After The Fire, Lush Valleys Bloom 🌿 | what the earth can teach us about human nature

Nature has so much to teach us about the laws that govern our organism.

Dear friends,

While hiking in the Rocky Mountains this morning, I witnessed something profound. I’ll show you a picture in a moment.

Nature is going to teach us a lesson about human physiology, illuminating the mysterious phenomena of why some people tend to be cold all the time while other people tend to be hot.

First, though, I want to let you know there won’t be a podcast published today.

Being in the online creator space is like learning some of life’s hardest lessons in public, and the truth is - nobody here really knows what they’re doing 🫣. Every online creator I’ve talked to or learned from says the same thing: we’re all just figuring it out as we go!

Well, I figured out - after the fact, as I so often do - that the podcast belongs on my Elisha Celeste YouTube channel (instead of the new one I created just for the podcast).

So…we are going to pause new episodes until we get the YouTube situation sorted out. Thank you for being here as I learn how to do all of this technical stuff (give me a body to figure out any day over the internet 😆).

In a way, it’s perfect timing.

Because I’m going to be teaching a handful of live classes over the next few weeks, in addition to hosting a 3-Part “State of the Union” - a clarion call to individuals and practitioners alike to ask ourselves some hard but necessary questions:

• Why are we so sick?

• What is at the root of the chronic pain epidemic?

• What is the real role and responsibility of practitioners in the healing arts today?

• Where are we going wrong? Why are so many people NOT being helped by the practitioners they’re seeing?

• What is the role and responsibility of individuals - whether we are seeking answers and solutions on our own, or from the practitioners in our physical and online communities?

• What needs to change? Because one thing is clear: if we keep doing what we’ve been doing the last 10, 20, 30 years…we’ll keep getting the same results: skyrocketing rates of chronic disease, chronic pain, loneliness, suicide, addiction and despair.

I’ll be sending an email out tomorrow with a Calendar of Events - class descriptions, dates/times and links that you can use to “add to calendar” (Apple, Google, Outlook etc).

Now, let’s contemplate something profound together!

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New life emerges from the ashes of what needed to burn. 🔥

Today, I spent four blissful hours hiking in the mountains outside Lyons, Colorado. I love spring here - it’s cool, but not cold; my bare skin soaks up the sunlight like a hungry plant; fragrant flowers send their scents on the wind…OMG, it smells so good out there right now!

In the photo below, one of nature’s secrets begins to reveal itself. And it has nothing to do with me ;)

This is a trail I’ve hiked ritually since I moved back. While I’ve aimed to hike it weekly, sometimes work demands have gotten the best of me. But these dirt trails and all the critters who live here (prairie dogs, hawks, vultures, frogs, eagles) have been my constant companion for months.

Last fall I noticed some signs that said “warning, controlled burn ahead - do not report.”

I don’t have any photos of the burned earth (I wish I did now!), but the images are etched into my memory. Charred black cactus stumps were the only sign of life, although I have no idea if they’ll grow back. Black ashy soot covered large swaths of land.

Fire is a critical natural element that, yes, brings destruction - but it also brings LIFE.

The ash contains the fertilizer needed to nourish the soil, the germinating seeds, and the roots of prairie grasses that are incredibly hardy and fire resistant. These grasses actually NEED fire to grow taller, and more lush.

Spared by the fire, the grasses I saw today that were preserved (kept from burning) actually looked dead: brittle, dry, stiff…

Meanwhile, from the ashes where the fire had scorched the land, lush new life was emerging. Look at the difference!

It’s very apparent in the picture below, but seeing it up close and in person was almost mind boggling. Seeing the contrast, it seemed to me that the aging grasslands were practically begging to be burned with their lifeless flammable leaves.

What can we learn from this lesson about human nature?

We are governed by the same physical-spiritual laws that govern the planet and the cosmos.

The nature of fire, and the laws that fire obeys, appear the same to me within a single human organism, as they do within the organism of our earth.

Fire brings life sustaining heat - but it also destroys.

That is its nature. 🔥

Cold brings relief from the heat - and it also preserves.

That is its nature. ❄️

Preservation can be a form of destruction, but it is very different from fire.

Food stored in a freezer can last years (maybe decades). Whatever “life” is in the food when it is placed in the freezer is suspended in time…until it is brought back into the heat, and thaws out.

Scientists have discovered the frozen bodies of mammals, and some intact human bodies like this Incan girl that was buried in a sacrificial mummification ritual.

If you want to cook food, you need fire.

Leave your food too long on the counter during the summer, and it will start to rot pretty quickly.

When organs are taken from donor bodies, they are placed on ice to preserve the life force that still pulses within them while they are transferred to the person waiting for a life-saving surgery.

Donated blood is kept on ice to preserve it as well.

Heat and cold are thermal energies, which is something we talked about during the 5 kinetic energies class.

Heat destroys.

Cold preserves.

If you are someone who tends towards being cold all the time, or you have constantly cold hands and feet, then there is a riddle here for you to solve:

What exactly is it that your organism is trying to preserve? ❄️

If you are someone (like me) who tends towards being hot all the time, there is also a riddle here for you to solve:

What exactly is it that your organism is trying to destroy? 🔥

Fear and shock brings the human organism into a state of cold.

Anger, passion and drive (will) brings the human organism into a state of fire/heat.

I would submit that, just as much as the dry, brittle grasslands long to have the chaff burned away and the entire ecosystem thereby renewed, human beings also need to submit to the fire of death - while still alive.

We can’t become who we could become - whatever potential lies dormant within us, like the seedling in the soil - without some part(s) of us dying.

To become truly free, we must give up our hedonic pleasures (for example).

If you want to cool down, you’ll need to trade in some of your heat.

If you want to warm up, you’ll need to summon some fire.

We all have parts of our nature that bring us into states of dry brittleness - like holding onto resentment, brooding in pain, self victimization, or fantasizing about revenge. Attempting to “preserve” our own pride, dignity or righteousness, we often refuse to let something lie…or die.

Maybe we’re holding onto (preserving) our preferred self identity, or a cherished delusion, or the wish to be right, or to see other people get the “just” punishment we believe they deserve.

Or perhaps something happened a long time ago that was so terrifying and shocking that our organism went into a chronic state of “self preservation.”

On the other hand, those of us with too much fire have a tendency to burn things to the ground: homes (not literally, but we do tend to move frequently), relationships, businesses, bank accounts…

The heat has to go somewhere, or it would destroy us - so we direct it outwardly.

We need both, obviously.

We need the right amount of instinct for self preservation, but not so much that we dissociate from our body while holding onto every little thing that bothers us, refusing to integrate hard life lessons and move on.

We need the right amount of heat to destroy what doesn’t serve us; to burn away the chaff; to let what needs to die, to die. But not so much that we destroy recklessly, impulsively.

Do you see yourself in these archetypes?

Do you see any patterns here that might illuminate your unique nature, and what you - as a soul and spiritual being - bring to bear on your physical organism?

The thing is - there’s NO HEAT in the human organism without a soul and spirit inhabiting and animating the body. A dead body is a cold body.

There’s an intimate, observable relationship between heat and cold, and BLOOD patterns in the human organism.

These are profound mysteries that I am only just beginning to understand, after many years of studying both nature and human nature.

We are going to explore these kinds of phenomena together inside the Core Curriculum of the School for Living Science.

Here’s one more picture from this land I love so dearly.

I hope to see you on a live Zoom class soon!