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The Aesthetics of Education

Ugliness is an hour
In the perception of beauty.
The ugliness of darkness,
Pride, arrogance and dishonesty
Will pass…

All facades will fall
And you will find yourself
Standing exposed…
Your ignorance, you will come to see,
Was faking it as knowledge.

While you were busy learning
How to do, how to act
How to think and how to be
Those lessons were futile and
Meaningless…till you learned how to see.

But learning how to see
Is a becoming…
It is arriving to a point
Where you’re able to tell the difference
Between reality and concept.

It involves a return
To a no-man’s land
Where all the knowledge
That you have acquired
Stands in vain.

When your satisfactions
Have become your discontent
Your truth is now false
And the certainty of your ideas
Have become an ideological noose.

You wish to be liberated
From fashionable ideas
And to look at
What you don’t know
For recourse…

Your ignorance then transforms…
From being the nakedness
That you were ashamed of-
It becomes the very means
By which you will learn.

When false knowledge is dropped
A superficial ignorance too breaks…
You come to see that
True knowledge lies in understanding
What you’re ignorant about.

It’s our ignorance
That teaches us what
We must know.
It introduces us to our human-ness
And thereafter our promise.

A good education
Will free you of conclusion
You will learn how to learn
And therefore, learn how to be
And therein, learn how to see.

Posted on by solangesuri2015

The Life of “I”

“I”
-an idea
-an image
-an impostor
-an individual

-an identity
-an idiom
-an illusion
-an imperfection
-intelligence

Life is a design
For sublimating the ‘I’
For losing it in life
So that it is not merely
Concluded by death.

Offer the ‘I’ through work
Dissolve it in devotion.
Learn to become…
But only to discover
Who you never were.

Learn to embrace
All the things that
The other ‘I’s in the world
Are ashamed of-
And run away from:

Failure
Loss
Solitude
Grief
Ordinariness.

Therein lies
The light by which
You will come to see
The darkness in which
The “I” was born.

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Humility

Appearances are not the Truth
And the Truth is evident, not apparent.

Know the difference.

Courage may not always look grand
It often keeps its distance from the grandiosity of gesture.

Let it remain invisible.

Your real achievements often go unnoticed.
Awards are intended to legitimise the awarder.

Their place is on a shelf; yours, in life.

You’re educated to acquire special skills
Yet all real work happens through surrender and prayer.

Give up all ideas of yourself.

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The Creative Process

In passing time
Observe an occurrence:
A curve…a refraction…
A twist…an aberration…
A connection…a concealment…

Stretch its dimensions
Towards the observer.
Perceive it in pure light
Without an ambience of knowledge.

Learn about it
By learning from it.

Trust it to take you
Where it must now live…
In the form of a new thing;
In the marketplace;
As an idea;
As a suggestion;
As a question;
As a voice

Or, as pure courage.

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Inspiration

The moment is bare.
My questions stand as a reflection.
My answers are unsure of themselves
And refract in search of other possibilities…
Past impressions collide with present gatherings…
The pen awaits its first recollection.
I am deeply conscious of my own emptiness
Or readiness…?
I’m waiting
For an arrival…
My ability to wait
Is my only claim
To an inherent creativity.

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The Decision

To decide
Is to commence
A journey of self-actualisation.

It is to lay the very path
That you and countless others
Will eventually come to walk on.

It is to take responsibility
For yourself and for those
Who depend on your care.

To decide
Is an act of faith.
It is prayer in action.

It is to be ready
To put in the heart and sweat
To make the new work.

A decision
May be a tough choice
Resulting in heartbreak and sorrow.

But in the final analysis
A decision is a poetic promise
That you must make to honour your life.

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Life is to be Made

Play an active role
In your own life:

Make tough choices.
Create joy.
Give love.
Provide space.
Bring intelligence.
Leverage opportunities.
Earn respect.
Work for a cause.
Acquire experiences.
Develop capability.
Dream and then recreate the dream.
Inspire and influence.
Leave. Know when you’re not needed.
Accept your fate with faith.
Rest. Redeem yourself.

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What Faith Is

We enter every day
Not knowing what awaits us
We operate on the faith
That we will be conveyed.

Faith is deep and silent
It’s secure and real
Unshaken and undeterred
By the havoc wreaked by emotion.

Faith alone is knowledge
Because of it
I can wait, watch and listen
And see past my own misconceptions.

Faith is a promise
That all that you need
Will be provided to you
And all that needs you, will come to you.

Faith is acceptance-
An understanding
That all our experiences
Are the intent of a larger design.

Faith is the ground
On which realization
Will eventually stand, victorious-
Having defeated all delusions.

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The Ultimate Choice

Every expectation for happiness
Is met with sorrow.
The ultimate outcome
Of all pursuits
Is disappointment.

Perhaps happiness is not
Something to be expected;
Or something to be pursued…
Its place isn’t at a distance
Somewhere in the future…

It’s a way of being
In this moment
A way of seeing…
A way of meeting and greeting life
With nothing more than your presence.

Happiness is a choice.
It’s when you choose
To put gratitude before demand
Appreciation before dismay
And love before hope.

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15th August (A Day. A Commemoration. A Manifesto)

Although we stand
On the foundation
Of an ancient past
We must-
At every single moment
Intentionally free ourselves from it.

The struggle for independence
Is not over yet…
Every generation must leave behind
Dead ideas and settled stereotypes
And be committed to
Self-discovery and self-actualization.

The pain of our past
Must be transformed to faith
A faith that can see
In our ordinariness
An extraordinary expression of divinity
And in our dreams, the power of prayer.

We must rise
On the merit
Of our accrued wisdom
And not on the foolish
Avarice for things
That are effectual or notional.

And thought…
That is the architect
Of the abode
We live in
Must itself abide in openness
…in a heart free of fear.

We have a lot of work to do;
Many battles to fight
Many adversaries to win over
Many rough terrains to traverse
Many mountains to climb
And many bridges to build.

And this work
That needs to be done-
Is in essence,
A solitary quest.
It’s our search for redemption
And freedom…from our own smallness.

And just as Nanak told Mardana
“It is my blessing that
The Good and the Pure
Be separated from the clan
And be scattered to spread the goodness…”
Sanctify your solitary effort.

Do well by doing good
Do well by keeping at heart
The Larger Good.
Independence, after all
Is not freedom from responsibility
But freedom in responsibility.