What is Your Passion? (Part 1)

The things you are passionate about are not random, they are your calling. – Fabienne Frederickson
 

I work a lot with people in transition: loss of job, of marriage, of relationship, getting pregnant and making a family, even managing a tremendous amount of goodness without sabotage.

 
All of them have hit a place in their life where something is not clear, they know there is a calling but they don’t know what. They want to move ahead, but they don’t know the next step. And there is a general feeling of unease, even pain in the form of illness, radiculopathy (nerve compression) and disease. Some are very depressed, some hyper and unable to be still, masking fear behind activity.
 

It is hard to know why passion is so fearful for most of us.

 
It just is. We can look at it as a feeling state, identify it as sexuality and/or call it a drive to encompass wholeheartedly a person, place or thing. In balance, it can bring us forward to live in our fullest heart expression and vitality. Out of balance, it can make us obsessive and paranoid. Not listened to, it can make us downright physically ill.
 
Most often when working with people who are unclear about the next step, they will write down passion as a feeling state, and how they feel passionate about a person, including if they have them, children. But here’s the thing: people change, children grow, and our emotions are always under flux. When we direct what we want in life toward something outside, toward keeping or acquiring something or someone, so that we can have a feeling state that feels pleasant, we are doomed for suffering. True passion in balanced and integrated form is the commitment to something inside, a knowing and following that leads us into a journey of the unknown.
 
Being clear about actions and activities that enliven, challenge you and give you pleasure can bring about feeling states both pleasant and unpleasant. Yet with clarity, you can move forward on a continuous stream that can ultimately lead you toward where you want to be, including a happy feeling state, one of the stranger paradoxes of life.
 
In the next blog post, I will include an exercise on finding and recognizing your passions.
 
Thank you Jess Frey and Lauren Ober for the inspiration.