Passion is: desire, affliction, appetite, craving, itch, agony, affection, sentiment, frenzy, transporting, lusty, craving, coveting, aspiring, aiming, intense, fiery, enthusiasm, zealous.
Passion, in all of its various meanings, always suggests intensity. Intensity of emotion or belief, which can be experienced as an esoteric euphoria or great suffering. When you feel passion you are living right on the verge of losing control, of that line we call sanity/insanity. You feel strongly, you believe strongly, you are reaching towards something or someone. The general idea is that you are abandoning all else to something external in pursuit of a goal or feeling. Passion can focus itself on something specific or not, on a concrete aim or an abstract one. It may be tied to a great feeling of a specific emotion or just a general focus. We often call the big things in our lives passions: our spiritual “calling,” our romantic partners, our children, the product of our life’s work. Whether we think of passion as a good thing or a bad thing, as the goal to seek or something violent to avoid says much about us as people. The truth is that passion is all of this.
Meditation on Passion:
I covet the greatest feeling, the edge of the night of humanity,
Am drawn to the light and the heat of the storm of yearning.
I block out the caution of those who fear for my safety,
The conventional sentiment of the ones who are afraid,
For I am not afraid of the burn.
I will push on in the direction of the sun, of the glory.
I am angered by the obstacles, laughing at fate,
Waving my arduous fervor toward the one, the dream,
the journey that takes me wherever it needs
to bring me to the outburst of ecstasy.