Is passion good or bad?

[mojomojo]

Many years ago I read "The Bhagavad Gita," I dont think it made much sense to me then and to a large extent not much has changed now.
I have always thought to be passionate about something was a good thing, my biggest passion in life was motorcycles, I lived, breathed and loved the things, not content with just riding, I had to know how they worked as well. What effort and love I poured into something which had the potential to cause me great harm.
But as with everything spiritual, it seems a complete reversal of this reality.
In the Gita it states that faith comes in three kinds, pure, passionate and dark, arising out of a persons own nature.
It then states, the pure sacrifice to the Gods, the passionate to spirits and demons, the others, men of darkness, sacrifice to disembodied spirits and the brood of maligant fiends.
This seems to give rise to the fact, one needs to be pure of heart, before setting a foot on the spiritual path, and that passion arises from pure ego.

[gruntal]

Watching a documentary on Walt Disney I was intrigued to find in the early 1950's Walt was becoming obsessed with his back yard model railroad. What was really odd is that the Disney studio had in-house facilities on the movie lot including a machine shop. So the train could have just been made by order by Walt's own employees. But that wasn't the case. Parts were made but Walt actually built or assembled the cars and locomotive himself. Everything was more or less authentic and based on actual railroad prototypes. Had the King of Fantasy thrown in the towel and embraced reality?

When it was finished people came to ride. Even the controversial Salvador Dali observed Disney was actually creating the ultimate fantasy: REALTY ! So who is to say rather dreams are an escape or an attempt to be. If so either way for what reason? The best answer I have is that "old souls" have less physical ambition and tend to seemingly do little but wait out a few more life times before they ascend to Mastership. That probably is mistaken for lack of passion.

My early passion was streetcars and trolley cars ( or what you might call trams ). I operated a Los Angles Railway car before I ever got behind the wheel of an gas automobile. At first nobody understood what I was up to. It was something I seemed to be born with. Even now I live only a mile from a Railway Museum and the interest never died. Very strange. Especially living in the space age. Nobody in my family influenced me to be like that.

Before I got so disabled I was one of the poor wretched souls who went out to the museum and worked there for free. Helping maintain the diesel locomotives. It was my passion and I loved it ! Also my fellow volunteers were just as crazy as I was. At some level it was that passion that built and kept the museum going since the beginning in 1956.

[aceofcups]

Good post Robert... yes i've read the Bhagavad-Gita, and the idea that our passionate attachments and desires are the things that can get us karmically attached to our ego made sense to me.  It is not that we don't do anything -- but more learning to do it as the witness ( if we can, takes work to make it so).   The goal is to do things less from our passionate ego, more from a deeper sense of a more universal sense of Love.   Learning to awaken a Passion-less passion if that makes any sense.  This universal passion is aligning with Divine Will.

just my two cents.


Every life experience, everything we notice in the universe is but a reflection of our attachments. That is just the way it works.
-- Ram Das

[syedali2020]

Aug 17, 2018 16:32:24 GMT gruntal said:

Watching a documentary on Walt Disney I was intrigued to find in the early 1950's Walt was becoming obsessed with his back yard model railroad. What was really odd is that the Disney studio had in-house facilities on the movie lot including a machine shop. So the train could have just been made by order by Walt's own employees. But that wasn't the case. Parts were made but Walt actually built or assembled the cars and locomotive himself. Everything was more or less authentic and based on actual railroad prototypes. Had the King of Fantasy thrown in the towel and embraced reality?

When it was finished people came to ride. Even the controversial Salvador Dali observed Disney was actually creating the ultimate fantasy: REALTY ! So who is to say rather dreams are an escape or an attempt to be. If so either way for what reason? The best answer I have is that "old souls" have less physical ambition and tend to seemingly do little but wait out a few more life times before they ascend to Mastership. That probably is mistaken for lack of passion.

My early passion was streetcars and trolley cars ( or what you might call trams ). I operated a Los Angles Railway car before I ever got behind the wheel of an gas automobile. At first nobody understood what I was up to. It was something I seemed to be born with. Even now I live only a mile from a Railway Museum and the interest never died. Very strange. Especially living in the space age. Nobody in my family influenced me to be like that.

Before I got so disabled I was one of the poor wretched souls who went out to the museum and worked there for free. Helping maintain the diesel locomotives. It was my passion and I loved it ! Also my fellow volunteers were just as crazy as I was. At some level it was that passion that built and kept the museum going since the beginning in 1956.

Absolutely. Passion comes through actions not words. Many people regard passion to be speaking fluently or endlessly talking about anything and everything. Passion comes through actions which do not involve Actions such as intent to intoxicate yourself. Many people think they’re really outgoing by going to intoxicate themselves, ILL intentions or fornicate however actions without these factors is the actual passion. Passion towards god will always lead to success.....

[syedali2020]

Sorry I meant to reply to the first post but all good 👍