Fanning the flame
(Disclaimer: I’m not sure who this little note is for, but I am sure of this – if it’s for you, you’ll know. And for that, my heart is glad. If it’s not for you, but you know who it’s for, pass it along.)
There exists a flame inside a man or a woman, a fire that fuels the whole of the human experience. Some call it drive. Some call it passion. Some call it fire in the belly. You were born with it, and it has been cultivated over time, going back clear to the beginning when you were incubating in your momma’s belly. Now you’re here and you are you, I am me, and the fire burns hot or it barely flickers. You know you have it. You’re thinking about it even now.
Is it hot? Cold? Flickering? Smoldering?
Sit with that thought a moment. Take a moment and just sit with that flame of yours. The rest of this note can wait for bit…
That fire is your spirit.
That flame burns at the core of your inner person. That flame is the target of the exterior world that seeks to influence you. Wrongly motivated people who cultivate great ability to persuade others know how to speak to that flame. They cull others with crafted messages that tell us to ‘buy’ or ‘join’ or ‘believe’ or ‘act out’, etc. But their motives are wrong, their message is not for you and I to grow or to become whole – their goal is self-seeking.
Other wrongly motivated folks don’t need to speak at all. They are simply attractive to us because we want what they have. They look beautiful or they have beautiful things, they do things that fascinate us, and we become lulled into envy and our flames to follow their path, a path of wrongly motivated, spirit dowsing pursuit.
These aren’t metaphysical ideas, friends. That flame – that is your spirit.
And the paragraph above are just a few ways folks get lost in life, both seemingly innocuous ways and in more devastating fashion. People and messaging that touches the spirit wrongly can affect folks to become bitter, engage in harmful gossip (both culture destroying things) and it’s also how affairs begin in marriages, how families fall apart, how sickness and illness perpetuate, how cults form, how political ideologies rise.
When the flame is fanned with wrong motives or fueled with wrong fuel – life gets seriously off track (and that’s saying it about as nicely as I can think to write).
Burning hot for the wrong thing, while it is a choice we must make, it is almost always first an alluring idea that seems promising, but it comes at the cost of something that was meant to be pure, whole, holy and good.
One of the truest things about that flame that burns inside the human soul is that it runs perpetually. Even if it seems to be quenched in the most tragic ways or if life seems to douse the flame with ‘wet logs’, the flame is a perpetual fire. It can be rekindled and fanned to burn hot and pure.
I want to put the log of ENOUGH on the fire and invite you to consider that today.
I am telling you it is true – that enough is enough. And that enough is what we need - but you have to consider it. You have to see it, and you have to want it.
The slicksters who sell you the lie that there “might not be enough ____ so you should probably do X,Y,Z right now before time runs out” are lying to you.
The person who says that ‘enough is nice, but more is better” is actually speaking unwisely (ok – foolishly).
I know plenty of hucksters who, in the name of their religious faith, promote a worldview that promises riches and wealth in this life.
Untruth is the log they are putting on the spirits of their listeners. The fuel for the spirit that frees you to soar is the truth that there is enough. Of everything we need – there’s enough!
When we see the world through the lens of enough, everything changes. You cannot answer every ‘why’ question about the past, but in believing there is enough, you find your way and figure out your how.
So I implore you, friends, burn today with the log of enough and let me know, if it’s you I’m talking to, what that means today in your life. Or, better still, tell a friend who might need to hear what you’re hearing as you sit by the fire.
You have enough of what you need. And boy, oh boy, can you go a long way and do some amazing stuff when you are freed up here! I’m sharing this right now because a lot of folks are recalibrating plans and reconsidering goals, reorienting passion and reenergizing life towards the success they were designed for.
Tend to the fire. Tend to the spirit. Be fueled in knowing that it is possible to live with aworldview that begins with the awareness – there is enough.
I would love to hear your thoughts – pop me an email and let me know what’s burning inside.
