Living a Passionate Life : Being a Secret Agent

Living a Passionate Life: Being a Secret Agent

The artists I know ARE artists. They draw, paint, sculpt, act, write, dance, choreograph, throw pots, weave, carve, design, build etc. etc. etc.  in their everyday life. They do these things because it is in their blood, their heart, their soul. They make the time to do their art every day and choose that over  drinking, partying, eating, shopping. They do their art whether or not they make a living at it, whether or not they receive recognition for their art. They self-educate, and practice, practice, practice. I have never heard an artist proclaim they had a “gift” and demand recognition. I have never heard an artist say they had a gift or talent, and not practice and yet expect to make a living from some so-called gift that they decided and announced came from God or Spirit. I have only seen this (over and over again) in the new age industry, people wanting to be “told” what their “gift” is.  If you don’t know, do you really think some “gift” will magically appear because someone tells you that you (supposedly) have a “talent”? This is “magical” thinking which is a classical symptom indicative of unhealed childhood wounds and these wounds are preyed upon by the new age industry to milk people out of thousands of dollars who pay to receive magical messages of hope (without having to do any of the ongoing work).

Your “gift” is not necessarily your passion. If your “gift” is beauty, that doesn’t mean your passion now is to be a model or a high class escort. Gift/talent and passion are two different flowers. If you love something, you start doing it without any thought of “outcome” such as making it into a career, making money, getting recognition and acclaim. Your behaviors, your actions, your choices on what you actually do with your time and how much time you spend doing it, (be it drinking and drugging, or reading books, drawing, or meditating) speak louder and more honestly than your self-proclaimed narrative of who you “want to be”, but are not. Pure passion means doing for the sake of doing. That doesn’t mean you cannot discover a passion later in life. That is absolutely possible. The key here is congruence (see last week’s article). In order to discover what your passions are, you need to observe your behaviors, not listen to your (or other’s) constructed narrative of who you are or who you are “meant to be”.  What if you are depressed, but you are convinced that “if only” you were doing your passion, you would then not be depressed? That is a fantasy. No external change such as moving to a new place, getting a career, marriage, having children etc., is a cure. It is a short term “fix”. If you are depressed and avoiding it, overweight because of over eating, etc. there is your current passion and commitment.  You are currently spending your time, energy, and money finding ways to “medicate” your unhealed wounds and the feelings you are avoiding, that you don’t want to feel by those choices. You are working hard at it, committed to not feeling, not healing and perhaps that is all you know to do right now. However until you can have the courage and honesty to observe and admit to the passions you are actually pursuing, meaning what you are actually “doing” as opposed to what you are thinking about doing, you will be stuck in incongruity. You need to take the first step stated in 12-step meetings. Admit you are powerless over the effects of….whatever current destructive behaviors you are spending your time and energy doing.   Until you can become honest about your “now”, become congruent, you will be living a lie thinking about and creating a narrative of who you think you are (if only things were better) versus noticing who you really are, right now, in the now (mindfulness, self-awareness).  

With incongruity you use words and thoughts to convince yourself of some fantasy narrative of who you think you should be and therefore “are” (but not really—denial), versus your willingness and ability to notice your actual behaviors, choices and actions. Incongruity creates a mild form of dissociation splitting your energy field as you try to not see what is truly going on in your life and you also try to keep convincing yourself that your fantasy of your idealistic future is starting to happen now (when you are doing nothing to make it happen except wishful thinking). When your energy is split you literally cannot be mindful or self-aware, you are too busy lying to yourself, you are too busy denying and distracting yourself from all the unpleasant feelings you don’t want to feel.  When you are not mindful, you cannot take good care of your Self because you, distracted by your fractured energy field and denial, you don’t even know who you are. In extreme cases you don’t even know how you feel.  All of this will cause you to make even more mistakes and bad decisions further widening the gap between who you currently are and who you desperately wish to be. And so you continue to spiral down usually with the effect of an increase in dysfunctional choices and behaviors, more eating, drinking, sexing etc. all to avoid the increase in uncomfortable and painful feelings of unworthiness which is toxic shame.  You are now living in hell.

Congruency, being honest about who you are in this moment of your life, means you must start to have the courage and discipline to observe, and document (by writing down) your actual behaviors, feelings, thoughts and actions. Asking you to observe and take inventory on your daily behaviors, choices and actions goes against the dysfunctional new age nonsense of using affirmations. Affirmations used while you are in denial is like spreading chocolate on dog poop and saying “I am eating dessert now”.  Positive thinking does not mean being in denial or lying to yourself, or choosing to live in a fantasy world of what you think could or should be happening in your life now (usually with no effort on your part).  Congruency also means you will be able to receive Guidance from Source. Only when you are congruent are you “home” in your body, able to receive any Guidance from Source just like television is being broadcast all the time, but until you turn on the set, you will not receive the broadcast. When you are incongruent (in denial) and creating narratives of how you “should“ be or fantasize you are being, it is very typical for people to “talk” to guides, with words, have conversations. However Source does not speak with words. Source speaks with energy only. So how do you know if your guides are really guides, or part of your system of denial and your ego and left brain narrative that you are running in your head in order to feel better in spite of your actions?  While you may not be full out schizophrenic hearing voices in your head, it is a close second for you to be creating so-called guides as a copinsg mechanism for your denial. How do you know if you are doing this?  Start taking inventory daily and stop “talking “ to your guides for a week or 2 weeks and see what you discover.

So what does all of this have to do with being a secret agent, a spiritual secret agent?  Many people lust after having a “career” in the new age industry and to use their “gift”. Typically their “gift” was told to them by someone in an expensive new age workshop, however if you look at their lives and lifestyles you will see there was no recognition or use of their “gifts” prior to being “told they had “it”. Suddenly people now declare that their gift is also their passion. We know that if people have a passion, they pursue it every free moment. In fact many people do not want to make their passion their source of income because somehow that can change passion to work, from I love to do this to I have to do this to earn a living. Sometimes the two can successfully blend. However gifts and passion are not the same thing.  For example, let’s say you have the “gift” of being born beautiful. Does that mean you have a passion to be a model? Or that you now “should” be a model? Confusing gift with passion produces and encourages incongruence. Integrating your passion or passions into your daily life either in you workplace or making the time in your daily life to pursue your passions is one of the heartbeats of self-care, of loving your life no matter what the circumstances. Making time for your passions is part of a living real life Spiritual Practice.

Being a secret agent means using your passion no matter what you do to make a living. I saw a video recently of a neurosurgeon who dances with children in the hospital. He was an amazing dancer and it was obvious that dancing was at least one of his passions and he snuck it in, integrated into his work for money, being a doctor.  Being a doctor may also be one of his passions, but maybe he is just a amazing surgeon, gifted, talented. Having enough self-awareness to know your passions and the courage to act upon the knowledge is the key to being a secret agent. You have to be congruent to be a secret agent. You have to know your Self, be in a deep intimate relationship with your Self, which also means you are home in your own body, open and available to receive Guidance through your connection with Source. Being a secret agent is intuitive, fluid and joyful. It is not for recognition, money, nor can it be used to build an incongruent image of yourself by using the idea of having a “gift” to define who you are and why you are on earth. So many new age people want to “know their purpose” as if that will solve your problems and always the new age “purpose” is some grandiose narrative. No one will pay lots of money to find out or be told their “purpose” in this life is to learn patience, or to take care of a spouse who becomes paralyzed. No, it always has something to do with awakening or saving humanity or the earth, in the meantime you can’t even make it to the gym. The new age industry is built on constructing incongruence. The lost and lonely will run to grandiose narratives as a way to feel better, without having to do any work.

My passions have always been to help people, animals and to “save the planet.” From a very young age I was rescuing baby birds, kittens etc. and spent hours “talking” to animals whenever I could.  By 15 years old I was reading books about animal behavior and going to zoos to practice what I learned. In reviewing my childhood learn more about who I am in this life I re-discovered that I loved to rescue and help others. I always went for the runt of the litter. I always became best friends with the underdog of the school or playground. I found a story I wrote when 10 years old about finding a bent key and when I went to straighten it, discovered it opened whatever it touched and revealed the secrets inside. In the story I learned about the world and eventually threw away the key because I discovered the most important thing, the most important key in life was to know your Self. By the time I was 17 I was working full time to “save the world” with the Quaker Project on Community Conflict and by 23 I was going to every spiritual event I could find (sometimes traveling hours), learning, reading, practicing anything to do with Spirit (and animals and nature and psychology and “saving the world”) with no thought of building a future.  Later on I was often working as a waitress, in a factory, folding laundry in a hospital, a bookkeeper, an office assistant, etc. in order to pay bills while pursuing my passions. These were not glamorous jobs with a future, but my passions came first. You will discover your passions if you look to your life, your past, with an honest eye.

If you want to find your passion, go back to your childhood and gather memories of what you did “naturally” as a child, as an adolescent, as a young adult. If you come from a dysfunctional childhood you have more work to do because that means your childhood was spent more on protecting yourself, not living.  In that case you may need to start with looking at what you did as a child to just feel better, and then you will have to spend more time (and with a Teacher, healer or therapist) discovering what indeed are your passions now as an adult.

Once you are congruent (honest with yourself) you can discover and own your passions, and then find ways to start to integrate them into your daily life. In your work to become congruent very often your passions will reveal themselves to you like discovering ruins in an archeological dig. Once emerged let them live in your daily life. If you are an artist, draw. I had a tech student who loved to draw. She became a network administrator but drew all the time. A superior at work saw her talent (her passion) and moved her over to graphic design for the company. She DID her passion with no thought of results or outcomes. The things you do because they are your heart, your breath, your lifestyle are your passions. If you are an artist give art to your coworkers, to the homeless, to your family.  If you are a chef you cook, for yourself, for others. Sometimes your passion becomes your career, sometimes you don’t want it to.  Integrating your passions into your daily life is secret agent work whether it is “talking to angels” or bringing paleo muffins to work. That is living your “life purpose”.

Going after “your gift” that you never used until a new ager helped you to “discover” it or going to that workshop where you were told you had a gift/talent and you are now encouraged (told) you  need to or should make money with that gift is a twisted version of spirituality and a dysfunctional way to live life.  It is you spending time and money to create (or have someone else like a workshop leader or “channeler” create for you) another false identity through the construction of a (usually grandiose) incongruent narrative to make yourself feel better. It will only be a temporary high, like having a drink or some weed, before you go trotting off to another workshop.  Congruence is discovered, incongruence is created. Dig deep and discover your sweet sacred Self and then create a deep passionate intimate relationship with your passionate Soul Mate, You.

Journey On