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Last arti­cle, I men­tioned the idea of “burn­ing, pas­sion­ate, self–respon­si­bil­ity.” It seems to me that that the defin­i­tive word – or per­haps the essen­tial word, is “self.”

Self respon­si­bil­ity is never about self absorp­tion. I use the term self-responsibility to describe self aware­ness. This requires dili­gent focus on what is going on inside of us, as opposed to end­less focus on externals.

We find our­selves, by find­ing ourselves.

As we end­lessly say, we were brought up to look out­side of our­selves – for how to act, what to think, and to dis­cover what’s going on.

For exam­ple, many clients, when I ask them how they are or what is going on for them, imme­di­ately begin to tell me what other peo­ple are doing. How other peo­ple are caus­ing them dis­tress, or con­fu­sion. How other peo­ple are mak­ing them feel some­thing, as if that is possible.

One client recently reported a con­ver­sa­tion with a rel­a­tive she hadn’t seen in years and years. She then spec­u­lated on why he had made con­tact, and then asked me what I thought the relative’s moti­va­tion for mak­ing contact.

I was curi­ous about all of it.

I barely know what I’m think­ing… how could you?

She was there, and par­tic­i­pated in the con­ver­sa­tion, and yet could only know her thoughts and moti­va­tions about her side of the con­ver­sa­tion. And I could only know what I thought about what she told me. I’m unsure about how I could ever know any­thing about another’s moti­va­tion, let alone the moti­va­tion of some­one I’d never met.

But here’s the point. If she wanted to know what his moti­va­tion was, all she had to do was ask him!

This is what I mean by self aware­ness. A self aware per­son does not spec­u­late about exter­nals, but rather exam­ines how “I” am in rela­tion to externals.

Self aware­ness is all about iden­ti­fy­ing who I am, and how I am, as I live my life fully, deeply, and with passion.

Pas­sion is about enact­ing or engag­ing with what is impor­tant for me.

From my col­lege sketchbook…

Because the word is typ­i­cally linked to sen­su­al­ity and sex­u­al­ity, we mis-think about our pas­sions. Many think pas­sion is self indul­gent, or self absorbed. Oth­ers think that pas­sions are sort of like hob­bies, to be engaged in as time per­mits, and always after the real stuff hap­pens. Oth­ers dis­tract them­selves from their pas­sion by cre­at­ing drama, or by col­lect­ing stuff to mess around with.

I said to a friend the other day that she seemed to be buried under boxes of “col­lected crap.” Old, unre­solved issues and rela­tion­ships, stuff packed away and dragged out incon­ve­niently, strange things that have no prac­ti­cal use. This stuff, hid­den in the metaphoric base­ment of her mind, (as well as tucked away in her actual base­ment) was the dis­trac­tion, the focus, the thing that drew her away from self awareness.

Of course, the joke is that she is dis­tract­ing her­self from self aware­ness be being self absorbed.

She is focussed on past issues, and in that, misses the pre­car­i­ous, yet pas­sion­ate pull of the present.

My goal, per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally, is to end­lessly pro­mote the present as a really great place to live. My focus on pres­ence lets me be fully engaged in see­ing myself oper­at­ing with moment-by-moment awareness.

Self aware­ness is pay­ing attention

Let me use med­i­ta­tion as a descrip­tion of what I’m talk­ing about. Many peo­ple expect that med­i­ta­tion will lead to some­thing else – peace of mind, calm­ness, tran­quil­ity, or “no prob­lems.” Yeah, right. Med­i­ta­tion leads to med­i­ta­tion. In other words, med­i­ta­tion is an activ­ity, in and of itself.

Now, within that activ­ity, much is going on.

Your legs or back might be hurt­ing, you will be think­ing thoughts, and you may smell incense, hear out­side noises, find the light too bright or dim. In other words, as you sit, you experience.

What you are expe­ri­enc­ing, if you let your­self, is the moment-by-moment aware­ness of being you. In other words, you are expe­ri­enc­ing your­self, being yourself.

Now, if you do have ideas about how the expe­ri­ence ought to be, then you are no longer in the expe­ri­ence. You have drifted off into your head, and are com­par­ing the actual expe­ri­ence with your imag­ined one, and find­ing real­ity lacking!

I would sug­gest that this is pre­cisely what we are doing, almost all of the time.

Just like my client in the story above.
She is hav­ing a real expe­ri­ence with her rel­a­tive, and is in her head, won­der­ing what is going on. Then, she cre­ates a story about why he is there, talk­ing to her, and thinks that her story is either real or true. The story, how­ever, has noth­ing to do with the actual expe­ri­ence. The actual expe­ri­ence was: she was feel­ing her feel­ings and think­ing her thoughts, and also speak­ing words to her rel­a­tive. For her, that was the entire expe­ri­ence. Until she decided to exit the expe­ri­ence and start think­ing about it.

Now, I’m not sug­gest­ing that we stop think­ing. That’s impos­si­ble. What I am sug­gest­ing is that, just like in med­i­ta­tion, we notice what’s actu­ally hap­pen­ing. In this case, think­ing. But here’s the key. Notic­ing that I am think­ing, and then shift­ing to the next thing I do, is dif­fer­ent from think­ing about what I am think­ing about!

If I start think­ing, by def­i­n­i­tion, I am “out of the expe­ri­ence and into my head.”

Pas­sion is active and total engage­ment in the present expe­ri­ence. This flies in the face of the cul­tural norm of end­lessly ana­lyz­ing every­thing, (play­ing with the stuff in the boxes.) The wise soul noti­cies the pull to fid­dle around, and then moves on.

No mat­ter what you think you are accom­plish­ing, up there in your head, it pales in com­par­i­son to actu­ally doing or pro­duc­ing something.

Pas­sion is engage­ment with the now. Even such a sim­ple act as “sit­ting” is ripe with mean­ing and depth. As you watch, moment by moment, you see your­self, and you see what is up for you. This process is an open­ing, and what opens is your eyes, your voice, and your heart. You become real.

I men­tioned med­i­ta­tion (zazen) for a rea­son. I think that this prac­tice, daily, is what begins to open the door to pas­sion­ate engage­ment with life. I’ve heard a mil­lion rea­sons why estab­lish­ing a daily prac­tice is impos­si­ble (I’ve used some of those rea­sons myself) and what I’ve dis­cov­ered is that when I do not sit, I do not have very much focus. It’s there­fore not one of the things that I make optional.

I encour­age you to start meditating.

(Please note! I’ve included a video on med­i­tat­ing which may or may not show up in the e-mail ver­sion of this BLOG. If it’s not directly below, go to the actual BLOG post to view!) Also, if the video isn’t show­ing on the BLOG page, do a page refresh, or <a target=“_blank” href=“http://www.youtube.com/v/bbOFRmg3ivA&hl=en&fs=1″ onclick=“javascript:_gaq.push([’_trackEvent’,‘outbound-article’,‘http://www.youtube.com’]);””>go here

I also encour­age you to start pay­ing atten­tion to the sto­ries you tell your­self. Pres­ence and pas­sion require that you notice the sto­ries, feel­ings, eva­sions, and games that you are play­ing, all with­out pro­ject­ing any of it on to other peo­ple or circumstances.

Once you notice that you are not notic­ing, you can, well, begin to notice.

Each and every time you turn your atten­tion to oth­ers, and to sto­ries and fan­tasies, sim­ply name the process, “Exter­nal­iz­ing!” and come back to you and your present expe­ri­ence. This is harder than you think. How­ever, it is the key process for find­ing and engag­ing your pas­sion.
Do it, now!