5 Signs You Are Ready For An Encounter With Your Passion.
The First Sign: The closet door in your mind is beginning to rattle.
A long time ago, some things happened to you.
They hurt so badly and they left you feeling powerless. You took back the only power you could.
You blamed yourself. You reasoned that you could make sure these kinds of things never happened again. So you cast off the parts of you that seemed to have provoked your painful experience. You vowed not to be like that anymore.
In order to make your way in this world, you put away your deepest knowing and your originality. You slapped a smile on your face. You learned to soldier on and do your part.
This closet door in your mind has kept everything in check with reason and responsibility. This is where you put all the parts of you that you thought were undesirable or too dangerous.
Your house of exile is behind this closet door.
For a while this strategy worked for you. The banished parts of you acquiesced. For years, they were quiet and mostly compliant.
But suddenly, something has changed and now that closet door is threatening to swing wide open.
Of course, you can get some reinforced steel and double your resolve to put down your fugitive self. But the truth is, you have been yearning for this moment even though it terrifies you. You have reached the point where you are no longer willing to go on without knowing who you were really meant to be.
The Second Sign: You have witnessed your pain.
For years, you were able to deny it.
It allowed you to keep smiling and keep on moving. You were willing to put your pain away because you had things to do, babies to raise, work to complete, groceries to buy, and other people’s happiness to worry about. But now you have glimpsed it.
You have seen the slashes and the burns that cover your soul. You are finally willing to look at it all square in the face and come to terms with what was done to you and what you have done to yourself.
Now you are finally willing to put yourself first and to love yourself fiercely.
You no longer care what it costs you. You are really clear that you cannot go on putting other people’s agendas first. Even more importantly, you no longer want to.
You are engaged in a really deep embrace with yourself. Romance holds no interest for you. Diversions are a bore. What you want is to know and love all of who you are. You will stop at nothing to make space for this profound and daring adventure with yourself.
The Third Sign: Something forbidden is tempting and tantalizing you.
You are being haunted and seduced by something that feels truly visceral and powerful.
You sense its presence in the soft screeching sound of the branches that scrape across your bedroom window in the dead of night. You can hardly resist the temptation to jump out of your bed and into the moon-drenched night.
You are beginning to understand what is happening.
Your primal power and your instincts have come for you and they will not take No for an answer. Not this time. In a rather insistent tone, they are inviting you to journey beyond the taboo and into the darkness and the richness of who you are.
They are insisting that you excavate and embrace everything forbidden that you once felt compelled to bury or deny.
The truth is, these primal parts of you contain your deepest wisdom and your uniqueness. They are in touch with your passion and your unbridled power.
That is why the primal call on your life is so powerfully magnetic.
Ultimately, these primal forces want only one thing: To release you into your passion and your power.
Up until now, you haven’t been ready or willing to take this journey, and rightfully so. These neglected and abandoned parts of you have gone feral. They hold the pain of abandonment and the terror of having been buried alone in the shadow spaces behind that closet door.
These are unruly forces. Once you unleash them, they won’t be easily satisfied. Once the closet door swings open, you are fairly certain you will have a hell of a time containing the situation.
But you are growing stronger and more confident that you can do this. You have an appointment with your darkness and you are becoming more and more determined to make this meeting.
You are growing more certain that it will release you into something that, up until now, you have only dared to imagine in passing.
The Fourth Sign: Confrontation is calling you.
The shit is hitting the fan.
Some things are happening in your life that simply cannot be denied or ignored. Previously you have been able to look away from this sort of thing. But the stakes have risen. Your eyes are riveted on a scene that demands your full attention.
This is life-or-death for you or someone you love, actually or metaphorically.
Finally you are starting to see that you cannot solve everything with loving kindness. You are beginning to realize that you are also not as tolerant as you thought you were and that there is an end to your patience and your willingness to absorb the consequences of other people’s bad decisions.
Truthfully, this is no ordinary conflict, and you know it. This is the confrontation of a lifetime. Though you would prefer not to face it, you also know that if you do not rise to the occasion, something precious will be lost forever.
The truth is that you are waking up from the nightmare of niceness. You are rising out of the illusion that everything can be healed. You are finally ready to destroy the notion that if only your love is strong enough, everything will be okay.
Tonight you have glimpsed the sword of your wisdom sparkling in the moonlight. You are now walking over to it. As you caress it tenderly, sensually, curiously, suddenly you understand. This sword is not so much about drawing blood.
Though you are now certain that you will do so if you have to, this sword is more than a weapon. It is your wisdom personified. You will use it to cut away everything that binds you and to cut yourself lose from all that is not yours.
This is the moment of reckoning. No longer are you concerned with cutting away the symptoms of your struggle. You are ready to cut it out at the roots no matter how much it hurts.
This is a different kind of pain than the pain which drove you to run like a fugitive seeking respite from the gallows.
This is the pain of sacrifice. Deep down inside, you know that this pain will set you free.
And so it becomes a kind of ecstasy.
The Fifth Sign: Fulfillment is seducing you.
It is a bit hard to imagine it now.
But you sense that your fulfillment and the blossoming of your potential are at hand.
Sometimes, late at night, you can feel your passion caressing you with tender, insistent strokes. At other times, you think you hear it speaking to you in a random burst of laughter that seems to dance past you on the tail end of the wind.
The hope of your fulfillment isn’t even fully formed as a thought yet. But somehow, in your gut, you believe.
For the first time in your life, you sense that something magnificent is possible. You are willing to do whatever needs to be done to make space for it. You are revved up and ready to face whatever is necessary.
You know there are no guarantees.
Yet, at the same time, the call of your passion and your joy are whispering softly in your ear and shouting at you insistently from the rooftops that flank every street in town. They are waiting for you at the crossroads of your life.
These crossroads are where your Passion Path begins, and life as you have known it will end.
The moment you take the first steps on this new life path, you will meet yourself again or perhaps for the first time.
Welcome home.