Angel in the rock

Posted on 28 May 2009 12:56am in Inspiration

There is an interesting anecdote told about Michelangelo. He had just begun work on his masterpiece David chiseling away at a huge block of marble. People who passed by looked at what he was doing and remarked: “Oh, he’s making a statue.” A young boy was particularly intrigued by what he saw. There was no sign of a statue – all he could see was an old man working painstakingly on a piece of rock. So he asked Michelangelo what he was really doing. The great master looked at the boy and said with a smile: “There’s an angel inside this rock. I’m setting him free.”

Michelangelo saw an angel where others saw a rock. He was working to set the angel free while others thought he was making a statue.

In due time, the statue was completed and people looked at it in awe. It was breathtakingly beautiful – a majestic work of art. They then looked at the hands that had shaped the statue and then at the master himself. “It’s wonderful!” they exclaimed. “You’re a genius!”

Michelangelo smiled again and simply said, “If you knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

How right!

We all have a David, an angel, inside us. The angel is hiding, waiting to be discovered, wanting to be revealed. Geniuses have found their angels. Every great person in history has found and followed their own inner angel. You and I can find ours too. All it takes is a realization that there’s an angel within and some work to reveal the angel.

Yes, it takes work. Ask Michelangelo, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates. It takes work. Ask a farmer who’s weeding the crops. It takes work. Ask a woman who has just given birth to a baby. It takes work!

It takes work to be a genius, and it takes work for a genius to reveal his angel. But it won’t seem like work. When you are out to explore your potential and uncover your genius, it won’t seem like work. Because it isn’t. It is a mission. A mission worth accomplishing.

Find your angel.

All the best.

A fantastic tale to delight your heart and ignite your soul

Life skills for young people

An unconventional guide to exceptional teaching

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The power of a teacher

Posted on 23 May 2009 08:25pm in Education

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
-Christopher Logue, British poet

Every kid is a genius. Any doubt about it?

No.

Then why do we need education, schools, and teachers?

To push them off the edge, to show them that they can, to tell them that they are geniuses.

Yes, kids are geniuses, but their genius is yet unexplored. We need education to explore and exploit that genius. We need schools to provide them with opportunities of exploration and discovery. And we need teachers to gently lead them to their greatness.

Indeed, it's the teachers. You can never tell what power they hold in the lives of children. They can ignite passion, inspire greatness, and expose genius from the very core. They shape countless lives and they steer the course of the world.

That is, if they know.

Many teachers do, and we have all felt their influence. It is as if they hold a magic wand in their hands. And there are those who do not know, and in place of the magic wand, they hold a cane of torture in their hands.

Let's see if this teacher in the excerpt below knows what she is doing. The excerpt is from Little Master (Chapter 9: What a teacher!)

"But you are not caterpillars!" the teacher thundered, all of a sudden.

Everyone turned to look at her. They were not surprised at all, rather they were all very eager. Eager to hear what she had to say and eager to see what she had to show.
The boys and girls looked at their teacher with hungry eyes and craving hearts.

She too looked deep into their eyes and peered into their throbbing hearts.

Their eyes were lovely. She had a wild desire to draw a picture on the canvas of those eyes. She knew she could draw and paint anything that she liked there. She could freely paint the scenes of a deadly past and a gloomy future. But then, she decided to splash them with the colors of life.

Now their hearts. She always had a free access into their hearts. She knew their hearts were as large as the world itself. Yet they were so fragile she could burst them with one piercing word. So she chose to build them up.

Such is the power of a teacher!

"You are heroes and champions, geniuses and giants," she declared, and her words echoed. "Shine, my little stars, shine. You have enough brightness in you to illuminate the whole world."

To the little boy, the teacher's words were like a bolt of lightning. He got a pleasant shock and he shivered.

That was when he realized that he had been imagining things. There was no teacher, no garden, no butterflies. It was all his imagination.

"Everything's possible in imagination," the little boy said to himself wistfully. What a teacher she was! She saw her students as who they could be in life. And they saw her as an angel. What a way to see each other!

Truly, what a way to see each other! And what a teacher!

A fantastic tale to delight your heart and ignite your soul

Life skills for young people

An unconventional guide to exceptional teaching

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Hello and welcome

Posted on 18 May 2009 12:34am in

This is my first blog post ever and, as the title suggests, it is sort of an introduction and welcome note to my visitors.

For those of you who do not know me, I am an author and educator. I write to educate and educate to empower. I believe that every human being has a spark of genius already in them. All you have to do is find that spark, ignite it into a flame and set the world on fire. In other words, discover your potential, explore your limits and live up to your true genius. Prove what you're worth!

Perhaps by now you got an idea of what to expect to read in my blog. But let me explain, quickly.

I write about what I believe in. So you will find articles and resources in this blog that center around the subject of human potential. Now this is a pretty broad area, I understand, and there can be a whole range of topics within it. So to make things easier for both you and me, I have come up with the following four areas of interest, or categories.

Education: The articles you find in this category will be mostly about teaching and learning, about how education can be used to explore the genius and express the greatness that we are all born with. Education can be a joyful experience of marvelous discoveries, it can be an incredible opportunity to unravel your genius, and it can be a doorway to endless possibilities. It can be and it should be. If it is not so, then it isn't education at all - it is torture. I'll be writing quite a lot on this front.

Inspiration: Every article in this blog will be inspiring in some way, but the ones in this section will be especially so. Stories of human achievement and greatness find their place here. We all share a unique human connection, a thread that binds us all heart-to-heart, and so when you succeed, I celebrate, and when I excel, you revel! Isn't that so? If not, shouldn't it be so? We all need a little bit of inspiration and encouragement now and then, especially from one another. So let's celebrate human greatness and be inspired. I'll do my bit here.

Empowerment: Tools, techniques, resources, strategies, principles and disciplines for success and greatness - you'll find them here. No, I'll not give you '10-ways-to-to this' and '20-ways-to-do-that' sort of things. Not my style. I will share with you what I practice myself, or what I know leaders and achievers practice, or what has endured the test of time, or what is new and challenging and worth a try. So no cut-and-paste quick-fixes here. Only genuine, lasting stuff written in my own personal way.

Transcendence: I could have called this category spirituality too, but I like the term transcendence better. Whenever I come up with articles of spiritual nature, I’ll place them here. Now, some people would like to think that spirituality is for the mystics and the old and dying souls, and not for young and modern success-seeking go-getters. But I would say that it is for everyone alive, without exception, kids included. Yes, kids - they are perhaps the most spiritually aware people on earth. How innately curious they are about life and its meaning and purpose! They ask many profound questions like "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where do we all go after we die?" These are questions that adults have mostly forgotten to ask or they simply don't dare ask. I'll ask these and more questions here (in clever ways, of course) and also share my answers. Perhaps you may want to share yours too.

Now a word or two about updates. I plan to update this blog regularly, about once or twice a month, or once or twice in a couple of months. So hop in here now and then to check it out. Or you can receive my new posts directly by email or RSS, if you prefer it that way.

Lastly, and quite importantly, I would want your feedback. Use the form at the end of each post to make your comments about the post or any post-related topic. And if you have something else to say to me, some suggestions to make or some ideas to share, then feel free to contact me. I would be delighted to read your comments, suggestions and ideas. So do me that favor, will you?

Thank you for reading me.

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