It’s fire season here in Oregon. Lightening strikes and human mishaps are igniting forest fires. 

When a forest burns, flames purify the forest by clearing decay, invasive plants and insects. Ashes add nutrients to the soil, light reaches in to the freshly exposed forest floor, and new tree growth and a carpet of wildflowers emerge from the replenished earth.

Burning is necessary for growth and transformation. This is true not just for forests, but for our mental and physical well being.

The term; spiritual awakening, points to the fact that true well being happens when light – as consciousness – penetrates more deeply into our being, clearing old patterns of thinking to allow more enlightened patterns to sprout as inspiration, healing and insights.

Allow yourself to be ignited. Life, is an ever evolving movement of expansion. This means that there will always be ups and downs and challenges.

The key to steering a steady course is to allow our life to wake us up as we live it, moment to moment. Times of friction, agitation, frustration or uncertainty are signals that the spark of transformation is igniting inside us. 

Rather than rush to suppress, push through, or turn away from what is uncomfortable, it’s important to stay conscious and awake, to allow burning to happen. For outmoded ways of thinking to dissolve, and habits that are eating away at us to become exposed, extinguished and transformed. 

The intelligence behind life is designed to turn all upsets; physical, emotional, personal or global into that which advances us. When we’re feeling challenged, life is inviting us trust that, at deeper level, we are being prepared for old ways of being and doing, to fall away and die, so that the light of our true nature can shine into our lives, generating new growth and fresh possibilities for beauty and love to express.

The next time you feel the heat rising in your life as pressure, intensity or friction:

• Breathe, allow your body to soften into what feels tight or uncomfortable.
• Contemplate what needs to drop away from your life – it could be intangible, such as a belief, or more concrete, like a relationship or job.
• Allow yourself not to know how new growth will show up in your life.
• Trust that your transformation will reveal itself.