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More Friction, More Heat, More Transformation

In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal. — Rumi

Oct 1, 2024

 

Greetings yogis,

 

While in Yosemite last week guiding a yoga teacher training for eager new teachers, my co-facilitator, Paula Wild, shared an aha moment: the more friction we bump up against in the world (and ourselves), the more heat it creates. The more heat and fire we let ourselves feel – the more transformation happens.

 

Try this experiment, bring all your fingertips to touch and rub them together to see if you can create any heat. Not much, right? Now, rub your whole palms together and you’ll quickly feel the warmth pour in. The more surface area that is exposed to the friction, the greater the heat. The more of ourselves we expose to the undeniable friction of life, the greater the growth. We need to let ourselves feel the fullness of it all.

 

The more we awaken to our experience, fully alive and present to the wild roar of life and our own inner landscape, the more we can rub up against what it means to be human – which is the catalyst and combustion power of our spiritual evolution. When we numb to conflicts, we freeze growth opportunities. When we avoidantly distract ourselves from a challenge, we miss the sacred gift of metamorphosis. Stagnation limits while living raw and fully kindles a vitality and presence.

 

Agni, the element of fire, has sacred symbolism in the practice, representing our will and fortitude to stay committed to the path, to keep the flames fanned as we burn through old patterns and habits. And I’m not sure about you, but I've been in the cauldron these last few weeks, on and off my mat. Big shifts, challenging moments, cultural insanity, global calamity, politics ablaze – the uncertainty is boundless and yet the invitation remains: to rub our full being into the coals. Avoiding the heat won’t lead to our awakening, or inner purification.

 

Let yourself feel it, all of it, the biggest, scariest feelings. Turn towards your resistance rather than run from it. Let it gild and guide you, the alchemy of transmuting fear into radiant gold. Bump up against every square inch of it, physically and metaphorically. Where you find the friction, let it burn away what no longer serves. Burn through the fog of your illusion and delusion. Without the heat, we could never transform from the gross to the subtle, the fearful to the sublime, the disconnected to the merged.

 

May you all be free,

 

Nat K

 

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti


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