Yesterday a mum brought her 17 year old daughter who is about to face her SPM just after Eid.
She had phoned me to tell me that she is bringing her daughter for me to see , counsel and treat. She had said that her daughter seems to have a gluten allergy and a bad colitis but lately the girl seemed to have developed some behavioral problems. She had lied and was defiant and had neglected her studies . When I saw the girl she said that she was totally numb. She could hear her mum dan dad tell her things but the words did not register. Her feelings were completely flat. She had lost her enthusiasm for everything and did not feel like studying or taking her exams . Her mum told me she was a very good student who did very well in school until lately.
I kept asking questions to give me a clue to the change in her and finally she told me.
It started with chatting online she said. She had met a guy and found herself after some time , in love with him. He came to meet her but she went to meet him without her parent's knowledge.He took her out for drinks and the relationship had deepened. I did not press her for details, her mum was there and also , I did not see the point of probing further. I had enough to go on. She was trying to forget him because she did not like what was happening to her. She did not like that she had become deceptive, that she no longer cared about her studies so she supressed her feelings until she became numb and flat. I casually asked when her last menses was and sighed with relief when she named a recent date. I suspected she had not gone very far in having a physical relationship but wanted to be sure. What she needed was to forgive herself and to understand what had happened to her. Love and passion are not wrong I told her . All of us experience it , and it makes us do things we do not normally do. The only mistake she made was in trying to conceal it from those who could help her and protect her from harming herself.
I did a healing and gave her a homeopathic remedy that would help heal the wounds and remove her numbness. I told her mum not to pressure the girl and I believe the parents were very understanding and not at all strict disciplinarians. I stressed to her even if she failed her SPM it was not the end of her studies and that there were ways to continue studying anyway.
This girl reminded me that I wanted to write something about love, my experience with it and what I think about it.
Pir Zia said quoting a Sufi Syaikh," How can you claim to love the Being in the Heavens when you do not love the one who comes before you?" Hallaj who was executed supposedly for claiming to be God even loved his executor , saying to him" come, come my Beloved for I recognise thee in all shapes and forms."
When I started doing spiritual practices and had what I would call openings of my heart, I became very sensitive to people's energy. I also fell in love with people very easily. It was their energy. Some people came into the room and I would feel peaceful and joyous. Of course there were those who made me sick .
There was one particular Ustaz who was a very plain person but who made me smile and smile everytime he came . I told my teacher about it and he said, well, that is what happens..now please do not go around declaring your love for people would not understand it!
When I was much younger, I realise I would have this yearning in my heart a deep yearning and I would know I was yearning for someone I loved. The mistake I made was to think it was some human person and I would suffer months and years until I snapped out of it .It is only in the last few years that I realise this yearning is for the Love.
I am most grateful ( syukur) that I have been blessed by being surrounded with people who love me and whom I love in return. I have also been blessed with loving friends and spiritual teachers , many of whom are men.
Our Malay culture cannot understand how a man can be friends with a woman and be loving without bringing into it a physical connotation. Yet with people from different cultures , it is not impossible . Indeed I am very careful here in Malaysia not to allow the men to notice when I like their energy. They may misunderstand .
And nowadays I am in love most of the time, besotted with love and yearning....
Ishq ....that is what it is..so if I seem to look at you with love...jangan perasan ....
I am a romantic and always thought I needed a soul mate ..and of course our wordly spouse would never fit the bill...but when I understood Love, it was easy to love my spouse..
Because I have learned to love...
15 comments:
Hmm come to think of it, there are several individuals whom I rever with great fondness. Their presence, their demeanour just please me. So that means I like their energy eh? But how come it's mostly men. I seldom get such feelings amongst women.
Yeah, and then there are those whose presence just makes you feel nauseated. You feel very uneasy amidst them.
Because dear Dr, opposite poles attract!
"Our Malay culture cannot understand how a man can be friends with a woman and be loving without bringing into it a physical connotation. Yet with people from different cultures , it is not impossible . Indeed I am very careful here in Malaysia not to allow the men to notice when I like their energy. They may misunderstand."
Thank you Nurelhuda. For years I have been in this dillema. In school there was this Chinese girl I liked very much and when I was in the university, it was a Punjabi girl that I can really connect with. We may not even meet or talk to one another, but the energy is and has always been there. I like this word "energy". That must be it, that I was trying to understand all along.
Unlike drroza, however, I do get that kind of energy with men too. You just like the person and enjoy his/her company. Sometimes, you can even be communicating without saying a single word. You may be thousands of miles apart, yet there is always this closeness in the heart.
And just like you Nurelhuda, I dare not tell anybody about the feelings lest I be misunderstood.
Thanks for this explanation. I am just a normal,sensitive kind of man and there's nothing weird about me then,eh??
I must get my beloved to read this !!
Aslm. singgah sebentar di blog ni dari comment yg doktor beri diblog lain. Habis saya baca semua tulisan2 di blog ni :) Saya rasa banyak yang saya boleh belajar dengan doktor. Saya pun di Melaka, mengajar di sebuah IPTS. InsyaALlah mungkin satu hari boleh aturkan pertemuan untuk doktor berkongsi ilmu dan pengalaman dengan kami disini. EMail address untuk saya hubungi?
Pycno:Indeed you are a sensitive guy..:-)sensitive to people's vibes that is...
Asst lecturer:my email
nursyifa@nursyifa.info
i wonder if those 'crushes' that people have are with the same level with this kind of energy that you mentioned?
Crushes are what I would call being in love with love. It brings on a state that sets our feel good hormones on high.It is not actually about the other person..we are in love with a notion and an ideal which the other person really is Not. We soon get down to earth..then the real work begins..for true love is not a state, it is a verb..we do love...although indeed now I know that being love is a whole way of Being..
Loving your close friends, loving your own flesh and blood, loving your idols - would all that fall into the same category of being in love with love?
Dear Pycno
Loving your friends and your own flesh and blood ..I think that is loving a part of yourself. People who do not love themselves find it hard to love their nearest..It is not the crush type of love though..that one falls into a different category altogether, it falls into the realm of addictions and obsessions.
Once I had evening breakfast at Saujana Hyatt yesterday with my chinese girl, we talk about relationship. My chinese girl said that it will be hard for a malay girl to be fond and married by a man once they knew that they already have a past experience of physical connotation.From my opinion, it is unfair to treat individual like this. What ever past is past. But somehow, do really guys like wanted to admit that it's all about the gentleman dignity and virginity.
Yes we Malays have double standards Led. That is true. Like it is ok for a man but not ok for a woman..Know what I think? I think we do not understand God's rulings on sexual relationships.
:) I am still a romantic at heart too, and inshaAllah I have married my soulmate. But even then, loving still needs a lot of hard work and patience, which I only understood fully after marriage.
I do meet some people that I instantly like, some people I dislike initially but later on like, some people who I dislike (although I try to keep my mind open about them for a while) and a few people who inspire love, both male and female. But it has always been clear why they inspire love in me; mainly it is because of their humility and their love of God. :)
Re: double standards, what is past is past. Everyone makes mistakes. I am more comfortable with people who have sinned but know that it is wrong than with people who sin but say that it's okay/promote others to it.
Kenakalayan
Yesterday my patient was crying and crying and she said she had a bad headache from worrying, I frankly hoped she would not tell me her woes, my heart had opened to her and as I held her hand and lead her through some zikr and breathing, I could even feel her headache and heartache..she spilled the beans..I guess she was bursting to tell someone. She was 2 months pregnant and had done it with her fiance who had insisted she go for an abortion. He refused to marry her earlier than the date they had agreed upon. She had a choice of keeping the baby and probably losing her fiance as well as her family's support and love and her reputation or, go for the abortion and lose her child. What a dilemma!It is wrong , she had done wrong and she knew it..but our society is even more wrong to give her such awful choices....why are we so judgemental??
Erghh I feel so mad at the fiance for not standing by her when she needs it most! (my feminist past rearing up her head?) It takes two to tango, so two should shoulder the responsibility. I am seriously wondering if she should marry a man who would kill his own child, and would not exhaust all the avenues before. May Allah ease her suffering and forgive her, amiin.
Maybe we are judgemental because we want to feel superior and we also refuse to admit that any one of us could have gone down the same path, only the grace of Allah saved us. Or perhaps some of it is also fear of being lenient might actually be taken as endorsement of the enormity.
I am now looking deep into my heart and asking myself, how would I look at the lady if I were to meet her,knowing her sin? I feel shame of daring to think bad of others whose sins Allah exposed, when I probably have done plenty of stuff in secret, when taken in total, might surpass her one enormity. Perhaps she might be admitted to Paradise ahead of me in the end, for the way we leave this life also matters. We don't know our end, we can only hope (and work!) for His Mercy for our death and eternal life.
Ya Allah please forgive all our wrongs, whether done consciously or unconsciously, amiin.
Kenakalayan
You have hit the nail on the head with this statement:
Maybe we are judgemental because we want to feel superior and we also refuse to admit that any one of us could have gone down the same path, only the grace of Allah saved us. Or perhaps some of it is also fear of being lenient might actually be taken as endorsement of the enormity.
We Malays are very good at denying our dark side and disowning our dark side makes us unable to do more than sweep the problem under the carpet
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