Om Shanti Om
A guru asked: who are you, really? Not your roles. Not your credentials. On the difference between schooling and education, and what we lose when we mistake possession for identity.
Read the full essay at Songs of the Lotus.
A guru's teaching from a summer gathering in 2013: we are souls inhabiting bodies, made of love, peace, light, and compassion. When asked "who are you?" people name their roles — parent, musician, professional — rather than the thing beneath.
Society corrupts our natural gifts. The education system teaches reading and writing while extinguishing the imagination that makes reading and writing matter. Formal knowledge, when forced rather than nurtured, becomes a burden. And the marketing of success — the phone, the photo, the house — disconnects us from an inner power that no transaction can touch.
Ownership isn't wrong. Attachment is.
Genuine success: inner peace. Passion pursued. Compassion practiced. Knowledge sought. Wisdom shared. We are beings of light and energy. Somewhere under the credentials and the curated images, that is still true.