Passion: Find It and Keep It

Passion: Find It and Keep It

Remember the beginning of your relationship, all those feelings of passion? You were lustful and excited about getting to know the other person. You stayed up all night talking endlessly, and a mere look or slight touch turned you red hot inside. You felt alive, with more energy and happiness about the way your life seemed to be figuring itself out. You felt intense emotions of desire and excitement.

Then, this person started to become familiar and the passion you two once knew seemed to disappear as quickly as it came on. We mostly submit to the idea that the passion is gone. We go on living our lives just as they were before, possibly with or without this new person.

What if you could make a different decision about your relationship with passion? What if you could let the bursting open of excitement and powerful emotions come back into your life without relying on or expecting your partner to give you that feeling? What if I tell you that passion is all up to you? Because it is!

Allowing ourselves to feel strong emotions is simply that. You must give yourself space and permission to be alive in this world.

To do this, you must first slow down. Getting quiet enough in your own mind to listen to your passion. This can happen through forms of meditation or even just quieting distractions, such as not constantly looking at your phone, computer, book, etc. Even turning off any music that’s playing.

Personally, I like to move through a focusing exercise where I first just feel myself breathing: breath coming in, breath going out. I let my breath naturally slow down and become more full and deep. Then I notice all the sounds around me. Really listening to the room, and outside the room or space I am in. Next, I take in the smells. Letting my senses slow down and just be. I connect with the pulse that is my body. My heart beating, the awareness of life moving through me. This is aliveness.

Slowing down gives me space to see what it is in my life I am needing to move towards or away from. From this place of aliveness, I reflect on what I might feel is missing or needing more of. What do I want? What do I want from this day? This week? Year? From life? How can I make this happen?

From these questions, I can start to see what my goals are. From seeking out my goals, I can begin to feel into where my passions lie.

For a very long time, my main passion in life was riding horses. Through horses, I felt alive and connected to the world. When I left the horse world for some years, really because I lost my passion for competing, and I struggled. I struggled to feel my own aliveness, a sense of being and passion felt gone from my life. I wanted to feel passionate again about something! Anything, I thought. I found myself turning to sexual partners to try to fill that space that I myself was unable to fill. I wanted the passion of the night to rub off on me and help me feel alive again. Although, I learned a valuable lesson about passion, a relationship cannot provide what is null and void in our own bodies. The passion would soon fade from from the relationship and I would move on to the next to try and get it from someone else.

In finding my own passions in life, I grew to understand that passion is not outside of ourselves. It is within us, all of us. Yet, in order to find real passion that last a lifetime, not just the beginning of a relationship, we must cultivate and continue to cultivate the aliveness that already lives within ourselves.

Some of the things I feel most passionate about these days are:

• learning to play the cello
• exploring my sexual fantasies
• helping people grow into their humanness as sexual beings
• learning new things and taking risks (safety first)
• growing indoor plants
• (now again) riding horses

Some of the above items are large and some are small. I recommend starting a list for yourself and adding or taking away things as you learn more about yourself.

You might be curious at this point about how this transfers over into your sexuality. It completely does. Once you identify what you feel passionate about, explore whatever that is and feel your body as you do. Notice the excitement and conviction in your demeanor. Really get to know this feeling as a “body felt experience” (meaning an experience of the body, not the brain). Let this flow through into your sexual experiences. Maybe first with yourself in masturbation and then with your partner. Notice if you are blocking the passion or holding back in some way. The more you know about how passion moves in your body, or how it doesn’t move, the closer you will be to keeping it burning for your whole life.

Passion first,

– Keeley

Featured image via WeHeartIt