// June 2nd, 2005 // No Comments » // Recovery, buddhist, china, life, magick, personal, writing
Current mood: searching
So, I’m in recovery. There they tell us that serenity is the goal. Serenity is the highest of all emotional plains. Serenity is achieved by reducing our impulse-responses. By practicing patients. Serenity is achieved by tempering the passion in our lives.
So, I’m a mage. In magick they tell us that control garnered from observation, information gathering and practice is the goal. In magick the success is determined by the ability to manifest Will in reality. Can you make shit happen. Passion can sidetrack us. Passion can deceive us. Passion can distort our ability to “see” clearly.
So, I’m practicing Buddhist principles. In Buddhism they tell us that passion is suffering. That passion creates suffering, in myself and in others. That passion is burning and is a form of hell. Passion is a Mara that prevents enlightenment and keeps us stranded in small-mind. Also, one of the precepts is that we are to abstain from sexual misconduct. Don’t use people for my own gratification or pleasure.
So…. since most of my teaching/learning systems advocate that passion is something to be transcended…why does that feel so wrong???
It really does. I’ve been meditation on passion and what it’s context is to my social or spiritual centers. I’ve been trying to place it in context of my life experience, which is trickier because life experience sometimes tells me that something that is not good for me is the SHIT!!! For instance. In my younger years I was pretty certain that bootin’ heroin would get me closer to “God”! No one could tell me differently, they didn’t understand.
So with this passion thing. Heck, it’s been years…like, lemme see. It’s been almost 8 years since I’ve let passion rule my house. I’ve garnered control over my impulses for the most part. I’ve opened myself to the possibility that passion is distracting and I’ve removed it from my life. Having it gone and looking at it as an outside observer. I see it has a large ability to wreck some havoc in peoples lives.
HOWEVER….as that outside observer. I’m also seeing that it isn’t the passion that is the source of the problem. It is the changing of the expectations that come AFTER the passion. After the surging of the emotions, the raging of the hormones and the release; physical, mental or spiritual, the expectations of that person/being/thing change and we invest some magickal property into that being. We shift our perception so that we change them into something they aren’t, might not want to be.
Passion as an energy is very raw and pure. I can tell from my experience that passion as a spark, lead to some very wide veins of enlightenment. But I needed to be careful and caution to allow that amazing feeling of freedom and excitement to have it’s freedom after the incident, to never try to hold onto it. To allow it to be it’s magickal self. When I did that. Passion was a huge part of my ability to open myself to the Process.
When I didn’t. When I attached some meaning of the incident onto the being or thing that helped me achieve that state. When I was emotionally needy and FORCED my blanket of perception onto another, I caused harm and suffering. I ask forgiveness from those (you included Adrian) whom I bludgeoned with passion in search of love. It was all I knew how to do at the time and I now realize how wrong that was and I have amended my behaviour.
So now. All the dust has settled from my prior abuses of passion. I’ve allowed myself to be alone and to open to what will be of benefit in my Path. I understand the state of serenity and enjoy the peace that comes with its moments. I understand the careful science of majick to manifest Will. I understand that harsh, abrupt emotions can cause suffering in beings. I understand that loving-kindness is the only pure energy that actually has the innate ability to transform all other energies. Hate can never change hate. Fear can never change hate. Denial can never change hate. But love can. Love, just by itself has the power to transform hate, to soften hate, to alter hate and to dissolve hate
Love rocks!
And love is not passion.
But passion…in it’s pure unadulterated essence, passion rocks too!
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Currently reading: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry : How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path By JACK KORNFIELD Release date: By 02 October, 2001
