u/External_Use8267

Lately I’ve been questioning what “self-realization” actually means.

A lot of us think it means becoming a better version of ourselves:
more peaceful, spiritual, confident, healed, successful, etc.

But isn’t that still just another identity?

If you watch carefully, everything about you changes constantly:
thoughts, moods, opinions, personality, even the role you play in life.

Yet there seems to be something that notices all of it without changing.

So what if self-realization isn’t about improving the character…
but realizing you were never just the character?

The moment I started asking:
“Who is aware of these thoughts?”
instead of
“How do I become someone better?”
something shifted in me.

Curious how others see this.

Do you think there’s actually a deeper “self” beyond personality and thought? Or is the observer itself just another illusion created by the brain?

What's the purpose of life?

Life is not given to us to collect things.

Not money.

Not status.

Not praise.

Life is given to us to act.

Look at a tree—it doesn’t eat its own fruit.

Look at the sun—it shines without asking who deserves the light.

Nature works constantly, but never for applause.

Somewhere along the way, we reversed this rule.

We started working only when we see a reward.

We measure everything. We wait for validation.

And that’s where the suffering begins.

Your purpose is not to chase outcomes.

Your purpose is to participate fully in life—

to do what must be done with full effort,

without needing the world to clap.

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all hosts of heaven and earth pause to say;

Here lives a great sweeper who did his job well