On the course ‘Hidden Fragments, Hidden Wholes’
The course ‘Hidden Fragments Hidden Wholes’ is about investing yourself more intensely in the content that you create. You can invest yourself intensely if you know yourself clearly and you can know yourself clearly if you have been able to somewhat assimilate your fragments. Why are we fragmented? All of us are fragmented, either we deny this fact or embrace it wholeheartedly and try to cluster together as many of the fragments as we can. This is a long-term and time-consuming pursuit. But till it is done, it needs to be a priority or a focus for on individual.
But why are we fragmented in the first place?
We relate to different people and experiences differently. So, one of the ways individuals are asked to walk on to gain self-knowledge is expose themselves as broadly as possible. This exposure also has to be parsed as soon as possible — made sense of, integrated. Else it leaves us feeling more jaded. Exposure aids self-knowledge as we get to know who we will be in different kinds of situations, We can know this either by examining our psyche carefully (which is what introspection helps us do) or gain as much exposure as possible. Traveling helps you unravel yourself? Because it shows us many many sides of our own self.
But exposure can be in many forms. We can travel, we can experience, we can practice in an experimental way as diverse a set of media as possible. It has to be intensive and it has to be diverse. If we are painting, we must paint as many different kinds of pictures as possible till we arrive at a kind of image that is uniquely ours, likewise if we are writing or doing photography or making films. What we call practice is exactly that. We are practicing being ourselves.
Doing this once helps; doing this many times helps more because eventually it becomes a habit. Those who have a habit of being as they are, find it very difficult to wear a face and be someone else. If you find yourself vacillating between many different ways to be, it is a sign of something going wrong. It might mean many things — but one of the things it can mean is that you have not had a glimpse into your real nature as yet. Once you have had a glimpse, it is quite difficult to forget and go about your life like you did before.
I say these things from experience — of intense self-encounter and calamity both. But one basic thing I like to repeat is that this is neither a gift nor is it something supernatural. It is the simple outcome of a methodical process that can be put in motion by anyone.
This course will help participants delve into this process — by exploring ideas as well as spending time to write and speak reflectively.
