On Friday 13th June 2014,
residents at SHAFA HOME Delhi had their fourth session with Mr. Shree Kumar, experienced life-coach, renowned motivational
speaker and master of EFTT. Today’s session was all about 'finding personal freedom through love'. Like last week, the session
took on a discursive format then transitioned to practical work. Today we considered
love and its impact upon the individual. Love means different things to
different people, for some these four letters evoke severe emotional disturbance,
re-opening old wounds allowing unpleasant memories of the past to flood in…But
enough of this negativity we think!!
It’s
time to close that chapter of our lives and re-view love as a transformational
force that begets mental and emotional liberation. Ever heard the saying “love
can set you free?” Mr. Shree certainly has and wants us to see that too! Love,
when harnessed and channeled in a proper and effective manner can be the force
that breaks the vice-like chokehold our irrational and negative self-talk has on
us; once and for all.
In our active substance use, our perception of
what love was had become deeply skewed. We didn’t know what meaningful love was anymore. This is one, clear hard
fact Mr. Shree did not have to tell us, we knew it for ourselves from past
experience. Was it people? Was it possessions? Was it obsession? Over time, our
definition of love had become progressively cheap, superficial and
one-dimensional. We threw the world “love” about like kids throw cricket balls.
In active using, love was something exclusively interrelated with our
hedonistic, self-seeking lifestyle; we loved the physical effect of our drug of
choice, we loved people who gratified us physically, we loved money, we loved
substance-enabling situations. Honestly speaking, love resided in the pursuit
and consumption of our addiction.
Based on resident’s experiences and Mr.
Shree’s expertise, the fact of the matter we had muddied the pure and beautiful
attributions of love. Love in our minds was basic, crude and self-gratifying.
This session invited us to go beyond physical dimensions of thinking; today we
embarked on thinking on a spiritual level. When Mr. Shree made his signature
serene entrance into the ‘asha grah’ hall. Many of our residents felt initially
cynical that they would be investigating “love-shuv” nonsense…Amongst the smirks
and rolls of eyes it seemed to be that many feared to enter its territory. Rest
assured, Mr. Shree’s cool, calm grace put our whirling minds at rest. He
started is session in his signatory way:
relating from personal experience. He explained that when he was younger
he had also faced a lot of emotionally scarring events. He nearly traded his hope
for permanent misery, but one pertinent and powerful thing stopped him dead in
his tracks. Our wide-eyed residents wanted to know what his magic was!
This
is when we learnt our first key lesson of the session: Shree Ji kept his heart
and mind open to miracles. God’s
benevolence and mercy sends these miracles to save us! Despite life mercilessly
battering him with misfortune, he kept his mind positively tuned to receive
insight and knowledge to sail through his troublesome times. Against all odds
Mr. Shree survived his bleaker moments to become the respected success he is
today! How did he do it? By practicing meditation and staying receptive to
higher knowledge, keeping faith in better times to come! Meditation allows an
individual to still his racing mind in order become spiritually receptive to
knowledge from higher realms. Meditation
is looking for God within ourselves. God and love are synonymous concepts.
World-over God is the supreme and everlasting source of love. Within every
single human being is His divine spark, so in this way we are all mirrors of
each other wherein God’s beauty and magnificence radiates all around us. When
we can learn to open our eyes to the world around us, then we are able to
listen to our intuition to find new ways of thinking and behaving.
Love is
when we endeavor to see God outside of ourselves. In our fellows, in
weather, in nature…God permeates and resides in everything. When we are appreciating
and respecting His creation in a noble and dignified way, this is true, mature
and sincere love. Loving is the highest and most creative form of energy. Love
can make a person more caring, compassionate and empathetic towards others.
When people are better able to understand their peers, then they can help
others and simultaneously become willing to receive help from others. We all
need assistance to move forward in life. Once we break down our self-defense
barriers and allow help to pour in, then we can emotionally and mentally grow
into the people we yearn to be! Strong, positive, cheerful and peaceful. Those
qualities we thought we would never be able to emanate and achieve actually
come to exist within us. Seriously!!
Mr.
Shree also told us that within love lies
forgiveness. When an individual starts loving, they start releasing
themselves from their self-imposed incarceration by being kind and merciful
with their inner-self. Since addicts spend unnecessary lengthy amounts of time
carrying an immense amount of guilt upon their shoulders, we felt it would be
incredibly beneficial if we could learn how to heal ourselves of this problem –
As the session progressed into the EFTT practice, one of our courageous
residents volunteered himself to work alongside Mr. Shree at the front of the
group.
All-in-all, this session was a fantastic blend
of both cognitive analysis and spiritual thinking, our participants were
challenged to break with their old and rigid notions. Burying old hatchets and
embracing our brothers and sisters is the ultimate. If understood properly,
love can become a super-powerful adhesive, able to re-attach all the fragmented
and splintered pieces of our self-esteem and confidence; remodeling us into new
individuals. No matter how many times we may have fallen over in the past, it
is never to late to pick ourselves up and move on! Our ongoing thanks go to Mr.
Shree Kumar for his time, effort and dedication with our residents at SHAFA
HOME.
To view more pics please click on the link below:
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