<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Baskerville; panose-1:2 2 5 2 7 4 1 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-2147483549 0 0 0 507 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:Cambria;} p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-link:"Header Char"; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 216.0pt right 432.0pt; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:Cambria;} span.huge {mso-style-name:huge; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-parent:"";} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header; mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:Cambria;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;} @page WordSection1 {size:595.0pt 842.0pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XWUOc-m9fF4..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="430" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XWUOc-m9fF4..." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Under the obvious</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Nowadays everyone owns a camera, be it a cell phone camera or a digital camera.Photography has become like language. You have vernacular, slang and schooled forms. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">However, like a pen, everyone might own one but very few write meaningfully or create that which endures and inspires. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Very often a photograph reveals a photographer more than the photograph he or she makes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">For the longest time, artistic expression involved the sacred. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Most “art” has religious roots. The artistic maps our parents knew were often religious ones. Dance, drama and painting were about larger philosophical or religious themes, the <span class="huge">expression a representation of the symbolic journey within.</span>  </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As Tolstoy said, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i> </i></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i>To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The act of sharing dissolves what lies between the "experiencer" of the art and the artist, creating a connection, an empathy, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, becoming one. <span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As someone once said "Art is like a finger pointing at the moon," that luminescence which shines on us in our sleep. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But the finger can point elsewhere. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span class="huge">A more recent idea of artistic expression often implies that the artist is to find him or herself not within, but without.  To express the self for reasons not in keeping with the compulsions the artists feels. </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XzimcgmFong..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XzimcgmFong..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Nowadays we often hear the following. Follow </span><i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</span></i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> passion,</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> realize </span><i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</span></i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> dreams and find </span><i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</span></i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">self. Every single billboard seems to promise answers. You buy this product and you will <i>get</i> that pretty girl. You drink this soft drink and you will <i>be</i> cool.</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">What is left unsaid but deeply implied is that happiness and fulfillment will result when <i>your</i> desires are met.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mk9wfjHRff4..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mk9wfjHRff4..." width="640" /></a> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">These messages are false. The self is not the center of life and happiness and fulfillment are not objectives in their own right</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> but come on their own. They cannot be pursued directly<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. </span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">India is changing very fast. Values, lifestyle and social classes seem to be in constant motion. We are in the midst of what is possibly the largest demographic shift in the history of the world. Our cities are melting pots of  histories, cultures and values. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What does one hold onto in the midst of this motion? </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Art can be like a finger pointing at the moon as someone once said but </span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">the finger, as we know, can also point the other way. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1K5NKN8ufS0..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1K5NKN8ufS0..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">How do we transcend the needs of the present,  in order to create something meaningful and timeless? </span><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">By needs of the present I mean the demands of clients, the aesthetics of the moment, our own egos and the good or bad opinions of the world. How can we live inspired and fulfilled and not be diminished by those persistent rakshasas, gatekeepers and minotaurs, which we meet on our journeys.</span><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-shwB1TRsMy8..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-shwB1TRsMy8..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Carl Jung when asked if he had faith replied "I don't have to have faith, I have experience". </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I can offer you personal experiences I have had that led me to experience what extends beyond the physical plane and which has led me to know that  <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">I can be a conduit for what is timeless and abundant that allows for life and expression to happen in unexpected, blissful and sublime ways, often not keeping in tune with my own plans or ideas of happiness. To learn to live the life that lies before me rather than the one I might have planned.</span></span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">It took a long time for me to realize this. That the darkness and suffering as as much a part of the life experience as is joy and happiness. That both need each other to be. That both are reflections of each other and that we are a part of so much more than the limitations our physical selves. </span></span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ICMCNmhvkKE..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ICMCNmhvkKE..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><u><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A couple of years ago I co-produced a film in Liberia about a certain warlord. During the process of film making we found ourselves in a slum populated by former child soldiers. Many of them were heroin addicts with violent histories. A riot broke out and during the chaos I wandered off to make some photographs. Suddenly a group of young men hustled me into an alley, many of them apparently high on drugs. They wanted to steal my camera. They instigated a young man to hit me. I am not sure how serious they were. Every time he advanced, high out of his mind I found myself instinctively raising the camera and taking photographs. Maybe I was retreating into the world behind the camera. Every time he came too close I asked him to pose and miraculously he did. I was incapacitated with fear but after awhile some of the young men began posing with me. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KZ5JFA8iykY..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KZ5JFA8iykY..." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I remember looking at the preview on the back of my digital camera and I saw myself staring back at me, terrified, wearing a slightly ridiculous safari hat. Suddenly something quite amazing happened. I suddenly felt at peace. I no longer identified myself with my fear. I was not a scared photographer and I was not only behind my camera. I was that which watched it all. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Later I decided that I had experienced a different sense of self, which liberated me from the needs of the present. Two grim looking men tried to take me down another alley. But now I was calm and managed to escape. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The act of watching oneself was a powerful experience for me. We are not in control of what happens outside ourselves very often, but we do have some measure of control over our insides. We can to some extent control how we react to the world.  </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-72Vhq5UAUBo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-72Vhq5UAUBo..." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My father </td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0cm; mso-para-margin-right: 0cm; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A few years ago I was a cameraman on a film about the Delhi fire service. Whenever it was shown on TV in Delhi people would call in to congratulate the DFS for its heroic work. A year or so later I was commissioned by a European agency to shoot a still photo series on the Delhi fire service. I jumped onto a fire truck and we headed out to a huge slum fire and </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">due to bad traffic, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">we arrived late . The slum dwellers possessions had been consumed by the fire and they were so upset that they attacked the fire trucks with stones.<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> The barrage was intense and a mob several hundred strong surrounded the vehicles.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uIUUOh4pElA..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uIUUOh4pElA..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A young man climbed on top of the fire truck and urged the crowd to stop rioting. I am not too sure what he said but more people joined him and soon successfully exhorted the crowd to stop attacking the firemen. The rioters stopped throwing stones and began to help the firemen who eventually put out the fire.<span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Exhausted, I walked towards my rented car and randomly met the man who had exhorted the rioters to stop stoning us. I thanked him and asked him what had prompted him to risk himself . He told me that he had seen a film on National Geographic, the same film I had shot, and that he could empathize with the difficult job the firemen had. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Work I had put out into the world had returned and saved a group of people, including myself from a thrashing at the very least. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It seemed that what I had put out into the world had come back to me.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A few days later I was present at a huge chemical fire. Bougainvillea flowers cascaded off a wall in the midst of an inferno. Naptha drums exploded around me, sending the drums hundreds of feet into the air,  the fire roared  (no one ever told me how a fire <i>sounds</i>) and </span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I had a sudden moment of epiphany. </span></span> </span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I felt I had been here before and that I had already experienced all this, like from within a blissful dream. As the flowers continued to bloom in the midst of the chaos, </span></span>I  felt a sense of order, of good omen and deeply, of benediction. </span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GresFSPfOyw..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GresFSPfOyw..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I like to think that surrendering to what is larger, being honest and true with oneself, despite the good or bad opinions of the world, </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">maintaining the vessel so to speak, </span>can bring great power to ones work, power enough to give it a life of its own. This could be living the inspired life, if you will and involves constant discipline, introspection, meditation and the ability to confront and accept suffering. </span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">When we read a biography what we admire the most is not what people did to court happiness but what they did to court hardship in their pursuit of excellence. It’s excellence and greater purpose that we admire the most, not happiness.  </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span>The pursuit of excellence often means one has to control the self, vanquish the ego and submit to the ideas of others. To be humble rather than proud, giving rather than parasitic, to suffer through dark times rather than escape them, to know that the sorrows are as essential as the good times,  to seek the truth no matter where it lies or what horror it is and to know ones physical self compassionately and <i>truly</i>, darkness and hypocrisy included. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Dark times have their purpose. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves often come when life is most dark and challenging. Like Joseph Campbell says. <span class="huge bqQuoteLink">It is by going down into the abyss of life that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span class="huge bqQuoteLink"> </span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The billboards lie.  It's not about looking for yourself or looking for the meaning of life but finding the experience of being alive. </span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0fSH_XXq4vc..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0fSH_XXq4vc..." width="424" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">As time goes by I find myself less and less motivated to further my own ambitions. I have begun to care so much less about which publication or gallery wants my work.  Rather, I feel drawn to certain stories and projects, which often find me rather than the other way around.</span></span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> The purpose being not to find oneself through ones work, but to lose myself in it.</span><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LT6TT8y4Iq4..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LT6TT8y4Iq4..." width="424" /></a></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Serendipitously and not according to plan, that's when the glass often runs over and realization and ostensible success come pouring in.  Nearly always, there are no laurels but the joy of knowing one is a part of a matrix so much more infinite, across space, death and time, is unquantifiable. And whatever else comes on its own. </span></span><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0mnmzW4-zYo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0mnmzW4-zYo..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Some of the greatest individuals I have ever met have been men and women often living in the shadows, transforming lives in immense and beautiful ways. They live the inspired life,  most often away from the limelight. They have transformed themselves first and then allowed their very being to transform the world around them, not the other way around. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyl... nurse who has counseled the dying </a>revealed the most common regrets that most people have at the end of their  lives is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">She writes about the phenomenal clarity that people get at the end of their lives and how we can learn from that wisdom, at a point when there is no reason to lie, and when there is nothing left to lose. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The regrets are simple. To live a life true to oneself and not based on other peoples expectations, not to have worked so hard, to have expressed feelings truly and to have kept in touch with loved ones. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> I like what<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borges&q... Jorge Luis Borges</a> says</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">He who is grateful for the existence of music.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Two workmen playing, in a café in the South, a silent game of chess.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The potter, contemplating a color and a form.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">He who strokes a sleeping animal.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">He who prefers others to be right.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">These people, unaware, are saving the world.</span></i><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iAu8UzsEsbw..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iAu8UzsEsbw..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The word inspiration comes from “In-spiros”. To live “In spirit” or to be a part of the universal spirit. Spirit comes from the latin root word "spirare", or to breathe.</span>  You’re a vessel. Look after the vessel. Be kind to it. Give it time and silence. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Surrender. </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">You stand on the shoulders of so many before you and the same muses sing thorough the ages. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Let it  flow through you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0-XW69ccsO0..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0-XW69ccsO0..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XOxg2gmGIWI..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /><br /><br /><b><i><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">References and inspiration</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Conversations with Dr. Ashok Krishnan</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Nytimes article - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opi... not about you"</a> by  David Brooks</span><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyl... five regrets of the dying - Guardian newspaper</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The writings of Joseph Campbell<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>, </i><span style="font-size: x-small;">comparative</span> mythologist<i><br /></i></span></span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .05pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><br /></div></div>