I have been reading Wayne Dyer’s book, Excuses Begone!, in which he assigns a chapter to Passion, which he starts with a quote from Aeschylus:
“When a man’s willing and eager, God joins in.”
It always feels, when we are doing something we are passionate about, that we have resources at our disposal greater than that of our limited individual selves. Rather than God joining in when we are following our passion, however, it seems more like we are joining back to God.
According to Wayne, the presence of passion “doesn’t just help us emulate the all-creating Divine mind; it allows us to become one with it again.”
As we learned from A Course in Miracles, we never really separated from God, but we think we did. That part of our mind which thinks itself separate from God is our ego, and when we are following the dictates of our ego, our passion, and thus our joy, dissipates. It is not that God has left us, or that we really are separated from God, it is just that we can’t experience our connection with God.
When we are following that part of our mind which is one with the Divine mind, we feel passion for what we are doing, and the more we follow our passion, the more joy we experience. As we become one with the Divine mind, we become one with All That Is.
The more time we spend in connection with the Divine mind, the more likely we are to want to stay there, for it is here that we find joy.
When we are dealing with the stresses of everyday life, and doing the things we need to do to survive, we sometimes forget about our passion, and therefore forget about God. But in doing so, we are also forgetting to experience joy.
We often think that we can only find passion in doing the things for which we have a particular talent or interest – an artist with her paint brush, a sculptor with his clay, a piano player as she sits at her piano. This is all very well for those people who are lucky enough to work at a job that they love, but for a lot of us, our passion is followed more as a hobby than an occupation. For those of us in that position, we may wonder how we, too, can remain connected to the Divine mind, and remain in joy.
Some of us don’t have the option of leaving our dreary job to engage in our hobby as an occupation. However, the more we follow our passion and thereby remain in connection with our Divine mind, the more we discover that God doesn’t only provide passion as we participate in our hobbies. We begin to find passion follows us around and joins us in all that we do. We start to learn to follow our bliss in every situation.
Wayne has titled a section of this chapter as Nurturing Your Passion. He reminds us of a quote from Lao-tzu:
“If your willingness to give blessings is limited, so also is your ability to receive them. This is the subtle operation of the Tao.”
Wayne suggests that “giving to others is a great first step in finding your passion”. Mother Teresa found this in her commitment to helping the poor. She is quoted as saying:
“I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy,
I woke and I saw that life is all service.
I served and I saw that service is joy.”
When we live a life of service, we are acting as God acts. God’s power in the physical universe is what provides us with all of our desires. God’s universe is a universe of service to all of God’s creation. As we live a life of service, we align ourselves with God’s power in the universe, and thus find our joy.
So, rather than attending our dreary jobs with resentment and mediocrity, why not think of it as a way to serve – both our fellow humans and God.
Who are you serving in your job? Your fellow workers, your boss, your customers? Consider how vital you are to their well-being. If it wasn’t for you, someone else’s life would be lacking something. You are a vital instrument in God’s universe in the current dreary job that you are doing. But when you start to nurture your passion in that role, and move from mediocrity to excellence, you will find yourself beginning to feel the joy that comes with your connection to God.
As you become more aligned with your connection to God, you may find that God has other plans for you. But your ego can never find you a role filled with passion. While your ego complains about your job, your boss, and your co-workers, your Divine mind is nowhere to be found. And without that connection to your Divine mind, your passion and your joy will be elusive.
There are many ways to reconnect with God, reconnect with passion, reconnect with joy. Once you have found that connection, it is much easier to keep it with you and share it with others.
The easiest way to connect with God is to connect with his creation – trees and animals. Whilst it is possible to find this same connection with God’s human creations, very often our ego selves finds reasons not to connect with humans, which don’t apply with other creatures.
Whereas we can find God in nature, we can also find God within ourselves during meditation. In fact, that is all that nature is doing; it is reminding us of the God within. God is present within every present moment, and we don’t have to look for Her. We just have to stop looking away from Her.
Once we have found that connection to God within, it is much easier to see God in other humans as well and want to help them to find their passion and their joy.
I am reminded of a quote from God, in Neale Donald Walsch’s book, Friendship With God, in which He explains the secret of joy:
“Release the joy that is inside of another, and you release the joy that is inside of you.”
He goes on to explain that there are thousands of ways of doing that, and “in the moment you decide to do so, you will know how.”
From something as easy to give as a smile, to something as complex as composing a symphony. From sharing a joke to sharing a meal. Your Divine mind knows the answer.
It feels like we have come full circle.
In following our passion, we find our connection to God. In finding our connection to God, we find joy and want to share it with others. In helping others to find their joy, we find joy ourselves.
The reason that this seems like a circular argument is that God is All That Is, and all paths ultimately lead us to God. And God is where joy resides.
I hope you have fun following your passion, and finding and sharing your joy.
God bless you.
Image courtesy of Idea go at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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