I Found a Path? Maybe.

Like many people who blog, I will occasionally get an idea for a post from a message board I visit. Rarely however do I post the message in question and today's post will be no exception. In this case, it's not what the thread was about that was important, but me looking into why I was doing what I was doing.

I have not been able to discuss anything regarding religion with passion for a while. Anything I said was merely a dispassionate exchange of ideas from an intellectual standpoint.

Yet recently when I found someone stating something about Taoism I disagreed with (and their statement was a misinterpretation of the philosophy) I found myself vehemently defending it.

Now, I've read the Tao Te Ching many times in various formats, mostly online. It doesn't take a long time to read it, but I didn't think I'd developed any deep connection to it. Perhaps I should have known better since when I first read the book I knew I'd found something I'd been looking for ever since I saw Star Wars for the first time as a kid. I always thought there should be something like the Force. What I wouldn't know until years later was that the Force and a lot of the Jedi stuff were based on real world philosophies. (I suppose that's why we have people trying to claim they're Jedi now. They simply don't want to look up the elements George Lucas used in making the movies.)

But I didn't realize I was passionate about it until I started arguing. Now, the argument details aren't that important. Basically, it was the typical type of argument that goes on on Internet message boards. I got accused of doing things I wasn't doing and then engaged in some armchair psychology of why my opponent felt the way he did. This is in fact a little hypocritical of me as I do in fact hate people who engage in armchair psychology on the Internet, at least where it relates to others.

Does this mean I've found the Way? I don't think so, but it does mean even though I hadn't realized I had incorporated a philosophy into my belief system and realize I should in fact study it deeper. I guess a few trips to the library and Amazon.com are in order.