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Passion
This is one of those realizations that I seem to need to have several times before they actually sink in.
I've been wrestling with my thoughts and feelings about "relationships" and love and romance. I've also been fretting about my lack of creativity and feeling sad and anxious about my inability to come up with anything that even I find compelling.
And recently I've been totally missing the fact that these two areas are intimately connected. There's a reason why the figure of the daimon is so important to me.
My creativity has always been intimately linked to my passion. Without passion in my life - and there has been none for more than a year now - my creativity simply dries up.
This passion does not have to be the result of an actual relationship with someone. I can generate a great deal of passion from loving someone close to me but unattainable, from fantasy, or fascination with someone or something fictional. Some RPG characters and campaigns have generated a great deal of passion in me. But without that energy, my creative work is dry, boring, and dead.
Despite the fact that my passion has never been solely linked to actual relationships, I've begun to worry that my unwillingness to be open to relationship has shut off my openness to passion. Both require vulnerability. Both require the willingness to surrender to strong emotion, to be moved. I feel like my inner self is sitting on a hard chair with crossed arms and a threatening, "Get Lost!" glare directed at anyone who might open her up again to pain and surrender. She has forgotten the experience of joy. Of ecstasy.
Several years ago, I wrote in my diary that passion was my summum bonum (not sure if I remember the Latin correctly): my highest good. This was not a "should be" but a description of how I lived my life. Because I am who I am, this is not something that was obvious to most people. I've always been good at keeping up the appearance of a mundane, "respectable," reliable person. And I (almost) never skipped work to be with a lover or to work on a creative project. But most of my decisions were made to favor the feeding and experience of passion, whether that was a lover, a project, even a game campaign.
Without passion in my life I am not the person I was. And I don't like the change. My life is dominated by work, by school, by domestic obligation. None of which are bad. (As most of you know, I happen to like school a great deal.) But they are not what causes my soul and my blood to sing. They do not make me joyous. They do not produce fountains of words and images and ideas that quicken my spirit and add sparkle and zest to my life. My life is not vivid in the way it was.
I keep thinking of Hamlet's words to Gertrude: At your age the hey-day in the blood is tame. It's humble, and waits upon the judgment. I hope that I have not reached that point. I never want to be "tame"! Not in my heart and soul.
I need to find ways to coax passion back into my life, and to coax my inner self out of her rigid, defensive posture. I need to gently seek out those things that once were sources of passion and find new ones. I need to remember that passion does not always equal pain. Some ritual could help as well. (Suggestions welcome from my priest/ess friends!) I need to remember, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queenofhalves wrote of so beautifully, that the universe is a magical, glorious place -- not just the mundane grayness I see before me every day.
I've been wrestling with my thoughts and feelings about "relationships" and love and romance. I've also been fretting about my lack of creativity and feeling sad and anxious about my inability to come up with anything that even I find compelling.
And recently I've been totally missing the fact that these two areas are intimately connected. There's a reason why the figure of the daimon is so important to me.
My creativity has always been intimately linked to my passion. Without passion in my life - and there has been none for more than a year now - my creativity simply dries up.
This passion does not have to be the result of an actual relationship with someone. I can generate a great deal of passion from loving someone close to me but unattainable, from fantasy, or fascination with someone or something fictional. Some RPG characters and campaigns have generated a great deal of passion in me. But without that energy, my creative work is dry, boring, and dead.
Despite the fact that my passion has never been solely linked to actual relationships, I've begun to worry that my unwillingness to be open to relationship has shut off my openness to passion. Both require vulnerability. Both require the willingness to surrender to strong emotion, to be moved. I feel like my inner self is sitting on a hard chair with crossed arms and a threatening, "Get Lost!" glare directed at anyone who might open her up again to pain and surrender. She has forgotten the experience of joy. Of ecstasy.
Several years ago, I wrote in my diary that passion was my summum bonum (not sure if I remember the Latin correctly): my highest good. This was not a "should be" but a description of how I lived my life. Because I am who I am, this is not something that was obvious to most people. I've always been good at keeping up the appearance of a mundane, "respectable," reliable person. And I (almost) never skipped work to be with a lover or to work on a creative project. But most of my decisions were made to favor the feeding and experience of passion, whether that was a lover, a project, even a game campaign.
Without passion in my life I am not the person I was. And I don't like the change. My life is dominated by work, by school, by domestic obligation. None of which are bad. (As most of you know, I happen to like school a great deal.) But they are not what causes my soul and my blood to sing. They do not make me joyous. They do not produce fountains of words and images and ideas that quicken my spirit and add sparkle and zest to my life. My life is not vivid in the way it was.
I keep thinking of Hamlet's words to Gertrude: At your age the hey-day in the blood is tame. It's humble, and waits upon the judgment. I hope that I have not reached that point. I never want to be "tame"! Not in my heart and soul.
I need to find ways to coax passion back into my life, and to coax my inner self out of her rigid, defensive posture. I need to gently seek out those things that once were sources of passion and find new ones. I need to remember that passion does not always equal pain. Some ritual could help as well. (Suggestions welcome from my priest/ess friends!) I need to remember, as
queenofhalves wrote of so beautifully, that the universe is a magical, glorious place -- not just the mundane grayness I see before me every day.
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I wonder if there is a dream you have buried or attempted to bury in your heart?
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So now I tell myself "I'm not interested anymore." What I'm gradually realizing is that I am still interested in love and passion. What I'm not interested in is binding myself to another person in the ways I have in the past.
The traditional romantic expectation of a long-term, dyadic, monogamous relationship is a procrustrean bed: if you fit it, great. If you don't fit, you suffer a great deal of pain trying to make yourself fit -- or being chastised if you try to make yourself another bed to lie in.
My response to your question suggests to me that I allow myself to affirm my dream of passionate companionship but free it from the expectations to which I have always shaped myself in the past.
Then at least I will be true to myself and my desires, and whoever finds me attractive in the future will be able to make a more informed choice about whether or not all that comes with me is what he really wants.
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twelve wild swans is a book of exercises in the reclaiming tradition that might be interesting to you. i haven't read it any detail, though. if you have access to a university library, you might be able to get it on interlibrary loan (unless you have some really cool public libraries there). try before you buy and all.
otherwise nothing springs immediately to mind. i'll give it some thought.
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The Wild Swans is one of my favorite fairy tales, and oddly enough it's always been hard for me to put my finger on exactly why. Perhaps because the princess does the rescuing? Perhaps because she commands her own voice - even if she does so by keeping silent - and she's stubborn and is willing to be misunderstood?
Hmmm. . . I have three bags full of books to take in to the used book store, and the one in the U District usually has a copy of 12WS. Maybe I'll check it out again.
I'd say it was a study break from writing my paper, but I haven't done a bit of work on my paper all day.