Don’t get started. Remember the fire.

I spend a lot of time considering how to be more productive, or on how to align my life with my goals and priorities, or how to motivate myself. Most of the time this leads to scouring literature on productivity and motivation, from secular and spiritual sources. It’s all good stuff. I could share it with you.

But recently I’ve been wondering whether any of this actually hits the spot. Because if I am to be truthful to you, motivation can go to hell when it hasn’t got fire. I don’t need motivation or false productive systems, I just need to remember the fire.

Do you remember the fire?

My heart is burning. I don’t mean I’m sad. My mind is burning. I don’t mean I’m angry. My body is trembling. No, I don’t mean I’m scared. I mean I’m intense and fierce and passionate and I’m coming after truth and knowledge. There are no barriers this fire can’t breach. Inside me there is a raging inferno. Step out of the way if you don’t want to get burnt. You can’t step out of the way. I am the fire.

I’ve had so much fear over the years that other people will be hurt by my own fire. I started covering myself up, closing the fireplace, smothering it up with fire blankets until no light can be seen or heat can be felt. What do you have then? Burnt ashes.

How can you motivate burnt ashes? How can you expect burnt ashes to be productive? How can chaining the mind and the body to GTD or Kanban inspire our life’s worth? I’ve got nothing against these systems, but it’s like making a sports car and forgetting to put the engine in.

The fire is needed. We need to remember the essence, the seed, the core. We need to remember why our minds and hearts burn and our body trembles. We need to remember why our entire body bubbles up with energy that bursts forth from the heartmind like a solar flare.

You are alive. Yes, you didn’t ask for it. But it doesn’t matter: you are. Volcanoes and tsunamis and waterfalls and earthquakes shake inside you; your heartmind stretches out to the vast expanse of space and in to the immediacy of the sunlit dust that drifts in your bedroom. The fire burns inside you. Don’t cover it up. Let it burn through you till you burn clearly.

Don’t get motivated – remember the fire.