Hot Hot Heat
The never-ending journey to temper the flame...
I’m a Leo. The fieriest of all astrological signs.
I don’t subscribe wholly into the enormous rabbit hole that is Astrology, but that’s not to say I don’t often relate and dabble. I’ve seen too much weird shit in my life to chalk it all up to complete nonsense. In my case, it makes all the sense in the world that I’m a Leo. I run hot, and I mean hot. My body, my mind, my spirit - all move at a hundred miles an hour, all the time. I don’t know how else to be, nor do I wish to be anything else.
My body temperature is always warm; I’ve often been called the human furnace. My mind races day in and day out, and if I want it to slow down, I need to intentionally make it do so. I have a desire to create that burns in me so strongly it’s often overwhelming. When I love, I do so with a hopeless and reckless passion that scorches whatever I touch. These are just a few examples of how the Leo rises within me, and today I want to dive into some of these. What I love so much about this platform is that it enables me to follow the thread of whatever comes up in me. On any given day I can write about Jesus, my puppy, or astrology. That’s good for me because I often find it difficult to keep my mind locked in one direction. Did I mention I’m a Leo?
I want to have some fun with this one and break it down into a few segments. Let’s see where we end up…
Leo Body
Those of you that know me know that I’m obsessed with physical training and physical culture. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, but it really activated in me when I got sober. I train every possible day that I can, which usually nets out to five or six times per week. People often ask me how I stay so consistent with it, and at this point it’s a difficult question to answer. For me, there isn’t a choice or any sort of obligation. I need to train, plain and simple. I wake up every day with a burning mind and a burning heart, and, although it may seem counterintuitive, training helps me cool down. I feel off if I go even a day without training.
In classic Leo fashion, I also train harder than most people I’ve ever seen or met because that’s just natural for me. My journey has taken me through seasons of extreme calisthenics, long distance running, heavy olympic weightlifting and, as of late, old school strongman training. Basically, I go to the gym and lift really heavy weights in very strange ways and most people think I’m insane. My answer would be yes, I certainly am. Subjecting my body to these extremes is just a part of my Way, a part of what I need to feel my best. It is a way for me to temper the flame that continously burns within me, which is a theme I’ll be coming back to often in this piece.
I interface with life best through my body. I love muscularity, both aesthetically and practically. I love physical touch and embrace. My tendency towards body-over-mind even led me to quit a budding career and start a new life working with my hands. To me I need to use my body all day, every day to keep the chattering monkeys in my mind at bay. I know this is not the case for everyone, dare I say most people, but it’s just a part of being a Leo.
I learned today that there is a Hindu deity named Narasimha, who “is a fierce avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, one who incarnates in the form of part lion and part man to destroy evil and end religious persecution and calamity on Earth, thereby restoring Dharma.” Not that that’s directly related to the topic, but I find it cool and maybe you do too.
Leo Mind
My mind doesn’t stop. It’s constantly calculating, praising and shaming and concocting all sorts of futures and fantasies. Any stimulus it is given it will devour and synthesize as it sees fit, and it’s always trying to find ways to connect everything to itself. It wants to know the most secret knowledge, the answers to the greatest questions, the purpose behind everything and everyone. I’ve always been extraordinarily smart (shout out to Advanced Academics class in grade school), but that’s not always made life easy.
The reason why I need to use my body so intensely is because of my overactive mind. I’ve struggled with OCD and hypochondria in the past, along of a slew of other fixation-related issues. A thought, idea or even feeling can get “stuck” in my head for weeks. The best way I can describe it is that my mind blows these things up into seismic proportions and refuses to let them go. It’s been a long time since I’ve suffered from any of that in any tangible way, but it serves as a reminder that my mind is quite powerful.
The incessant questioning and analysis has often led me to feel apart from others. The truth is, my mind thinks big. I don’t give a shit about sports, the weather, what college you went to or how your day went. I’ve just never been good at small talk, which is a necessary skill in meeting new people. What I want to know are the things you fear the most, what your darkest hour looked like, what God means to you, etc. I mean, why else are we here? I’ve been called an intense person many times in my life, and I’ve found that this intensity turns a lot of people off. I have no plans of changing (it actually serves as a good barometer test as to whether or not I’ll click with someone), but I bring it up here to elaborate on the theme. Everything is big, everything is intense, everything is on fire.
Leo Spirit
I would say my Leo is most pronounced in my spiritual life. I’ve never been someone who could accept not knowing and just go on about my life. I have an endless craving for spiritual knowledge, spiritual growth and spiritual adventure. I believe in some crazy shit, and I’m not ashamed about it. It’s just a part of who I am, and I’ve found that the more I drift away from it the worse off I get.
Spirit comes in many forms. For me, the first form is creation. I’ve been creating since my teens, whether other people liked it or not. In my twenties I earnestly tried to be a musician, and while I do believe I was talented enough, I ran into a wall. I wasn’t able to package my creativity into a sellable item. I’ve always disliked social media and the idea of shamelessly promoting myself has always felt disingenuous. I just wanted to created, and that’s what I did and continue to do. I feel the same way about this SubStack - I don’t promote it anywhere anymore except through word of mouth. Sure, I would be great to make more money and become a successful writer, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is simply to create and to express myself and reach my spirit out into the world. It will find exactly who its meant to. What has always surprised me is that not everyone has this need, this desire. If I didn’t make music or write, I’d probably have ended up in an insane asylum.
The second form of Spirit is love. I love hard, deep and without rules. I wouldn’t necessarily call it “healthy,” but at this point it’s getting difficult to discern between what’s healthy or not in this culture. I will say that it’s another one of those things that’s doesn’t always go well for me. Many people today want detachment, limited emotion, sex and comfort. I, on the other hand, want to devour your soul. Yes, it’s problematic, but like everything else in my life, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve tried to it the way you’re “supposed to.” I’m sure you know what I’m talking about - something about loving yourself first, personal boundaries, successful partnership blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day I’m still the type of person who watches The Notebook and thinks that that is a perfectly reasonable template for love. Hah, why not!? We only live once, and doing anything half-heartedly has always felt like a slap in the face to life itself. Love is meant to be a dance of joy and laughter and play, not some rigid, regulated thing. Then again I’m probably not the best person to take advice from in this realm.
The third and final form of Spirit is faith. In this I have travelled to many places and experienced many things. I met the Buddha in Ireland, got sober through a loving God, was part of a few strange spiritual groups when I lived in Brooklyn and most recently turned my life over to Jesus Christ. It’s just where my road has taken me, and it’s been such a beautiful and horrifying ride. I could have just chalked it all up to make believe a decade ago, but I would have missed so much! Faith, in tandem with spiritual growth, is, for me, the purpose of it all. It’s the only thing that really makes any sense in the grand scheme of things (Leo, much?). Why not believe? Why not try? Why not have faith? Everything else pales in comparison.
Conclusion
I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t really know where that one came from. I just started writing and that’s what came out. I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a strange vibe this week, and that’s quite alright.
Writing about astrological (or astrologically adjacent) topics might surprise some of you, especially those of you that resonated with my Christian writings. To this I’d say that I’ve always hated boxes. Yes, I enjoy writing about Christianity and will certainly continue to do so, but I’m always going to write about whatever comes up for me. I can choose to look at life as chopped up into segments of right and wrong and cast judgements upon things, or I can see everything as coexisting under the same sun, moon and stars. I choose the latter - there’s God in everything and everyone and every thought and every belief.
My message today is that, whether we believe in astrology or not, each of us has to decide who we are and how we’re going to deal with ourselves. I choose the fire, and all the joys and horrors that come with it. I do what I can each day to temper the flame, even if it doesn’t make sense to others. I know what I have to do for me, and I hope this inspires you to do what you need to do for you.