Sacrificing Your Self

The art of sacrifice depends on one's ability to see correspondences in things. 

Tim Addey, The Unfolding Wings
 

'Thing' is a horrible word. It presupposes separation, isolation, alienation and demarcation. It is cold and alone, a thing. But since 'aloneness' is an aberration of Mind, so too is the 'thing'. Indeed, the 'thing' (as some have already suggested) is a monster... and a pretty horrific one at that.

Here, instead, in a universe of no-things, we have systems, and correspondences: reciprocities and mutualities. Everything is in everything else. The only question here is to what degree. Sacrifice depends on knowing this. Yet, as Tim Addey writes, sacrifice like prayer is in a terrible state of misunderstanding. 

When one becomes aware of this fundamental nature of the universe, one can understand how things are not merely things, but trans-things. In other words, things affect other 'things' simply by being. But understanding the essence of a thing is at the same time to understand that the human being is also not a thing, but an intricate system of subtlety that has evolved over great periods. Sacrifice can then occur through this knowing, as the making sacred (sacer + facere) of the self. This consecration is at first what appears to be a loss; in the Christian calendar we have Lent (marking the lengthening of the light) where people 'fast'. Yet, this 'fasting' (from Gothic 'fastan' to keep, to observe) is a matter of self-control and self-discipline, and of making of the self a disciple of the Earth. It is, in the grand scheme of systems, a re-turning to our natural way of being, observing the self, and not letting the self go, as is so easy to do in a society that has lost all sense of fasting and gone over to the dark side of excess, gluttony, and greed. 

 Just as prayer is a form of communion so too is sacrifice. 

'In sacrifice we conjoin ourselves to the convertive power of the universe in which all things - the most intellectual as well as the most material - are returned to their divine source... Sacrifice is a symbolic act which acknowledges our relationship... to the entire macrocosm'.

Insofar as this is concerned, sacrifice is all about getting over yourself...