He said, "If you only stop singing, I’ll make you safe."
And he repeated the line, knowing you would hear
"I'll make you safe" as the comforting sound
of a door closed on the fear at last.
THE FIRE IN THE SONG by David Whyte
There is much writing out there describing the evolutionary relationship we humans have had to fire. Darwin is quoted saying the two most significant achievements of humanity were language and fire. In fact, no anthropological evidence exists of a culture anywhere existing without fire, without cooking. Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham believes that fire is needed to fuel the organ that makes possible all the other products of culture, language included: the human brain.
In this essay I want to share about my inner evolution with fire.
Have you ever been camping in the wilderness, and as the sun slid towards the horizon you began to feel the gravity of the vastness of the universe? Or maybe it was more like fear of your smallness, or of the dark. Something about this existential unknown is soothed by lighting a fire in the pit.
It is Winter Solstice season when I write this. I’ve been spending a lot of time alone, just me, my dog and my writing. I like being alone, I really do. I like my own vibe a lot. But with the days being so short, so much darkness, the virus isolation, and the holiday season festivities mainly revolving around family, I was beginning to feel more than alone, a little lonely.
We had a storm here in Northern Michigan that knocked the power grid to its knees. I was out of power for 2 days, some of my family for 4 or 5 days. I lit a fire in the fireplace to stay warm, and something miraculous occurred.
I realized I felt comforted. It felt like I had company. Little snaps and pops felt like language to me. The fire dancing in reds, oranges and purples, like entertainment. The warmth of its alchemic process, felt like an embrace. I found myself soothed, and what’s more, incredibly inspired to slow down and get in touch with myself internally.
Then I felt my own presence strengthen, and somehow it felt like more beingness was here. Not another presence, but more of me. My soul felt like it could take up more space, and with it, my heart expanded too.
It was a subtle shift, but I went from feeling cold, and shrunken back, closed emotionally, to feeling full, warm, and emotionally well and alive. And I took my tea with the fire. We communed. We remembered something together that’s been happening since the very beginnings, imprinted upon my DNA.
I’m learning the circumstances that bring me into claircognizance, (claircognizance is one of the four major psychic abilities and means ‘clear knowing’). This is a gift I have, and for me its knowing through the field of sensuality. It’s been affirming to find language around it, to know it has a name. Darwin was right, language is a very powerful human gift.
Claircognizance helped me feel belonging with Fire, but I think this is something all of us can sense. Not only because of all the ways fire protects us, feeds us, and warms us, but because it has an essence, a life force of its own.
Feeling belonging is the very antidote to loneliness, I found. Sitting with Fire is what we have done since ancient times to gather, make meals, have ceremony, and to grieve. We are energetic beings, more than we are matter. And Fire is one of our oldest vibrational ancestors. So it’s no wonder it feels like I belong when I am in Fire’s presence.
A sister told me of a dream she’d had recently. She shared her dream with me in present tense, which is the best way to keep the gate open to keep receiving guidance from dreams in waking life. It was a very symbolic dream, and it was easy to fall into my liminal imagination and feel myself in her dream.
In my imagination I saw a fire. I asked her if there was a fire in her dream, because she didn’t say it out loud. When she felt in, she realized there actually was. She asked me if any wisdom was coming though about this dream, and it felt to me like she needed to revisit a snowy forest in waking life, and light a fire.
This is all to illustrate, once a sacred connection was made with Fire and I, this presence continues to befriend and commune with me.
I’d been studying the elements previously, being a student of Ayurveda, but this felt different. This didn’t feel like an intellectual understanding that the elements are all around us and within us… it feels like tacit knowing in my bones.
I believe you know too. I feel in my body that Fire is calling you too. All the elements are calling. Nature is calling. The forest, the ocean, the lake, the desert is calling you to come. To slow down, to set aside your life’s distractions and to listen. To commune, to let yourself be open to wisdom. Everyone has a gift of listening, whether it’s through visions, hearing voices, feeling things, or simply knowing.
May I ask you a confronting question? How are you slowing down? Are you savoring your longings and lamentations, or are you rushing to social media to get a dopamine hit the moment you feel the gravity of the vastness of the universe?
There’s so much more IN HERE than out there. As a recovering busy-addict, I can attest, it’s worth it. Slowing down, drastically or menially, and restructuring your life so that you build in unstructured time and pauses, just sitting there with nothing and everything… it’s so worth it.
Because there’s nothing hotter than feeling belonging.
…
This blog is possible because I take time to slow down and write, and it requires a lot of prep to get my nervous system down-regulated enough to listen. That means, I offer this writing to you as a gift of many hours of ‘labor’. If you want to support the art that is behind claircognizant writing, please consider joining as a subscriber to this Substack.