The small boy, about ten years old, is in the deep Appalachian woods with a Native American elder. It is evening, they are cooking two rabbits over a fire. The old man speaks:
"Take a look at the fire. Watch how it moves, how it dances in the air and across wood like a ghost. The four main elements exist in life and they are fire, water, air and earth. The fire is the purest of them all. It cannot be tainted; it cannot be polluted in any way. It is pure energy and so is held in high respect for its abilities in the aspects of purification. Fire is not that much different than us. It must breathe, it must feed and it is always moving. Without the breath of air it would suffocate. Without food to burn it would starve. And it has too much energy to remain still. Even a single flame upon the wick of a candle in a still room moves. Fire itself casts no shadow, because it is the light. Fire demands the utmost respect. It can be used to warm the home or burn it to the ground. Pay attention to the fire because your connection to it is strong. Pay attention to how it differs from the other elements." - from Ways of the Wild Institute founder White Wolf's memoir
I received his request and applied ho'oponopono from Joe Vitale (his nickname is Mr. Fire and his website, MrFire.com--you can't make this stuff up, as they say) but it took me about a day to receive enough clarity on my reactions to the wildfires in central Texas in order to clean within. Joe Vitale was the second person ever in the same time frame in about 2003 to urge me to look into the mystery of ho'oponopono. I'd never hear of Joe Vitale nor Dr. Len before that point.
The wildfires in central Texas were out of control and burning down homes and scorching the lands. Could we pray, please?
Mr. Fire goes on to say that he feels that it represents an out-picturing of inner anger. Yes, I totally agree. I disagree with his next suggestion--which he says is serenity or peace.
Not that harmony is to be thrown out... just that's not the message I got. Check it out for yourself. Light a candle. Watch. Feel it. What does it say? Or if you're better with archetypes, look at the suit Wands in the Tarot? What is the sensation?
A few days later, Mr. Fire updates us on status publicly on his blog, "Almost instantly a friend who had been evacuated from his home due to the fires wrote to me saying the smokes seemed to clear, the power came back on, and he was told he could return home safely.
Friends of mine who were preparing to evacuate were told they were safe.
Then I looked at the news and saw that while the fires were still burning and there was no rain in sight, most of the larger fires around my area of Austin, Texas were either contained, put out, or greatly improved in containment.
That’s progress, but we’re not done.At last count, there were 180 wildfires in Texas.
The smoke from them could be seen from space." -- Joe Vitale, A Texas Wildfires Solution
That is soooo good to hear, but the work is not done if you are reading this September 12th or thereabouts.
My comment on that blog is shared below in case you any of it resonates for you and you also wish to apply ho'oponopono. It is well-worth contemplating, feeling the fire element within for your own self first.
"I am grateful that you reached out to your community on this. I did ho’oponopono and prayer work when I first received your email newsletter request.
When you mentioned wildfires in Texas as “contained” above, I must say a good part of me viscerally bristled at the suggestion. My whole upbringing consisted in being told to be obedient, and “containing” my fire.
Then I recalled something a mentor of mine told me a week before your prayer request (how quickly I forget): Stifled passion, sooner or later, ends up bursting out as anger.
I see that as the core message of the wildfires. It’s more about passion than peace. Be wild! Be fire! Blaze in all your glory! –or the will riots in a potentially destructive way as the will is enraged at being held down, dried and bound. God knows what happens when that spirit explodes. Homes are lost (homes reflect our self, or “being home for our own selves”) and trees burn down, land is parched. Sometimes lives are lost that didn’t escape before destruction engulfed them.
The message: If I don’t self-extinguish my flame, then the outer world is no longer bereft of my gift. And I don’t need feel or be explosive. I actually don’t feel THAT explosive at all; yet because of the email in my inbox, I took that as a personal call for cleaning… I explored it and, yes, I can consciously detect the seething and simmering anger at being denied to express creative will symbolized by the fire element.
I was flipping through a new (to me) magazine this morning while it rained outside (connecting with Texas again in prayer) my window called Ode Magazine which had an article on anger. The title of the article was, “Prelude to Courage,” (the word courage comes from ‘coeur’, French for “heart, innermost feelings, AND TEMPER”), and the illustrations in this article where all of the crackling bonfire variety.
So my final takeaway from all the cleaning, and visualizing rain is to allow our vital and prodigious passion to express. Thank you for the opportunity to perceive this message and participate with the clearing."
* * *
I found this excerpt also apropos:
"There is a saying, “Life is a journey, not a camp”. We are either moving forward or moving backwards, but we are never standing still. In the vast river of change we call life, any life form either moves with it, or is swept away to be replaced by another.
Lifeforms that consistently oppose life may, after many lifetimes, even lose the ability to incarnate into physicality at all. Lack of growth weakens the lifeforce at someone’s disposal. Without sufficient lifeforce and energy, the formation of a lower or physical body cannot take place. It requires an enormous amount of energy to create material form.
Because everything is in constant flux, balance cannot be stationary –- it has to consist of movement. Many light seekers think of balance as always living in serenity and peace no matter what occurs. What they fail to understand is that by refusing to embrace the dark, they call it forth. Anything that we deny the right to exist by failing to acknowledge its contribution within the cosmos, is strengthened either within us or within our environment.
We are the microcosm of the macrocosm, but the macrocosm is anything but peaceful and serene. Although some parts of it may be tranquil, it is also destructive and explosive and gloriously passionate. The only constant is the matrix; the underlying grand scheme that gives the overall purpose and the allotted time and space within which creational cycles play out.
As we enter God-consciousness, we see the big picture. Not until we re-enter the human condition do we pay attention to the stormy ups and downs of life. Even as we cry and laugh once more in the drama of human life, we still keep our inner focus on the big picture; the perfection of the divine plan. Like the cosmic matrix that underlies the passionate drama of the cosmos, this large inner perspective underlies the stormy changes in our lives. It provides stability within flow, measure within movement.
Keeping our eyes fixed on the perfection underlying appearances can be called the first half of balance. It is the masculine, positive polarity of balance. Learning to bring balance to the movement or flow of emotion is the second half of balance, the feminine, magnetic aspect. If we have expanded vision, without allowing the balanced interaction of emotion to occur, growth stops and we start to stagnate. When emotion is denied the right to exist, it eventually surfaces as jagged and disproportionate; in other words, out of balance." -- excerpt from Almine's book, Journey to the Heart of God, http://diary.spiritualjourneys.com/life-is-not-a-camp
p.s. Particularly noticed the sentence on my second reading, "Anything that we deny the right to exist by failing to acknowledge its contribution within the cosmos, is strengthened either within us or within our environment. "
credits: Heart Fire USA postage stamp via Zazzle.com; image from role-playing game, role-playing game Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Very thoughtful post, Evelyn. I agree with the explosion of stifled passion. And I see much of that in Texas. When we learn to better direct this passion into creative expression, it's thrilling to imagine what will emerge.
So, we continue to prayerfully clean - to heal.
Posted by: Kimberly Cain | 09/12/2011 at 11:43 PM
Thanks so much Kimberly. Today, I was feeling even more fury (I guess it was buried), and much of it had to do with suppressing creative expression in order to fit into some neat tidy box of societal conformity so that I wouldn't be left alone to fend for myself (the exchange that is actually a sacrifice). I'm sure I'm not alone, here, particularly anywhere in USA. I don't know that much about Texas specifically, last time I was in Austin was for about nine days in April 2009, and I cannot say I've cracked the code of the vibration there at all (probably my 4th or 5th time in Austin).
I agree with you that it is going to be thrilling... I was by 'serendipity' at a cafe this morning and picked up a book in their enormous community library titled Cosmos and Psyche. The gist is that the archetypes of the cosmic planetary alignments during this time period are almost identical to the tensions and tumult that catalyzed the High Renaissance 500 years ago. So, it is a ripe time for a Renaissance.
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | 09/13/2011 at 01:59 PM