What is passion, how do you define it? Excited. Moves me emotionally. Energized space. Defining passion takes me out of the state of passion. What is it that makes me come alive? At the end of the day there are many voices having conversations about what I do. Fundamentally the permission I give myself is to go where the energy is for me. Creating an internal open space for me. Who are all the characters who are alive inside (who are probably mirrored here?) Finding that web of mattering.
The question is: to whom are we in debt to that limit our capacity to step on the square on the game board and let the gusher go. That is the issue. How do I recognize the other voices and allow them out? The big one is…I should be doing this or that. Once I go down the "should" tunnel I'm a gonner.
Passion is all the Lilliputians who draw energy off.
Question: What was the time in your life when you felt most alive and what created it for you? What can we create in our roles today that would create exactly the same space? I feel choked up and so touched and inspired I can't stop the tears. I feel a fire in my whole body, there is something here.
David Whyte's poem says anything or anyone who does not bring you alive - it's too small for you! The challenge posed to myself, am I the one who is making people and conversations in my life too small?
Creativity is important. Had great time in Italy to write novel. Wanted to weave the galaxy, in nine panels. Then carved a cribbage board as a boat. Felt totally creative and every moment was fun.
Movements for Mass Movements book. Energy is huge.
There's something that's alive for me. I'm aware of the fears that keep me from stepping into who wants to manifest. I think I'll die or go crazy if I let her free. Getting sick or going crazy are the ways I can manage the volume of energy that comes through me when I let myself loose. During book tour I just let myself go. I was just a channel. The 5th chakra, if I let this out, I have a fear I'll die or go crazy. Polarity. I live in a small life in a little village. I've made that life for myself as a counter balance to the total creativity and passion. I am stuck in it and I make one of the poles wrong.
I wonder if we are not all pulled between the big and small, however that shows up for us. Polarized as the same however they show up. How do you go from feeling the tension to integration?
Acceptance of the tension - a witnessing. Letting it be exactly what it is. Being excited about it and curious about it.
Do you define them as opposites? In reality they are a continuum.
Oh I see that this polarity is where I am at the moment. Just landing where I am becomes interesting, curious, and simply where I am. We have a picture out there of what it should look like. The book is out there. It's forgetting and going into the story of a future success. It's a living mandala of my life.
How can we nurture in ourselves and others? Relationships tend to be difficult. How do you create the safe container? I know if I enroll friends to assist me it would be done in a month.
How do we create the container for everyone else? Make it a portal.
Stuck for many years with the idea that my ideas were too small. They had to be huge. Everything was too small. Most powerful lesson: he calls his life "extraordinary ordinary." Single father and abused child himself - incredible passion to make corporal punishment illegal. Old school parenting creates dysfunction. Lives in VA suburbia, life dictated by a 4 year old. Could reconcile the polarity. The world needs you while you do mundane things. He taught this is where I get grounded. I am now choosing to put myself in a container that keeps me connected. The mundane is his laboratory… his research space.
That's what my village is. Making myself smaller in my own mind. Community only allows you to be who you are without the myth in the real world. This is the ground of my being. The deeper the ground the more energy can flow through me.
Being present, and not to be afraid of being great. You don't have to be great but you have to be real. Being here right now, as you are here right now you are experiencing everything.
Who am I willing to be in this moment? There is nothing else.
Tremendous beauty in the intolerance of smallness that is part of your being. Your huge dreams had no landing pad. Your life brought you a man who could ground it. Everything I've done has been in a large scale. The universe gave me an opportunity to ground so now the impulse to serve in a larger way can be allowed.
Zen phrase: After satori, chop wood and carry water.
Scale can be seen as an illusion. Doing something passionately and impeccably in the moment reverberates on many levels.
We've been learning to build micro cultures that support the meta culture and expansion.
The grief of this process is difficult because you can taste it. The culture itself is the creative field of play.
When you are given that gift…each of you is speaking out of the gift and the isolation. Do you have to go crazy or get sick? Is there another way to hold the gift?
My gifts call me in different ways. I'm curious about holding the container of passion for children.
If I take a stand that I create my own life? How am I contributing to the fact that I don't feel alive?
Noticing daughters' passion and not wanting to smother it. Believing that debt can turn around by following passion. Trusting the passion of not knowing.
Who holds that space of creative passion for you? How can we do that for each other?
Some need space by sitting in nature. We find our nurturing space. Trust is the element that knows ripeness. Trust the passion.
Leadership is letting go.
POEM: POEM OF PASSION This is the past's future now There is greatness in this moment May we cherish our enormous smallness Our minute, precious grandeur What an opportunity the universe has given To be on the ground...to serve it all.
She wears purple on her feet And even so, forgets she is a Goddess Water, wood, tears are all of this fullness It matters not whether what I do - out there or in here What matters is the impeccable integrity of how I show up. And yet….what of our tension between this pole and that? How is it that I may support the reflection of the expansion? It’s so close, I can taste it.
The culture itself is the creative field…play! It is the myth of isolation that makes this gift so heavy. May we listen to the call of our gifts - as there are many who may serve, if asked. May we listen to the gift of the call - as learning is everywhere. May we practice well - mindful of the children Fortunately he knows the depth of the pond - as he followed his passion, and studied well... And she wears purple on her feet.
