Self-Realization
“Your own self-realization is the greatest service you can render the World.” – Ramana Maharshi
Critical Mass of Self-Realization
Here’s a belief I’ve had for a while now:
As one moves along their journey to enlightenment, they bring the Universe with them. And that includes me. And you.
Eventually, there will be a critical mass of awakened people. A critical mass, because the movement toward universal awakening will start to be self-perpetuating. In fact, the absorption of everyone and everything into this vast enlightened space will be unstoppable at that point.
Devout religious folks might translate this as the rapture. And not to get all religious-y on you, but I think it is probably accurate. Having some level of Christ-consciousness or Buddha-consciousness…or Muhammad or Gaia or anyone who has awakened become realized is really I think the same thing. And when this awareness is everywhere, then universal harmony will abound.
I say this because I think it’s important that we all work toward some level of harmony with existence.
Someone analogized it for me once. He said if you put one drop of blue dye into an aquarium filled with water, it will have no visible effect. Add another drop and the water is still not blue. But if you continue, at one point the water will become decidedly blue.
Now expand that to all of humanity and the oceans instead of an aquarium.
Now I just keep adding my drop of blue dye to the Universe.
Current Knitting
Now that I’m not fiddling with designing the cowl/gaiter, I can bang them out pretty quickly.
It’s just the reverse colorway of Monday’s cowl/gaiter. Here are a few photos for comparison.
In case anyone wants to do this, I just do a 5-stitch i-cord on US7 (4.5 mm) needles for 89 rounds. I use a US8 (5 mm) needle to pick up and knit 88 stitches and then complete about 50 rounds of plain knitting before doing an i-cord bind-off (again using a US7-4.5 mm needle).
Helical knitting is used to create the striping.
I really don’t know what “enlightenment” is, or “self-realization”, or “awakened”. Would appreciate hearing your definition of any or all.
Also, did you really mean 89 rounds of 5 stitch I cord?
Answering the easy question first: Yes…89 rounds of 5-stitch i-cord, which turns out to be the circumference of the tube…it also allows for picking up 88 sts (one per round, less the last one…I just graft the last round with the cast-on edge of the i-cord.
For your less easy question. I consider “enlightenment”, “self-realization”, and “awakened” to be all the same thing and so I used them interchangeably. I am unable to define them very well. First, I don’t consider myself to be enlightened, self-realized or awakened. While I think I have had a taste of an awakened state, I think to be awakened is to live one’s life mostly in that state.
And the state of awakening for me has the characteristics of many experiences simultaneously – deliberate and acute awareness of all I’m experiencing, serenity, lack of anything extraneous demanding my attention, a sense of being complete and fully okay, a sense that my body and mind are aspects of me, but that they don’t define who I am, an expanded definition of who/what I am that seems to extend infinitely. There’s a lot more to it, and I’ve grown to know the experience and find successful ways of experiencing it when I want to.
Continuing to look for opportunities to be in that kind of state are my way of adding a drop of blue dye into the ocean.