We often find comfort in conflict. Intensity and contrast are all around us, all the time, especially these days with everything happening around the world. For many of us, conflict has become our default setting. And when it goes on too long, we come to a place where we feel more comfortable in the chaos of an argument or a dramatic piece of news than we do in the stillness of our own being.

Often we pride ourselves on how much we can handle. Our backs are strong, people can lean on us. The more problems to solve and the more crisis to manage, the better. We take it on not necessarily because we want to, but mostly out of habit and because we can. We often hold the limited belief, “I should because I can.” And when chaos outside settles, we realize we have forgotten how to thrive without it. Our subconscious seeks the familiarity of chaos.

 

I know this about me. I can push my limits quite far until I can't anymore. I can ignore my desire for stillness and creative expression for a long while, distracted by fires, other people’s and my own. Fires who need fanning, need love, need witnessing. I am very good at that. It is comfortable for me. I’ve done it my whole life.

 

In the silence and stillness, I become aware of a background noise. When there are no fires that need me, I am left with my raging volcano, calling from inside, begging for my love, my attention, and my life-giving breath. I often miss it and its meaning. I have missed the extent of its intelligence for a big part of my life.

When for too long our fire has been measured, controlled, miss-labeled, and redirected to be “appropriate” and "acceptable", and we have fuelled too often on the fires outside of ourselves, something has to give.

 

Our core-essence gives, and the full expression of its luminous force.

When I look at Pele expressing as a volcano, tending to her own light with the grounded care and protection of a Mother and the fierce clarity and support of a Father, and I see her creating her world, literally shaping the land with her fire, I am reminded of what is possible when I give myself permission to stand in my fire, without the need for external conflict.

 

It might be super uncomfortable to feel all that intensity flowing through without any immediately apparent reason and to breathe deeply into this hot mess of urgency, of impatience, and of agitation, but I know there is no better way out than in and through.

 

And not just for the sake of healing. We sit and breathe in the heat not solely for transformation but to tap into a new way of moving through life, where change is joyful, where lessons don’t have to be hard-won, but learning happens spontaneously through the joy of fully feeling.

 

We know that if we want something new to be revealed, if we want to do justice to our creative heart and its unique song, we have to make an unbreakable commitment to our fire, first and foremost, daily, hourly. Can we draw the line in the sand even more clearly, to create the boundaries we need to make real our core-essence? What does it look like when we allow the fire in our belly to rise and rise, and voice itself, not because there is a fight to fight but because there is a big life to live?