Fire Energy!

Over the course of my lifetime, I have felt a lot of fear around my passionate, fiery energy I feel from within. There have been many times where I have followed this excited energy to the point of exhaustion, feeling burnt out or overwhelmed by this ignited, excitable, fast-burning energy. This energy scared me. I didn’t feel like I could trust it, nor did I feel like I could trust my body’s response to this energy. This passionate energy, or even anger, left me feeling scared and hesitant to encourage it.

I’ve made the connection these last few days that the greatest transformations that have taken place in my life occurred while living on islands in warmer climates (Cuba, Indonesia, and now Hawai’i). There’s something about the combination of me + a warm environment that stirs something up, deep from within.

Pelehonuamea: Pele of the Sacred Lands (Hawaiian Goddess of Fire and Volcanoes)

Three years ago, in December 2015, I attended a yoga and meditation retreat in Indonesia that has since altered the course of my life. It’s set me on a course, which now includes a lot more inner listening, introspection, and self-discovery. One of my friends who I met on retreat reminded me that it wasn’t being at the retreat that changed things for me, it was the showing up and the intention I had for myself in going to the retreat. I was ready to show up for me.

I’ll tell you what, this type of growth ain’t for the faint of heart! BUT, I am infinitely appreciative of every step in my journey that has led me to ‘exactly’ here and now.

At the yoga and meditation retreat, we talked about the 5 elements in Nature: earth, wind, water, fire, and ether. For the fire element, we discussed its ability to transform and renew. At the time, I remember being puzzled by these qualities of fire. I only viewed fire as a destructive, consumptive process. And when I considered fire in that light, my friends, it felt pretty fearful.

This year, through my master teacher, Mother Nature herself, and the experience of living in two different National Parks, I have learned a thing or two about fire. At Glacier National Park, I learned through observation and listening how wildfires are a natural part of the lifecycle of a forest’s regrowth and regenerative process. Now here at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, the volcanoes are teaching me that the eruption process is similarly life giving. Both (natural) wildfires and volcanic eruptions are part of the earth’s renewal, rebirth, and regrowth process.

Now if I take what Mother Nature has been teaching me this year in very poignant and powerful ways and apply it to my own life, then this fiery energy I feel from within can be equally life giving and regenerative. BUT…just as the fires in Glacier have now been extinguished for the wintertime and the once active molten lava flow at Hawai’i Volcanoes is now dormant, I, too, must remember this balance by sustaining my own fire through periods of R-E-S-T. The inner fire is only a gift so long as you can sustain it.

I wanted to end this post by responding to the question: What sparks my passion? Below is just a start! What sparks yours?

I love being a student of life, open to new experiences, out of my comfort zone, willing to learn and to listen. I love encouraging others and feeling connected and inspired by others. I love being a teacher, learning something new every day, being open to the process of learning, inspiring others, and believing in others. I love believing in me, too! I love working on projects with others and the collaborative process. I love feeling inspired by a podcast, or a book, or what someone’s doing, or seeing a yellow bird delighting in the morning dew. I love the power of words and learning new languages (world views). I love how there are concepts in another language that are not available in English. I really love that there are feelings that cannot be described in ANY language. I love traveling, living in, and exploring new cultures and places. I love the dance of life. I like being new at things. I love feeling like I’m on another planet or like I’m in another world, not knowing what’s up from down, and being okay with it. I love feeling at home, surrounded by people who are speaking a language I do not understand. I love the open road for its possibilities. The same, too, for the horizon. I love the mountains and the ocean waves and sunsets and the feeling of expansion the moment I step outside. I love looking up at the twinkly sky and feeling connected and expanded and appreciating. I love the feeling of listening to a beautiful, soulful piece of music and feeling the energy coursing through my body, especially my spine, and the energy swirling up and down and all around. I love feeling mesmerized or fascinated by something simple like the wind moving through the ferns against the night sky. I love the creative inspiration to hold my hand up to the moon and take a photo, as though I were holding the moon in the palm of my hand. I love the inspiration to cook without a recipe, just following my intuition of what sounds good and trusting that guidance. I love listening to what inspires other people. I love the inspiration to put a lime in a coconut! I love smelling passion fruit. I literally could smell passion fruit all day long! Yum! I love basking in the rhythm and sound of silence. I love feeling that my heart was broken wide open by this beautiful little girl who was hula dancing with such graceful pleasure in a vibrant red dress. I love Feeling! I love allowing myself to feel, to be moved, to be surprised and delighted by Life! I love reading something or connecting with someone I don’t personally know, have never met before, yet feeling such loving appreciation and energy pulsating throughout my entire body for them. I love how the more I think about my passions, the more passionate I feel, and the more I light up to the things I love!

Hawaii’s gifts: Passion fruit, mango, and red dragonfruit with mint garnish.

In Light,

Alicia

 

 

Hawai’i reflection: Allowing the flow of our experience

I’ve stepped into another world. It’s a world filled with plants I’m unfamiliar with, lava rock cascading all around me, vibrant sea creatures, frog calls masquerading as birdcalls to my untrained ear, and white tropicbirds soaring gracefully above me.

The weather ranges from hot to cool to humid to rain to rainbows. The frequent weather shifts are their own form of non-attachment. It’s almost as if Mother Nature were saying: Don’t get too attached to that sunshine, there might be a storm in the near future. You put on a rain jacket? That’s nice. But if you wait just a sec, you won’t need it.

For me personally, I am embracing it all. I’m excited with the changes. And it’s easier for me to embrace all of these changes—all of this life—like never before. It’s a result of my own gradual process of turning towards this ease, inviting in soulful wellbeing for my life.

I am currently sitting in the grounds of an outdoor garden and café. The closest feeling I have to this energy, this moment, was when I was living in Indonesia, especially traveling in Bali. I am experiencing a feeling of peaceful tranquility, an appreciation for the elements, for nature, this moment, for life itself.

 

This feeling feels one of overwhelming love, pure joy, a feeling of reverence for this life before me now. My heart swells and is captivated by it all. When my heart is this full, tears tend to spring forward.

In these gardens, something captures my attention and I focus lovingly on it. Then, sure enough, something else sparks my interest, igniting my imagination, so my focus shifts to this new fascination. A gecko makes it way like a stealth bandit through the grasses. The wind expands lazily about. The non-committal rain dampens the earth. The leaves absorb the movement of the winds as they dance and return to their calm stillness. The clouds have now decided to send down more liquid nourishment. The rain spatters about more forcefully. Subsiding once again, just 5 minutes have passed.

I notice how my emotions follow this same fluidity of the weather. The sun comes out and my heart swells; a smile dashes immediately to my face. The clouds roll through and my mood shifts. The rain picks up and I feel this crescendo. I start to feel the power and the energy of this more forceful patterning of weather.

I think now of how quickly the storms pass, the moods shift, the weather turns. It’s the same with our emotions, our blessed, tender emotions. We may feel one particular mood in one moment, like anger or fear or overwhelmed or love or contentment, and then something happens, something changes, and that emotion can shift quite suddenly.

I’ve come to realize how our emotions can be viewed as a gift in our lives. Rather than fighting or resisting our emotions, can we, like my recollection of the weather, simply allow the range of emotions to pass through our lives? Can we acknowledge an emotion we are currently feeling with utter compassion? Can we treat our emotions as loving guidance in our lives, allowing for the “okayness” of the full spectrum of emotions that we feel?

Grant and I recently hiked the Keauhou Desert Trail in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. If you saw our photos from this hike, you might think: Wow what an amazing place to be! And it is an incredible place, but a photo can’t capture an individual’s personal experience of a lived event. For this hike, there were some really beautiful moments along it, but there was also some personal suffering. It was really hot and we were, quite frankly, unprepared for that kind of heat. We were out of our element, to say the very least.

Keauhou and Puna Coast Trail

As we were walking across the old lava flow areas, my mind was feeling in a rebellious state. Having placed some resistance on my trail, my mind was feeling rather dissatisfied, over it, and ready to be done with the hike, with the heat. I tried my old stand in trick of telling myself, Your life is right now Alicia, not some future moment. Embrace your Now. Well, that advice wasn’t working for me.

So another little nugget of advice came to mind by way of Vincent van Gogh: “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” I found myself taking photos of the old volcanic lava flow, appreciating the rock cairns along the path like never before (signs of civilization and other people had also traveled this path; we were not alone!), and breathing expansively into the area of my belly. This advice worked slightly but when my body gets overly heated, my mind dwells in a melodramatic, fear-based state: I’m going to die! I’m not going to make it out alive! Yeeeah, I went there. 😉

I’ve learned enough about my mind to understand this part of me. I know that my mind is simply doing whatever it can to keep me safe. So thank you to my mind for your constant vigilance! However, I do not choose to live my life from a fear-based stance, so more often, I am surrendering to this feeling of trust in life, trust in my own inner wisdom, and trust in the universe to take care of me along the way.

The personal value I gained from this hike was to take care of myself, to honor how I’m feeling in the moment, and to listen to whatever it is that my mind/body/spirit needs at the time. One of the bigger takeaways from this hike was to not judge myself for my fears or my resistance and to be unconditionally okay.

Despite our first hike here feeling like a personal suck fest at times (which Grant will attest to also!) there was still beauty to be found both around me and, importantly, within me. So thank you, Van Gogh, for your timely advice as I continue to train myself to see the beauty everywhere, and especially within.

Keauhou: photo taken before it really got hot!