This month has asked me to look at my inner fire and how I am keeping my fire burning. I’ve been looking at how I nurture and flow between different aspects of myself. I’ve been curious about ways I can express and channel the fire of anger, passion and creativity.
Material Fire
In the earth channel I’ve been called to look at my literal fireplace. It’s deep mid Winter and my fire is working hard to keep me and my narrow boat warm. I’ve not taken care of it and so I’m suffering with soot and smoke fumes and in efficient burning – wasting energy. A lack of confidence in my ability to deal with the issues coupled with a resentment at the discomfort of the work is what has been blocking me. The question of what sustains me – which actually came from a fantastic reading by Kelsey from www.unseenhandshealingcollective.com is what inspired me to face this stuff. While more delicate tasks are my preference after years of pushing my body and a lot of chronic pain I recognised that this area of my life and this practical creativity was of equal value. I approached the task mindfully. Slowly I assessed the issues and ordered the parts I needed. From broken glass to broken, fire blocks, from a rusty exterior and leaking seals to a very squashed rope seal there was plenty to do.
Once I had accepted this part of my reality and taken some space to feel how I felt about it and honour those feelings I felt clear and committed to the job. I didn’t rush or force as I would have in the past because I would have been fighting myself all the way! It all went amazingly smoothly and now two weeks after repainting the stove, replacing the glass, sweeping the chimney and fixing the seals all I have left is to put in a new rope seal. Check out the gallery below to see the finished results.
Creative Fire
So many doubts… how to keep my fire burning? I don’t lack fire for creative work the issues I face are burn out and being spread to thin – a lack of focus which leads to depletion, lack of confidence and lack of completion which then reinforces the original doubts. What’s this lack of focus about? Well there’s an urgency to my process that stems from childhood and ancestral wounds. There isn’t enough time, I’m a waste of time this is a waste of time. It’s too hard, because for a while it really was too hard and underneath that – what’s the point? Nobody wants this! Nobody wants me. There’s no place for me in this world, this clean sterile goal oriented world. Everything I do is wrong!
Ugh how heavy these beliefs are – how much I don’t want this to be my process. Not all this! I don’t want the mess! At times I reject myself and abandon my projects before anyone else gets the chance. I don’t shine a light on all the beautiful gifts exploring these beliefs hold because I don’t think people are interested in exploring the shadows with me. Well that’s what happens when I’m in resistance anyway. The truth is I am an edgy person a lot of the time. I am very sweet too of course and in a way it is the tension between the joy of sweetness and the ferocity in me that makes me who I am. I live at the edges of this society and hold intense polarities of privilege and marginality and a lot of the time I resent it! I learnt to survive by shape shifting and hiding and coming in to deeper visibility and integrity is a great joy and a great demand and struggle. Now I am learning to hold this heaviness lightly, lovingly. To accept and enjoy this density of humanity of embodiment, that needs and fears and longs and grows and is vulnerable to the elements to want to support that in others.
I can see that my intelligence, my particular, peculiar, non linear, receptive, sensual and emergent intelligence and my logic, my formality, my irreverence and my directness are difficult for me to reconcile. The part of me that wants to rule and control and decide and the part of me that wants to let go, lounge, be led and surrender. There is an inner battle that rages – the mediation between the two, the flow, the space and the balance are what keeps the fire alive and tempered! I want to be the we in my I and the I and my we. My practice is listening to the cells and neutrons that make up the ‘we’ ness of me. It is not an apparently logical business, it is at times chaotic, confusing, overwhelming and at others chaordial, magical, new. This part of my experiencing which Is primary does not translate easily into words or make good small talk. I feel often alone in the human world and yet there is an appreciation of that ecological, natural, formative, trancendent messiness, that unknowable, unpredictable emerging me ness that is of the ‘we’. The art in giving up trying to make sense and trusting you will find your own sense very nicely, or move on to what makes sense for you. Or even better that between us we might make our own sense, or represent a sense of something bigger, quieter wiser than we do alone…. Right I need my linear translating self back…
So keeping my creative fire burning requires a constant evolving and abandoning and of ‘self’ and a constant ‘re- cognising’, exploring and rejoicing of the ‘self’. And that needs rest! Plenty of rest and peace and space and play and right relationship in/with the human and other than human. Check out the pile of images that are on my desk just now, it’s this process work which supports more cohesive projects like the animal oracle deck – wolf is pictured below.
What keeps your fire burning? I know for myself this is a question I’ll be staying with and revisiting and resting into for a while to come. If you want to explore your creative process and find some experienced company while you do get in touch to work with me.
