Thursday, 29 January 2015

Passive versus Active Spirituality, Intentions


Written by Mathew Naismith

I think it’s important to be personally aware of the way we use spirituality either it be passive, active or both, why is this so important to become aware of this?  Confusion for starters, you can’t use passive and active intention at the same exact time and when we do, it causes all sorts of confusion. You can however use passive intentions immediately after using active intentions or visa-versa. The bellow information will help with this confusion in regard to the difference between active and passive spirituality.


Extract: While some people continue to experience spiritual awareness passively, it makes more sense to actively pursue spiritual growth.

Meditation, Prayer, Visualization, Stretching, Yoga, Dreamwork is supposed to be about active intentions where passive intentions is more about just letting our spirituality just  flow brought about by our daily experiences with few intentions. It’s not quite correct that these practices only denote active intentions, visualising for example can come to anyone at any time, I’ve experienced this many times myself.  Within this we have no intentions there for it’s not an active intention; it’s not about active spirituality but passive spirituality.   

Active spirituality has more to do with forcing an experience rather than going along with the experiences in our daily lives. Another thing to consider is, what experiences we have in our daily lives is more to do with a need rather than a desire, living for a need is all about passive spirituality, this is saying that active spirituality is more to do with desire than a need. 

I don’t think we experience anything by chance, everything that happens within our lives happens for a purpose, forcing such experiences to occur only goes along with what man has done right throughout history, forcing our intentions on all around us which has only created a lot of chaos and destruction. Man’s intentions have always been about desire, is that the way we want to continue?  

Let’s look at sages, shamans and Buddha and Jesus, did and do they not use active spirituality to become aware and well connected to their inner selves?  There is one fundamental difference between sages, shamans and Buddha, Jesus; yes they all allowed their daily experiences to determine their intentions, this denotes  passive intentions, but sages and shamans and alike also induce these experiences through various practices, Jesus and Buddha had no such intentions I feel.

Buddha and Jesus, especially Buddha who we know often meditated, to us obviously used active spirituality by using such practices like mediation, this is a clear indication of active spiritualty but that isn’t so.  

I and many other people like me can go into a daydream state at any time and at times this can lead to a deep mediative state, this is accomplished without any intentions what so ever, some people can just go straight into a deep meditative state by just going with the flow of their environment.  This can eventually be accomplished through active intentions but what I am saying is, Buddha and Jesus didn’t have to use active intentions and I don’t think they needed too from the very start. What they did is allow their environment, without being in judgement of, to determine their states of consciousness quite automatically.

It’s not just about being one with yourself but one with all that is around you no matter what it is without judgement.  A lot of people have a hard enough time becoming one with themselves, becoming one with our entire environment that we ourselves are experiencing seems utterly daunting and unachievable but it’s not, Jesus and Buddha are good example of this.

Everything that you experience in your life has the capacity to teach you to become aware through passive spirituality like it did for Jesus and Buddha, yes active intentions can and do work but active intentions  have a down side to it, it’s not going with the flow of life and it’s about a desire not a need.  Ask yourself, did Buddha and Jesus live their lives on desires?  You could say they desired to help others but it was more of a need than a desire, the need of the collective.  

I’m not sure to this day why we are not listening to the greatest spiritual teachers of all times, is it primarily to do with the ego,  seen as to desire is of the ego, or is it we relate these great teachers to a religion? It would seem our disdain for religion and our egos are holding us back big time; to be anything like Jesus or Buddha, we need to go beyond our own personal desires as did Jesus and Buddha.

If you dropped your intentions and judgement, you will find you will automatically go into meditative states without any intentions, this is our natural state, believe it or not I feel it’s not natural for us to have intentions, yes it seems natural for our human selves to have intentions but it’s not for our inner selves, our Jesus and Buddha selves.  

To accomplish our desires and even our needs we need intentions or do we???  We have lived under intentions for so long we have no idea how to exist without intentions; I think this is quite amusing.

Do I live without intentions? No, I’m actually going with the flow but I am aware of what our intentions have created and keep on creating. I have actually stopped myself from going into deep meditative states, this was my intention brought on by my present environment which is all about intentions.  My intentions is to not go into deep meditative states which other people have the intention to go into, it’s still intentions either way.  So in all that is what most of us are doing, we are going with the flow, however, this flow is becoming increasingly destructive only because we are now unaware of how to exist without intentions.  We are not living within our environment but have intentions of what our environment should be, this isn’t going with the flow of our natural environment but against it.  


How do we stop being so much about intentions?   This is simple, just be, in every moment you get think of just being, yes this is still expressing passive intentions but it’s not about desire but a need.  Just being within the present moment without intentions and judgement is quite uplifting and a very passive way to become one with all of what is, eventually you will just automatically be within the present moment at any time. Yes humanly you will still be expressive of intentions but within yourself, in your own space, you will have lost your intentions, you would have found out how to exist without intentions. 

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