Making it count

Happy New Year! May 2011 provide you with unlimited blessings and opportunities to exercise the power of your intentions.

May you be encouraged (gently) to strip away what is nonessential to your being, and wildly encouraged to live your deepest passions.

May you look back at the year just past, this time next year, and say "wow, look what I did!"

Willing to be "wrong"

When you follow your heart, your passion, someone's going to disagree. That's okay. The only way to appeal to everyone is to appeal to no one. Be willing to find your tribe, that group of people who are willing to drink your kool-aid (which you, of course, have filled with all the goodness and wisdom of life, not the icky stuff of chemical coloring, sugar, and the occasional lethal dose of dogma) and sing your praises.

I don't care if your goal is to be the world's greatest accountant, the lead soprano in a touring Gilbert and Sullivan troupe, or godmother to the world's wild orchids. Do it for yourself, do it for your soul, and do it for the people who like your style.

Don't waste your time trying to sell your art to someone who doesn't appreciate it. It diminishes both of you. Just do your thing and do it in the way only you can do it and THAT is your contribution to the world--and it's beautiful.

Too much to do: exploring your passions

I have what I like to call an empty calendar allergy. It's stronger than an aversion, more like a compulsion. Even as I'm spinning in circles (like a Sufi dancer, I hope--enlightenment / ecstasy to be obtained in the process), hoping for some downtime, it's almost impossible for me to accept HAVING it.

There's too much to do, so little time. As Lynnette pointed out in her comment yesterday, we can have quite a laundry list of 'passions' to occupy us....and how do you know what the 'one' is? Maybe it's like knowing 'who' the one is when we meet him? Maybe it requires trusting your intuition to pull you in the right direction, no matter where that direction leads, accepting life as an exploratory adventure as much as a well-lit path with a certain destination.

It's not about drifting. It's not about learning to like something. It might be about trying something, just to discover it consumes you. I gave rock-climbing a try last month. I'd been dying to do it for years--I loved the memory of clambering up rocky hills and bluffs as a kid, loved living near the Rockies as an adult--mountains within reach, so beautiful it almost hurts to have all that rising up in you and in front of you. I truly love mountains. Although apparently not enough to move to one. Same with forests. Love being amid the trees and rocks of a northern woodland. Not crazy about hanging out in the woodlands of Florida (remember that fear thing? I really am okay never facing how I feel about reptiles. They have their place in the world, and we / they should not be occupying it together. Just sayin'). Yet, I live in Florida, because of all the things I love and want to do / be / whatever...most of them sit here. If I won the lottery (I understand...playing increases those odds substantially), I might not live here, so I guess part of what I care about is my job.

But back to rock climbing. I wanted to climb. I could see myself doing it, even though heights terrify me. This, perhaps, is key--if you are willing (or anxious) to try something despite your fear, and not because of it (in other words, it's about the doing, not the facing of the fear), that's a good sign it's something you should do more of. But that doesn't make it a passion--makes it something worth doing. Rock climbing? I liked it. Will do it again. A passion? Not to the extent of consuming my life. Not something I'd take vacations to do, although I might make it part of one spent doing something else. See the difference?

I think we'll be looking at this more deeply--it seems like a lot of people have a lot of things they care about, and spend a lot of time doing...and it seems to divide their energy. Some of the people I admire most have one or maybe two deep passions, and it consumes their life. Not saying that's good or bad (might depend on the person), but it's definitely worth talking about.

Opening up and taking in

Hat tip to Jennifer Todd of Just Breathe Orlando for making me see chakras from a different perspective. She's doing a series of classes on the chakras, and I've missed all of them except last night's on the brow chakra (aka the third eye). There's definitely something for me to explore there--a new way of looking at how our lower chakras (lower on the body, I mean--that is, root through solar plexus) open to place us in the world and in our reality. If you're in the Orlando area, check her out.

I'm also in the middle of a book called Advanced Chakra Healing (the author escapes me at the moment, and the book is in another room). It's part of why I went to Jennifer's class last night.

While I spend a fair amount of time talking to people about their passions, and what living their truth means to them, I sometimes forget to check in with myself--I often end up drifting into things that are good, are helpful, aren't 'me.' One of the paths that turns me on is energy work. I have a hard time seeing how I can use that as anything more than interesting fun (emphasis on 'I'), so it gets shoved to the back except for almost daily Reiki on myself and when requested by others. Journeying is another love. A lot of the journeying I do for healing (of self and others) includes energy work, which is probably not typical for shamanic practice, but seems to be just right for me. So now I'm consciously checking in with Jennifer's work, and the work laid out in this book, to ramp up how I combine the two practices--it feels right, so I think I'm onto something.

'nough about me, though--how about you? Do you see a glimmer of what you could really love to do a lot of?