Parkinson’s. Second to Alzheimer’s. A movement disorder of the nervous system. Symptoms may include: tremors; slowed movements; muscle rigidity; poor postures; poor balance; loss of automatic movements; speech changes; writing changes; nonmotor symptoms like depression, anxiety, constipation, sleep issues, tiredness, and thinking-memory-senses issues. Parkinson’s is caused by loss of neurons, leading to decreased dopamine, or norepinephrine. Maybe genetic. Maybe exposure to toxins, environmental factors. Lewy bodies, alpha-synuclein in Lewy bodies, altered mitochondria might be causing loss of neurons. Mostly, elderly men above 70 may get this condition, a small fraction of this age group of men – 5% or so. Exercises, Caffeine – coffee, tea, and green tea – reduce the risk of Parkinson’s.
The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm. He who knows nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing, understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees… The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love.
Love, loving is an art, like living. If we want to learn how to love, we need to proceed in the way we love any other art. Mastery of the theory and mastery of the practice, resulting in intuition because of the mastery. We need the will, intent to master it in the first place as an ultimate concern.
Love is the answer to the problem of human existence. Man is gifted with reason. S/he is life being aware of itself. S/he has awareness of herself, of her fellow humans, of her past and of the possibilities of her future. This awareness of being a speck, but separate entity, in this world; of a very short life span; of being born without will, and probably dying without will; of loneliness, separateness, and helplessness seeks liberation to unite herself with other people in the world outside. This is the deepest need. Intense, occurring in the total personality, mind and body, and periodical, recurring. The quest could lead to: transitory orgiastic state; conformity herd status through routinised work-life pattern(s); not-so-interpersonal creative activity. The one the human is looking for is the interpersonal union, fusion with the other, in love. The most powerful striving. The most fundamental passion. The force that keeps the human race together, the family, the clan, and the society. Symbiotic – as in mother and foetus; psychic symbiotic – with two bodies; passive symbiotic – submission – mind, body or both; active symbiotic – domination. Mature love preserves one’s integrity, individuality. The paradox occurs that two beings become one, yet remain two. Love is an action, the practice of human power. Practiced in freedom, not in compulsion.
Love is an activity. It is primarily giving. Highest expression of potency, strength, wealth, and life – filled with joy, ecstasy. Expression of aliveness. Not to give would be painful. Giving oneself, one’s time, energy, and resources – for her joy, interest, understanding, knowledge, humour, smiles, sadness, expressions, and experience. To enrich the other person. To enhance other’s sense of aliveness. In the act of giving something is born. Love produces love. Love exchanges love. Giving receives the result. Like a teacher learning from the students; an actor getting stimulated by the audience. Giving calls for ability to give. Without even being asked. Knowing the other and her needs without being expressed. Then, earning and giving; learning and giving.
Love implies care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. It is the active concern for life and the growth of that which we love. One loves that for which one labours for. And one labours for that which one loves. Responsibility is my response to the needs expressed or unexpressed of another human being. Being responsible translates as being able and ready to respond. Lover responds. Mother, physical needs. Others, emotional, psychological needs. It comes with respect for what one is. Concern that the other person should grow and unfold. For her own sake, in her own ways. Feeling one with her as she is. This is possible only with independence, freedom. With no exploitation. Respect is not possible without knowing the person. Care and responsibility cannot be blind. Seeing and knowing the core, deeply. We know ourselves, yet we do not know ourselves deep enough. We cannot help, if we love, care, but desire to penetrate into the secret of her soul, into the innermost nucleus which is ‘she’. Lovingly, not cruelly. In the act of fusion, I know you, I know myself, I know everybody, and I know nothing. In the act of giving myself, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover human. The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love, transcending thought, words. The experience of union is not irrational. Ultimate consequence of psychology is love.
The polarity of receiving and giving exists within and without. Individuals. Couple. Family. Mother-child. Father-child. Teacher-student. Mentor-mentee. Friend-friend. Leader-follower. Men—We are masculine and feminine simultaneously. Blended together.
Motherly love is unconditional. Mother is the home we come from. She is nature, soil, and ocean. She secures us. She has faith in life. She wishes for our growth and independence. We all can be mothers. Fatherly love might be conditional. Father shows the road into the world. He guides subtly, patiently. He sets principles and expectations. Fatherly love can be acquired, won over. We can all be fathers at the same time. We are both. A child needs both.
Love is an orientation. If a person loves only one other, and is indifferent to others, her love is not love but a symbiotic attachment. If I truly love one person, I love all persons. I love the world. I love life. If I can say to someone – I love you, I must be able to say, I love you in everybody, I love the world through you, I love myself also in you. If I love myself, I love the world. If I love God, I love the world. Love takes various nuanced forms – brotherly love – we are all one; the differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge et al are negligible, in comparison to the identity of human core common to all of us. We can love all our brothers and sisters – all people. Motherly love – giving milk and honey – without reciprocal expectation. Happy mother lets the child grow into a separate complete human being. We can love our children, and all children. And all people. Erotic love – love among equals, craving for complete fusion, union. It is exclusive and not universal. It is not a possessive attachment. If it is so, the experience of this union is an illusion. Erotic love excludes love for others only in the sense of erotic fusion, full commitment in all aspects of life. Not in the sense of deep brotherly love. Love is not just a strong feeling, it is a decision, judgment, promise, will, and commitment. Self-love – loving self, like we love all people, all life. It is not being selfish – wanting everything for self, with no pleasure in giving. Love of God – experiencing the oneness with God. Akin to love for mother and father, teacher and elderly. If we love God, how can we not love all life, including ourselves?
Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the centre of their existence. Only in this central experience is human reality. Only here is aliveness. Only here is the basis for love. Love experienced thus is moving, growing, and working together, one with each other, by being one with themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned. This is the fruit by which love is recognized.
Love is an art. Practice of an art requires discipline. Concentration is a necessary condition for the mastery of an art. Most of us seem to be leading an unconcentrated and diffused mode of life. We do many things at once, just for the heck of it. Art mastery requires patience. We seem to think that we lose something – time – when we do not do things quickly. Yet we do not know what to do with the time we gain – except killing it. Mastery requires a supreme concern. If one wants to become a master, one’s whole life must be devoted to it, or at least related to it. One becomes an instrument in the practice. And this practice could be a life-long endeavour.
We need to start practicing the discipline first. Devoting regular amounts of time periodically, may be daily, on ‘select useful’ activities like meditating, reflecting, reading, listening, and walking, without overdrinking, overeating, and oversleeping. Like an expression of one’s own will. To practice concentration, we need to learn to be alone with ourselves with no activity. The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. Concentration practice may include – being in a relaxed position, with closed eyes, following the breathing. If we are concentrated, we have full attention. Genuity matters. Trivialities, cliches can be avoided and not reacted to. Even in conversations. Living fully in the present is concentration. This requires practice. And patience. Like a child learning to walk – falling, falling again and again. Like we learn cycling, swimming. Becoming and being sensitive to oneself is part of learning concentration. Like the mind of a driver driving being in a state of relaxed alertness, open to all changes for driving the car safely. Despite road, traffic conditions; noise, conversations within the car. Like the sensitiveness and responsiveness of a mother to her baby and her needs. We can and need to be sensitive toward ourselves. Being aware, being open to the innermost, inner voice. Beyond bodily processes – mental processes, social processes, and spiritual processes. Vis-à-vis becoming a ‘complete’ human being.
The faculty to think objectively is reason. Humility is required to use reason. Love requires development of humility, objectivity, and reason. Humility and objectivity go hand-in-hand indivisible. Objectivity in every situation, being sensitive where we are not objective, we need to strive for. It cannot be limited to a ‘select’ person(s). If it is so, we will fail everywhere soon. Practice of the art of loving requires the practice of faith. Faith in the vision, the possibility, and the potential. Rooted in an independent conviction based upon productive observing and thinking. Faith is a feeling of certainty of reliability and unchangeability of the core of a person. Faith in our capacity and potential, and others. We have faith in ourselves. In humanity. This gives us the ability to promise. What matters is the faith in one’s own love; in its ability to produce love in others, and in its reliability. Like the faith parents have towards their newborn baby: that it will live, grow, walk, talk, love, be happy, use reason, realise artistic gifts et al. If led forth, educated. Likewise, we have faith in us, as humans we would build a social order governed by equality, justice, and love. We have faith in a thought because it is the result of our own observation and thinking.
To have faith requires courage. The ability to take a risk and readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. To love, we need faith in life; we need courage. This faith and courage need to be practiced. Faith and courage to bring up a child; to fall asleep; to begin any work; to commit oneself without guarantee; to give oneself completely in hope. Love is an act of faith. Love is an activity. Inner activity. Productive use of powers. In a constant state of awareness, alertness, and activities. Being active in thought, feeling, with eyes and ears, throughout the day. Active in all spheres of life. Capacity to love demands a state of intensity, being awake, enhanced vitality.
Love exists necessarily, if it exists, in and towards all our relationships. Love is not split. It is not splittable. Loving some and not loving some is not possible. We are, we can be loving people. The economic machine must serve us, rather than us serving it. We must be enabled to have a share in experiences, work, rather than a share in profits. Society needs to be reorganized such that our love, loving nature is not separated from our social existence. It should become one with the Society. Love, coexistence, is the only sane and satisfactory way forward for the problem of human existence. Any society that excludes the development of love would perish in the long run. Because love is the ultimate and real need in every one of us. This need has been obscured. This does not mean it does not exist. To have faith in the possibility of love, as a social and not only exceptional individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of human beings.
If we have to state the activity and the key quality of a development worker, it is LOVE. An activity of giving; giving without any reciprocal expectation. In case, one is not able to give, there will be pain. To be able to give, one needs to have power; one needs to have capacity; one needs to have fortune or luck. If one gives, the worker derives joy; boundless joy; mother’s joy when she feeds her child; brother’s joy when he cares for his sister; sister’s joy when she cares for her brother; lover’s joy when s/he gives to her/his love; devotee’s joy when s/he devotes/submits her/himself to God; the joy one gets on achieving what one wanted to achieve.
If a development worker is a lover, and wants to sink himself in this joy, then the development will come on its own spontaneously. The mother bird desires that the child bird gets the wings and flies. It does not prevent the child bird getting the wings in anticipation that the child bird will fly away when it gets the wings. Love has the power and ability to promise and deliver the promise. Love makes the loving soul reliable. It has enormous faith in the potential of the loved ones. Because of this, love does not manipulate. It educates. It does not make one work with false promises and incentives. It makes one to analyse the situation and take decisions on its own. This love requires courage. It requires soul power and self-confidence. It requires some boldness and ability to take risks. It requires readiness to bear pain, to bear frustration and discomfort. It means to commit oneself to give whatever within one’s powers and acquire those new powers/capacities if one does not have and give, towards sharing complete love, showing immeasurable love that has no distinctions, helping the loved ones to grow fully to reach their true potential.
The loving soul does not rest. It does not move away from the faith. Thus, love is an act of faith. It stands for fairness and justice. A loving soul cannot be unfair to one for the sake of the other.
All of us can be true development workers. That is the faith we have and we celebrate hope, faith, promise, love and coexistence.
Can we love, give? Be fair? Offer agency? To ourselves, families, friends, teams, communities, collectives, neighbourhoods, organizations, systems, and governments. In general; to PVM in particular?
Yes, we can. If we coexist, flowing. With love in the soul. In N? kshamatayoga for 7L.
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