I’m so emotional about dinosaur stuffed animals,,, there are these creatures, extinct long before any of us were alive, but we found their bones and their eggs and their footprints. And we made drawings and models of what they could’ve looked like. And we made them into stuffed animals so we could hold them. We made them soft so we could love them. I’m sobbing
Women all around the world have created traditional dishes and dances and sewn the clothing and organized the parties and preserved the photos and created the rituals and practices and customs and decided on the decor and set the trends of their communities and I am very proud to descend from them. Women make the world vibrant and warm. People say, oh but you haven’t invented as many machines and gadgets or you haven’t written as many classic books or you haven’t built the architecture but guess what? I don’t care because I will always take pride in how women have contributed to coloring the world in various unique ways
there are days like today when I am overcome with the gratitude and awe stemming from the simple realisation that everything I have comes from others. everything I am has been influenced by others. someone made the clothes I’m wearing, and someone also wore them before me. someone made the food I’m eating and the ingredients I’m buying, and they were arranged on the store shelf by someone too, and someone wiped the floor I walked on to buy it. someone delivered my letters and hundred of strangers worked to make the movie I watched last night, and my memories are filled with people and things they made and feelings they made me feel, and when I die someone will dig the hole for my coffin, too, and someone will take care of my belongings. I am never alone and I exist thanks to thousands and thousands of strangers
Atmarama is one who is established in self. When one attains the state of atmarama, one becomes self suficient, satisfied within himself and feels no need for anything else.
This stage of purified narcisism while being emerged into ones own existance produces bliss - ananda and keeps one self satisfied.
However our effords for self satisfaction can never be compared or equalised to an intimate relationship we experience with a lover. Shanti one experiences in atmarama devoid of bhakti is just a form of purified narcisism. To experience higher rasa, Atma must relate to Paramatma and experience spiritual flavour.
Bhakti requires that intimate relationship between Atma and Paramatma. This is required in love. Lover and beloved. Once a person finds himself out of the darkness of ignorance and realises himself, becomes established in the self, then his spiritual journey can start and one can experience more than just peace and ananda. One can then emerge in bhakti and experience higher rasa with Rasaraj Sri Krishna.
In this state one remains individual and yet still loses himself completely in constant giving. Then a mystical neverending cycle happens; giving, one receives even more, but only to give again and to receive yet more… love is an ever increasing cycle of ectasy, it is a verb, an action, it’s not an abstract construction and definitely not narcisism, purified or not. Love is Krishna.