The Fire Within
Have you ever felt something that was so hot that you couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold? And vice versa? This happened to me recently when warming up some nourishing hot chocolate (my favorite recipe linked here!). It got me thinking about polarity and how if you go far enough to the extreme end of hot or cold, they feel like the same thing… and maybe they are the same thing?
I was born and raised in Austin, Texas until I was 22 years old when I moved up north to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Talk about polarity. In Texas, I was familiar with one end of the spectrum- extreme heat. The air was suffocating and the seatbelts were painful to the touch. We would worry about sunburns and keeping our air conditioning running.
Now, in Michigan winters, the air takes your breath away, the seatbelts are still painful to touch. It is often so cold that it burns. We worry about keeping the furnace running.
They don’t seem to be that different.
Before I moved, I was used to living in a perpetual summer, and was quite afraid of winter honestly. I did a ton of research on how to prepare for the cold and that first winter here, I pretty much overdressed every single day. I was so afraid of feeling cold that I would often overheat. It makes sense to me now on reflection. I was so comfortable with feeling hot, that it felt safest to overheat vs. feel the slightest bit of cold during my transition.
Now here I am, wrapping up the end of my fourth winter here in Michigan and I have noticed such a shift in my relationship with the cold and in natural consequence, with myself too.
Your environment shapes you. (This is an axiom that Altar was founded on)
Turns out that the scary cold that I was so heavily warned about and that felt so unfamiliar, is the exact same as the Texas Sun. The unknown has always been known because there cannot be warmth without cold. They have always been inextricably connected, woven, one.
It was only me that was not aware of the wholeness. That could not see the shadow of winter in that fullness of summer. I have only recently realized this truth:
Experiencing heat is the same as experiencing cold because they both show us the fire within us that burns.
The fire that burns within you is your core essence, your love energy, your heart, your center of relationship.In winter, you receive it, in summer you give it.
Giving and receiving
and giving and receiving
and giving and receiving
-the cycle flows.
The exchange of giving and receiving is a match to cold and hot. Giving and receiving are one in the same because to give, you receive and to receive, you give. In the heat of the summer you give your light, in the depth of the winter, you receive your own light. You heat yourself.
In perpetual summer, I learned and found comfort and familiarity in giving my light out into the world. I did not need the fire within me to keep me warm, it was natural to give it out, give it away. But then I lost the reciprocal act that needed to happen. I needed winter to spiral it back into myself and generate my own heat to keep me warm through the winter. To look inwards, to take care of myself, to have that love be given to myself and for myself to be able to receive it.
If you are constantly in a state of summer, giving your love outwards and focusing on your outside relationships, what happens to your relationship with yourself? When do you know about yourself, tend to yourself, love yourself?
For you are the furnace and the home, the generator and the electricity, the provider and the dependent in one. And you must be both, experience both, to be whole.
Hot and cold are the same because they are both you. And you are one.
Here’s your invitation that it’s safe to explore the winter of your soul, and that not only is it safe, but it may just give you a breath of fresh air.
This is a great practice for discovering your comfort between giving and receiving. https://youtu.be/WSHaQ9NYVQ0?si=1jmNRZwPCaak0Az3