The Fire of Life

By Natalie Dekel.

I would like to share with you the process that led me to discover a pathway to overcome fears and other discomforts; and how we can absorb life instead of fighting it.

When I was younger I felt that it was better for me to be in the spiritual world than in the physical one. If someone had asked me which world I would choose, I would answer: the spiritual. I didn’t want to be here, on planet earth, as I felt the weight of the emotional and physical suffering, and so I wanted to go back ‘home’. Having near-death and out-of-body experiences also added to that feeling of alienation and desire to be in the astral realms.

When my mum died from cancer in a difficult and painful process, I became very fearful. After her departure I became ill, and got terrified of dying. The pain of my own physical dis-ease has brought me down into my body with a crash… Five years has passed since. Five years of struggling with my health issues and emotional balances to try and rise out of my grief, out of my fear.

As I watched the temporality of life in my mother, it made me appreciate and honour the gift of living in a body. Mum has taught me the value of living. Seeing her resistance to die and her clinging on to life, despite the awful pain, suddenly brought me to the realisation that I do like being Alive.

She taught me the value of living in her choice to stay with her family a bit longer, to the end, despite the pain she felt and the contortions her body was going through during her last weeks. She has given me the value of what I have, here and now. The value of giving and receiving love and gratitude for what we do have in life. She made me realize how important life is, and that I am not ready just yet to leave this world willy-nilly because I’m here for a reason. I’m here to manifest this reason and to be the reason.

Absorb the fire of life's events, instead of reacting to it. (photo 'The Fire of life' by Gil Dekel)

I’ve realised that I have been living in fear for way too long; I’ve built such great shields around me to protect myself. I have built protections from life, from pain and suffering and everything else that comes with it. Now the reasons for this suffering and pain are no longer there; the shields have no reason to hold. The house I built is a house of cards. There’s no roof anymore; and I’m still that trembling chicken holding on to that last withering wall, trying to protect herself from… nothing…

It’s time to face what we’re really afraid of. Looking back at the nature of my illnesses, I’ve come to realise that it all came from fear I ‘adopted’ even before I was born. Fear of life, fear of embracing life, fear of losing someone you Love.

But there is remedy to fear…

In the core of our being, if we look inside and be still for a moment, we will see infinite peace. Infinite awareness and intelligence, with pure unconditional Love and Bliss. This cosmos is there within us as if we are an atom aware of itself… it is a micro cosmos within a macro cosmos.

What I’ve learned in my yoga classes added to that insight. I have learned that life’s events can be seen as a fire – the fire of life. When events come our way, when this fire comes at us into our spatial awareness, into that inner peace within; instead of re-acting automatically as we tend to do, instead of contracting internally with emotions, with fear, with worry, we just need to pause and observe…

By pausing we absorb the fire without judgment, and in that way we can increase our energy without losing out emotionally. We will give ourselves more shine into our light. We will neutralize the fire and change it, shift it by simply holding it as a neutral energy which is what it is, rather than an ‘event’.

In reality nothing has value attached to it, unless we give it one. Problems are not really problems unless we judge them to be problems – and then they fulfil that prophecy and become exactly what we expect them to be… If we observe Love we will see Love, if we observe/project fear and judgement we will see fear and judgement around us.

The inner stillness can be the solution to all our problems.

In my case, my main issue is adopting fear, and this fear manifests itself in illnesses – so what would happen if I decide not to be afraid anymore? What if I embrace life instead of running away, defending, or re-acting to it? What would happen if I absorb it, open up and stay open… trusting? What would happen to my fear then? And what will happen to that chicken? Will we create a chicken soup for the soul?…

Fear that is brought up from our own insecurities can be used as the solution to our problems. If we look inside and absorb the stillness, we can transform our feelings. We can turn things upside down, inside out… We can become the solution or we may remain the problem. It is our choice which path we want to experience this time.

© Natalie Dekel
17 April 2015. Update 19 April 2015