FIRE
What is my greatest expression, that I could ever dream of in this life?
Expressing
Fire holds the aliveness and joyful expression of life. The laugh that comes easily, the warmth that draws people in, the love, the connection, the creativity and the greater Spirit of life. Fire weaves stories, draws us in as a place to share and it gives us the sense that any of this life means anything. Fire is most noticed — in its absence. When we are cold, when we disconnect, when we pull away, when we stop believing, when we forget our path and the courageous truth that lies ahead of us.
Fire can scorch and burn us too. Burnout is Fire's territory: not tiredness, which sleep, hydration and diet repairs, but the gray flatness that sleep doesn't touch. Do you ever find yourself in burnout? What does it look like for you?
“The closed heart and the open heart are the same fire.”
The work still gets done, but nothing in it burns anymore. You live your life, yet it is severely lacking the glory, the beauty, the love, the vigor. And underneath the flatness, usually, is the armor. Somewhere along the way — a marriage that went quiet, a friendship that ended badly, a younger self who got laughed at for wanting too much — the heart put on its guard and never took it off.
The guard works. That part of you is doing its job. That’s the problem. Nothing wounds you now, and nothing reaches you either. A man can live years inside that armor, warm to everyone, known by no one.
Where do you fall within this? What might you be guarding? And what lies underneath? Can I allow love to shine on me again? Can I allow myself to feel a light and playful sense of joy? You are worthy of it all.
“The fingers may not finish feeding the fire, but the fire passes on, and no one knows it ends.”
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The closed heart and the open heart are the same fire. In this tradition, what hardened around your heart is not the opposite of love. It is love that got burned and drew the only conclusion it could. The work of Fire is not to tear off the armor or perform an openness you don't feel. It is slower: to notice the armor is still deciding for you, and to ask whether the danger it remembers is still in the room.
And there is a second teaching here, resonant with where you are in life: the fire of noon is not the fire of the afternoon. The first half of life burns outward — building, proving, blazing for everyone to see. Somewhere past the mid-way, the sun begins to descend, and a man who keeps forcing noon will burn his reserves to hold a position the day no longer asks of him. That's burnout's deepest root. The descending sun isn't defeat. It's the light turning inward — where it can finally illuminate what all the radiance has left unexamined.
The descending sun is not defeat. It's the light turning inward.
Questions to sit with:
When did I last feel genuinely alive — and what was I doing?
Who actually knows me? Not around me — knows me.
What am I still trying to prove, and to whom?
For when you are ready:
What burned me — and what conclusion did my heart draw that day?
If I let one person all the way in, who would it be? What stops me?
What would it mean to let noon be over — and what might the afternoon light show me?
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