Poll inspired by BKA's "karma" thread

[Brian]

Just an informal survey with choices which popped into my head while typing, inspired by BKA's post on the topic of karma and individual motivations as well as by some other recent discussions along these same lines. The choices are not all-inclusive and not mutually exclusive. There is obvious overlap, etc.

 

Please take a moment to reflect and then answer sincerely or not at all. First question is multiple choice and the second asks you to pick just one.

 

The poll is anonymous.

 

Thanks!

Brian

[i am]

answer sincerely or not at all.

It's unfortunate to feel the need to request this, but I'm glad you did, and I hope people respect this.

 

Results which just show what people think they're supposed to be doing this stuff for won't show us anything at all.

 

It was interesting for me...

 

What I want most, I feel very OK with. But I won't deny wishing for some "super human" abilities

[silent thunder]

For me energy work came about instinctively and generates as a sort of compulsive need within me.

I'm insatiably curious about the nature of reality/consciousness and obsessed with 'who am i'.

 

Plus it feeeeelz zo good

[BaguaKicksAss]

Cause the guys down at the local Taoist temple are kinda hot... .

[BaguaKicksAss]

Oh lol, I was just joking, but I do see sex as an option. That would be a lot of effort to put in... anyways. Perhaps it is the reward for that 100 days of celibacy?

 

For my top reason, I chose other instead of find myself, because I don't simply wish to find myself, but I also wish to reach my full potential. I feel that once this is reached, all the other things on the list (well OK many of them) just come naturally. I jokingly call them "side affects".

 

Nothing wrong with supernatural abilities in my opinion, I think we were born with them, and should be readily developing and using them, instead of keeping them hidden and ourselves blind.

[Brian]

Oh lol, I was just joking, but I do see sex as an option. That would be a lot of effort to put in... anyways. Perhaps it is the reward for that 100 days of celibacy?

 

For my top reason, I chose other instead of find myself, because I don't simply wish to find myself, but I also wish to reach my full potential. I feel that once this is reached, all the other things on the list (well OK many of them) just come naturally. I jokingly call them "side affects".

 

Nothing wrong with supernatural abilities in my opinion, I think we were born with them, and should be readily developing and using them, instead of keeping them hidden and ourselves blind.

I like the "fulfill my potential" response, BKA, and I realize I left off "be a better person," too. I don't want to modify the poll in mid-stream, though.

[BaguaKicksAss]

That's what the *other* option is for .

[Wells]

When I was a little child, I watched the movie "Supersonic Man" and during the following scene I suddenly realized with a flaring up desire of utmost intensity what I wanted most in life: To be completely free, the master of my own destiny and impervious to harm and destruction like the guy in the movie. Now I know that the only possible answer to this desire is self-cultivation through Nei Kung training.

 

Edited December 11, 2013 by Dorian Black

[Taomeow]

When I was little, I participated in printing photographs, my father's hobby, and in the mysterious darkened space lit only by a glareless red light, I'd be looking at a blank sheet of photographic paper at first, then it would be exposed to some light filtered through a particular frame of the film and projected onto the paper, then I would carefully grab the edge with forceps and immerse it into a bath of liquid -- and the picture would start coming out, faint at first, ghostly, but gradually getting clearer, sharper, and then you fish it out and immerse into another bath that will stabilize it. And then you hang it to dry, or slap it onto a polished drying surface, or just on a mirror so it acquires a shiny gloss. Very magical and alchemical. So I want to do this with my life -- first have the exposure to see what that picture really is, and then stabilize it if I like it -- or discard it if I don't and do the next one.

 

Karma is like prior exposure of the film, it's not like cause and effect or crime and punishment, it's more like exposure and imprinting. And practice -- that's your photo lab. First you allow the picture to come out, then you look at it and decide if you like it, and then, if it's a taoist practice, you decide if you want to change it -- on any level -- including on the level of prior exposure. People today who know photoshop have a false sense of practice -- photoshop is the way to change the picture without changing the "what really happened," the whole of reality behind it. I think many erroneously transfer the idea of the ease of this process, which they don't even have to understand in order to use, to their lives, their karma, their practice that mostly happens on the "make-believe" level. So I'm after alchemical practices because they start out with letting the real picture come out, and then go for to change, at will or on a whim, the very reality that made this picture happen to begin with. Roam the root of heaven and earth, as taoists say.

[BaguaKicksAss]

As a kid, I read all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, and took myself to be a mystery solver . Fortunately my parents were very nice in the fact that they would help me to try to do my "hobby" lol.

[Wells]

When I was a little child, I watched the movie "Supersonic Man" and during the following scene I suddenly realized with a flaring up desire of utmost intensity what I wanted most in life: To be completely free, the master of my own destiny and impervious to harm and destruction like the guy in the movie. Now I know that the only possible answer to this desire is self-cultivation through Nei Kung training.

 

 

Is the similarity pure coincidence.....? Hmmmmmm....

[mYTHmAKER]

When I was little, I participated in printing photographs, my father's hobby, and in the mysterious darkened space lit only by a glareless red light, I'd be looking at a blank sheet of photographic paper at first, then it would be exposed to some light filtered through a particular frame of the film and projected onto the paper, then I would carefully grab the edge with forceps and immerse it into a bath of liquid -- and the picture would start coming out, faint at first, ghostly, but gradually getting clearer, sharper, and then you fish it out and immerse into another bath that will stabilize it. And then you hang it to dry, or slap it onto a polished drying surface, or just on a mirror so it acquires a shiny gloss. Very magical and alchemical. So I want to do this with my life -- first have the exposure to see what that picture really is, and then stabilize it if I like it -- or discard it if I don't and do the next one.

 

Karma is like prior exposure of the film, it's not like cause and effect or crime and punishment, it's more like exposure and imprinting. And practice -- that's your photo lab. First you allow the picture to come out, then you look at it and decide if you like it, and then, if it's a taoist practice, you decide if you want to change it -- on any level -- including on the level of prior exposure. People today who know photoshop have a false sense of practice -- photoshop is the way to change the picture without changing the "what really happened," the whole of reality behind it. I think many erroneously transfer the idea of the ease of this process, which they don't even have to understand in order to use, to their lives, their karma, their practice that mostly happens on the "make-believe" level. So I'm after alchemical practices because they start out with letting the real picture come out, and then go for to change, at will or on a whim, the very reality that made this picture happen to begin with. Roam the root of heaven and earth, as taoists say.

So we might say Photoshop is an external practice

[Taomeow]

So we might say Photoshop is an external practice

Exactly.

 

Not only in MA though. There's many external practices that do nothing except manipulate the make-believe picture. The most notable being the whole outcropping of "positive thinking" applications (the gift of the CIA to the New Age movement, actually, if you go for where this whole 'lineage" really comes from). A friend of mine called all these -- anger management, unconditional love, random acts of kindness, suppression of negative (but real) emotions and expression of positive (but fake) ones "fucking with the surface." That's some existential photoshop going on if you ask me...

Edited December 11, 2013 by Taomeow

[mYTHmAKER]

 

Exactly.

 

Not only in MA though. There's many external practices that do nothing except manipulate the make-believe picture. The most notable being the whole outcropping of "positive thinking" applications (the gift of the CIA to the New Age movement, actually, if you go for where this whole 'lineage" really comes from). A friend of mine called all these -- anger management, unconditional love, random acts of kindness, suppression of negative (but real) emotions and expression of positive (but fake) ones "fucking with the surface." That's some existential photoshop going on if you ask me...

Yes it's this lack of inner connection that makes the world go square. The very reason I like to feel my brush on the canvas, draw by hand and not use a computer. Life is moving from ones center no matter what we are doing, then we are in the moment and we become the moment.

[Starjumper]

The OP forgot to mention super health, great physical prowess, or happiness. Those are my choices.

[BaguaKicksAss]

Hmmmm, love isn't mentioned in there either? Come to think of it that really is the reason I practice, I love the practice itself. I think I practice for the sake of practice. I remember a few years back my Bagua teacher asked me what I will do once my health is fixed, so I thought for a moment and said, well keep practicing of course .

[mYTHmAKER]

makes me feel good

[Marblehead]

I selected "longevity" to both questions. This, of course, includes maintaining strength so that I can do things requiring strength as well as good mental and physical health while I am growing older.

[Brian]

Yeah, there are definite overlaps in the choices presented -- some because of interrelations between them (as you mention) and some because of variations in terminology between belief systems or whatever. I considered lumping some together but thought the separation important in some cases and thought in other cases that a respondent might skip a choice because part of it fit but the other troubled them (I'm seeing this in the case of belief systems believers believe are substantially different despite strong parallels being apparent to the dispassionate observer...)

[BaguaKicksAss]

Personal healing, and join with the light are in the top position .

 

What has everyone got against cool supernatural powers? lol

 

Impress others lollolol.

[Marblehead]

Hehehe. Maybe the poll is rigged.

 

Yeah, I want some supernatural powers as I have never had any of those. That would automatically impress others.

[BaguaKicksAss]

[Marblehead]

Sad songs are so sad. Get up and dance!!!

[Brian]

Hehehe. Maybe the poll is rigged.

 

Yeah, I want some supernatural powers as I have never had any of those. That would automatically impress others.

Depends on what they are. Supernatural sweat-gland activity, for instance, might make an impression but probably wouldn't fall into the "impress others" category.

 

But don't y'all bias my poll!!! Some future reader might NOT answer honestly because BKA laughed at him -- or, on the other hand, might say, "Super-Sweat? Sweeet..." and click the button.

 

[MissEmilyLutella]

Never mind.

[/MissEmilyLutella]

[Marblehead]

Hehehe. Laudy Miss Claudie!