Saturday, November 17th, 2007
It’s real. The slate-gray skies are regulars again outside my window, waiting for the same god-sent coffee I am right now, to lift their spirits. And the last wind storm shook the final tenacious leaves from the trees, and they are as bare as some of us feel walking through an ashen landscape. All of this may be true, and yet all I can think about is passion. The orange glow of a flame inviting the color out of everything around it, the strange and welcome rush of heat from hot water running over skin. The liquid of ink becoming one with the paper.
Magdalen has called it a “passionate universe” and I absolutely agree. But lately I have been thinking much more about the passionate dimension. The dimension of passion is always there. It’s close kin inspiration, vitality and joy are often found hanging about nearby. We must simply find the hidden doorways at the ends of the hallways of confusion, distraction, or pain. Those hallways we almost can’t avoid in the human experience, and which veil from us the dimension of passion, but cannot keep us away from it ultimately. For passion is true to our essence.
There is a little curtain that often keeps us from seeing the doorway to the ever-present dimension of passion, and there is also a secret for seeing beyond it. The little curtain is postponement. And while the hope of something greater tomorrow can be the fuel we need to move forward in the first place, if it is all we ever have we will ultimately feel a hunger that doesn’t go away. A yearning for a feeling that seems out of our reach, but comes truly from something right at our fingertips…this moment. It may not seem like much from where you are. It may not always be well dressed, but if you can look beyond appearances and truly claim it as your own, you will find the electric spark and the eternal flame that keep the dimension of passion always open to you.
Begin with little pleasures. They are everywhere, but you have to acknowledge them in order to receive their nectar, and pollinate your life with them. They can make your life fertile. Only you can find them…hiding in the grass of other things, like painted easter eggs. You have to look for them, and fill your basket. You have to find them in a fragrance, a cup of fresh and eclectic herbal tea or a mind-blowing and well-pulled shot of espresso. The soft light of a colored lamp. Music you really love. A long, hot shower. When is the last time you let yourself become completely absorbed in the experience of a shower? Felt the water actually rolling over your skin and savored the sensation? How about the last time you ate something so delicious that you involuntarily salivated and slowed your chewing mid-bite? How about the last time the color of an insect, or a flower, or someone’s hair stopped you in your tracks?
What about the last time, whether sitting in nature or the wilds of a city, you just gave your total awareness to taking in your surroundings? The sights, smells, and sounds? When is the last time you wore silk, or soft cotton or any texture that caresses your skin as you wear it…and really felt it? We spend so much time trying to avoid our surroundings rather than indulging in them. They are harsh instead of warm, and we pull back from them rather than fall into them. We try not to feel. We become artists of the numb. We forget then, when we return to environments of sweetness, deliciousness, or bliss, how to let go again. We have become too good at not feeling.
The moment is the remedy. It is always there. The medicine never grows far from the poison. First we just have to remember what we want to feel and take every opportunity to surround ourselves with it, and then give ourselves the chance to really feel it when we do. I don’t mean to say this is always easy. It can be massive to do this…awkward, painful, even terrifying. We may have to try many more times than we feel hopeful enough or willing enough to try, to make it through the sometimes-thick layers of resistance or pain between ourselves and our feelings, which gain us entry to the passionate dimension. But once we get there we will want to keep going back. It is healing, and immediately feels like a balm to the ravaged places in our heart and soul.
It takes courage to slip over to the wild side, when others may not see anything beyond the stone-washed landscape of the world of non-feeling, but as soon as you do you become a warm-colored light, a luminous bulb of vibrancy moving across the dimensions. You don’t have to give your light, you just have to be a light and the giving will happen on its own. You are not responsible for it. You are just responsible for finding what lights you.
Make a list if you want. Add to it. Notice how many times in a day you can slip into the passionate dimension. It can be your little secret if you like. Though soon you will notice that it is changing the rest of the parts of your life that have been black-and-white, to color.
Love,
Jennifer
