Connect to Your Passion: A Letter from Deepak Chopra

Passion is the free flow of natural emotional energy that leads us toward the fulfillment of our dreams, desire, and purpose in life. Even though some people feel like they’ve lost their passion or never had any to begin with, in reality we all have passion or we wouldn’t be alive. The reason why so many feel bored, lost, or adrift in life is that they have become disconnected from their deepest desires.

As we are growing up, some of us receive the message that we don’t deserve to have desires, that what we want is unacceptable, or that it’s wrong or selfish to go after our dreams. Or we may feel powerless and think, “Why bother having desires when they will never be fulfilled anyway?” We then suppress our desires, even to the point where we’re no longer consciously aware of their existence.

No matter how deeply we’ve buried our desires, they are a force of evolution and growth that can never be completely halted. When we reconnect to what our soul is yearning for, we will find ourselves naturally expressing our passion and experiencing the expansion of happiness in our life.  Here is simple practice you can use to rediscover your true desires:

1. Begin by meditating for a few minutes and connecting to the experience of stillness and silence. Then ask what your heart deeply desires and yearns to express and listen quietly for an honest response. For the time being, don’t fixate on any one response, let the journey move wherever it wants to. This part also requires you to develop trust in your inner voice. As the process deepens, you will gain insight into whether a desire is coming from your ego or your real self. Does it feel relaxed and loving? Is it coming from a place that already feels good about itself?  Does it want this for others as well as for oneself? These are the desires that the universe will support and therefore which will be manifested most easily.
2. Ask yourself, “What are my unique gifts and talents? How can I use them to bring happiness to others and to myself?” Answers always come, but what I have discovered is that many people have such a strong filtering mechanism that they won’t even entertain certain responses and say that they aren’t getting any answers. The important thing when you are listening for an answer is to not to immediately reject what comes to mind just because it doesn’t match your preconceptions.

Just dig in deep and find out what really matters to you. Keep at it and don’t settle for “I don’t know what I have to offer others” or “I’m not really great at anything.” Don’t let yourself get stuck in notions that your passion has translated into work that you do for the rest of your life, or that it has to be grand or spiritual. Let it grow out of what you are doing today, right now, so that you find meaning and value in your present as well.

Continue doing this daily, asking yourself these two questions and writing down your responses as they evolve over time. Over the weeks, let the answers accumulate, whether they are repetitive or contradictory, or both. After a month, take some time to consider the ways in which your desires and your gifts have found expression in the last few weeks. This is the evidence that you are following your passion.  It doesn’t have to be a simple final revelation; it can be an ever-changing process. Understand that everything you need to know is right here, right now and that it’s just a matter of transcending your limited perceptions to experience the passion, joy, and purpose of your life.

With love,
Deepak

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Source

Words that heal

by Deepak Chopra

There is a long tradition, both East and West, about sacred words. We don’t resort to that kind of thing very much in modern life. If you are a devout Catholic you repeat the rosary, and in many sorts of Buddhist and Hindu meditations a mantra is repeated over and over. There are two reasons for this, usually. One is that the repeated words go directly to God, as prayers do. The other is that repetition fills the mind with a deeper intention that can create a good effect.

I wonder if it isn’t time to consider how words can help to heal. I’ve been fascinated for a long time about how to update traditional spiritual practices, and this one is especially promising.
What can a mere word do to heal?

In ordinary life words can be incredibly powerful, creating instantaneous, often dramatic changes in mind and body. Think of the difference between hearing the words “You’re hired” and “You’re fired.” How many lives have been changed by “I love you”? Yet we actually know very little about how to consciously employ the effect that a single word can have.

Let me make some suggestions for you to ponder:
Withhold harsh words: Being honest doesn’t mean being brutal. In the name of telling the truth, we’ve all heard — and said — things we’re sorry were ever uttered. It’s worth remembering that every cell in your body is eavesdropping on the brain, and when you feel hurt or shocked by what you hear, the same shock is occurring to hundreds of billions of cells.

I became a doctor just on the cusp of a big change in this regard. It used to be that physicians hardly ever told fatally ill patients that they were dying, often withholding even the diagnosis. (When the last emperor of Japan died, he was not told his diagnosis — the old practice still holds in other cultures.) It was thought that receiving bad news could hasten a person’s death and impair his chances of recovery. This effect is known as nocebo, the reverse of placebo. In essence, your body metabolized bad news and becomes sicker, or it metabolizes good news and starts to heal.

Today, we believe it is only ethical to give patients full disclosure about their illness, and on the whole that is the right thing to do. But it doesn’t erase the nocebo effect. Leaving medicine aside, consider withholding harsh, harmful truths in daily life. There is no reason to discourage a child, for example, by saying hurtful things.

It’s well known in psychology that descriptive statements (such as “you’re lazy, you can’t be trusted, you’ll never be as smart as your sister,” etc.) make a much deeper impression than prescriptive statements (such as “pick up your room, remember to come home on time, be nice to your sister” etc.) Sometimes a single derogatory sentence from a parent or close friend can remain stuck in the brain for life, serving as a toxic seed that grows into a belief that one will never be good enough, smart enough, or beautiful enough. It’s much harder to remove these seeds than not to plant them in the first place.

Words that heal: Besides holding back on harsh and derogatory words, saying words that heal really works. Offering reassurance in an anxious situation settles people. Reminding someone that they are loved, respected, and valued should be a habit. Such words serve to bond two people together at a deep level if the words are backed up with simple, sincere, believable emotion — not over-stated emotion but natural feeling. We tend to be shy about exposing ourselves emotionally, but only if you try can you gain the benefit.

Then there are words we say only to ourselves, silent words of healing. In the East there are thousands of such formulas, many gathered under the loose term of mantra, that are repeated in order to infuse the mind with their good effect. You can’t get much effect from repeating a word like love, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness when your mind is agitated or filled with the flotsam of everyday life. But if you deepen your awareness through meditation, which brings one’s attention to a level of silence beneath the surface static, then healing words can have quite a strong effect.

It is taught that healing words, when said at a subtle level of the mind, can do several things. They can purify the mind of negative thoughts by introducing a more positive effect (such as replacing “It’s my fault” with “Blame won’t help anybody”). A healing word can bring comfort; it can add a positive element to your surroundings. It can improve your mood and the overall tone of your demeanor, which others will notice and take heed of.

I’m suggesting that healing words need to play a more important role in our lives. This is a vast territory worth exploring. As a society, we’ve become experts at words that definitely don’t heal: gossip, cynicism, skepticism, accusation, partisan wrangling, smear campaigns, and character assassination. As a result, we know all about the bad effects of such words. Why not consider the positive effect of saying words that work in the opposite way?
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle