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Carpe Diem #1378 Finally … Enlightenment
The Silk Road was a hard slog, as is the path to enlightenment. It might help a little to consider some of the unobvious ways the images in this post are alike.
Oneness Beyond Color
Glass ball and blossom:
so unlike yet so alike.
Enlightenment glows
beyond breakage or wilting;
beyond illusions of death.
Mellow Curmudgeon 
I wonder… is Enlightenment born at the moment of an individual’s awareness of Universal Truth? Does Enlightenment persist beyond death, or is only Universal Truth eternal?
I would love to have an umbrella that looks like the glass ball from above.
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I’d say that enlightenment is (partial) awareness of deep truth(s) that affects how one lives. Joe’s personal enlightenment will end when Joe does; deep truths endure.
Yes, a swirly pattern like the one on the ball would be nice on an umbrella. Hope anybody who puts such a pattern on an umbrella remembers to flip the image (if necessary) so as to match how the user furls the umbrella around the shaft before engaging the little strap that will keep it furled. (Once an engineer, always an engineer. 🙂 )
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I’ve always considered Enlightenment to be a sudden, total awareness of life’s deep truth/s and one’s relationships with and within the Universe. I think we find partial enlightenment in those moments when we suddenly understand what the hell is going on in any particular life situation or we finally stop being fooled and recognize an often disappointing truth (deep or shallow) concerning those things and relationships that touch us. You know, the “Oh, I get it” moments. lol
I appreciate your engineering mind. My dad was an aerospace engineer, and encouraged engineering approaches to problem solving. As a fabric engineer, (said with a wink, but offered as an accurate description of my experience in trick costume design and construction), I envisioned, not a printed pattern of that side of the glass ball, but (like the 3D swirled substance inside the ball) actual swirled fabric. The mechanism beneath the shell might include a cog 2-3″ below the tip that spins up to 180 degrees as the umbrella opens. The ribs might have to telescope if the cog actually rises up the shaft — maybe not if it’s fixed. I’d have to spend more time thinking about it and playing around with models. But in any event, then the user could furl it in either direction, since it would unswirl when closed.
Now I want to make one. 😉
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As the origin stories of some religions illustrate, the idea of sudden awareness and understanding of everything important has wide appeal. While I did treat the idea sympathetically in a post with a little weird fiction [Miracle: Satori from an MBA], I am skeptical as to whether it has ever happened (or can happen) in the real world. The incremental progress of partial enlightenment would satisfy me.
The idea of an umbrella where the fabric itself swirls as the umbrella opens is intriguing and might find customers among those who buy stuff from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. Being an old Yankee as well as an engineer, I would admire the cleverness of the design but stick with what is cheap and simple.
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Intriguing reflection, beautiful images. I’ll need to go away and think about oneness now.
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Enlightenment comes through deep, silent awareness that we are more than we know. Your photographs and words touch on the need to look beyond the obvious, challenging one’s perceptions of our visible world. Reality in more than the visible spectrum.
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