Heart Fire

As I write this, I am sat in my home in central Portugal, surrounded by wildfires on all sides. The closest fire, which seems to be the most widespread wildfire in Europe at the moment (the current burn area has reached almost 85,000 hectares) and has been blazing out of control for almost a week now, is a mere 8km away. This feels pretty vulnerable given that wildfires can travel up to 30km/hour in optimal incendiary conditions. Our daily backdrop is great plumes of black smoke, often amassing into huge, billowing white pyrocumulus clouds, like you would see over a volcano. These falsely benign-looking clouds create their own weather system over the fire with unpredictable strong winds, adding more fuel to the fury. The air over our land is often brown and filled with noxious smoke drifting in from near and far, creeping insidiously into the house and into our bodies.

It’s raw, elemental, intense, scary.

I sit amidst the happily oblivious, industrious wildlife on our land and my heart breaks for what this means for humanity and the rest of nature.

I see everyone has their own way of dealing with this stress on their nervous system. Some are ‘business as usual’, almost as if nothing is going on. Some are overtly busy, focusing their energy on practical solutions, such as laying the preparatory foundations to either evacuate or stay and fire-fight if it comes to that. Some go into a downward spiral of low mood, negativity, hopelessness and lethargy. Others are glued to their phones in obsessive high alert, watching for the slightest piece of news. For myself, I can relate to all of the above, except for the ‘business as usual’ strategy. There is nothing that feels ‘usual’ to me about this. This feels like a world out of balance, screaming for attention.

I reflect that this is my third blog post in a row that speaks about the fire element (firstly through war energy, second through ‘solar’ power versus lunar and, thirdly, through the element of fire itself). My sense is that these are themes that I and so many others are being called to look at within ourselves at this time. If we wish to prevent the destruction of out-of-control fires and wars in the world, we must find this energy in ourselves. Where are we at war with others? Where has conflict become incendiary, destructive and unmanageable? Where have we not managed to contain our own internal fire and sprayed it out onto others, burning them with our words and energy? Which of our relationships easily become a conflagration of anger and hurt, with no way forward for peace, reconciliation and resolution? Where has the fire burnt an impasse between us and someone else? What are we disowning or rejecting within ourselves that causes us to make war on our mirrors of this energy in the external world? Where are we out of balance and out of control?

As I wrote in my previous post, anger has its healthy place in the human experience, as it can show us our boundaries. And it’s the same with fire, which has its healthy place in the natural world; indeed some plant species are only propagated by fire. It feels vulnerable to state that, knowing that so many people are losing homes, land and health right now to what does not feel like a healthy fire. This is heart-breaking and traumatic and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Yet at my soul level there is a trust in the wisdom of all elements at play in the world right now, even fire. Fire energy is transformative. It clears the way for new understandings, a clean slate. It shows where something is out of balance, forces acceptance of loss and tests our mettle. Do we have enough conviction in our current life to start over? Or is it time to move on? It crystallises our priorities and can give us permission to let go of a life or belief that was no longer working for us or dig in and recreate that life from new, humble beginnings, fully invested with a fresh perspective. Much that we’re ready to leave behind can be burnt away and the ashes that are left can provide a fertile bed for something more aligned to emerge for us.

An out-of-control fire is an external mirror for something out of balance and unmanageable within us. So, I am going inwards right now and trusting in the fire’s intensity all around me. I’m watching my reactions, knowing these are indicative of how I have reacted to out-of-control fire energy in my past, probably originally in close relationships when young. I’m looking at the relationships in my life that feel conflicted and I’m opening to the possibility of a quenching of harmful flames and a flourishing of new life within the ashes of impasse, to move forwards in peace. I will need to own my internal fire for this, but I’m hoping to do so with a tempering wisdom, by coming back to my heart. All answers and solutions are found in the heart. Heart-fire is safe fire.

I pray that homes and wildlife are kept safe from the fire where possible, and I also pray that, for those whose home is sadly burnt away, something even better arises from the ashes in time.