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Fire Water

In my younger years prior to full prefrontal cortex development, there was this awful liquor we drank called After Shock. It was cinnamon flavored and felt like fire solidified into ice as it burned down the soft tissue of your esophagus. Good times, right? Lucky-to-emerge times is more like it.

I haven’t had a shot of After Shock in a really long time. Primarily because it was just disgusting. And secondly because After Shock actually existed within me that entire time. Especially in this month of August in this place of North Carolina, those same sensations are ever present for me to experience. And with no hangover in these years of a bit more discernment.

The suffering we feel day in and day out of moments both large and small reflect what is not to our “liking” in our lives. What we do have but we don’t want, what we don’t have but we do want, what we do have but will be going away soon. We wrap around the likes and dislikes and land ourselves in a tangle akin to the time my college roommate tried to speed dry her newly dyed yarn ball in the dryer.

Granted it was fun to be together as we unwound that ridiculous tangle.

I am in a tangle in this moment. Before I continue, let me be clear that I trust myself to be in this tangle so the why isn’t that important for our interface here. I trust myself because me, myself and I have a darn good track record at this point of being in a tangle and of walking out the other side with more of Me to bring along. I have an incredible team of people to turn to in my life. I have five functioning senses to bring me back to the moment. And I have a natural ability to Feel deeply.

Yet, there is a flip side to that natural ability.

When we can Feel deeply we may have a tendency to try to escape the “dislikes” in our lives. The uncomfortable, the fiery, the prickly, the sharp, the hard, the tight. You get the drift. But if we try to escape all of that, we’re missing the capital “P” Point.

The Point is that we land here at all exploring this earth, one another and all the flavors that come along with it. The Point is that we feel what we feel with bravery and courage. The Point is that we step into community in the hard stuff AND know that we will end up feeling more deeply and more pungently for the simple reason that we are now in a state of compassion for more than just ourselves. (That ‘pungently’ was going to be ‘poignantly’ but I like what landed so we’re going with it.)

For the past two weeks of deep summer, fire water has coarsed through my veins. In my yoga nidra practice, I can feel the throbbing of blood thick with southern weight – molten lava beneath my skin. In that pure stillness, it is intense to feel in the way that I imagine bungee jumping or skydiving to be.

As uncomfortable as it is to feel what is present, there is some part of me that is intrigued by my innate power that is the very source of these sensations.

Just as a mother’s body creates the contractions of labor that deliver her child, so does my very humanness create these sensations to match Me perfectly in a given moment. The sensations match MY intensity, MY power of thought, MY power of grief, MY power of love.

That is an arrestingly beautiful thing. All this feeling of my own deep and infinite creation. All this comfort and discomfort of my own sculptor’s hands. I use what I have learned in this life to sit down in the flames and fall in love with myself over and over again. The hot seat can be intense. But I have a secret to tell you… intensity is the name of my game.

And so I make space to feel the anger. I lessen the inputs around me – less people, less moving pieces, less stimuli in general – and I hang out with glorious, powerful, fiery Me. This is my Grace right now. The ability and desire to Be with Me in this Life in this Day.

Nothing – absolutely nothing – you feel is wrong. It is all just glorious, powerful, fiery You. Make space to feel You and not hide from You. You are stunning in your Grace.

We are stunning in our Grace.

Take good care,
Rachel

 

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