Thursday, August 12, 2010

Let's Talk About Passion.

Let's Talk About Passion.

7 August 2010 (begun)
12 August 2010 (completed)

Passion is freedom: pass it on. My new mantra, but what does it mean? Let me break it down.

Here we all are, in this paradoxical human condition. We are plagued by self-awareness. We are individualized, separate from each other and from everthing else. Compartmentalized. Each one of us is—in a sense—trapped within itself. We perceive the outside world, but we do not really completely touch it. It is there, but the mind can play all kinds of tricks on us such as to make it seem less-real than the self that we carry around with us. Through our thoughts, we can become further disconnected from the world outside our self-conceived, self-contained selfhood-bubble. We long for a deeper, fuller, more permanent connection, but we just cannot seem to stop thinking ourselves into isolation.

How do we get out?

Many have come before us and charted paths to the other side of the perception-paradigm. The Buddha went so deeply within himself that his every attachment to anything perceivable completely vanished, such that he no longer perceived either himself or anything else to exist. He became one with everything and nothingness. He ceased to be, before his body died. Those who seek a similar dissolution follow him through meditation, the subtle practice of inward reflection whose goal is to reach the state of everythingness/nothingness.

Countless others have found freedom from selfhood through devotion to a higher being: Nature, God, Love, whathaveyou. These people practice some set of a multitude of methods of ritualized subservience to their greater power of choice. My grandmother, for instance, reads her Bible every morning, goes to church at least once a week, and prays constantly. She is the most selfless person I know.

A seeming majority within our culture choose a different route: that of self-destruction. I have such extensive personal experience with this method, and have written on it so much as a result, that I really do not have anything more to say about it at present.

And, so, passion. My conception of passion is inextricable from my most intimate personal role model, Jesus Christ. If you ask me, this is what Christ did: He woke up from perception. He went into the desert, starved himself for 40 days, and entered an altered state in which he realized that we, as humans, construct reality. He experienced, firsthand, the fullness of God, the purity of pulsating light-energy which animates and activates everything that we experience as Real. Having known this force as fully as a human can, he understood that the disease and destructiveness that plagued humans was merely a force of their own creation, and determined that direct contact with the Divine is the cure for all conceivable ailments. He knew that all of existence boiled down to a singular love, and that it was this his human brethren had forgotten, and needed to be reminded of.

Thus, he set out to do just that. Jesus opened his heart—fully—and shared of himself completely with everyone he encountered. He allowed God Itself to pour through him, ceaselessly, and heal the masses who were attracted to his divinely wrought warmth. He shared the internal light, which truthfully resides within us all, and did so selflessly. He bled the whole of his energy into the world that surrounded him, and did not stop until that world extinguished him.

This is passion.

And passion is freedom.

Of course, Jesus is the archetype to which we Christians conform our lives. Not all of us are made for martyrdom, but each and every one of us is called to improve the condition of humanity through Christlike unconditional love. Thus, most of us will experience Christ's passion as a metaphor that connects to our life in such a manner that we vicariously live his sacrifice, even though the majority of us will not be executed in a literal sense. But we do die for his love.

Everyone is unique and some of us feel more unique than others. For a Christian such as myself, who lives against the grain, who feels within the burning desire to share an internal reality which radically conflicts with that professed by most others, who wishes only to give of myself such as to make others feel some degree of the ecstasy which remains alive within me even in my darkest of moments—for such a person—Christ's passion becomes an analog for the notion that our true salvation lies in our ability and willingness to give ourselves wholly to the world outside our viewfinder. The life and death that I wish to enact is one of giving everything that I have to show others what I see, to give them the ability to feel what I feel and know what I know. This is my passion.

And so, it is only through living, enacting, actualizing my passion that I will find freedom from myself. This process is in its beginning phases, and thus I can still describe it; later, there will be no need nor any desire to do so.

In order to give full justice to the images within my head that correspond to the concepts I am trying to covey, I will need to spend some time explicating my conception of the God/human dichotomy. I'll try to be brief here. Basically, God is everything. A human is a unit of consciousness which has the unfortunate ability to perceive itself as separate from everything (aka God). In Truth, the human is as much a part of God as any other unit of existence, but don't tell him that, for he is not ready to hear it quite yet. He takes comfort in believing in, or in some cases rejecting, a Divine actor who is outside of himself. He trembles in fear at the immediate realization of the Divine within himself, as it demonstrates its always-uncompromised power over his steps, his thoughts, his decisions, his entire existence. For the human to experience the Divine, he is forced to remember that he is not really a human at all, and never was.

It is this moment of rejecting/disremembering our humanity that we become free. This is our nirvana. For the Chirstian-self, this can only be described as “coming into contact with God,” or “receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Language is just that, and nothing more. As I said, these moments are characterized by an immediate sensation of fear and trembling, a sinking within and an instantaneous mourning of all we ever thought was. And so, we cannot take but so much of this feeling at any one time. We still want to be human, and to forget this other-reality, and be perfectly innocent of it.

I have met others who have achieved, in a real sense, renewed innocence. Those who have permanently forgotten their moments of contact with the Divine. I am not yet one of these people. And maybe I never will be. But, I will be free of this present condition, in which I can remember that reality, but am too afraid or unwilling to re-experience it. I will, someday, be entirely free of my perceived-humanity, as well my perceived-divinity. And this is how I will set out to do it:

Passion. I will live out a sequence of events in which I share my deepest-held beliefs, my most profound convictions, through my most intrinsically pleasurable forms of communication. I will do what I love to do the most, in service to what I believe from the innermost depths of my core. I will extract from within the Divine seed at the center of my being in such a manner as will allow me to reach the very heights of human enjoyment. I will enter the state of ceaselessly making love to life.

For what good is a life if I cannot love every moment of it? Yes, my life itself is a creation. And yes, I am part of God, a self-contained creative force, an actor and perhaps the principal and—dare I say—even the sole author of this experience. That said, why not, in all my divine awareness, give to myself the life which will bring me endless pleasure in service to the entire rest of existence? Is that not a beautiful notion? Why not give to myself the most extremely pleasing path-to-death that I can conjure, having known my human self for its entire endurance?

Passion, for me, is a process of successively breaking down the border between myself and my Creator, between me and God. Its is systematically destroying the wall which divides internal consciousness from external consciousness. In every moment, I experience God as everything outside of me. But, through the sharing of myself, through living my passion, I am increasingly giving my inner awareness to “God,” as in that which exists on the outside. And, consequently, God is pouring Itself into me; there is an equilibrium of exchange. The more I give of myself, the more like God I become. And, it is my Holy vow to give all of myself to God. And, so, what am I left to assume but that God will give the whole of Himself to me?

We, the humans, are the parts of God who experience ourselves as becoming God. God is pure love. God has no fear. God has no concerns of any nature. As humans, in this limited, fear-ridden, materially weighted, deathly state, we long for the abolition of the negative aspects of our experience. Of course, the only way to make this happen is to become God.

So, as I am becoming God, I will do so in a way which allows me to believe that I am worthy of godliness. I will love God and the world unconditionally, and I will give all of myself to It. I will take this fire inside, this consciousness, and I will make from it beauty and expression, and I will put the whole of my creative, emotional, physiological, mental energy into it. I will love my life fiercely, and invest of myself boldly, confidently, painstakingly, brilliantly, and tirelessly. I will be all that I can be for God. And I will feel the enormity of this process every step of the way.

Thus, the pathway to death and God will be paved for me through the ecstatic expulsion of my internal self into eternity. And, with every release, with every surrendering of another aspect of my being, I shall feel a sublime joy, a new lightness, a crisp breath of relief. And, as my selfhood dissolves, my life will more fully reflect my heart's internal vision of peace and transcendent pleasure. In other words, by living my passion, my life will become a Heaven-on-Earth. By giving my All to God, God gives his All to me. And we become One. God/Me/Heaven/Earth. A single verse of unconditional, undying, unyielding love. And this, my friends, is true freedom.

Pass it on.

5 comments:

  1. I will admit that I had to read the above post a couple of times to fully appreciate its message. However, each time I read it, your honesty and earnestness became more evident. I don't quite know how I feel about what you have written. I will say, though, that you have given me a lot to think about and I am internalizing what I have just read and feel that I am more enlightened for it. Thank you!

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  2. Andrea,

    Thank you so much for reading, more than once, and for posting a comment. My apologies for the delayed response; it's rare that my posts have comments!

    It means a lot to me that you took the time and expended the effort to understand and feel my message. And I am grateful that you feel as though both of our efforts--mine as the writer and yours as the reader--were not in vain. This encourages me to continue writing, and indeed reaffirms (within my thinking) that by living my passion, I am somehow contributing to the Whole. Thank you, so much!

    I could not view your profile, because it's private, so I was wondering: have you and I met in real-life? Most people who read my blog do so because they know me. I know several people with your name, but cannot immediately figure whether you're one of them, or someone I've yet to encounter. If we don't know each other, would you mind telling me how you found my blog? I'm very curious; eventually, I hope to share it more widely, and it would be interesting to know how effective my present methods of dissemination have been.

    Anywho, if ever you'd like continued correspondence about this or any topic whatsoever, feel free to contact me via my personal email account, sean.michael.barker@gmail.com. Thank you again, and I wish you peace and happiness along your journey!

    Blessings,

    Sean

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  3. Dear Benevolent Sentience,

    This is Meghan Vicks, co-editor of Gaga Stigmata. You have been selected as the winner of our Billboard giveaway. Will you please email us at gagajournal@gmail.com, so that we can send you think code to access the Lady Gaga digital supplement? Also, thanks for your thoughtful comments on our site. We really appreciate it!

    Yours,
    Meghan

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  4. lol you won the GAGA giveaway?? what?

    (stacey)

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  5. I understand for my own reasons that we move on when we pass away. The majority of us have souls. We answer for the life we live and we may have more than just this life to live on our journey. I think the way to fully understand what we are supposed to be doing here is through connecting to our soul. We need to learn from each other, but we also need to stop being concerned in weather we all follow the path the same way. I've seen through my souls eyes!! I have no doubt about it. I also work on being a good honest person because I know that there are going to be determinations on what is next based on who I am and what I've contributed to this life.It's wonderful to see the world with your soul! Your soul sees so much more than your body can and will allow for the understanding of what you are looking at. However the more you connect with your soul the deeper the information you receive can become. The warnings of the decisions we make in this life have real connection to how we move beyond this realm. Or simulation if you will. This is very important. Especially as there seems to be such a massive disconnect from the way in which the truth is revealed. Connecting with our soul is the way to that window. A lot of people may not like what they see around them in that realm though. Maybe enough so to make some changes in this life. Hence the Mandela effect. Maybe? A Divine way of waking up a people who have foolishly forgot to love learn and experience the gift this life is to us.

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