Change. Fuck.
I dunno if it was the natural vibrancy of youth, or the amplification taking place through my open heart/will/ego center (in Human Design) by which I ran with the whole motivational movement’s pinnacle virtue of passion.
My twenties was definitely characterized by that burning passion expressing itself through multiple avenues - a burning ambition for the pursuit of musical goals, entrepreneurial studies & endeavours, deep dives into esoteric studies, and just an all-around zest for life that was impossible to contain. The good ol’ days.
And yet, here about to turn 39, as I encounter various people speaking on the topic of passion, I find myself wondering: where the fuck did all mine go?
Certainly, I did overdo it. Went too hard with an unsustainable intensity that was bound to wind up in breakdown and burnout. Attempted operating on overdrive, motivated by conditioning that wasn’t suited to my design - the open-heart/ego/will center ‘trying to prove’ itself through the achievement of “success” and “productivity,” with ever-moving goalposts that’d result in a perpetual sense of “never enough” and yet further “persistence” and embodying all the personal development dogma that has been presented as the critical requirements for “overcoming obstacles” to finally “achieve goals,” blah, blah, blah.
Combine the inherent abundance of energy of a Manifesting Generator with my design, the open-heart tendencies towards deep-seated insecurities and amplifying cultural rhetoric as that rampant in the motivational, entrepreneurial, and self-help realms… well, #IYKYK. And perhaps the only way to really know is to live through it.
A crash was inevitable.
Somehow, mine coincided with the demise of my marriage - the point of separation marking the most profound death of this lifetime so far, at which the old ways of doing things simply would no longer work - including all the ways I looked at, thought of, and related to “passion.”
And nearly 19 months later… I’m hard-pressed to identity where any traces of that alleged “passion” may remain.
Granted, we may not be able to realistically expect our energy levels to be the same as getting older. Nor might our lives resemble the ultra-passionate larger-than-life ideal painted by the motivational cultures propagated by self-appointed gurus selling beliefs systems to fund their dreams. Life certainly turns out to be quite a bit different and more nuanced than most have attempted persuading us to think.
And while alot of those cultural paradigms - whether of the self-help / personal development variety or those more tailored to the ‘entrepreneurial’ variety - may appeal to / be targeted more towards the younger among us, there’s these things that happens to all of us… growth. Maturity. Transformation.
So maybe it ought not be some huge unexpected surprise for one’s relationship to the concept of “passion” to evolve with increasing life experience. (Duh.)
Maybe I’m the slow & stupid one to discover some of the obvious. Nonetheless… life.
So where did the “passion” go? After all, isn’t it supposed to be some absolute driving force that inspires, uplifts, and propels a person to all their greatest dreams and goals? I mean surely, such a potent thing said to shine so brightly, unable to be ignored, couldn’t just easily go ‘missing.’
As always, I’d logically turn to the domain of music if seeking this missing “passion.” Yet even there, it’s not the same. Yes, there’s some inner drive & love that can never be suppressed to make (and explore listening to) music which is bound to remain until the day of my physical death (and perhaps beyond, in multidimensional levels). *But it doesn’t feel like the romanticized, all-encompassing, ‘this is all I wanna do and devote the entirety of my life to’ kind of “passion” all these teachers, authors, and “coaches” preach about as though discovering their “passion” is akin to the second-coming of Christ.
And sure, there’s glimpses of excitement - whether some variation of love-driven or merely curiosity - experienced in various explorations of subjects (from astrology & Human Design to crypto and the larger cultural-economic-spiritual-evolutionary trends manifest through world events). But ”passion…?”
Sad as it feels to confess, there’s no one thing that “ignites” me in such ways anymore. Nor even a plethora, as there used to be.
Where, oh where, did the “passion” go?
Rewind 15 years…It was one of my best friends’ 24th birthday party, and a few of his friends brought some cocaine. Fuelled along with some booze & weed, that evening turned out to hold perhaps the most signficant ego-death of my life…
With the mix of substances amplifying what over-inflated ego & superiority complexes I had at the time, there was a point I leaned in hard to the discussion of passion - (practically) making an ass of myself as grilling the people there intensely about what they did with the aggressive question, ”but are you PASSIONATE about it?” Like, overboard - and painting it in/with a context that they were inferior because they didn’t live up to the same level of passion I was fervently neurotic about embodying every aspect of my life with.
Then the tables turned.
I can’t remember the details of what was said, but I was silenced as they masterfully shone light on the dynamic of my petty ego grasping for importance in its comparison based on this point of “passion.” Absolutely brought to my knees in awe, with their flipping the script to reveal - with dignity and respect - how immature & out of line I’d been. And maybe a couple hours later as I laid in bed, listening to them still up echoing back my question, ”but are you passionate” with a perplexing combination of disbelief, mockery, amusement, and compassion - “guardian angels,” mirroring back aspects of my conditioned self that had latched onto this “passion” piece and presented it on the altar which my ego would be sacrificed on that night for the greater good.
*There are moments I question whether I am now living some karmic repercussion of my old self arrogance - that night being a pinnacle and prime reference point of contrast for observing the descent from that height of “passion” to this current bottom of it’s seeming absence.
Could there be some sort of karmic rebalancing that’s taken 15 years to complete a cycle, wherein I had to fall from the grace of arrogance then - thinking my ego had been checked that same night, while it’s actually taken roughly 5000 days for the gravity of maturity to bring me to the pavement and experience the opposite of the “passion” I both evangelically & demonically represented that monumental night drunk and on coke?
Or - circling back into the Human Design realm - is this trajectory of growth but a reflection of the energy I’m heading towards post Chiron-return, into the Cross Of Refinement…?
The refinement of “passion” from the raw, hormone-driven, unadulterated energy ready to charge at life head-on with reckless abandon… to the matured, more grounded & distinguished, diligently-cultivated form which seeks not external validation & loud, extravagent expressions, but rather a calmed, collected, inwardly-satisfied embodiment as evolving with the energy’s progression from scattered & forceful to focused, subtle, and integrated.
That deserves repeating…
The refinement of “passion” from the raw, hormone-driven, unadulterated energy ready to charge at life head-on with reckless abandon… to the matured, more grounded & distinguished, diligently-cultivated form which seeks not external validation & loud, extravagent expressions, but rather a calmed, collected, inwardly-satisfied embodiment as evolving with the energy’s progression from scattered & forceful to focused, subtle, and integrated.
Maybe the passion didn’t disappear. Maybe it just transformed.
Not changing from one point of focus to another, but changing form altogether through the alchemical processes of this life journey.
The passion for music, no longer expressed through a head in the clouds and big talk of grand dreams of success, but channeled down into in the nitty-gritty of time & energy poured into tweaking the fine details of projects, no matter how painstaking slow progress may seem at times.
The passion for learning no longer finding its outlet through reading books or listening to “gurus,” but in observation & contemplation of life unfolding as integrating the past’s logical learnings in tandem with the perception of real-time events in increasing depth as grasping more information through a wider spectrum of senses than what used to be capable back at lower levels of 3D development.
The passion for rebellion, revolution, justice, and overhaul of corrupt politics in process of refinement from having depleted so much energy fighting & resisting what cannot be changed in the external, to greater, wise self-restraint in conservation of energy for where it can make a difference - and perhaps holistically integrated with other passions such as that for learning, observing events in greater detail with greater detachement so as to refine the comprehension of nuances, subtleties, and distinctions in the dualities of events unfolding rather than continuing in the premature expression of passionate reactions to one-sided perceptions I was unequipped to full understand previously.
The passion for life and all its spectrum of phenomena to explore not the over-enthusiastic, uncontained buzz jumping scatteredly from one focal point to another like a horny, rabid dog seeking to impregnate it with “my” (conditioned) ideas of how things should be, but finding a slower pace to saunter through the adventure in less of a rush so as to experience a more intimate relation to each moment as it is - stopping to smell the flowers, listen to the fine details in the symphony of creation with greater appreciation for the smaller, refined variation in the Divine’s expression through infinite forms that’s all too-easily missed when “driven” by the type of passion I used to think was some universal standard characterized by an aggressive masculine required to prove itself with some gladiator-like charge that’d make the most intense motivational “guru” proud.
Maturation. Evolution. Transformation. Refinement. Go figure.
And then, ’passion for writing…’
To be honest, I thought/felt it was dead.
Yet with the way this is streaming out… perhaps not.
Perhaps there’s some forms of ‘passion’ which work like/(as) the emotional waves as described in Human Design - each with their own cycles. Some progressing over longer time periods than the conditioned mind & ego would like, sometimes even taking months or years for their ebbs & troughs to come to completion.
(Not to forget, with an artistic form like writing, the process can’t be looked at in a limited, mechanical way as though the writing itself is the only phase essential to the work - whereas the reality is more along the lines of life as a whole being essential to the process, with years of life experience often being the raw material from which the alchemy begins and proceeds through various internal phases of processing before finally distilled into the final form of words on a page -or blockchain.)
And last but not least, irregardless of what activity or topic a passion may be “for…
Perhaps sometimes ‘passion’ is not ‘lost,’ ‘dead,’ ‘missing,’ or AWOL, but buried.
Buried underneath grief & disappointment. The disorienting noise others’ chattering & overthinking about too many things that really don’t nourish or matter to us personally. The parasitic layers of insecurities & self-doubt built up bit by bit over years through “failures” and hard knocks. Preoccupations with too many serious things in life that weigh the heart down with burdens suffocating the youthful voice that once sought to express its passion wildly & freely.
For this… I wish there was a quick & easy fix/solution as simple and straightforward as all the self-help gurus would lead you believe (in order to sell their latest book or seminar). Yet just as with any gold-mining operation, the extraction process can’t always be done in a single, swift swoop. Perhaps this is the realm of the notorious “shadow work,” or “dark night of the soul” - which tends to last alot longer than a ‘night.’ And/or, perhaps there are times where no amount of “personal development” can amount to the change we’d prefer, as it comes back to the part on cycles.- like the earth buried beneath snow for the winter, no “work” to be other than the exercise of patience to wait for spring to return and a new season’s greenery to begin sprouting once again.
Or some shit. What do I know. I’m merely a student of life’s ever-evolving, infinite, full-spectrum of perspectives.
Blah.
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