DemonKia
Posts: 5521
Joined: 10/13/2007
From: Chico, Nor-Cali
Status: offline
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*happy, content sigh*
What a lovely topic to bring up. Thank you, pinnipedster . . .. . .
& what a wonderful diversity of responses . . .... .
& a rather disjointed, & of course lengthy, posting from me . .... .
& all of which contrasts in a beautiful way, for me, with the "Belief is . .. . " thread in Politics & Religion . . . . .
One of the aspects I think I'm hearing in your OP is what I characterize as the dichotomy between compartmentilization & connectedness . ... . . I tend to see the universe in terms of unity & wholeness, the 'all is one' thing, & I experience life as having a surprisingly high (lol, to me) level of 'connectedness' . . . . . & my experience is that some people are more comfortable with a worldview in which aspects of life & oneself are more discreetly segmented & separate . ....
I'm a comparatively 'spiritual' person, in my own weird way, & I see myself as treading my own oddly spiritual path . . ... .. & have experienced the world in a relatively strongly spiritual way going back into the distant depths of my early um-hood . . ... . & I'm otherwise introspective . . . . . & I experience BDSM as having a significant component of self-discovery, at a minimum . . . .. .
I had what, in retrospect, can be well described as 'animist feelings' as a young child alongside a strong interest in 'factual data' (history, science, & fiction with a strong grounding in fact; I think of it as a lifelong preference for 'nutrient dense reading' . . . . .), & in adolescence I became a hard atheist materialist. I was raised in an agnostic / atheistic home; in her later years my mother referred to herself quite gleefully as a 'recovering fucktamentalist', lol . .. . .
& her mother is a fundie sorta-Baptist-y proselytizing Christian who did her darnedest to convert me in my childhood . . . . . & those Bible stories, as censored & condensed & prettified as they were for children, still converted me away from wanting anything to do with Christianity. No offense, but I've no interest in participating in a god-the-bully, god-the-saboteur-&-hater; it was specifically the story of Joseph & his many colored coat that repelled me, I remember quite clearly . . .. ..
So, as I said, in my adolescence I continued adoring fact-based material, especially science & history, & identified increasingly strongly with hard-atheism. My mother was exploring all kinds of Eastern philosophies & belief systems & other new-age-y ways of knowing, & I was finding strong resonance between Buddhism & science. I was looking for some kind of formal moral base, a belief system that could form a ground under my feet, & the more I looked to Buddhism the more it worked for me. At 18 I started to self-identify as buddhist, with the lower case, to me, indicating my non-dogmatic, unorthodox & non-doctrinaire approach.
I started out with one basic principle, & got more elaborate (still pretty minimalist) over time: Job 1 is to alleviate suffering, starting with self & working outward from there. & most of what I've added to that is the 3 marks of existence: all is change, all is unsatisfactory, & ego ceases at death . . . . . . . That & ahimsa (avoidance of harm) & a general injunction to educate self . . . . .
I've added some taoist interest in the last decade-ish . . . . . . These days I identify as a buddhist-taoist-hard-materialist-atheist-secular-humanist, with streaks of some weird ass animism. If there is deity, it is all of everything, the sum greater than the magnificent parts, existing on a scale that we ephemerals may have no ability to comprehend . . . . . . .
At some point in the last few years I found this definition of 'God' -- belief in hope beyond reason. I've liked that quite a bit . .. .. . I don't believe in 'God', but I do believe in 'the universe' & in 'hope beyond reason', both, so I use 'the universe' where other people use the concept of 'God', & now I've thrown 'hope beyond reason' into the synonym pot . .. . . . Similarly I've seen the idea of using G.ood-O.rderly-D.irection as a mind-trick switch for 'God', to diffuse the either/or conflict between atheists/nontheists & believers, & viewing both 'good-orderly-direction' & 'god' as ideals, to assist in communication between diverse viewpoints . . . . . A building-bridges kinda technique . . . . .
My 'BDSM nature' emerged for me in what has felt like a very 'organic' process, naturally, effortlessly, the result of the path unfolding under my feet shaped by my following my wants within my own moral / ethical frame, & thus that process has felt remarkably 'taoistic' . ... . . & my kinky self is part & parcel of all my other selves -- me-the-artist, me-the-writer, me-the-mom, me-the-citizen-of-the-world, me-the-environmentalist, me-the-would-be-pornography-tycoon, me-the-intellectual, me-the-smart-ass, me-the-playful, me-the-spiritual-being . . . . . .. Each feeds into the other . . .. . & none gets in the way of having fun . .... Which also feeds back into my experience of myself & the world as having all kinds of interconnection, of identifying strongly with fluidity . . .. . .
&, lol, I don't care how the people around me vote, I just care that they do vote . . . . . . lol . . .. I'm kinda annoying that way . .... I keep voter registration forms on hand, & my loved ones know I'll pester them regularly about registering, changing their registrations when they move, reminding them of upcoming elections .. .... . One of the special things my ex & I shared was going on 'voting dates', lol ..... . .
< Message edited by DemonKia -- 6/6/2009 5:31:04 PM >
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Snarko ergo sum.
The Verbossinator
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RE: BDSM: fun, or philosophy? - 
Mmmm... give me mine fermented out of a complex blend of Syrah grapes or, maybe, a nice Grenache, or even fermented from some beautiful local honey to make a sweet, rich mead... depending on the weather, and accented with a gorgeous raw-goat-milk cheddar or rich, tangy hand-made gouda, and macadamia-meal crackers! 
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When I'm in the middle of *doing* it though, isn't the time for semantic debate, usually! Sometimes, it's very fun, sometimes I have mixed feelings, it depends on what we're doing.
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