The Soul's Journey by James Ricklef

Author:James Ricklef [Ricklef, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: KnightHawk Books
Published: 2013-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Knight of Wands

This knight rides his passions. He can be dynamic but restive, he can be enthusiastic but reckless, and he can be like a wildfire that burns brightly but that also burns out quickly.

Riding your passion

"We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value—the rapture that is associated with being alive—is what it is all about." — Joseph Campbell

When we are adolescents and young adults, our passion for life is directed toward the future and we are in a rush to become something other than what we are right now. We can’t wait to finish school. We can’t wait to get a good job. We can’t wait to fall in love. And so on, and so on, as we ride our passions forever looking forward. But when we finish school, we may miss our classmates, and when we get a good job, it may consume so much of our time and energy that we are never able to relax. When we fall in love, we might get hurt, or we may take our relationship for granted and let it grow stale. In short, to quote Neil Gaiman, “The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.” As a result, we may turn our passion toward the future again.

As we get older, however, our energy and optimism wane, our plans may fade and crumble. All too soon, the time left to us seems limited, fleeting, and diminished in its possibilities. So we begin to look back at our lost youth with the longing with which we used to look toward the future. But this desire will never be fulfilled—we can’t go back—and that brings sadness and regret.

We may wonder what happened. Were we wrong to ride our passions? No, not at all. The problem was not that we acted with passion, it was that we didn’t realize that it was the ride itself that was important, not the destination. We must learn to ride a passion for what is, not what might be or what once was.

Fortunately, it is not too late to enjoy the ride we are on right now. This applies to our life in its every detail. For example, whenever we say, “I can’t wait until ...” we are deferring our happiness instead of experiencing the joy of our life right now. To quote Eckhart Tolle: “It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.” So ride passionately toward the future, but always enjoy the ride as it exists in this perfect moment of now.

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