Claude Monet’s driving passion in his later years was creating his garden at Giverny. He captured that passion on canvas, creating what was later recognized as a monumental collection of work, his Water Lilies Series.

Have you ever considered what kind of world would we live in if we all followed our soul’s passion? Do most of us even know how to hear our soul’s messages? Too often we manage to muffle them to the faintest whisper, burying our desire for deep fulfillment in some back drawer of our minds. Maybe later… And then later never comes.

Tuning into our soul’s passion

A quote from Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

“…One of the most important discriminations we can make in this [life] is the difference between things that beckon to us and things that call from our souls…
…When we are connected to the instinctual self,…which is natural and wild, then instead of looking over whatever happens to be on display, we say to ourselves, ‘What am I hungry for?’ Without looking at anything outwardly, we venture inward, and ask, “What do I long for? What do I wish for now?’ Alternate phrases are ‘What do I crave? What do I desire? For what do I yearn?’ And the answer usually arrives rapidly: ‘Oh, I think I want… you know what would be really good, is some this or that… ah yes, that’s what I really want.’
Is that on the smorgasbord? Maybe yes and maybe not. In most cases, probably not. We will have to quest for it a little bit – sometimes for a considerable time. But in the end we shall find it, and be glad we took soundings about our deepest longings…”

Creative people tend to be naturally tapped into their soul’s passion and are driven by a need to speak it to the world. It may be about any number of subjects; for Monet it was his water lilies and the beauty of nature.

But, living passionately is not reserved for the creative ones only. Deep within each of us lies a deep yearning, a need to experience certain things, to feed our souls, and to express our passion to others.

The shift towards living our passion

What dormant passion lies within you, perhaps still untapped and unspoken? Humanity is experiencing a major shift right now, and it is taking place within each of us. Society as it stands says more often than not that we cannot live our passion and practically speaking make a living at it. But what if that’s not true? What if that is an old message, one we can make antiquated, right now?

What is your passion, that thing that makes your soul sing? Use the questions Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests above, and jot the answer(s) on a paper.

Then start dreaming. Dream big. Claude Monet’s passion for water lilies could not be contained on small canvases, and later his art captured the imagination of the world. Anything is possible within the realm of imagination. Anything.

As the great author Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Dare to tell your deepest story to the world, starting now.

Monet Message | Live Passion © Susan L Hart 2020 | Hart Haiku