Face to Face with Life - Mansukh Patel & John Jones

Autobiographical history of the first decade of the Life Foundation, with techniques.

• Face to Face with Life
• Move from Struggle to Freedom
• Create Successful Relationships
• Turn Challenge into Triumph
• Dissolve Fear & Loneliness
• Discover your Greatness
• Ignite your purpose

Background articles

Face to Face with Life - Mansukh Patel and John Jones

This powerful book has its origins in the way that two people encountered profound tragedy, and then used their experiences as a way of accelerating their lives forward rather than allowing themselves to be stopped in their tracks.

Dr Mansukh Patel and John Jones started a unique journey as students in Bangor University, and their inspiring autobiographical story gives hope to any who want to find their full potential.

The book opens with two tragedies.

John Jones was in his mid teens when his father took their family walking up Ben Lomond, the highest mountain in Scotland.

‘John, come back quickly,’came the call as the youngster scrambled ahead of the party. ‘Something’s happened to your father!’There on the mountain-side, John held his dad while he took his last breaths, and the seeds were sown for what would become John’s life-long search for meaning and for answers to why such terrible experiences could happen. He considers that much of the force which has motivated him along the at-times arduous spiritual path has come from these moments. Many, who have benefited from John Jones’profound Dru Yoga teaching and meditations in the ensuing decades, would later be grateful for this transformational moment.

Mansukh’s corresponding event occurred within the rich tapestry of life in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, in the turbulent aftermath of the Mau Mau civil war. As a small child, Mansukh was taken on a short journey with his parents to an outlying farm, expecting a day’s picnic. However, when Mansukh and his parents arrived there, everyone had been slaughtered. The Mau Mau had been overnight, and even the farm animals had been killed.

Later, that night, after all the days events were finished, Mansukh Patel’s mother looked at her child and said, ‘I hope that the events since sunrise this morning have taught you never to hurt anyone in your life.’

It was to be a defining moment for Mansukh Patel. Many years later, when looking back, Mansukh believes those few healing moments with his mother laid the scene for much of his later peace work.

The book, Face to Face with Life, then continues to follow the lives of Mansukh and John Jones. Their journey is split into bite-sized sections that trace segments of the development of the Life Foundation and the work of Mansukh and John from their first meetings at university, through to the early 1990s. It concludes with the passing of Mansukh’s parents and the birth of the Friendship without Frontiers world tour, involving Mansukh, John, and their colleagues Rita Goswami and Andrew Wells.

University days

Anyone who has been a student –and those who haven’t –will enjoy this section about university life, in which Mansukh Patel and John Jones share some or their more memorable experiences as students in Bangor University. These include when Mansukh’s simple kindness and consideration for the chef in their college dorm led to her spontaneously offering to cook Mansukh vegetarian food for the rest of his college life. His luscious, individually prepared meals soon became the envy of other students and led to a number of others realising the taste as well as health benefits of vegetarianism.

Spiritual awakening

This fascinating section explains some of the spiritual underpinnings that motivated Mansukh Patel and John Jones on their journey towards creating the Life Foundation. We see the genesis of the first Dru Yoga classes, taught to Mansukh and friends at Bangor via Mansukh’s parents, Chhaganbhai and Echhaben Patel. We learn how putting time aside for meditation and yoga each day became a key focus and source of power in every aspect of their lives.

New beginnings

This section gives an important insight in how visions and goals need to be worked for. Using the example of events surrounding their first yoga teaching experiences, Mansukh Patel and John Jones make it clear that strength of character enables you to be of so much benefit to so many, whereas cultivating mere strength of body benefits only a few.

Maristowe

Anyone who wants to build a community must read this section. Mansukh’s parents, Ecchaben and Chhaganbai Patel, had worked with Gandhi’s Satyagraha movements in India, and passed on many of their experiences. They became key trainers, with their wisdom, experience and incisive advice and in many ways became the main source of inspiration for the early Life Foundation team, Mansukh Patel, Annie Jones, Chris Barrington, Rita Goswami and John Jones.

Simple living

This section reveals how kindness provides an untold source of power within any community, as well as describing how when your vision is clear, you’ll end up attracting people to come and help you. John and Mansukh describe their work in Maristowe, their Dru Yoga teaching there, and the birth of this first Life Foundation centre. Many people were drawn to help with the fledgling centre as the Life Foundation began to take shape.

Serving the world

John Jones and Mansukh Patel achieved the progress they made because of the strength of their commitment to their dreams. Face to Face with Life is a graphic and candid discovery of how two people followed their dreams to a magnificent conclusion.

And for Mansukh Patel and John Jones, the ending of Face to Face with Life was the beginning of a whole new expansion in the peace work of the Life Foundation and Dru Yoga.

For the continuation of the Face to Face journey, see the following: