Learning the elements: Fire

There are different things you put in the fire. When hungry, you keep it flaming, since it needs to cook the food that is going to satiate your hunger. The flames keep bright to calm the flame of hunger within. When there is a fire that harms, then we calm it by dousing water on it's mighty rage. It is the same element, and yet, the way it is, in the different situations, make them different. Somewhere it means light and life; somewhere it is the agent of death and decay. 

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When you have a fire raging within you, all that you need to do is to understand what meaning is it creating. The elements can be of beauty and benevolence only when the circumstance of it is recognised. If you have a fire that gnaws within you, that systematically destroys and degrades, corrupts and decays, it is the type of fire that needs water. Water is a fluid entity. Denial is not. If you deny a fire is spreading in the forest of your thoughts, it will soon burn down the meadows of your dreams. To find water that calms the fire that harms, you need not to go to one special being. Yourself. The reservoir of the water is in us. The nature of the water is to flow. Let the fire that eats you from within flow out of yourself. Let go of the fire. Don't hold it back for the sheer pain of burning. Let it be water, and there will be calm.

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Don't fail to recognise the fire that is life. A dream. A desire. A wish. Anything worth living for. That is the sacred fire of the yagna. It requires the sacrifice of your petty fires. It requires dedication and hard work. It requires the choice of tenacity. It requires hope and faith and a belief that Prometheus was not wrong in giving our ancestors fire. Nurture that fire. Nourish it. Let it be the fire around which the carnival of life happens. Let it be you. 

Fire in the sky 

Image: sunset, Lund.

 

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