Survival Essentials - Fire Creation - The Introduction

In this episode of Conversations with a Shaman. 
We get into episode thirty-eight of Survival Essentials. 
Fire Creation - Always stay warm and protected. 
The Introduction.

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Thanks again for listening, and much love and God Bless.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to Inside the Raven's Eye. I'm your host, Alan Mitchell. My medicine name is Raven's Spirit. This podcast is partnered with Earth and Spirit Medicine, owned and operated by Winfield Ivers. His medicine name is Coyote Thunderhawk. He is a shaman here in the state of Utah, so make sure to visit Earth and Spirit Medicine.com. In this episode of Conversations with a Shaman, we get into episode 37 of Survival Essentials Fire Creation. Always stay warm and protected. The introduction. This and so much more in this episode of Inside the Raven's Eye. Thanks for listening and enjoy. Okay, so here we are. Whole new section. This is episode 38. And this is Fire Creation. Introduction to this, and you know, I coming here, I wasn't even really thinking about this episode, to be honest with you. I kind of walked in and I said, okay, here we are, and it's kinda like the first time that you're introducing me to fire making up the canyon. It's kind of what I'm thinking about right now, and it was so much more than just building a fire. I didn't realize that at the time, but because I remember I was struggling in the fire process and making the nest, and you know, you have your stone and you're trying to get that spark, and you have the charred cloth and all that, and doing that, and I remember I think Jacob was there too, and he was wanting to step in and help me. And uh you you stopped that real quick. And I remember I eventually got a fire going, and but it was interesting because I kind of was very confused on what I was feeling on the inside. Like there was this fight in me, saying, like, no, you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you're not this, that, and the other. Like, really kind of felt like crap. And I remember going home, and then immediately, I think at the time I only had a turkey feather, and it was just I remember Spirit saying, Okay, lay on the bed and put this feather right over your heart. And I remember that intense heat, and I it's like I could feel every little piece of that feather around my chest, and that's when I was more connected to this Kiva area, and that was what helped me connect, and it was that's when I realized that you helped me create a fire on the inside, and what that's was all about was creating that fire from within. So, with me going not too much into detail about all that, you know, it just it's that's where my thought really was was kind of going back and realizing that yes, the introduction and creating the fire, creating the fire, creating the fire. It's one thing to be in the wilderness to create one, but then which a lot of people can, oh yeah, we have classes, we you learn that in the Boy Scouts, but I don't think that there's too many people out there, if there's any except you, that really teach the concept of fire making is on the inside. The inside, the inside, the inside. And so, yeah, that's uh kind of what I what I got on that.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, I remember the story really well. So I he shared there. I I love fire making. I've always loved fire. I I loved lighting matches when I was a little boy, caught our doghouse on fire, etc. You know, just fire is amazing to me, you know, it has its own personality, and you know, it it's it's something that I over time learned to work with, you know, and and it seems like fire works with me. And I always found this invigorating push within me. A drive, but it was more than a drive. And even more than that push, but that push will stick with that word, within me, when I was learning the bow and drill fire making technique, and there were so many things that I kept coming across from the very idea of where am I going to go out in the wilderness from my home and find materials for bow and drill that I can bring back home and start working with to learn how to create this bow and drill fire. So I just started. I went up the canyon and I started gathering things, and I just everywhere I went, I I was completely obsessed with bow and drill fire making. I made so many bows, so many fireboards, I still do lots of pistons, you know, fire uh is something that I just absolutely love. And the part about the bow and drill fire making technique that really was impressive was that I couldn't quite figure out a uh a success recipe other than don't ever quit, don't ever give up. That was the only success recipe I could come up with because the temperament of the wood, one piece of wood and what would be called the fire hearth. And in making this, if you already understand bow and drill fire making, great. If not, you know, just bear with me here. But there's like this, uh, if you can imagine a natural uh two by four but much smaller kind of a looking piece of wood, and you put a another stick on it and you kind of rub sticks together kind of a thing, but you have more of the uh components than that to assist you to do that, but it's friction. And in one piece of wood, you can find a temperament. It's like people's personalities. It's you know, it's it's kind of you know each day manipulated by the weather or things like that, you know, other people, energetic. So when you know the the wood gets more condensation, and or if it's you know uh humid or things like that, it it changes how the wood is able to produce its friction to turn into an ember. And in working with this technique, and then at the time in my life that I was doing this, I was completely obsessed in self-mastery and still am. I it's never stopped. It's the greatest journey that I've ever been on deliberately, intensely with a purpose since I was 25 years old. And you know, it was that first hip replacement that just shifted everything within me as to priorities. And I was single then and still quite young, you know, I was only 25, and as I began this journey of well say human psychology, what is it that makes a person do this or do that? Why is it that people say things and do things that seem so out of context? What happened to 100% continual kindness and trust? So as I was looking at things with other people through my life, and then understanding where I was in that and thinking that as a child, when adults are saying things to you, you kind of are taught that you should listen. But it never resonated very well with me. I couldn't figure out why all these people through my entire life were saying things to me that were seemingly an attack upon my spiritual self, my inside fire, my worth, my my thinking about myself, my how I viewed my my own interaction with others and what that looked like. And so this was a very, very intense period of time, and fire making just took on a whole new meaning. My life took on a whole new meaning. The intertwining of my inner fire and creating fire on the outside. So this idea of creating fire is is really, really wonderful. You know, I say always stay warm and protected. And so fire allows us to stay warm and protected. But see, here's the thing about fire. Have you ever had so much of it that it scared the hell out of you and you ran away in fear? No, not fire can scare the hell out of you. Ask a lot of people who've been getting their places burned down. You know, when we look at fire, and these are natural in many cases, natural fires. Then the wind comes, and and hopefully the rain comes. You know, it's interesting how all these things work together. You know, it's interesting these elements, this placement. Uh we talk about our human placement in this uh earth environment where from day one humans have been just trying to s keep themselves fed, stay safe and protected from the things that are coming up against them, to try and find some peace of mind through it without feeling threatened, to be able to secure some method of fortitude that says, let's just look forward to, let's not just survive, let's start to look forward. How will this look in the future? A way of thinking, and here we are, a long time away from that beginning. And today we're talking about fire. So many levels. Survival essentials, number one, preparing and training, always be in a state of readiness, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Number two, stop in first aid. Always stop when you feel lost or stranded, and attend to that first aid. Stop, think, observe, and plan. Mental clarity and focus is number three. Always remain fact-based and solution-oriented. You've got to think it, you've got to speak it, you've got to feel it, you've got to act it to get the deliberate result. We're getting results all the time. Number three is uh so powerful to how we get success in everything. Number four, navigation and signaling. Always know where you're going, how to get back. Number five, water questing. Always stay hydrated and aware. You know, we learn how to conserve, filter, locate, purify water. But wow, you know, you when we talk about all this on the inside and you know how this pertains to our everyday life, that you know, we it's it's it's good that people don't need to go out and spend decades of their life to learn all this, okay. I want to point that out. I've already done that, okay. We don't need to reinvent some will here, impertinence to survival essentials as to how we live each and every day to have a balanced and prioritized life. We don't need to go out there and recreate or redo or you know, say, well, uh let's just forget about this other information and try and figure it out ourselves. Yeah, that's good. Okay, I think that we need to think for ourselves absolutely, but when you can be given recipes that work, it's like if you have a good bread recipe. Why are you gonna jack with it? You know, and you know, you might want to try other flavors maybe or put some raisins in it. I don't know if you like raisin bread and cinnamon or something, but you know, you don't want to, you know, tweak it too much or throw away the recipe or forget how to blend the ingredients, or under what conditions it will raise, and when do you provide fire to that bread to to make it become what you want? So we get to number five, water questing, like I said. Number six, shelter solutions. Always stay protected from the harsh elements. We went through all those recently. The types of shelter, the creating of shelter, the insulation, the location. We talked about going into this part right now, fire creation, always staying warm and protected, and here we are. And yeah, fire can can help you feel really good. But when you get in too close and that flame changes and it burns you, it's a step back. So learning how to work with fire, what's too much, what's not enough, under what conditions. So, you know, we'll get into necessity. Do you even need fire in a survival situation? And I'm gonna say that, yeah, you know, you need a fire on the inside if we're talking about our everyday lives. But sometimes what we might call our inner fire can push people away or attract them, depending upon how we behave. We're going to talk about location of fire, keeping it safe and small in survival. Yeah, you want to really understand your situation. You want to work with it as kind of minimum minimalist in the way of approach in order to secure that safety, that certainty in working with Mother Earth, the elements, and making certain that you have your water, shelter, fire, and food, and working with your thoughts, not letting what seems to be on the outside defeat what's on the inside. So fire creation in wilderness survival and how many techniques there are, and what are the uses of fire, what can you do with fire? Wow, off the charts. So to me, fire, I have fire all the time when I'm out in wilderness. I love fire, I'm using it all the time for different things, and we'll get into those different things. So fire isn't just something that is there to like when we think of camping or something like that, you know, and people gathering around, it's always such a good feeling. And that's kind of what I'm getting at here, too, because when your fire's burning bright and you invite some others around a real fire, and you're kind of circling around and you're just talking about good things, something seems to happen. So when you can do that and ignite a fire in your own home, in your own family, in your own relationships, in your workplace, because you're learning the techniques. So when we talk about the necessity, the location, the techniques, and the uses, I will be covering probably more profoundly the survival situations and the inside situations in much more depth than I ever have. It seems so important to me right now about this fire and what we need spiritually in us. This world is as to what we are seeing out there, it's somewhat spiritually opposing. So when we're living in this world and we're seeing things on the outside, how we perceive that is important. But even more important, how we perceive ourselves in an environment of human beings and Mother Earth and structures and energy, we're mingling. And when you have these mingling fires and it's unaware, it's somewhat self-defeating, somewhat dangerous, sparks flying everywhere, kind of a thing. Smoke everywhere, kind of a thing, it's not good. You gotta stoke it, you gotta stoke the fire. I spent a few years in the barbecue industry, uh, huge rotisserie rack pits. Where just to give you an idea, you could you could fit a you know 160 half chickens on, you know, in one of these pits, you know, and uh just roast them around. You've got these uh four four racks rotating around automatically that are you know four foot wide and uh four foot long and two foot wide. So you could place all this and and in the back, choosing the wood, what kind of wood we used, you know. Uh we used to use mostly apple and stoking those fire. To maintain a temperature was imperative. This was before I learned bowl and drill fire making. This was when I first came out of my cocaine addiction, and I began working for Luther's Barbecue, and I went from dishwasher to barbecue chef to training all the corporate new managers and how to manage and maintain and hire people to regulate the pits to produce good food. And I was frontline runner on the on the board cutting up the meat. People would stand in these lines and their mouths would be watering because these glass windows would let them, when I'd open up these big doors, they could see all that meat just in there, sizzling. Chicken in one, link sausage, you know, briskets in another, and you know, these full ribbed uh full ribs in another. And by the time they get up to make their order after seeing all that, and yeah, I was playing a psychology. I loved this job. I loved it because I could make people be happy. I could make them get so engaged into their experience as they would come in. We had lines out the door, people were coming from Idaho to Utah to come and get Luther's barbecue. Okay, so it was a big deal. I learned a lot. That's when I gained some preparing and training without really knowing where it was going. I thought it was restaurant-oriented. But later I was able to, as I say, in navigation and signaling, always know where you're going and how to get back. Well, you gotta go back sometimes, you know, you gotta do this backwards walking, you've got to know where you've been. Sometimes we gotta go back and gather some people that didn't quite, you know, keep up, you know. So we gotta we gotta keep in mind how to go everywhere and what to do with it. So I was able to go back and retrieve that information and start to look at some of the earlier times of how I worked with fire and what I learned. So, what would you say at this point, Mr. Raven Spirit? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Well, in regards to everything you just said, especially about know where you're going and how to get back, and when I was thinking about fire making and how many times, because I don't use necessarily the word failure, because each time, and this goes much deeper than just even fire making, but that we're talking about fire here, it's like when you don't get a fire to walk backwards and to realize what did I do that caused it not to happen. So, yes, the air quotes failure of not getting a fire, but then to backtrack and figure out, you know what, I should have done this a little bit better and to take the time to learn the lessons. And I think that's where spirit works the best in a lot much cases, is when we can understand and hear listen within ourselves to learn what went wrong, how to fix it, and then by the time you know the next time you do it, you got a fire.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

And let's just go a little deeper. Let's just forget about fire right now, but let's stick with that mindset and that thought process. What about our personal relationships? What about our relationships at work? What about our relationship with self? How willing are we to assess and say, where did I get off the path? Where did I go wrong? What can I do different so I don't end up there again? What can I do different now? What can I decide right now so that I don't go into some sort of blame game, stupid fire making kit? Okay, right. I don't go into some blame game, uh, stupid people, you know. I don't go into some blame game that keeps me from personal assessment. This is the value, people. This is the value in fire making. Everything, when you are that engaged in making fire and going through the processes and not wanting to feel defeated, not wanting to throw your fire making stuff, you know, three miles down a road, you've got to be able to discipline yourself and step back. Step back and do the stop. S-T-O-P. Stop, think, observe, and plan. And you gotta do these things all the time. I don't want to keep going on, people, but Judas Priest, assess yourself, find out where you're at. Don't get upset with yourself, just crank it up. Okay, if you're pissed off at yourself, then do something. If you're sick of the same habits that are defeating you, if you're doing the same things over and over that are not getting you what you want, you better shift it now and you better shift it profoundly. Because that fire's out of control or it's gone, and you better do something. Alright.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

There we have episode 38 to Survival Essentials. Fire Creation. Always stay warm and protected. The introduction. To me, remember to look at this episode and the upcoming episodes of fire creating as not just a way of creating a fire in the raw wilderness, but the importance of understanding it is also teaching you how to keep the fire within burning strong and safely. If you enjoy this podcast, please remember to share this with your loved ones, family, and friends. Give us a rating and follow us so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Thanks again for listening and much love and God bless.