"Medicine of Heart, the Gift of Self for a Better World!"

Dearest EBWN

I'm sorry to be so late in getting this to you, but as I have a heart problem, I've had to stay in bed up to now.

But I could manage to take part in an exceptional and well-prepared gathering organized by non-Baha'is. Indeed I had been asked to take part as a Baha'i and a physician in an interfaith dialogue, together with Hinduist, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim physicians. But I fell sick. I was so willing to keep my word that I kept praying. As a result on the very day of the dialogue, I had the strength to get up and go to this gathering of 130 non-Baha'i people. The topic was "Medicine of Heart, the Gift of Self for a Better World", whose aim was to tackle the spiritual dimension of human beings and the spiritual vacuum of today's society.

I think that this physical test I had been through was in away a personal preparation for me to better seize the meaning of this lack of spirituality. This might show that the spiritual has a magical healing power on the physical realm. There was quite a pleasing atmosphere and true understanding among the physicians themselves and between the public and the physicians. Although the war in Iraq was the prevailing subject matter being talked about outside, the religions were not at all blamed for during this gathering. Rather, dogmas were pointed at as a cause of disunity. Instead, we all concluded that each of our presentations converged to a harmonious conclusion.

I hope to be in good shape to be able to continue my travel-teaching trips in Albania and Africa. Could you please remember me in your prayers?

With love to all,

Shahnaz

The following is the talk:

"Medicine of Heart, the Gift of Self for a Better World"!

I would like to say some words about how I try to live the Inter Religious Dialogue (IRD) and to question how to articulate the unity of religions and their pluralism, the unity of humanity and its diversity, its differences, in the task of Inter Religious Dialogue. IRD.

"Let your vision be world embracing, rather confined to your own self" (Gleanings. Baha'u'llah)

When we have the desire to "meet" people intimately, to see them in their reality, we try to modify our representations, our opinions, to eliminate our prejudices that we project on them, to correct our filters with which we consider them.

When we want to make sincerely acquaintance with them, to hear them, to understand them with their differences and different ways of life, we try to accept their differences with respect.

When we yearn to enter in real dialogue (not in monologue) we try to research the truth with the speakers and the participants of the IRD, with a pure intention, with an intellectual honesty, without trying to convince or to convert the seekers, as the whole life we are seekers.

The art of living Baha'i relations and teaching by acts in the IRD will have an influence on us, because we grow, as well as our community and also they will produce reciprocal transformations: hostile people become friends!

When I stay and persist in my mental frames, as being in a tower and declare: " I know, I am arrived, I have understood ", I am neither able nor ready to dialogue or to understand the others.

But, when I desire in the bottom of my heart to meet the other and to dialogue, my actions and attitudes conduct me out of the tower, out of myself, towards a median road (between myself and the other) that explore and discover a space of interaction, of creation, of words, of experiences. Here, we let ourselves enter in a spiritual dimension, in a veritable communion, in a new vision, establishing new loving relations uniting us, in our inner being.