The modern era, marked by technological advancements, often veers us away from the path of self-discovery and deeper understanding of the inner workings of this world, fostering an environment driven by materialism and neglecting the spiritual realm. However, delving into the importance of self-realization becomes increasingly crucial in a world overshadowed by conflicts and a lack of ethical values.
This journey involves cultivating mindfulness, building a foundation of contentment, and embracing experiences that shape our perspective. Let’s unravel the significance of self-realization and explore the pathways to achieve this profound state of awareness, which is another word for realization.
What is Self Realization?
Realization is the ability to come to an end of destroying our illusionary views, also known as self realization. Realization in fact, is an abstract thought of achieving a sudden mindfulness of ending all our worldly activities and unnecessary daily attachments in our lives.
While it may take years and countless life experiences to reach this stage, if one could come to an awareness, which is a realization synonym, of knowing everything in this world is impermanent and subject to decay, that is the beginning of instilling realization in ourselves.
However, self realization is only the basic structure of developing insight and liberation towards a higher stage of blissful attainment. Even though this moment of realization is the core of our higher stage of blissful development, many could not understand nor comprehend this theme of realization.
Also read: Zen State
Why Is It Difficult to Gain Realization?
When one is born into this world and begins to be exposed to all kinds of daily activities and worldly affairs, many of us then develop a heavy attachment to this worldly pleasure and leisure. As time goes by, our human mind will eventually fathom them as real and we become forever stuck to these impermanent features of our living.
When our five senses, consisting of touch, smell, taste, hearing and sensation or feeling, become grossly attached to our worldly leisure and pleasure, we become illusionary in living even after retirement. And it is this unwavering thought of attachment to our worldly activities and earthly gadgets that we will never able to realize anything more substantial in living. We could not fathom anything beyond our ordinary scope of human comprehension and able to explore beyond our ordinary scope of human limitation.
The Importance of Realization
Why is self realization or awareness important in life? The importance of gaining realization within ourselves is not to be undermined; in today’s world of scenarios, wars, conflicting political rivalry, internal rife and even political corruption all over the regions can actually be resolved through the power of realization in our human world.
It is this life realization that is the driving force of enhancing our strong ethical belief in good discipline, mutual respect for one another, obedience to all laws and orders, harmonious living and lastly racial unity. Not only that but with realization and the mindfulness that follows, we will become more aware of our actions, contributing greatly to our overall body and mental health.
We will then realize that our life on Earth is short and temporary – so why the need to stay unhappy with people, things or events when things don’t go your way?
We will realize that all our actions will affect every being living in the same world – so why continue to be selfish, bicker and fight among ourselves? Isn’t it better if we treat one another well and work together to make this world a better place to stay?
We will also come to realize that we cannot bring back all the wealth and status to the afterlife – so why the need to be materialistic to the point of forsaking faith and spirituality? Why do we have to become atheists or agnostics just because of the population of humans who ruin the original essence of religion and faith?
Only this power of realization can save this world from all wars, conflicts, wrong understanding, atomic testing of destruction, and the impending self-destruction coming from newer, more severe diseases due to our human negligence of uncontrolled eating of meat and gourmet consumption.
How to Achieve Realization in Life?
If we were to take an interest in building up our aura of realization, we need to value realization and come to terms with our contentment within ourselves. This is because when we have been so dissatisfied with everything we do, we are not able to move any positive step forward towards entering our ray of realization in living.
We need to develop the correct approach in instilling our minds to feel satisfied with what we have instead of being discontented with what we do not have in our possessions. The moment we feel dissatisfied with what we do not possess, our mind becomes uncalm and obsessed with worldly attachments.
This is also the reason why we always are in oblivion of our ability to instill realization into our minds. Thankfully, there are a few practical ways you can practice to gain realization.
Through Exposure and Experiences in Life
One of the greatest assets in building up our ability to achieve realization is through undergoing profound exposure and wide experiences, ideally since young.
Throughout our youthful age of growing up, when we have undergone immense exposure to suffering and bitter experiences, we will then learn to be humble and tame our minds to be more simple and contented in living. This way, we have unconsciously imbibed the good knowledge of simplicity and moderation that will gradually develop into realization.
Unfortunately, many of us today cannot instill realization within ourselves due to our shortcomings of soft upbringing or pampering parenting style that will indeed hamper the ray of realization from shining into our minds.
This is where the importance of good parenting becomes apparent – without discipline through informal education at home by their respective parents, children will easily grow up to be lazy, too easy-going and indisciplined in their actions. These negative attitudes in life will deviate them from the path of instilling realization into their mind.
Consistent Pondering, Contemplation and Meditation
Another best means of achieving realization is to develop frequent pondering, contemplation and meditation.
One should always initiate pondering whenever we recall and assess any incident regardless whether they are mishaps or good tidings. This will help us gradually build our basic structure of mindfulness over our actions.
Mindfulness is the initial step to instill realization. Consistent pondering and contemplation will constantly arouse our mindfulness in our hearts and prevent us from being overly consumed by our life attachment to pleasure and leisure. Pleasure and leisure will always intoxicate our mind, heart and body which lead us to nowhere.
When we have strongly achieved mindfulness, we will eventually practice meditation as a norm in our daily living. By possessing a strong meditative power through our power of mindfulness, we develop insight and eventually to realization of truth.
Through this realization of truth, we would have attained Jhanas. By attaining Jhanas, we have manifestations of the four resublimed states namely Compassion, Loving Kindness, Altruistic joy and lastly Equanimity of mind.
Final Thoughts
In this modern world of fast technology and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) concept, Realization is becoming more and more of an oblivion to society. What we must realize is that, we as humans are coming entirely into two worlds on Earth; one is the materialistic aspect of innovative advanced development while the other is our spiritual world of natural phenomenon.
The former will gradually develop into more Greed, Hatred and Ignorance, while the latter will go towards more non-greed, absence of hatred and gaining more inner knowledge in life, which is what we should be practicing to improve our quality of life on Earth while advancing on our spiritual cultivation.
That said, the importance and the benefits of having realization are far greater than staying unaware or living in ignorance. If only more and more people realize the need for self realization in life, then the world will be a much more harmonious and peaceful place for us all.
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