I wish you lovely morning, dear Toastmasters.
Today, I am going to talk about love. And no, I am not going to talk about love. I am not going to talk about how we should also love our parents and our families, I am not going to talk about how we much love nature and how we love our pets. Do the students of JNU love the country… no, I am not going to talk about that either! And I am not going to talk about how we must first love ourselves. Come on! This is February, a beautiful February, and I am going to talk about unabashed, unapologetic romantic love.
What
is love? Surely, it is not about the red balloons at the traffic signals or
about the Archie’s greeting cards. It is profound, much more profound than
that, of course. It is perhaps the strongest emotion we human beings are
capable of. It is often larger than life itself. It can change the life that
you lead, and it can change the person that you are. It is important to know
how every love stories is immortal in its own way even if it does not result
into a forever. You are never the same person before and after it. Think of it
- shall we ever be able to love as innocently, as entirely as we had loved in
our first crush?
Today,
I am going to talk about two specific kinds of love.
Twin-flame
Love!
“He's more
myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Catherine
had said this about Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
The
thing about soul-mates, the thing about being made for each other! There is a
formal term for that. It is called a Twin Flame Love! Plato, the Greek philosopher,
talked about that back in those days, and we talk about that even to this day. They
say that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of
two faces. They were complete in themselves. But the gods felt
threatened. They split humans in half as punishment for humanity's pride and
doubling the number of humans who would give tribute to the gods. But then, each human would then only have one
set of genitalia and would forever long for his/her other half; the other half
of his/her soul. So, by mistake, the Gods had created Love!!
It
is said that when the two soul-mates find each other, there is an unspoken
understanding of one another, that they feel unified and would lie with each
other in unity and would know no greater joy than that. As I read more
about twin flame love and the different stages, surprisingly I found this is
exactly the same concept that they use in the Yash Raj movies or in Disney
fairytales. It does talk about the very same story, of having someone marked
for you, and until you find your soul-mate your life is but incomplete.
Try
it! I mean, search it up on the internet.
For
a long time, I too had believed in it. I had imagined that there’s someone up
there, possibly in a silk robe and long, white, flowing beard, who manufactures
handcrafted hearts to the world. But before he sends them down, he playfully tears
them into two halves and floats them in the air. For the entire lifetime of
these two souls, their sole task is therefore to find out the displaced other
half, and in union shall they be complete. In fact, when I was in school and
had just watched Dil to Pagal Hai, I
half expected that one day a tune will start playing from behind some closed
door, and in a moment I will know who it is!
But
then, days passed. I grew up! I began to realise that matches are not really made
in heaven; it is rather we, ourselves, who create our own destinies. Like
falling in love, in due course I also learned what heartbreak means.
So
we come to the second concept I am going to talk about. We call it as shamanic
love! Elizabeth Lesser, who founded the the Omega Institute, had first coined
this term.
Shamanic
Love!
If
the twin flame was about falling in love, Shamanic love is about breaking your
heart. If twin flame is about souls, shamans are about spirituality. If twin
flame love is a myth, shamanic love is a mystery! Unlike Twin Flame love, Shamanic
love is not about forever and lifetimes! Instead, Shamanic love is about
passion and fierce intensity. It has a healing power that is so strong that it
can have a transformational effect on a person.
In
some ancient cultures, particularly in South America, Africa and some village
tribes in South Asia, a shaman is a person who is designated for the art of
healing. He is known to be a medium between the real human world and the
invisible world of spirits. He knows all about darkness and fear, and has
conquered them. And so, he takes the sick soul from darkness back into light. He
heals and transforms.
Philosophers
say that even in this modern world, there are Shamans around us, who have the
secret power of healing the soul with the stroke of love. However, it may not
be a durable love story. They may not there to stay in your life and make it
into a fairytale happily ever after, no! In fact they won’t even be what you
think you want from a lover. If you want a rich man, he will be a broke. If you
want an aristocrat, he will be a hippie! In fact, shaman lovers may even be
violent, or rogue.
About
a couple of months back I was in Kolkata and we were shooting for a short film
that we are making. Over a casual chat about art-house movies, a friend told me
a story which went like this:
A
young girl in her twenties had faced a fatal accident and went into coma. She
was admitted in the hospital for several weeks and was showing no sign of
progress whatsoever! Now, something happened. The ward-boy, who used to cater
to her cabin, well… he forced himself onto her one day. He raped her. Of course
he went to jail. But when the doctors rushed to check on the patient, they were
taken aback by what they found. The girl had got back her senses and her spirit.
She was right there, standing on her feet, back into life!
As
I heard him narrate the story, I kept nodding in affirmation. The friend asked,
have you watched this movie? I said: No,
but then I know about this. I told him about Shamans.
Please
don’t get me wrong! I am not trying to glorify sex crimes of any kind. But that
is just a shaman lover is made of! A shaman lover is made of lies and delusions,
he is the messenger of the evil spirit.
Shaman
lovers can appear in your life practically out of nowhere, and when you are
most unprepared. Your moral values may ask you not to yield to its powers. And
yet, he will attract with a kind of magnetism that, philosophers say, is only
comparable to the gravitational force of the planets. More often, they show up
in your life in form of a doomed affair, and will only cause heartbreak and
disaster. They will leave a scar. But, in your path of recovery from your
heartbreak, you will rediscover yourself in a whole new way. You will awaken to
your soul like you have never known before.
You will gain a deeper sense of life and about what you want to do with
it.
“You don't
get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who
hurts you. I like my choices.”
These
are just myths and mystery, you may say. Well, but that is exactly what love
is! A myth, and a mystery!
Based on the convention we follow in our Club, this meeting was thematic and the theme was LOVE!
Project 7 - Research Your Topic
Your speech will be more effective if you can
support your main points with statistics, testimony, stories, anecdotes,
examples, visual aids and facts. You can find this material on the Internet, at
a library, and in other places. Use information collected from numerous sources
and carefully support points with specific facts, examples and illustrations,
rather than with just your own opinions.
Time:
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5 - 7 minutes
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Objectives:
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•
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Collect information
about your topic from numerous sources.
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•
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Carefully support
your points and opinions with specific facts, examples, and illustrations
gathered through research
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