Sacrifices are funny things. They are often little more than giving up something that we realize along the way we never truly needed in the first place. "Need". I feel like that is the key word for something to qualify as a sacrifice under the conditions you've stated here. To give up something you need, or at least, something you are under the illusion of needing, and as you discovered (and I am about to repeat) that the very thing you thought you 'needed' was far from such, and rather it was the sacrifice itself that you needed.
Yes that's well put. And there cannot be a hidden intention, it must be done for it's own sake. Assuming those conditions are met, it seems to me that giving up some part of yourself helps to allow something new to come into being. It is a reciprocal giving between the self and the divine. And the particulars of what will result will always be a mystery, never known in advance.
Sacrifices are funny things. They are often little more than giving up something that we realize along the way we never truly needed in the first place. "Need". I feel like that is the key word for something to qualify as a sacrifice under the conditions you've stated here. To give up something you need, or at least, something you are under the illusion of needing, and as you discovered (and I am about to repeat) that the very thing you thought you 'needed' was far from such, and rather it was the sacrifice itself that you needed.
Yes that's well put. And there cannot be a hidden intention, it must be done for it's own sake. Assuming those conditions are met, it seems to me that giving up some part of yourself helps to allow something new to come into being. It is a reciprocal giving between the self and the divine. And the particulars of what will result will always be a mystery, never known in advance.