Dear Friend,
What comes into your mind when you hear the words, “Passionate Warrior”? Do you imagine a romantic image of a powerful individual taking on the forces of life with an unseen strength? Or maybe you see something different?
These words were chosen carefully. They are meant to invoke emotion in you, and they are meant to contrast with your self image as it truly is, right now. How close do you feel right now to being a “Passionate Warrior” in your life? Do you charge headfirst into danger in pursuit of what matters to you most? Are you driven by unseen forces to achieve things that most people believe can’t be achieved?
The label Passionate Warrior is a hard label to wear for most. An uncomfortable one. Because most of us feel that we are frauds. That we hold back, second guess, hesitate. That we can’t be passionate about a life that we don’t understand, one that is carrying us along rather than the other way around.
That’s OK. You’re not a fraud. You are you. And I am me. The label is an ideal. Ideals are beautiful, and in the end, they are fully true. But it takes time for each of us to accept ourselves in this new image. That is because so many parts of our ideal images have been formed by others. And we learned long ago that we do not fit into those others’ ideal images. So we must be flawed. We were flawed in our parents’ images. In our teachers’. In our bosses’ images. Or at least we thought so at the time.
However, the disappointment that you were seeing those people’s eyes was in fact their own disappointment in themselves projected out onto you. You can’t be disappointed in you being fully you. And being fully you is the one thing in the world that everyone of us is really good at.
Still, it takes most of us a long time to come to terms with disappointment. And finally to come to terms with our disappointment in those others whose judgment we had accepted for so long.
Yet time really is a healer. Let it work it’s magic. Be sure that you are ready to enter your passion mode before you start your journey on the Passionate Warrior path. Though it sounds like a journey begun with force and aggression, surprisingly it is not. The first steps down the road to a passionate life are gentle ones. These are the gentle steps of acceptance of what is. In you. In others, and in the universe itself.
Talk to you again soon,
Hugh
