Clearing Out the Ashes
We all have an internal fire that begins as a spark at birth and, with the right care and attention, grows into a leaping flame. We call this inner fire the soul, and we tend it by investing in our personal passions – our family, our art, or our interests and ambitions. When we act from our soul, when our inspiration comes from this white hot center, we’re best able to sear our mark upon the world. We become like living art – instead of building, creating, painting, or saying things; we become them. When we live and love from the soul, everything that we do, create, and say is embedded with soul.
Because the best of human creations are always born of this inner flame, entire industries have been created to help us remain in touch with it and keep it burning brightly. As a society, we have invested millions trying to bottle up the inspiration, the efficacy, and the artistry that come from soulful living so that we can hand feed it to our overworked, under-stimulated, and spiritually malnourished people. The result of this has been the creation of a particularly dangerous drug, both addictive and destructive – the notion that good people are happy people and that positivity is next to righteousness.
Positive thinking is a powerful tool for building our reality; but more powerful still is what comes before thought: the soul. To live from the soul is to be completely present in and accepting of all of life’s experiences, and to feel them equally and absolutely. Soulful living doesn’t allow for the plastered smile that so many industries rely on their consumers craving and their workforce donning, or the strict adherence to only positive notions implied by so many of today’s self-help books. It’s not always about smiles and light – sometimes it’s about facing and truly feeling the fears, the pains, and the disappointments.
Soulful living is all about tending our inner fire, and sometimes the best way to tend that inner fire is by letting it burn out. When a fire burns hot, it occasionally runs out of fuel, and it’s during this time of cooling off that we have the chance to find new fuel – new inspiration – for our flame. This is also true for our thoughts and our feelings; they must sometimes be permitted to grow cold and to go dark, because it is often only during or after this state that we are supple enough for change. And when we are in a state of supple stillness we have the chance to crawl into our cocoon and do some inner growing, so we may later be reborn with even more beauty, strength, and ability than before.
Because burning out is a natural stage of life, trying to prevent it only causes more pain. Instead of the sudden, sharp pain of negativity that is a natural part of life; we end up experiencing the slow pain of becoming disheartened. Becoming disheartened – which is to say tired, bored, and lacking passion – is like a slow drizzle of tears that smothers our inner fire one drop at a time. It’s the pressure to manufacture positive thoughts and feelings that most effectively steals away from the potency of the real thing when it comes along.
It’s for this reason that we must learn to allow and even embrace all of life’s ups and downs, all of our own light and dark, and to permit both our positive and negative thoughts. The secret isn’t in fighting negative thinking, but in observing it with detachment, allowing it without following it. Nor is the answer to push away or bottle up dark emotions. It is instead to allow them to pass through us without letting them define us; this will keep us open enough that when the brighter feelings wash over us, we are capable of feeling them deeply and wholly. When we aren’t wasting all of our energy trying to fight the negative, we have it available to invest in the positive.
Just like a flower needs occasional cover from the life-giving sun, so also do we sometimes need to fall into shadow. When we learn to balance the two, we are free to step back and soak up the beauty of the bigger picture, the whole of our experience. And it is from this eagle’s eye view that we can see the inspiration for our own passion and appreciation painted in bold colors before us, moving us to care for those inner fires and use them to sear our mark upon the world.
©2015 Cristen Rodgers
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