Saturday, May 31, 2025

A Fistful of Fiery Stardust

A Fistful of Fiery Stardust

by Catherine Viel

Posted on May 31, 2025


May 30, 2025

Many are exhausted, short-fused, and sitting in a kind of pressure cooker that often makes no rational sense. There’s grief, irritation, and even a deep burning rage…the energy to me feels like a dragon’s fire. It is erupting through me…It’s amazing, exhausting, and sometimes scary…The challenge now is to feel it all, even the rage, and set ourselves free without burning down what we need and want to remain. ~ Jenny Schiltz

I’ve noticed how some of us pay cursory attention to nature, while others experience a deep awareness of and connection with the natural world. I gravitate toward the latter more and more as time goes by.

When I entered Stow Grove Park the other day, a squirrel was chattering madly high up in one of the redwoods. It ceased while I walked the path through the peaceful redwood grove, and when I left the park, I heard the chorus of squirrel barks recommence. 

Being attuned to signs of Spirit delivered through everyday nature encounters, I wondered if that scolding squirrel was a message for me. 

*****

Since there are anger-management courses aplenty, frequently mandated for certain offenders post-trial, it seems obvious that anger is an issue for many humans. 

We have limited choices when dealing with emotions we perceive as negative (or in spiritual correct-speak, “not preferred”). If something causes our temper to flare, we might tell ourselves to hold steady: wait until we can assess, and respond rather than react. After all, reacting is probably how people end up in those anger-management courses. 

For many people, a few deep breaths and reasoned self-talk probably work well. For others, the reaction is like a force of nature erupting from our body-mind-emotion amalgam. Trying to put the brakes on the response is no more use than reeling in a comet by its tail. The comet hurtles onward and we’re left holding a handful of fiery stardust. 

It’s no wonder the comet escapes my grasp. If Ayurvedic and homeopathic type assessments are valid, I’m apparently programmed to be the human version of that angry squirrel: defending my territory, scolding trespassers, and erecting barriers against invasion. 

Those aren’t behaviors I embrace or consciously choose. Perhaps if I’m noticing and feeling this so intensely right now, it’s not just me, but a collective experience as Jenny Schiltz describes in a recent newsletter.

*****

I do think there’s validity in holistic assessment tools as well as mainstream personality type assessments. I took the Myers-Briggs test decades ago, and it landed so accurately it was uncanny, bordering on witchcraft.

If I’m prone to prickliness, defending my territory, or other bad-tempered reactions, does it follow that I “chose” this body and mental-emotional construct? Were they essential ingredients in the recipe that created me?

Hmmm… what if I’m done with having those experiences, but am trapped in a lifelong homeopathic constitution and Ayurvedic type that continue promulgating a fiery, easily triggered temper?

What is the recourse for breaking free from this personal-matrix nightmare?

*****

I’m not sure that animals really get “angry.” I have a feeling that what we perceive as anger in animals is the behavior they manifest when they are threatened. When they are fearful. When their lives, or the lives of their young, or their territory, are under perceived attack.

Are we really that different? Is human anger an elevated response, lifted up above such base concerns as territorialism and self-protection?

I suspect not. No matter how we might justify our negative emotions and the “bad” behavior stemming from them, I think it’s likely that we’re just prettying up an evolutionary and biological response to threat.

*****

Homeopathic constitutions can be modified, the troublesome aspects toned down via dietary adjustments, homeopathic remedies, and holistic therapies. But the undesirable aspects of a homeopathic type won’t simply go away, especially if they are a lifelong imprint.

I ponder the seemingly carefree life of that chattering squirrel in the park. Do the other animals say, “Tone it down, will ya? Nobody’s threatening you.” There are no anger management courses in nature. 

One of Dr. Peebles’s suggestions is to ask ourselves: “I wonder what my soul is mastering?” A slightly more loosey-goosey approach than the dreary “What lesson am I supposed to be learning?” 

Who doesn’t want to be a master at something? It strikes me as peculiar that an immortal and limitless soul would need to master anything, but what do I know? I’m just the vehicle toting this particular God-fragment around on Planet Earth.

*****

The next time I go to the park and hear a squirrel chattering, I will slow down and really listen. I will spot it running across a branch high up in a magnificent redwood, hopping fearlessly from branch to branch and tree to tree. I will ask my soul: do you really want to keep emulating that perpetually antagonized squirrel? How about if we move on from this part of the program?

It’s not a solemn ritual or a fancy, multistep spiritual plan. Just a couple of questions, self to soul. God willing, the dialogue will go both ways, and the human me will be able to hear what the soul is speaking. 



My notes: 
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