Fire and this female
Over the summer, I was hosting a seven week online experience to talk about fire in relation to the female. Week by week I unpacked each fire center within our bodies, how we could tend that fire and how it impacted the other fires and ultimately our lives.
Many months before this offering was even created. It started slowly, but I heard the call. Go outside, make a fire. Fire invited me to come and sit and receive it's warmth, wisdom, medicine, healing and its transformational gift to my life and soul. After sitting with the fire through the winter months and even into summer - I had a fire on the solstice; I felt nourished by fire and as though it were a dear friend. Even the scorching sun, through the summer months, is a cherished friend I welcome onto my skin.
Yet, even as my friend, fire, I recognize it's ability to burn me, to make ruins around me and to scorch my soul.
Fire, is such a gift to us as humans. When you study our evolution as a species, it is intimately tied to fire. Even our diets evolved as a species because of the significantly larger array of foods our bodies were able to consume and digest thanks to the use and tending of fire.
Both men and women have tended fire; but women, we are the ones who have tended the hearths the most consistently through history.
From my perspective, there is a unique reason for that. No, not just cause we are in the home more to do so; but because of the way our energy moves through us as females. We are much more, how shall I put this, compatible with relational dynamic one needs to be in communion with a living fire. And of all the living fires there are, I would say the fires of the hearth are some of the most alive and vibrant fires humans have known.
Why do I say this? Because, the amount of love, devotion and attention needed to tend the hearth and keep that fire alive is so ongoing. A continual communion. A relationship is built. With the wood the fire likes, with the humidity the fire likes, with the air pressure the fire likes, with the ventilation the fire likes, with the people the fire draws to it each morning and night....you learn, in that tending what the fire needs to thrive and you offer it that every day to the best of your ability.
This art of tending a fire, has been lost now, for some generations by women; and we have greatly forgotten just how dependent we are upon fire. Both as women and as a species. The truth is fire keeps our entire lives lit and moving. I am right now, typing on a device that has enabled me to use fire on tap and for just the precise firing of each little key on my keyboard. You are perhaps reading this on a screen, also a device that controls fire and enables us to use it on tap. Our modern stoves use fire on tap. Our electricity in our walls and overhead lights, all this is fire on tap. We have controlled the flame and made it ours and contorted it for our purposes and at the same time, lost the ability to commune with it. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, we relinquished it in the name of innovation and progress, simply because we have forgotten to relate to it as living.
However, fire still kindly offers itself to us in it's pure form. We only need light a candle or a match to find a flame. If we add the right elements and conditions, we can get a fire happily burning in not too long of a time. If we sit with that fire and keep it alive; fire offers us it's communion still. Like all of nature, it unbiasedly shares it's warmth with us and shares itself with us.
In alchemy, fire is considered the prime mover. Meaning all other elements can be changed or moved by fire. It holds an energetic potency and power that suits the thriving of life so well. I really like fire because it has this duel component to it. A good fire, a solidly built one that is thriving, is held together by two interwoven forces that run through all of nature; masculine and feminine. Fire itself, moves with a flow, very feminine, yet, in order for that fire to move that way, the support of the masculine structure energetic has to be present and so does the sweet nest of the feminine have to be present for the spark to even become a flame. Held within that flow, that feminine dance of the fire, is the radiant and bright burning capacity of the masculine. My my! How interwoven it all is. No wonder it is such a powerful element! No wonder it is the Prime Mover! No wonder it is the life source for all the world.
When we embrace our masculine and feminine energetics and marry the two within us, we also become powerful. We also become a powerful and radiant source of warmth and very life giving to those around us. It's really easy to forget this as females.
A lot of women are running non stop in their masculine. These are the go getters, the corporate girls, the career orientated women. They hold their own fire and it's beautiful to witness. Yet, if left unchecked, unmarried to the feminine principle of flow and rest and restoration; they will be burned and their health will be their confronting factor.
And then there are my flow girls. I tend to be a flow girl. I like to be present and choose to move totally in the moment and just blindly trust things will be ok. Yet, if left unchecked, unmarried to the masculine principles of structure and support and sustenance; I will get burned and find myself in some seriously strugglesome situations.
Guess where each of us functions best. Anyone?
When we marry our masculine and feminine energetics within us.
When we choose to work with both; knowing our weakness and tendency and taking the necessary steps to integrate both into a working and happy union within our bodies, beings and life.
As women, we hold a greater capacity to do this than men. Why, because while we are not masculine beings, we can channel that energy fairly easily due to our transient and fined tuned capacities as females. However, men on the other hand have no idea what those fine tuned capacities entail when those capacities are at their prime function. They can learn about it and think about it; but cannot embody it to the same level that the female can. And no! Changing your hormonal profile cannot give you the insight that a female being from birth holds within her.
I'm not saying women are better or have a greater capacity to thrive than men do; I am simply saying that women hold a unique and vital role in the big picture of what we are here for and what we are meant to do.
As female beings, we are really well equipped for all the tasks necessary for tending fires. No, not just physical fires; but also the fires within our bodies and lives.
If I lost you there, let's just consider for a moment all the fires within the human and the female to be specific. As women, we have little centers, holy cities if you will, where fires are lit and burning night and day, day and night. If we tend those fires well, we thrive. If we forget about them, or disregard them; we may actually get burned (think inflammation). Within the female body we hold many fires, but I want to focus on a few vital ones. The first being the womb. No, if go into the womb with a camera, you will not see a fire. But, if you look at the energy body of a female, there you will find a fire. If you move up her body, she has another fire within her naval center - her living compass. Moving up again, you will find the fire of the heart, may it be ever tended! Then the throat - oh, that she use her voice more; the head and of course their are others....but all of these make up the beautiful light and fire that she is designed to be to those around her.
A beacon of light and hope and warmth and radiance. A giver of sustenance, a cultivator of community, a catalyst for change, a destroyer of that which must be cleansed, a medicine for the weary. Really, she holds a unique role in the grand scheme of it all, the female.
As I have been sitting with fire, almost, if not daily now for many months - be it candle or campfire; I can assure you it holds so much tenderness and warmth at the right distance. Too close, you will feel a whole new level or radiance.
Our fires within us deserve our presence and tending. Our hearts need us to check in more often. Our bellies may not be happy about life circumstances. Our heads may feel deeply jumbled and unable to pick up the important ques life is bringing to us each day. Yet, if we pause and offer the structure (masculine principle) of devotion to ourselves as women, we begin to see that flow to once again thrive. As we tend those living fires we find a communion that gives life, not just to us; but to all those around us.
So, let's talk about why I have been sitting around a fire. Let's talk about the scorching fires in my life and let me share about fire for this female who is learning to walk through flames.
I don't like to share my personal world often, but many of you know, I have been moving through the fires of grief. Grief around life looking differently than planned. Grief about how to move forward through those flames. The burning heat of being in the middle of the past and the future. And the fire of Love sustaining me through it all.
Love is also a fire. We even refer to it with terms of hotness like "the heat is on" and other such references. We kindle love with another person if we want it to grow. We fuel it with devotion over years. It's the little things that add up and make this fire between two souls live, breathe and thrive.
That love, that fire.... That is the one you must choose with yourself first if you are going to thrive or maybe I should say, stay alive.
As I have walked through this past year, the last 14 years to be exact, there is one thing that I have constantly turned to over and over again. Loving myself. Choosing myself. The little steps of devotion to myself over the years.
There are been seasons where this has lapsed, there have been seasons where I let fires burn low, fires burn out and other fires; like anger and resentment, burn so mf high!
If we forget which fires to tend - like all the fires around us; our home, our children, our career, our neighbors, our ...., we will face the scorching experience of a fire out of control. The long term view of that, our life goes up in flames which looks like, an empty life at the end of our days.
If we forget to tend the fires within us and forget to stay focused (like slowly, but surely, offer fuel each day to our soul, our bodies and our beings); even when - no, especially when - the flames of life around us are burning high, our lifespan gets cut short, our literal fire goes out all together.
Here we can see how and where the marrying of the two energies within is necessary and we find in order to walk through fire and not be burned; we must choose ourselves in devoted attentiveness each and every day because you are the giver of all the love! It's all found within you.
I am walking through fire in my own way right now. It may not be obvious, but I have lapsed in my show up with my work here, because I am learning to marry myself on a level I didn't know I needed to embody 4 years ago. I have lapsed in my engagement with facets of life (sorry mom friends, play dates are hard for me right now). I have lapsed in making dinner every night, somedays you just have to eat cereal for dinner. It's not easy; but the fire hasn't consumed me, I'm finding my balance among the coals. The integration is slow and steady. Some days feel like ass. Yet, as I tend myself, I find the coals might even bring me laugher as they fizzle and fuss beneath my feet.
I am still learning from fire. I think I always will be, because I choose to let it be my teacher. With each iteration of my life, fire will teach me something more and new and as it burns away what does not serve, it will make fertile ground for beautiful life to spring up and bloom.
Fire is a giver of life and a destroyer of life and both are necessary for the ever expanding nature of reality.
Fire tended, revered and intentionally communed with in the female body makes a woman so devoted to herself and life, she knows when and how to be creatress and destroyer. She knows how to love without scorching. She knows how to be radiant without blinding. She knows how to consume without devouring.
and.
She knows when to devour, blind and scorch. The fires she tend, tend her and she marries the dual natures held (within all of life) within her, to find, a whole new iteration of thrive. Then, and only from that place can she then be radiant warmth to those around her and allow that flow to give life to her home, her children, her career, her world; because she embodied love for herself over everything else.