Flame Made Flesh: Choosing the Fire That Transcends

Since this thought first entered my mind last week while in conversation with my partner, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It keeps circling me, pressing on me in quiet hours, flaring up in conversation, echoing like an ember that refuses to die out. It does not leave me alone… perhaps because it is not meant to.

There is an image, a vision, that has etched itself so deeply into my soul that it feels older than memory. Perhaps it was always there, waiting for me to finally see it clearly.

It is the imagery of the very moment our fiery souls are poured into flesh, when the spark of our higher self consents to descend into this fragile vessel. Even in the secret darkness of the womb, the burn has already begun. Conception itself is a kindling, essence clothed in matter, light sealed within skin. By the time we draw our first breath, incarnation is already aflame, and the world around us becomes the oven.

From that moment forward, we are in the burn.

The fire of life does not wait for us to be ready. It surrounds us from the beginning, searing, shaping, testing. We may call it pain, we may call it trial, we may call it grief, but whatever name we give it, it is the same relentless heat. And yet, at the very core of that furnace burns the light of our own essence, not separate from the fire, but fueling it.

This is the thought I cannot let go of: that life is the burn, and we are flame made flesh.

The Unavoidable Burn

Here is the truth we all resist for most of our lives: pain is inevitable. There is no bypass, no loophole, no secret path around it. To live is to burn.

And because of that, each of us is confronted with a choice, not whether we will burn, but how.

One path is the burn that consumes. It is the slow suffocation of denial, the ache of disconnection, the hollow numbness of disassociation. It is the life spent trying to outrun the fire through distraction, denial, over-functioning, or silence. And yet, even then, the flame never disappears. It smolders beneath the surface, unextinguished, still burning us in the depths of our shadows.

The other path is the burn that forges. This pain is no easier, in truth, I feel it often cuts far deeper. It is the pain of awareness, of waking up to the truth of how much of our life has been spent in hiding and in denial. It is the grief of recognizing the years lost to silence, the friendships or loves distorted by fear and anger, the wild light of our essence dimmed so others would not be uncomfortable.

Both paths burn. Both hurt. That is the paradox.

But only one path refines us. Only one shapes us into something truer than what we were before.

The Holiness of Embodiment

And here is where the image of flame made flesh becomes even more piercing.

Because it goes further than the inevitability of suffering. It points to the holiness of embodiment itself, the fire of our higher essence consenting to be clothed in this fragile, finite vessel, knowing full well it will burn.

That choice, the descent of flame into flesh, is both terrifying and sacred. Terrifying, because to be human is to suffer, to fracture, to be cut open by the heat of life. Sacred, because to suffer is also to be refined, to be shaped, to discover the brilliance of the light that survives the fire.

When I see life this way, I no longer ask why there is pain. I ask what the pain is making of me. I ask whether I will be consumed to ash or whether I will emerge forged, luminous, whole.

When Fire Was Turned Into Fear

And yet, I cannot help but notice how this primal truth has been twisted.

For centuries, religion has capitalized on the fire. It took what is inevitable, the burn of life itself and weaponized it into fear.

The fire was painted as punishment. To burn was to be condemned. “Hellfire” became the great terror, the image used to corral souls into obedience. As if the flame itself were evil.

But the fire is not evil. It is not even “good.” It simply is. It is the condition of embodiment, the furnace of existence.

By teaching us to fear it, organized religion stripped us of our agency. Instead of being invited into the alchemy of transformation, we were told to avoid the fire at all costs. Instead of being shown that grief could refine us, we were told only to surrender power to those who claimed to hold the key to escape this “eternal” pain.

The tragedy is not that fire burns... it always will.

The tragedy is that we were taught to fear the very crucible that could have made us whole.

To reclaim the fire is not to call evil “good.” It is to see that the fire was never evil to begin with. It was always the forge. It consumes or it refines and that choice does not belong to any priest, church, or doctrine.

It belongs to us.

Beyond the Illusion of Healing

This realization also unraveled over the weekend, the way I once thought about my own journey. For the last five years I’ve called it a “healing journey,” as though the pain itself could one day be erased, as though life’s burn might somehow be soothed into silence. Heck, my whole purpose in starting this blog was to share such a healing journey.

But as I sat this past weekend with the paradox of our painful existence, I see now that the human condition itself cannot be healed, at least not if by healing we mean the removal of pain. Certain scars will always ache when touched. Even when the wound has closed, memory lives beneath the skin. Healing does not mean erasing that history, it means carrying it differently.

Pain is woven into the very fabric of embodiment. Thus, to live is to burn.

And yet, though pain cannot be erased, it can be transmuted, integrated, redeemed. The fire does not vanish, but its meaning changes. Grief does not dissolve, but it becomes initiation instead of exile. The scars remain etched into our flesh, but instead of testifying to ruin, they become the place where the light enters and radiates.

What we call “healing,” then, is not the ending of pain but the re-weaving of it into wholeness. It is the alchemy of surrender, where the very thing that seared us becomes the fire that refines us.

My Furnace of Grief

I do not write this as abstraction. I speak from my own flickering furnace.

For decades, I wore the mask of positivity. I became the “queen of light” to cover the darkness I carried. If I smiled wide enough, gave endlessly, and kept moving forward, I told myself, maybe the heat would not touch me. Maybe I could outrun the fire.

But I could not.

Behind the mask, my grief grew heavier. It was the grief of a little girl who had learned too early to silence her needs. The grief of a woman who dimmed her flame to keep the peace. The grief of wasted time, of years spent performing survival while my soul ached to live.

When last year I finally stopped running, when I allowed myself to stand in the fire, the grief came like a wave. It was unbearable. It burned through me, leaving nothing untouched.

And yet, this very grief became the ember that reignited me. It was the proof that I had not gone cold. It was the reminder that my essence still burned, waiting for me to stop numbing and allow the forge to do its work.

From Wildfire to Lava Flow

When I was a child, I thought of myself as a wildfire. Untamed, I often was called..."too much", dangerous if let loose. Wildfires flare bright, burn fast, and then they are gone, ashes scattered by the wind.

But I no longer see myself this way.

Now dormant for almost half a century, I wake up now feeling more like a lava flow. Slow. Dense. Unstoppable. Lava does not apologize for its heat. It moves with purpose, reshaping the land itself. It destroys, yes, but it also creates. When it cools, it becomes new ground, something no fire could erase.

That is how I understand my becoming. I am not here to smother my flame. I am not here to blaze wildly only to extinguish. I am here to flow, unyielding, transformative, carving new paths into a new land of awakening.

I am here not just to survive the fire, but to become its embodiment. Not just a wild flame, but flame made flesh.

The Alchemy of Transmutation

And so the question comes back to me, again and again: if pain is inevitable—if we must burn either way, why not choose the fire that transforms?

We can numb, deny, and fracture… but the pain remains. Or we can surrender, grieve, and be forged. The pain remains here too, but something else emerges in its wake: alchemy.

When we choose the path of transmutation, pain becomes the teacher. Grief becomes initiation. The flame becomes the crucible that burns away what is false, leaving only what is tempered, resilient, radiant.

I believe this is the invitation of life itself. Not to escape the fire. Not to deny the burn. But to allow it to make us more than we were before.

Flame Made Flesh

This is the heartbeat behind my song, Flame Made Flesh.

The lyrics were born from that vision, the moment our essence is poured into flesh, and the world becomes the oven in which we live. A reminder that pain is not our destroyer, but our alchemist. A hymn to the choice that is always before us: to be consumed into ash, or to be forged into something eternal.

This is my favorite verse

I was the ember, I was the spark

Burned through the shadows, lit up the dark

Now every step is a battle drum

I’m not afraid of what I’ve become

I write these words not as one who has mastered the fire, but as one still painfully flickering through it. I know its heat. I know its grief. I know the fracture of denial, and the unbearable burn of awareness. And I also know the rising, the moment when what was once unbearable becomes the very force that is shaping me now.

This is the slow, holy work of becoming. Not a blaze that burns out, but a lava flow that reshapes the ground of my existence.

I am no longer afraid of the fire. I am learning to live as its embodiment. To let my grief become flame. To let my flame become tempered flesh. To let my flesh become a vessel for the radiant light that will light up the world.

And maybe that is all any of us are here to do.

☥