"Forget the Rules and Play By your Heart"

It is not passion that abandons us. It is we who abandon passion, mostly in the name of “reason”. But in reality, it is not truly reason, but is more like our fear of being taken by passion into the depth of life, which is ironically that very place we dream we could always live from. Perhaps we fear losing it once again, and going through the pain of our separation from it. Perhaps we fear being led astray by it, into the slippery slope of recklessness and foolhardiness. But are these fears truly justified? First it may be necessary to define what we are taking about when we say “Passion”. I believe the correct definition is: any emotion that is intensely felt, fully embodied, and has the power to effortlessly drive our actions. It is that emotion or group of emotions that make us feel alive in the moment. It is the opposite of “numbness”, numbness being that state of borderline apathy that many of us sometimes fall into. Our culture, western culture that is, has placed an immense value on intellectualism, and often looks down upon the emotional aspect of our humanness. We simply are not a touchy-feely culture… In fact, the mostly derogatory connotation of “touchy-feely” evidences our aversion to emotional openness and fearless display of affection. Don’t get me wrong, I love our culture too, but let’s call a Spade a Spade. Our culture just isn’t a Heart-centered one, at least relatively. But because most of us have kept our emotions well alive within us, we crave that closeness that is only human, all while we shield ourselves from it. Our environment gives us little encouragement for the expression of these beautiful feelings in our public interactions. This calls for the radical and courageous, yet light-hearted defiance of the norm which the status quo has given into, and thus perpetuates. I’m not saying we should fake it and/or willfully make a mission out of displaying affection in public, for instance. But I also think that we should take the time to give into those almost sacred moments of loving affection and let our actions towards each other fully reflect it, regardless of where we are standing. I believe it is more a question of allowing our emotions to flow through us and guide our actions, than any kind of deliberation based a philosophy or ideology. Intuition, which can be understood in this context as a kind of knowledge that has its source in our emotions, is mostly what I am talking about here. So please don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that we should act solely based upon our emotions, that would be folly. But acting without taking into account emotions is also folly, in fact in its extreme, it is borderline psychotic! We may believe we are being objective, but our so called objectivism is biased by the fact that they do not incorporate the existence of our natural emotions and their importance, thus relevance in our affairs. Often enough, emotions are either viewed as a source of pleasure to be milked like a cow, or just a nuisance to us in the way of living our perfectly planned life, as suppose to the energy in motion that it truly is. E-motions are really at the heart of what we create, and they inform our lives whether we like to admit it or not. Ignoring our emotions only leads us to live in two ways. Either we become completely numb, unresponsive, and thus dead, or we become deeply fearful, overly reactive, in a continual state of fight or flight, and thus lost in anxiety. Most experience these states of being to varying degrees at different frequencies. But once our innermost nature with its longing to feel alive has had it, we always rise out of it, to face whatever it takes to see that juice of life flow within us again. We all benefit from getting ever more acquainted with the emotional side of our humanness and it's connection to our very soul. The more familiar we are with it, the better we become at understanding the veritable role it plays in our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. It helps us gain an increasingly truer perspective of the purpose of our "good" and "bad" feelings. I believe that today many people in our culture are rising from their apathy, breaking away from their fear and facing life head on. Fully embodying and working through any emotion that emerges within them, they are ready to harness the power of feeling. Because the essence of life in lived through our emotions, and they inform our outer reality by serving as a guidance system to what is good for our soul, which allows us to create a path for ourselves in this world, a path that allows for the most freedom and joy to fill our experience. If allowed, the powerful force that passion is can “break our mold” and allow us to melt our conditioning and egoic self-construction’s and conditionings into the free-flowing essence of who we really are. Gives another meaning to “Castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually” ;-] As I was writing this, I once again opened a mini chocolate dove bar; in the foil wrapping was a message that “by chance” fit right into the topic of this post. It said “Forget the rules, and play by the heart”. It made me think… it is when we play by the heart that we are flowing along the rivers within us, and they will lead us to the living sea of joy… eventually. =]