Shakespeare's characters are sometimes real people and sometimes the
personification of personality traits. His ability to give a
characteristic a name and a voice is unsurpassed. "I your looking
glass shall be and reveal to you things that you yourself know not
of," so he says.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar can be called the personification of
courage. Of fear he says, "We are two lions littered in a day, and I
the elder and more terrible. And Caesar shall go forth." He knows,
like all great men, that fear can paralyze and immobilize anyone who
would indulge and entertain its presence: "Of all the wonders that I
yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear,
seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."
Anyone with this kind of attitude and the courage to back it up must
succeed in life.

Julius Caesar was an epileptic, a condition many would use as an
excuse not to succeed. He built a good, useful and robust courage by
doing things that were hard to do. He swam the Tiber river everyday
when in Rome, while others watched from the bank. He took risks when
others stood back. In Shakespeare's play, Cassius and the other Roman
leaders thought they saw Caesar's ghost after his assassination. Even
after his death, he remained a force to be reckoned with. One by one
they commited suicide, driven mad by their fears and their doubts.

In some way all failure is suicidal, because we bring it on ourselves.
The failure to learn is the only failure there is. As we steadfastly
keep the larger purpose of life in mind, namely the evolution of
awareness through exploring the mysteries of beingness, we become
unattached to outcome. Each battle is a battle for perception; we have
nothing to prove and everything to learn.

For a life of adventure and risk, a life in which we can make the
greatest contribution to the One expressing as the many, we have come
to the right place. It is here in this density, where the light
(known) meets the dark (unknown), that all new knowledge is gained.
And we access it by turning the unknown into the known through
experience. The diligence with which we tackle our role as explorers
of consciousness depends on our willingness to take risks and to
extend the boundaries of our comfort zones.

Many seek the comfort of the familiar and the safety of the known. To
do so, however, is to overpolarize toward the light, which brings
stagnation and retards growth. The irony of the situation is that the
safety of the known is anything but safe. Life is set up to prod
stagnation with forced change, which is pain. That which is used to
break up the shelter of stagnation and force us into change is anger
or rage.

We can, therefore, deduce that anything that helps us avoid actively
participating in the experiences of life and keeps us from growing
through increased perception attracts rage from outside sources. The
passive always attracts the proactive. Any escape from our own
"negative" emotions manifests them in outside circumstances and
strengthens them within. We are then faced with either having to
increase the avoidance or experiencing increased emotional outbursts.

Some shelters (ways to avoid having to confront life) include drugs,
alcohol, work, living vicariously through TV or books and using
meditation as an escape of bliss rather than a noncognitive
information-gathering technique. Some of these shelters are certainly
valid ways to relax, but they could become a substitute for vibrant
living.

The destiny of humanity is to push the existing limits of what is
known, to take risks through developing a strong and useful courage.
Within this density, the value of pushing beyond our comfort zones has
become obscured. We are taught to think things through and not to take
"unnecessary" chances. But to be valiant in exploring the unknown
through experience, we have to go beyond where logic or reason can
predict the outcome, for they are the tools that access only the known.

That which we have undertaken to solve on behalf of the Infinite has
never been solved before during all previous cycles of life. As always
when dealing with the unknown, the feelings of our hearts will show
the way, even when reason argues otherwise. It will require passion
and trust in the perfection of the greater purpose, much like the
ancient mariners who launched their ships on an unpredictable voyage
and into uncharted seas. There is no certainty of outcome, only the
deep conviction that to plunge forward, pouring our hearts into our
actions, is infinitely better than to disengage from life by staying
in the safety of the harbor until storms forcefully cast us adrift.

Finding Our Passion and Joy

When the social conditioning of our lives has left the clear
impression that it is unsafe to fully participate in the game of life,
we may hang back in the safety of the known, afraid to make ourselves
a target by being noticed. We may fear that passion could cause our
light to shine so brightly that others might try and tear us down so
that their own lack of luster isn't as obvious.

If we deny our desire to express passionately long enough, we will end
up being strangers to passion, not knowing how to find it nor
recognize it even if we do. The lateral hypothalamus tells us when we
have eaten enough; the ventromedial hypothalamus tells us when we are
hungry. If we do not recognize the promptings from these portions of
the brain, we will end up either obese or anorexic, and we have to
gently coach ourselves into learning what their promptings feel like.

When passion beckons, we feel warm and excited; our faces are flushed
and our imagination stirs with questions of "What if?" and "What lies
beyond the next horizon?" It inspires us into action and gives us the
belief that we can take risks and build. We find our passion by
following the yearnings our moments of joy evoke within our hearts. It
is the lost song the singer feels hiding within the shadows of his
mind. It is the lost rhythm the dancer forever seeks. It is the
mysteries of the cosmos that wait for the scientist or the
metaphysician to unlock them. It is the desire, inspired by the
innocence in our child's eyes, to build a life of wonder and beauty
for our family.

If passion has become a stranger to us, we might have to become
reacquainted with it one facet at a time. When expressed, passion
consists of taking risks, of accomplishment and the building of
something new. It adds new experiences, further boundaries and new
depth to our lives. To train ourselves to hear the voice of passion
once again, we find the yearning of our heart and follow where it
leads. We make a concerted effort to break free from the prison bars
of ruts and expectations, socially conditioned limitations and
selfimposed belief systems that keep us in mediocrity. We take a few
minutes a day to dare to dream of what would make our hearts sing. We
awake each morning and determine to live the day before us as though
it was our last. We look at our lives as though for the first time,
with a fresh perspective that can detect the joyless, self-sacrificing
areas. With courage and great consideration for the consequences of
our actions on others, we implement our first steps to bring the glow
of passion back to these areas.

A decision may take a minute to make, but for it to be as
life-altering as we would want it to be, it needs to be supported
by a firm foundation. This requires planning and also a certain amount
of analysis. What is the goal? What resources will be needed? Is there
a discrepancy between what we need and what we have, and how can we
fill it? Many businesses fail, taking many dreams with them, because
not enough thought is given to what is needed to support them in terms
of time and money. Once a goal is identified, break it into projects
and tasks.

Jack London is one of the highest paid authors if one takes inflation
into consideration. He used the same method for achieving success. An
immigrant and dockworker, Jack London had a dream of breaking free
from the hard, grueling labor and becoming an author. Before his long
day began, he studied English grammar for an hour and then worked to
earn his bread and butter as a dockworker. At night he took a creative
writing class at the library, and when he got home, he did his
writing. His goal was broken up into projects, then into tasks, and
his day was structured to accommodate them. Many envy the achievements
of others, but they are not prepared to put in the work. Sometimes it
takes burning the candle on both ends to fulfill a dream. It is our
passion that keeps our enthusiasm lit and gives us our second wind to
fly higher than we ever thought possible.

FINDING OUR JOY

Passion explores the multitude of possibilities through which we can
express, whereas joy is concentrated on the simplicity of the moment.
Joy is a mindset, a certain focus that sees the perfection of the here
and now and casts a golden glow over the experiences of yesterday. It
turns the mundane into poetry and captures the moment in a still-life
image. Milton said, "The mind in its own place and of itself can turn
hell into heaven and heaven into hell." At the end of his life,
Turner, the great English master painter, said that in his entire life
he'd never seen anything ugly. Franz Liszt was urged to write his
memoirs, but he said, "It's enough to have lived such a life." He
found such joy in his experiences, he didn't have to externalize them
to appreciate them. Joy can be recognized by the deep feeling of
satisfaction it brings, by the feeling that one has come home to
oneself. It taps into the quiet place within that nurtures the soul
and replenishes the mind. When under its spell, joy makes us feel
light and young again, connected to the Earth and freed from our cares.

The key to finding our joy lies in our ability to work with time. In a
world where mounting responsibilities urge us to accomplish more in
less time, most tasks are hastily performed. Yet we don't seem to have
any more time to enjoy life. The time that is supposed to be leisure
time has even more undone chores competing for it. The reason this is
so is that when we rush, we speed up time and seem to have even less
of it at our disposal.

Just as building with passion requires careful and disciplined time
allocations, living with joy requires the ability to compress time. If
we focus on the details in front of us at this moment, time slows
down. Even if we cannot find an hour today to do the things we enjoy,
we can find the time to enjoy the things we are doing. In cutting up
vegetables to make a stew, we can see the colors of the carrots,
explore the different textures of each vegetable, smell the fresh
fragrance as we cut through the skins.

Repetitive work can become a mantra, or a production line can become a
prayer as we send blessings and angelic assistance to the homes where
the products will end up. Walking in the crowded street, we can feel
the sadness of others but can turn it into joy by envisioning
blessings pouring into their lives. Loss in the lives of others can be
used to inspire praise and gratitude for the blessings in our own.

In our choice of the joy to fill our leisure time, we look for that
which will inspire us into achievement. As the joy flows inward on the
surface, the passion it inspires folds outward beneath the surface.
The greater our joy, the greater the actions it will inspire.