Today, while moving through the endless stream of information that passes before me, I came across something that stopped me. It spoke of those moments when the world reaches for your Spirit with both hands. Not gently. Not quietly. But asking for your attention, your fear, your anger, your voice before your heart has had time to speak.

There are moments when it seems as though everything is asking for something from us.

Our attention.
Our outrage.
Our fear.
Our immediate reaction.

The noise comes quickly before the heart has spoken. Before the body has registered what is true. Before we have had time to notice what is happening inside.

I feel the deeper work of this time is to remain awake enough not to be taken by the noise. There are some forces in life that will test the steadiness of your inner fire. Not because they are evil. Not because they are wrong.

But because they are asking:

Will I remember who I am?

Will I remember my center before speaking?

Will I remember my heart before reacting?

Will I remember my humanity before projecting?

Some things arrive not to destroy but to see if you will forget yourself. And this is where the practice begins, not in suppressing anger or bypassing what is real, but in listening longer than the noise, feeling what is moving through you, and letting the first wave pass.

Can you allow the body to speak before the mind creates a story?

Can you witness what rises without immediately becoming it?

And then asking:

Will the words or actions I choose next destroy?

Or…

Will I move in the direction of light?

In the ways of medicine I have been taught, fire is sacred. Fire is a teacher. Fire is medicine. It has the power to warm, illuminate, and transform. Fire is tended, prayed with, sat beside, and listened to.

This is also true within us. For within each of us lives a sacred fire. Fire is sacred; it gathers people together. But fire can also consume.

Left untended, it can move through us as reactivity, blame, ego, and the impulse to strike before we have listened. It can burn through relationships, scorch trust, and leave behind things we never intended to damage. Not because the fire itself is wrong, but because we have forgotten how to tend it.

The medicine has never been to extinguish the flame. The medicine has always been to sit with it long enough to remember what it was given to us for: to carry warmth, to tend to life, to bring light where fear asks for darkness, to remain in “right relationship” in moments that tempt otherwise.

The world may ask for your anger. But your Spirit still gets to choose what it offers back.

And that choice is one of the greatest medicines of all.

May your fire illuminate more than it consumes.

Aho.