebanon civil war in 1983 to the Bangladesh cyclone in 2007.

There are no horrors that Mr Edhi and his incredibly brave army of ambulance men have not witnessed, and the numerous lives they have saved.

The story of Mr Edhi coincides with the history of the Pakistan state. More than any other living figure, he articulates Jinnah's vision of a country which, while based on Islam, nevertheless offers a welcome for people of all faiths and sects. Indeed, the life of Mr Edhi provides a sad commentary on the betrayal of Jinnah's Pakistan by a self-interested political class.

One evening, as the sun set over Karachi, I asked Mr Edhi what future he foresaw. "Unless things change," he said, "I predict a revolution."

Peter Oborne's film on the Edhi Foundation can be seen in 'Unreported World: Defenders of Karachi'

THREE CHEERS FOR OUR REAL HERO ''EDHI SAHIB''- MAY ALLAH BESTOW HIS CHOICEST BLESSINGS ON HIM
--