JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 15
April 22, 2020
Strange Angels
I started writing Strange Angels in 2016, and like with all the books I have ever written, at certain points in the writing process I knew an event hadn’t happened yet that was crucial to my finishing the book.
So, I decided to give it some distance.
Strange Angels is about stillness, plateaus, listening to your soul, it is about how the people you meet in your life are for a very specific reason at a very specific time. It is about how I’ve noticed that real life events often simultaneously occur in your life to either renew your spirit or to answer a problem you have been trying to solve on your own, but have not been able to as of yet.
With 99% of the book complete I knew there was something missing.
So, I listened to my soul, I gave it some space.
I finished Strange Angels today, during the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, with the whole world shut down.
Seeing the world in solitude, social distancing, and understanding who and what is essential in life was the event I needed to experience to finish this book.
I understand the importance of interactions with people, the need to live life, of seeing the world, of knowing the effect we all have on one another, and that the invisible can be very powerful.
I know more than anything else in this world when a life-changing event simplifies your life, brings it down to a standstill, the gift you are given is the ability to hear your soul.
Your souls was always there for you,
Life just provided too much noise, and it drowned it out.
When you take away worldly noise ones soul is audible.
The opportunity to clear the air, to be able to listen to our souls is a gift.
When we hear and listen to our soul we are aligned.
Life in soul alignment is the most important time in our lives.
It is in soul alignment that the Divine orchestrates our journey.
Soul alignment sends us to the right path we need to travel for us to wind up where we were meant to be, and become who we were meant to become in this world.
There is nothing more important.
So often, we make plans without ever listening to our soul, and we wonder why those plans peeter out at some point.
It is only after experiencing a life-changing event, after all we have or ever worked for is washed away in an instant, that we realize we are most rich.
For a very special gift has been given to us.
The gift is a clear audible pathway to our hear soul.
I believe it is when we hear and listen to our soul that we are guided by Strange Angels in our life, who, often will direct us to the next Divine dot in our lives.
I have often tried to define what success is in life, I have concluded success is living a life that is in alignment with your soul no matter the circumstances.
To recognize the people who speak to your soul, to partake in actions that make the sound of your soul louder, to trust in the process of life.
When we do, I believe, we are living successfully.
To be able to recognize the
Strange Angels your soul sends into your life you must be aligned with your soul.
Sometimes, it takes a life-changing event, like a world pandemic to become soul aligned.
Welcome the Strange Angels.
Get to your next Divine dot.
For, when the dots eventually all become connected the portrait of your life is revealed.
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Strange Angels will be released May 1st.
April 15, 2020
Essentially Intertwined
Living through the last month has reminded me that EVERYONE is essential.
Every person alive existence and occupation is intertwined in a magical way.
More than I ever knew.
April 5, 2020
The Ordinary Is Extraordinary
The ordinary is extraordinary
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One of the keys to happiness is to see what others overlook and take for granted.
Appreciation and gratitude are powerful fuels.
They allow you to be in the moment.
What dying person does not crave for just one more moment of an ordinary day, in an ordinary year, with an ordinary person?
When you really think about it, one’s ability to realize that the ordinary days probably outnumber the extraordinary days 750 to 1.
One’s happiness and ability to make the ordinary days amazing is very important to one’s life.
I contest the average person only remembers about 50 days in their life, their wedding day, the birth of their kids, the loss of a loved one, etc.
If one were to live to be 100, one would have lived 36,500 days.
Imagine if you only remembered the special days that would leave 36,450 ordinary days, unremembered.
The quality of one’s life is in direct proportion to their ability to be amazed by the ordinary.
I contest ones ability to make the ordinary, extraordinary is much more important than having a few memorable days.
There is so much to be in awe of in life.
If one realizes that the ordinary is extraordinary one will always be happy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
“If the stars were to appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.”
Adore the stars, may you be able to see them shine in the light as well as in the dark.
JohnA Passaro
Your Soul Knows
April 2, 2020
It’s Always There.
She still finds the beauty in life.
March 20, 2020
Grenade
Life is hard.
And unpredictable.
Sometimes, life will throw you a curve.
When it does, the solution is easy; you just learn to hit a curve.
But what do you do when life throws you a grenade instead?
One that goes off and disrupts and destroys nearly every aspect of your life.
Death, divorce, a diagnosis – a random act of violence.
You wake up one day, and your current life is no reflection of the life you once knew.
When this happens, I’m not going to tell you everything is going to be alright.
That is going to be up to you.
You are going to have to fight.
And even after you win the fight, the term ‘alright’ is going to take on a whole new meaning to you.
What I will tell you is to buckle up because it is going to hurt like hell.
For that, I do know.
You are going to experience hurt more intense than you can ever imagine.
Enough to paralyze you.
And when you do learn how to move again, you will be at your breaking point.
Many times over.
The pain will be enough to fill your every thought with quitting and throwing in the towel.
Don’t.
When you get pushed to the edge, to your breaking point, instead of using a period in your life, use a semi-colon.
Pause, but then go on.
There is more story left to write.
More life to live.
More love to feel.
Hang in there.
Tread water for as long as you can.
And even longer if you must.
Endurance requires purpose.
Purpose requires love.
Find yours.
The best day of your life hasn’t been lived yet.
You need to believe that.
Kindness in the universe will find you.
As you sit there looking around at the destruction in your life, what you do not yet realize is the adversity you have experienced, although devastating, has secretly given you a gift.
A gift so valuable, you will never want to relinquish it.
Although this gift is available to everyone, everyone’s too busy to recognize it.
They say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
You are now ready.
Look around.
At first, you may not see anything.
But I can assure you the teacher is present.
Your ascension from the depths of despair to the heights of euphoria is about to begin.
Right now, you can only see the ways your life has changed for the worse.
Those changes are obvious.
The good news, and yes there is good news, is your life can change for the better.
Significantly.
It is a universal law that when the universe takes something of value from you, it must give you the gift of the ‘seed of something greater’ in return.
One day, I don’t know when, probably sometime after all your human emotions have run their course, you will come face to face with your gift of the ‘seed of something greater.’
What you do with that seed will be totally up to you.
You can plant and nourish the seed and experience the miracle of its growth, or you can pay it no attention and allow its fruit to die, even before it gets to the vine.
Make your choice wisely.
The quality of your life depends on it.
This seed is the greatest gift you will ever be given in your life.
You don’t know that yet.
But you will in time.
If there is anything you ever trust again, trust in the fact that this seed, if planted, will produce boundless fruit in your life.
Fruit, you never knew existed.
Fruit that will nurture you back to health.
You have paid the full price for this fruit.
You might as well let it nourish you.
I will not insult you and say the fruit is in any way a fair exchange for what you have lost; or even that you should be grateful for the exchange.
I also know it is not an exchange you sought, and one if given a choice, one you would absolutely undo.
But when all is said and done, you have two choices.
You can open and use the gift.
Or not.
That is up to you.
The exchange may not be what you want in your life right now.
But it is what you have.
And it is much more valuable than you know.
I have never met a person who experienced a life-changing event, who, ever wanted to give back their newfound perspective on life.
I know you do not believe that to be true.
I believe, in time you will.
For, inside the gift lives what you lost.
And opening the gift is the only way to keep what you lost alive.
Rebuilding your life makes its spirit flourish.
And that spirit goes out into the universe to help others.
I believe that.
I know right now you want to lie down amongst the rubble in your life, to just blend into the destruction.
They say the greatest mistake is in giving up.
Don’t.
You must build again.
The normal reaction will be to try to rebuild a life exactly like the one you had before the grenade went off.
That will prove futile.
As you rebuild, if you attempt to replicate your past life you will realize if you rely on the pieces the grenade destroyed, you will come up short in comparison, as gaps and holes will emerge in your new structure, and the result will look nothing like your life before the grenade hit.
The key is to rebuild, not to replicate.
Obviously, there will be pieces of your life that will be missing.
You are going to need to be resourceful; to do more, with less.
As you rebuild, your newfound perspective of life will be your greatest asset.
And the rubble will miraculously transform into a foundation on which you will build anew.
J.K. Rowling profoundly said, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
It can be done.
You should do it.
It is worth it.
Every day is a new life.
There’s many life’s waiting.
No, it will not be the same.
It can’t be.
Integral pieces are missing.
But it will be enough to make this moment matter.
And, matter it does.
Do not attempt to make answers to your unanswerable questions the prerequisite to your happiness.
I promise you what you do not currently understand, one day you will.
You need to believe that.
Your effort is better utilized teaming up with trust, belief, faith, and love.
Unconditionally.
So, pick up the first shattered piece of your life and attach it to the next.
Glue them together with love.
Keep doing that.
That is how you to build again.
To live again.
To care again.
To be you again.
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FREE eBook download available
https://payhip.com/b/ydAU
________
Paperback
March 19, 2020
In the Eye Of A Storm
Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home.
Edward Abbey
I have come to realize my ideal place, my right place, my one true home, is in the eye of a storm.
For it is the storm, which has made me appreciate the calm.
It is the clouds, which have made me see clearly.
It is the rain, which has caused me to grow.
It is the odds, which have taught me to believe.
The ocean, which has made me feel vast.
The waves, which have made me feel directed.
The oars, which have made me feel purposeful.
The solitude, which has made me soulful.
The empty boat, which has made me resourceful.
Yes, I am most at home in the eye of a storm.
For, the eye of a storm has magnified and extracted from me my greatest asset.
My fight.
The eye of the storm has pounded me into the best version of myself and revealed to me who I am.
And what I value.
Life.
So, give me a rowboat and some oars.
Throw me into the ocean, far from land.
Pelt me with rain and stun me with thunder.
I will never go under.
For I’m not looking for any port in this storm.
For it is in the eye of the storm where I yearn to be.
Right here, where I am my best me.
Excerpt from “In the Eye of the Storm”
March 17, 2020
Deep In The Difficult You Will Find the Best Version of Yourself
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The gem cannot be polished without friction,
Nor man perfected without trials.
Rumi
Feel blessed when faced with difficulty.
As difficulty is the sculptor of men.
One of the greatest, most profound realizations I have ever had in my life was the understanding that all adversity that I ever faced in my life was designed to bring out the best in me, to turn me into the best version of myself.
Since then, I have always been up for the challenge of the transformation.
When I am deep in difficulty, I feel blessed knowing a better version of me is in the process of being sculpted.
I imagine the Universe during the sculpting, with a chisel in its hand and Michelangelo’s quote hanging on its wall,
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is up to the sculptor to discover it,” while sending more adversity my way.
I truly believe that life doesn’t happen to me;
It happens for me.
In her book, “Death and Dying,” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote,
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Wrestling Rules for Life
March 14, 2020
Essential
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It is only when you cease doing
What you are programmed to do
That you can find
What you are meant to do.
Pico Iyer
Henry David Thoreau lived in the woods in solitude for two years to rid himself of nonessential worldly distractions, to focus and understand what is truly important in life.
I have been blessed with the same such solitude.
No, I haven’t spent time in the woods like Thoreau, but I have lived a much more simplified life over the last ten plus years’ taking care of Jess, much of the time in solitude.
Thoreau said, “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
They say that if the world would stop spinning the gravitational forces would generate a wind gust more than 10x that of the most dangerous hurricane mankind has ever encountered, stripping the world of all non-essential items.
I say a life-changing event, is very similar.
A Life-changing event is like standing in a wind tunnel, holding on to your life, as all the non-essential items get blown away.
When the wind stops, and it will, what will be left will be all the essential items to rebuild.
Which will be your will to live and your love of one another and for life.
Everything else is non-essential.
Being Jess’s caregiver has changed my life.
It is said that one must first become limited to become limitless.
One could say being Jess’s caregiver has limited my lifestyle as either BettyJane or I are either always with Jess at all times, but I say being Jess’s caregiver has made me limitless.
It has eliminated the nonessential aspects of my life and has allowed me to prioritize and has given me the time to do what I believe I was meant to do with my life.
To be unified with my soul.
There are vast amounts of time I spend in solitude, and like Thoreau, solitude has forced me to live deliberately and to suck the marrow out of life.
Divinely, my life-changing event has blessed me with solitude.
And solitude is responsible for teaching me the essentials in life.
The will to live.
The love of one another.
The love of life.
www.johnapassarostore.com
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March 13, 2020
The Ultimate Test
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The ultimate test of a wrestler is to handle any outcome with grace.
Out of all the fantastic lessons that this sport teaches,
This may be the one most beneficial to life.
To let nothing ever beat you.
They say you can only control the controllable,
I have learned that choosing to handle the most difficult of times in life with grace actually controls the uncontrollable too.
JohnA Passaro
March 12, 2020
It Was Worth It
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To all those wrestlers who are now wondering if it was all worth it,
Always remember,
The reward that you seek,
May not be the reward that you receive.
It is always worth it.
Sometimes your reward comes disguised as heartache.
But it is that heartache that propels you to do what will lead you your true reward.
One more magnificent than you have ever imagined.
I know that doesn’t seem possible today,
But, believe me, one day it will.
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