Passion

Passion is the very substance of our grandest visions. It is not easy to find a comfortable home in our daily, civilized, disciplined and organized world for passion’s vibrant and intense existence. Our culture can certainly be prudent to control and contain, with watchful and sensible eyes, the spontaneous, sometimes unrefined nature of potent energies such as passion. These are the qualities of our being reflecting the most profound and powerful aspects of inner nature and inherent responses. I believe that passion may be one spiritual expression in life that cannot be defined or bound by words alone.

The essence of passion has levels of existence, experience, and influence that command the most dedicated exploration. Only if one deliberates for a time, not only to the thought and memory of passion, but also the feeling, on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level, would they be able to fully give reverence and honor to the profound and intense force, design, determination, and, finally, the ultimate purpose of passion’s existence and truth. It seems to be all consuming in its’ power and authority.

Passion is alive. It incorporates the full embodiment of life, however you define it. One must be thoroughly participating in the experience of life to embrace the effects of passion. The mutual exchange of life and passion is essential. There is, when successfully expressed, no separation. Passion is just as critical to life as the full presence in life is necessary to the experience passion.

Passion is the wonder and unfoldment occurring through life. If allowed, passion births more passion in a continuous cycle. Passion reveals itself as the deepest, highest, greatest, and fullest of life's energy, filling, then expanding and encompassing all. So immense is passion’s effect that any ‘specifics’ are difficult to define, even unnecessary.

This is about passion as the deepest of spiritual, physical and emotional experiences. To be centered totally within and engulfed by passion is to have your senses purged with fire, with life-force energy. Passion presents a delectable meal that we can savor, tasting every level of sweetness, spice, tartness and saltiness - examining the texture with every grain and fiber, relishing the coolness or warmth upon the tongue. As we feast on passion, we discover our senses exploding in our body, mind, and spirit, just as the senses are caressed with every morsel of food we choose, prepare, and enjoy.

This passion yearns to feel as alive as it can feel. It does, in some of you, bring the very confirmation, the absolute knowing, that you are truly alive. Passion provides a door that, when opened, will expose how far this level of being alive can take you. This door is not easily opened by the timid. It is a door that will unlock unknown parts of your being that, once revealed, will remain awake, initiating desire for self-expression just beyond the outlines of your daily activities. Its goal is to pursue the fulfillment of its’ own destiny. It will remain in this pursuit once the ‘switch’ has been turned on. It is a journey beyond the 5 senses. It is to venture into a dimension that is free of the familiar, daring comfort zones to shed their layers of protection. A place illusive to our conscious minds alone. A place that cannot be ‘thought’ or taught. It can only be embraced and channeled, charged with our own individual character and essence.

Passion is the praise and dedication of the spirit. Passion discloses the depth into which we exist and are submerged in the life experience. Passion is ignited by and moved through what has the deepest heart and meaning to an individual. Passion stimulates the truth, discloses our wisdom, deepens our insight, expands our vision and can, literally create a force that changes, transforms, heals, activates, manifests, and brings to light, what cannot and will not exist in the shadows.

Passion is the force that brought the timeless, everlasting shifts and cycles of evolution and advancement throughout history. Passion bears and projects energy that has the power to gather the multitudes and brings forth the
uprising of voices. Passion gives birth to, and energizes the calling of the people. It is the force that breaks down the walls of separation and oppression. Within passion there is no fear, it exists without doubt, and develops opportunity where there has been condemnation. Within passion there rests certainty and clarity, it builds character and integrity and honors the fullness, strength and courage of our spirit.

When I was very young and through my youth my mother instilled in me the value, the very necessity of passion to one's living. To best describe her sense of passion, she identified herself and her view of the possibilities in the world through the eyes of Don Quixote in the story “Man of La Mancha”. He was a character who, without question, saw beauty instead of ugliness, chose to dream what were considered ‘impossible’ dreams and reach destinies that others declared unreachable. He did not see life as earthbound but rather the spirit as limitless. He saw light within all shadows. His vision that others saw as an illusion, even a delusion, became his cause, his very standard by which he chose to live and how he chose to love. Although but a story, my mother fully embraced and bonded personally with this character and believed in its’ power. For her, this sometimes brought sorrow from the challenges she faced attempting to bring it into the structured society in which she lived. One with established guidelines and generally accepted, culturally learned limitations. But, by her embracing this concept, she changed my view of life permanently. She showed me that door through which passion existed and could be fulfilled and, through witnessing her dedication to this and experiencing her love for the passionate spirit, this door has remained forever open in my own life.

Passion alters individual and collective thinking and provides the love to generate prayers that heal. Passion consummates group support in aid of the masses as well as the individual, hearing their cause and needs. Passion stands to amend unjust and discriminating laws and fulfills the cries for justice. Passion gives birth to creative magnificence….Let us take into consideration, as an example of this, the building of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and the Sistine chapel in Rome. Here there are examples of both individual and collective passion, expressed. Passion stirs scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs. Passion embodies the fortitude to excel beyond one’s own physical limitations. Imagine the peak of Mt. Whitney as an adventurous climber’s quest, the Olympic hopefuls and the sailing across vast oceans in search of great lands. Passion unveils the heavens for astronomers and astronauts, expanding possible realities. The breath of passion channels movement of truth, hope, dreams, change, creative expression, and exploration and discovery. These all are the children born to passion.

Passion from the heart and spirit transforms the mind and body. Passion’s destiny is to continue to be reborn in the goal of self-fulfillment. Passion is the director of imagination, the inventor of growth and technology, the stimulator of our own heart’s awakening. Passion drives the force of mystery, magic, wonderment, desire, courage and compassion, tolerance and truth.

We have to be passionate about something to bring it forth beyond mere flickers of thought and possibility. Passion gives the strength, conviction and tenacity one needs to go further into the unknown. It encourages the willingness to be moved, and to trust that movement. Passion faces and stands up to the doubts, fears, and discomfort of others and will continue to forge ahead. Passion sees no darkness or division. Passion moves us beyond our present and supports our constant evolution of thought and purpose. Passion bears witness to the impossible and re-establishes new boundaries of the possible. Don Quixote exemplified passion as the master of our dreams, our visions. Passion transforms illusions into realities. Passion manifests all things driven by the spirit and by the deepest love of life.

Passion awakens the spiritual dance!

Please take a moment to close your eyes and call upon your imagination to form a vision that would fully represent the picture, power and magnificence of what absolute passion means to you. What vision would be most representative of a passionate moment? What past experience, for you, would so completely define the feeling of passion that just viewing it in your mind would stimulate the zest and delight of it’s essence? What would represent most completely the expanse of experience and depth of the feelings of passion? Continue to form in your mind’s eye what would inevitably take place as a result of passion’s induction into the human spirit. We can then begin to understand.

There are some challenges, however, to bringing passion within, embracing, and making it an integral part of life. Passion takes us on a journey that pushes us through levels of experience, emotions and senses that remain untamed. As ‘responsible’ adults, we are encouraged to settle into our lives, create a sense of order, security, safety, and of appropriateness -
we must devote important attention to taming this ‘wild’ unstructured, responsive, “excessive” aspect of our character. How else can we successfully build our sturdy, productive, responsible, safe, and structured lives? Our culture’s definition of self-discipline, in itself, is in conflict with, the contradiction to passion. Or so we are taught to think. Rather than encouraging the most responsible and honorable expressions of passion, we encourage those characteristics that fulfill the standards of our society,
institutions, family, and community. Unbridled energy, emotion, and spirit will not be contained within these codes or principles. Where does passion fit into productivity, responsibility and appropriateness?

During counseling sessions clients have asked, in desperation, to find their ‘passion’. They feel confined within such a small and limiting container and fear if they let out what is stirring within, they will undoubtedly create chaos and destruction. They are struggling to give themselves permission to express something they don’t even recognize as passion, and they certainly do not perceive it as a safe and positive part of themselves and their personal expression. They just know that the yearning is ceaseless. It is a joyful place for me to help them identify this ‘simmering’ energy. When they come to understand the true nature of what is striving to come forth, that it is a natural and important part of their spiritual, mental, and emotional creation - that, in reality, passion will be the support and confirmation of that very spirit, mind and heart, then they begin to see that to totally fulfill their individual potential and unique gifts within their lives, they will need to welcome the energy of passion, allow it to surface and purge into the veins of their life’s expression. They begin to understand that what they are trying to control, is actually the very thing that will revive their sense of wholeness, relieve their sense of limitation and disconnection, and direct them to the completion of the full awareness and expressive creation of their being.

When we envision passions’ energy, it looks quite primitive, even primal. It has been known as that part of us that ‘gets away’ - frees itself from the confines of our control. It is commonly thought of as something we need to conquer and gain restraint over. If left ‘unleashed’, we might behave wildly, overtly sensual, expose deep intimacy, or stimulate movement of our body without exercising adequate discipline. It is only our conditioning that has activated and continues to perpetuate these fear-based myths. A child naturally, instinctively moves and breathes, responds and thinks from passion. Very young spirits are so close to their origin, having just newly sprung from their indigenous seed. It is natural for them - an instinctive flow, they think nothing about it. It is an automatic extension of their being to be fully engulfed in every moment, every vision, every thought, and every creation of life. They remember, as we need to remember how natural and necessary the expression of passion is to our existence and the fulfillment of the experience of life, heart, and the spirit. The child pays constant tribute to passion as the purest celebration of the ecstasy for life, the heart and the spirit.

One wondrous aspect of passion is romance, intimacy, human bonding in closeness. It is the warmth of love and fantasy. It is ‘amour’. The experience of this type of passion surging through our being has the absolute power to heal the tired, weary heart. It can return a partnership to the first sparks of love, of attraction. This passion is activated by the ‘romantic’ experience. The one that is filled with adventure, excitement, music, aromas, textures and colors. Ah…..the wonder! The electricity! The exhilaration! The rapture induced simply by the melding of the two hearts into one, like an explosion!

Remember when your romantic passion awakened through love’s embrace? The beating of the heart how time seemed altered, the mind was full of the other and all life looked and felt different? This characterizes passion’s onset, streaming in and engulfing our hearts and our every thought. It fuses into our bodies, and it will, if we let it, surprise us, excite us, thrill us, and tantalize us.

Some of our more intimate, romantic, even lustful feelings that flutter persistently in our beings can be unnerving and in the midst of 'proper' human feelings and expression, especially when we imagine actually bringing to fruition a passionate desire. Our culture is more repressed in sensuality, sexuality, and intimacy than many other cultures, particularly the European cultures. How can we be close, intimate, sexual, and sensual if we are not comfortable with our bodies, physical movement, touching, caressing, or exchanging intimate energies without fear or shame or discomfort?

It is time to reclaim the passion in our lives and within our relationships. It is time to personify all of its’ fullness, greatness, depth, grandeur, splendor, and dazzle. Relationships have the opportunity to call passion back to reside in the heart once again, remaining there to touch, to embrace, to swell from that hidden cave of safety and caution. Not only our partnerships with others, but our partnership with life itself is ready to be transformed and fully revealed for all of the possibilities within. It is time for us to experience, as in the time of inception of relationship’s first romantic sputter, the spark of wonderful union with another. The time that our hearts joyfully, and most willingly aroused passion from its’ womb.

Many people feel a heavy despair from the loss of their hearts’ passion. Their passion for their partner, their jobs, their interests, their life. They know they once felt this celebration of the spirit with the depth and intensity and totality that would describe passion’s experience. There can be a feeling of emptiness, a void, without the experience of passion in ones’ life and within relationship. The essence of it brings the energy to nourish, rejuvenate, revitalize, refresh and restore. We can all remember times when we have witnessed older couples, sometimes way into their senior years, spending, what you knew easily, from the waves of passion flowing from them, very intimate and special times together. They may have been walking along the shores of a beach hand in hand, or sitting across from each other in a restaurant, or enjoying themselves side by side on a park bench, just watching the world around them, together. You could feel their warmth and devotion, their passion. It was abundant to the point of illuminating and encircling them. Although they were somewhat older, you noticed, with curiosity and amazement, the youthful energy radiating from them. They were like ‘teenagers’ and you looked upon them with hopefulness that you too, someday, would be able to be filled with such generous joy and warmth with another. This is the power of passion….ageless, timeless, without fixed dimensions, fluid and fresh, no matter what the chronological age. Passion engages us in regeneration of the spirit and brings us back to original innocence.

Passion becomes the dance of life, of love, of spirit. There will be no area of our being left concealed. How we choose to befriend these discoveries is left to us. However, since the relationship we choose to engage with passion generates never ceasing energy, our first movements, no matter what they impart, will naturally, automatically feed and build into the next. Imagine, in your mind, the ocean's waves arriving onto the shore. You can see each generous wave move into the last, in one continuous ebb and flow delivered powerfully, yet lovingly onto the sand. A Dance! This is what passion spurs and this is the power of passion’s momentum. This is the tireless, potent, and driving force of the passionate experience.

We can, then, fully appreciate passion as the instrument through which we come full circle as human expressions by integrating the deepest, fullest and grandest totality of our essence and expression, perfectly uniting, even transforming our earthly selves into purely magnificent Universal Beings of life.