22) How to Be Passionate? - Meditate Now
Video Version - Guided Meditation
Audio Version - Guided Meditation
Written Transcript of the guided meditation
Welcome to the Meditate Now podcast.
Excited to be here with you today.
We're going to take a moment to come back to what's real and true and recognize and connect with the gift contained therein.
The title of this episode is “How to Be Passionate.”
This is curious for me. Whenever I say how to do something, it's never really about the 'how', but it's an invitation for those who ask that question — "How do I be passionate to explore maybe a more direct access to passion?" What do I mean when I say it's not about 'how'?
Well, what I mean is, at least in the things that I point to, it's more about the what and the why. Like, what is passion, really?
The Passion is Already There
The more you understand what it is, beyond all of our hopeful expectations, we start to recognize that the passion is already there. We're just not allowing it to flow. We've repressed it, we've pushed it away.
We're trying to use it for a purpose that is not intended in its authenticity.
So understanding these things, as with all things, when you bring a deep understanding, there's wellness that emerges, and everything kind of comes back into harmony.
So what can I say briefly about passion in our lives before we dive into meditation?
Well, what I would invite you to recognize is that fundamentally, life itself is passionate.
To be Alive Requires Passion
Where passion is, this drive of aliveness, this enthusiasm for aliveness, this creativity of aliveness. It's almost like the energy that animates all that is. Can you see how life is passionate?
To be alive requires passion.
Now, notably, in our human experience, there is the tendency to not extend to ourselves a permission to truly be alive, which is also to say to not allow ourselves to be ourselves, the authenticity of our aliveness. In fact, we spend a lot of our time striving to be something that is not alive, that is imaginary, which is to say striving to be what we think other people want us to be.
We think that if we can somehow figure that out, if we can somehow get where we think we're supposed to get, then we'll find the passion that we're looking for.
So I want to point us back to the beginning of a passion and connect with the authenticity of your aliveness and recognize that there is passion there.
There is deep gratitude for being alive. From that deep place of gratitude, we can open up to see what aliveness is within us that is open to being animated by the wholeness of life.
So let's see where this meditation goes.
Are you ready? Let's dive in.
Start of Guided Meditation
Recognize and Feel the Aliveness of this Moment
Okay, here we are.
Let's just invite ourselves to the present moment.
Take a big, deep breath, and as you exhale, just drop deeper into right now.
As always, you can do this with your eyes closed, do it with your eyes open, do it while you're on a walk, doesn't matter. Just be here with me.
We're just going to take a minute or two to allow ourselves to breathe effortlessly.
Notice as you put your attention on the breath, you naturally become more present, more here and now.
Might be fun to make breathing effortlessly important.
Acknowledge its gift, honor it.
Allow it to be what it is.
I invite you to recognize and feel the aliveness of this moment.
For me, I can hear cars in the distance driving by.
I can hear birds singing outside.
I can feel a very subtle vibration all throughout my body, doing what it does. Being alive.
If passion feels like it might be distant or absent, let's recognize that that's okay right now.
If that's the way it is, then we can see it as an opening that simply invites passion to be seen.
So we don't need to reject that. We don't need to push it away. We don't need to use it as more evidence that there's something wrong with us.
We can see it as a deep sincerity that is open to experiencing more passion.
Breathe into that openness for a second.
You Don’t Get to Choose; You Get to Discover
Our passion is that it points towards something sincere, something authentic.
It points to real and heartfelt interest.
Do you notice this? That in moments where passion might be showing, you don't get to decide what you're passionate about.
You don't get to choose.
What you get to do is to discover.
So let's create a space of openness that's not trying to decide what it should or shouldn't be, but an openness that's willing to discover to see something new.
So often, in our innocent confusion, we separate ourselves from our genuine interests.
We spend our time trying to be interested in the things that other people want us to be interested in.
We spend our time trying to be interested in things that we think will get us somewhere in the future.
But yet it's not sincere. It's not real. It's not alive.
Gratitude is the Fuel of Passion
The invitation is to connect with the heart of what you are and ask yourself, "What are you genuinely interested in?"
Beyond any fear that says it should or shouldn't be, what speaks to the uniqueness of you?
If this world was a landscape for your heart to shine, in what ways would you love to play?
If you could explore any subject or topic, what is your most sincere interest?
What is real?
What is alive?
What you will also find is that passion has a very difficult time being passion if gratitude is absent.
In so many ways, we can say that gratitude is the fuel of passion.
Can you discover profound gratitude for simply being alive?
The opportunity to experience being you?
To explore and discover what exists on the inside and begs to be shared with the world?
Passion is the Full Permission to be You
Passion isn't about getting somewhere.
It's not taking you to a destination.
Passion is the full permission to be you.
If you recognize in your experience that there seems to be a lot of restriction, a lot of fear that doesn't allow you to be you.
I invite you to get honest about how that's going. A life spent not allowing yourself to be alive.
In the denial of our own aliveness, we simply find ourselves blaming the world, blaming others.
Saying, "If only this, if only that."
But, my friend, the permission to be alive isn't going to come from the world.
It's not going to be given by somebody else.
You're going to have to come to a place of deeply honoring your human.
Deeply honoring the gift of life.
In that sacred honoring, dive into your heart's deepest resonance.
Come home to you.
Find a genuine enthusiasm for being alive.
Do what you're here to do.
If you still feel like you don't know, that's okay. Rest in that deep space of not knowing. Again, let it be an open invitation to find out.
In that openness, you can release all the nonsense, all the silly expectations.
And give yourself back to yourself.
It'll show itself. The more you come home, the more you'll see, the more you'll know.
See Passion Everywhere
I invite you to see passion everywhere.
See it in the bird that flies across the sky.
See it in the sparkle of the stars in the night.
See it in the flowers that bloom this spring.
See it in the bumblebee that bounces around from flower to flower.
It's here. It's everywhere. And if it's everywhere, it's definitely in you.
We just need to make space for it to be seen.
Thanks for meditating with me today.
Until next time, cheers to the beauty that you already are.
