Love: A myth and a mystery!

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.” 

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

These are just myths and mystery, you may say. Well, but that is exactly what love is! A myth, and a mystery!

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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:	5 - 7 minutes
Objectives:	•	Collect information about your topic from numerous sources.
	•	Carefully support your points and opinions with specific facts, examples, and illustrations gathered through research