There is a meditation I’ve done where you imagine yourself like a mountain, broad at the base, tall on the sides, clear at the top. As the mountain, you observe with less judgement all that occurs. It’s a helpful way to allow sensations, thoughts, or feelings to simply exist without getting overly involved in all the stories. I guided a similar meditation just a few weeks ago. I was feeling pretty pleased with the practice and pleased with myself for how balanced I was feeling. It was lovely. For about a week.

And then someone I care about faced a challenge where they needed to advocate for themselves to get something done. They had begun to take action, in their time and their way (as opposed to my time and my way). I was worried and each day the situation continued I felt more anxious. Certain voices started getting louder. “I can’t relax or live my life until this is resolved.” “They won’t get it done and bad things will happen.” “I will have to jump in.”  A softer voice was telling me this wasn’t my problem, that I had other things to focus on, and that nothing was even wrong yet. But that voice was getting shouted down. There was a fire on my mountain. And I couldn’t tolerate it.

In the wild, fires extinguish themselves without fuel. Well, I was fueling this one big time with worry (about nothing that had actually happened), anger about being worried about the things that hadn’t actually happened, and a real inability to just be in my own skin. It was exhausting. And honestly, that’s what got me back to the present moment. I got tired of the fire fight. And I needed to breathe. Going a little higher up the mountain gave me air and a better vantage point into the present moment as opposed to the imagined future firestorm.

So I humbly discovered that I couldn’t stay calm. And, as humans, we’ve not meant to be calm all the time. Things happen on the mountain that will tangle us up. And there are things we will need to tend to. But maybe next time I will try to tend to my flames, acknowledge them, do some stomping around, play some angry music and then release them to burn themselves out. Until the next time.

Here’s to feeling (without fueling) your flames,