Theos-Talk Archives (September 1994 Message tl00032)

aki wrote about sports being harmful.

Hi, my name is Kent Livingston.  I haven't posted to this list
before.  K.  Paul Johnson introduced me to it a month or so ago
and I enjoy the dialogues.  I'm not a Theosophists but of course
their are many aspects of Theosophy that I feel aligned with.  I
have been working with the spiritual exercises model in Eckankar
for a little more than twenty years.  (hope this doesn't
disqualify me from participating...you're certainly welcome in
alt.religion.eckankar or the various Eckankar lists)

I was motivated to post because of aki's sports post.  There are
a lot of good points in it.  I found myself feeling and thinking
that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

I would not have come to Earth if my purpose, as a spiritual
being, was to be in a meditative or inwardly directed state all
the time.  Granted there are lots of reasons to come here ;-).
And lots of ways to be here.

There are lots of points aki makes about the absurdity of sports
that I agree with, particularly the way it often seems to take up
half the news broadcasts.  However I think there is something in
the absurdity of it that is persistent through the ages.
Something about "homo ludens" I think that is the term? That
playfulness has turned into big business or become distorted in
some urban.ritualistic.little league <g> is just extreme
behavior.

In my experience I test myself in many ways.  Sometimes
consciously and often not.  I watch kids do this too.  As a
spiritual being I've tested myself in many lifetimes and the
process continues in the present one.  Is the end goal to be
totally turned within and not to engage in "testing behavior" or
is it something else? Perhaps to keep deepening my realization of
the diverse wonders of the manifested as well as the unmanifested
universes.

I should add here that I do not play any sports now.
Participated as a kid and teenager a little.  And only rarely
would you find me watching sports live or on television.  However
I think they have a positive place in our lives.

|
|     kent@gatezone.com
|      Kent Livingston