Unexpected In Common Hours

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Thoreau

Fire

This post is third in a five part series on the Elements. I recommend you read Earth and Water, the prior two posts before this one. Water, especially will add some perspective with this post on Fire.

I want to start this conversation on the fire element by shipping you over to read this too: The Soul of Fire

Now that you understand my viewpoint…that fire is alive and has consciousness, I’ll proceed with further discussion.

Fire is the liminal element. It is the balance point between the spiritual and the physical for us. I think the best way to truly understand the fire element is to understand how energy and experience is catalyzed by the heart…because that’s really what we are talking about; creativity, love, passion, joy.

Our physical being is motivated to do and act because of love and the urge to create. Our intellect is inspired by the passion we feel. It is called to question and sift through what’s most important as a result of our urge to love and feel joy in our lives. The need to be happy is one our intellect can accept, but it is usually only moved to make radical changes in thinking because of something in the way of that joy and happiness or because of the loss of something or someone important to us. Thought habits are transformed under the impetus of the fiery passion of the heart when no other force can compel it.

The urge toward a life of meaning is made personal because of our loving heart. By this, I mean to say that what’s personally important to us is what defines us, what gives our lives meaning and purpose. These things that are personally important to us drives our believes, behavior, needs, accomplishments, lifestyle…even drives our loving toward our goals.

“An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.” Harold Loukes

This is one of the paradoxes of the heart that has been taught to me in the past couple years. I do not need to recieve love to give it. I need to simply love. Love is about listening. It is about witnessing another in their life, be it happy, sad, glorious or deeply tragic. It doesn’t take away the things that make us strong just so that we are never hurt. That is not love. Love is beingness. It fills our hearts with life force. Love is a life force. It is something that we can feel the measure of, even if we cannot see it. We can see its actions, just as we can the wind. We can feel its heat, just as we can the sun’s radiance. We do not need another to love us in return. We may feel we need that, but we can fill ourselves with love. We can feel full in our hearts by tapping in to the love that exists within ourselves and all of creation.

And the very best door way for reaching that love is gratitude. Forgiveness is another door way. So is creativity and service.

These door ways have been written about at length. I read many of these books. Truth to tell, I see these door ways as mysteries…things that one will never really understand until you’ve passed through them one self. An intellectual understanding of them just does not really help you implement the skills and blessings of these door ways. Nope. You just have to go through them and find out how they apply…how they work for you…how they impact your heart personally.

Just like fire is an ephemeral being, so is the heart. Its a living thing within us. It has a will and life all its own…it is almost as if we just get to carry it around with us and live with it. It will guide us through life if we let it…just as our soul will.

This is the one element, that despite it not being a part of our personality, we must still confront it. We must still find a way to deal with this gift we each carry. We must still learn to control our passions without stifling our life force and creativity and loosing our purpose and the meaning in our lives.

Sorrow remarked that she realizes that she has to be careful about how she handles others, how she expresses herself because she can easily hurt someone’s feelings. This is so true. A person with a very fiery nature is a creature of great passion…and often great conviction. The force of such a personality is a force to be reckoned with. We can just barge right over a person with a less forceful way of projecting themselves to others. This element requires the skill of turning back the heat, of learning to be a candle flame, not a raging bonfire…to to know when a bonfire is appropriate and how to manage it so that you don’t burn yourself out or drive others batty with obsessive behavior.

I know that there’s more in me to say about this deep topic. Somehow, I think that this is enough to take a person into the deeper aspects of this element, which initiatory, transformative and healing by its very nature.

Update: I was kindly reminded that I had forgot the meditations and rituals that I’ve been offering in the other posts. I knew when I wrote this post that I’d forgot something, but I didn’t feel well, so I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I figured someone would point it out and for archival sake, I’d just update the post.

A word of caution. Fire is dangerous. Work with it with great caution. If you choose to try anything I share here, do so understanding your own risk. You are responsible for your own safety. Ensure it. Use your head.

So here’s some Fire meditations:

In social settings between human beings we naturally do this. We share tea or other drinks and food because the act of sharing nourishment is a peaceful, calming thing to do that makes friendship grow between people. This same custom has also been applied to making relations with spirits. Fire in particular is a living being as I’ve shared in this and other posts. If you do this ritual regularly over many years, you will see amazing things happen with fire. It will behave in unusual ways when you interact with it. But it takes time to build a relationship with it and you must be ego-less and you must respect it. Do not toss garbage into a fire that you have made relations with. Do not toss fuel into it. If you are sharing the fire with others, do not interrupt the prayers and offerings of others to work in the fire or to pray yourself. Wait your turn. Do not interrupt the fire keeper as there is something going on between the fire and the keeper in those moments. Let them be. Approach fire with respect. To make relations with it offer it something that’s meaningful to you in your tradition. For example, for me pure grain alcohol is an appropriate offering with some fires. Usually these are lit for a specific sort of ritual that I’ll share about later. At most other fires, I make tobacco offerings. In the tradition I follow, tobacco is understood to be a plant that is supports making friendship and prayers and the smoke carries the prayers with it. Also I may offer sweet grass and flat leaf cedar depending on the prayers I am including in the ceremony.

When I light a fire in my house for warmth, I make relationship with that fire…especially if its a fire that is likely to stay lit for the rest of the heating season. That fire will be a very old soul as fires go by the time its allowed to die out again in spring. So we pay attention to it. We give it plant offerings regularly thanking it for staying in the stove and not eating our house. And believe me. There have been times when it could have jumped ship and didn’t.
The meditation part of making relations is to just be with the fire. Watch it. Tend it. Care for it. Spend lots of time doing that. It will teach you things…especially things about your ego.

Another meditation is called Mindful Smiling. That is to deliberately smile allowing your whole being to fill with gratitude and joy at the existence of what/whoever you smile at. In this instances, close your eyes and smile directly at the sun, feeling it on your face. Understand that it gives you life. Did it not exist and radiate all its loving warmth upon this planet you could not exist. Let it fill you.

Here is a heart meditation. I warn you that this site has adult content. If that offends you, then do not surf anywhere else but this single page. On this single page, there is absolutely no adult content.

Following are two ceremonies. Both are called Burning Bowl Ceremonies. One is with alcohol and one is without. Here is a link to the kind without alcohol. The purpose of this sort of ceremony is to work with fire as a tranformative partner. You could also start a bon fire and burn things like journals or braids you have cut from your hair or an old tshirt that represents something to you that you want to let go of. The key to these ceremonies is to truly let go of it and to do that, you must not let your mind dwell on the images and ideas associated with what you let go of again.

The Burning Bowl Ceremony with alcohol is a very simple ceremony that is wonderful for cleansing the aura of a place or a person. This is an indoor ritual. If you want to cleanse your aura with fire outdoors, then just build a fire and tend it. You’ll succeed. Burning alcohol outside is as dangerous as burning lighter fluid outside. It is an uncontrolled kind of fire that can blow all over the place in the winds. Don’t do it.

As for doing this indoors, be very, very cautious indeed. Be sure that you use the proper fire proof gear required to protect your interior space from fire damage. A heavy guage cast iron pot, a wide, well made trivet with legs and be sure you work on the floor with six or seven feet of clear space above and around the pot. Do not do this ritual with small children or animals in the room and do not do it with open windows or with fans on as the flames can be blown in a dangerous manner. Do not walk around while the alcohol is lit. Just sit with it and make relations while it provides you with a cleansing.

I have done this ceremony for many years. It is incredible for getting rid of yukky stuff off the aura and out of your house that builds up over a long winter without much sunlight or open windows. All you do is put alcohol in the pot and light it up. Be warned that the fumes of alcohol are also combustible, so don’t dally and you’ll be fine. Just toss the match in. Trying to hold it is foolish because of the fumes. You must use alcohol with very little water in it. 90% rubbing alcohol works. 200 proof vodka also works well.

Just sit and watch it burn. It does something very different than fires that consume other sources of fuel. Those with gas cookstoves get a similar effect without the issues of the fumes killing brain cells. *winks*

Visual Meditation #21

Busy Bee

I’ve been a busy bee lately. I’ve got about 1/3 of my novella edited. I’m surprised that its taking this long. I really had thought it would be a speedy thing, but I have yet to pass a day without spending at least 5 hours on it and some times 7. Its longer than I thought. *smiles*

I’m getting ready for my summer ceremony too. Mostly that’s an inward process. And my focus this year will again be tending fire. It puts me in an odd place about writing on the topic of fire for my Elements series too. I’ve not only been away from the fire a great deal in the past year for a large variety of reasons, but its also something that I will be immersed in and have been immersed in years past.

I can feel the post being written though, so its on its way.

I’ve been watching life around me. Friday I was sitting my Adirondack chair that my son made me watching the dragon flies argue over hunting space in my yard. I’ve been watching the butterflies and found some laundry I’d left out over night with a few holes in it because the moths thought my cotton things were tasty. Watching life is good…

Imagination Prompt

What do you think happens when we die?

I think that the “I” part of us lifts out of the physical vessel we’ve inhabited and ascends to another plane of consciousness that the physical doesn’t reach. I think that the vessel that’s left behind is the ‘we’ part and that composts itself for something new. I don’t think life ends with the separation of the soul from the body. I think that its just a separation of soul from body. Life goes on. Its just different…and we wake from this shared dream that we call physical life.

Message from the bushes of my heart:

Seek what brings you real and profound joy. For there lies the fullness of the soul’s purpose.

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Mood: Peaceful

Tea: No tea today, just watered juices

Munching: berry pops

Song: Flavors of Entanglement

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Stuff on my mind this week:

Love

My writing and the goals I want to accomplish

My summer ceremony

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Friday’s Feast

Appetizer

Do you consider yourself to be an optimist or a pessimist?

Depends on the topic. If its about trust where I’ve been let down before. I tend toward emotional pessimism in my ability to trust…but I am over all an optimist, always hoping for more.

Soup

What is your favorite color of ink to write with?

I can see blue the best when I am working with ink.

Salad

How often do you get a manicure or pedicure? Do you do them yourself or go to a salon and pay for them?

I don’t use chemicals when I do a manicure or pedicure. So no polishes and such, so no, I don’t go to a salon. I just do my own, using salves and oils I make myself or buy that are relatively healthy. Trimming and filing are the extend of my efforts besides moisturizing my skin.

Main Course

Have you ever won anything online? If so, what was it?

I’m told I have done so many times. I never go get any of it because my inbox is just packed with spam if you do that.

Dessert

In which room in your house do you keep your home computer?

In an office on the second floor of my home.

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Today’s Card:

Here…

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Shakti Quotes

Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance,

you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.

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Favorite moment of the week

Laughing with my husband

I’m grateful for:

Laughing with my husband

I invite you to pick a lily yourself; answer or respond to some part of this weekly meditation

Quotes

Sorrow tagged me recently to do a post on quotes that feel important to me…

I think I have something to say about quotes first.

It seems as if I feel driven to find an answer to a dilemma that prevents me achieving something important to me. Sooner or later someone will drop a catch phrase in my lap that will define the moment for me and I’ll have a something to grab on to that will bring me to skills and skills building. But I have to define things in some way. Quotes do that for me.

An early one in my life was:

“Isolation is the dark room where I develop my negatives”~ Anonymous. At the time, that one just so took me where I needed to be…which was to get over my resistance to asking for help.

Another early one is “You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.” ~ Zahira That was is still needed even today. I struggle with overcoming resistance. Over and over again, I hit a wall and can’t find it in me to do a hard thing.

A recent one that I’ve been really hanging on to is “When I’m trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.” ~ Shakti Gawain I really need that one, because I often doubt that my effort at something will be met. I often wonder if I’ll be left standing at the altar.

Also I had a recent dream about this: “Love is not about fixing someone, nor about anything else but listening and Loving.” ~ Dream

Thanks for asking me to do this Sorrow!

Authentic Loving

Authentic love comes from a mind that doesn’t turn away. It comes from a mind that faces the possibility of not getting what we want, of losing what we have and being separated from whom and what we love. An Awakened Life

Loving authentically can be very painful.

Still…

I would not…could not turn away…