Keeping the Sacred Flame

This is also hard to talk about.  It was a dream, but more, it was a vision.  And it was a vision of what we all can be.

There are two things that limit us.  Our weaknesses and our fear of greatness.  It is terrifying to stand on the brink and look over at all we can be, and know that if we take that step, we will never be the same again.  But this is a call to step forward, to dream the Universe as it dreams us.

Step forward.  Be everything you can be.  Let yourself be something more than your limitations.  Refuse to accept your fear of what you can be.

You are Divine.  I am Divine.  It’s up to us to live as such.

Happy Gift of Flame day!

It’s a day of renewal and celebration!  It is a day to light candles and celebrate the light.

And it is a day to keep one candle unlit and in shadow, to symbolize your dark flame.  Keep this one in shadow all day, and think of it from time to time.  Even when celebrating with others, you still need to keep yourself safe and whole, inside as well as out.

Today is a day of renewal, and that means to look at what you’re doing.  It is the end of the old year, but not quite the beginning of the new.  There is now a little over a week to contemplate what you did and see what worked and what didn’t.  Take this time and look at your goals, and at the New Year, instead of empty resolutions, set concrete goals.  (Ones that concern yourself.  Goals like “convert X people” aren’t good because they’re about OTHER people.  Goals that are what you’re going to do).  Celebrate your accomplishments.  Mourn your failures.  Accept the year.

Light a candle against the darkness.  And unlight a candle against the light.

What has FlameKeeping led you to this year?  Comment here.

Today, December 23rd, is the Gift of Flame day. It is the day that the knowledge of the Flames first passed to a second person and grew and drew breath.

Today is a day to set time apart to celebrate the Flame. Begin with the Balance of the Flame meditation, and find balance within yourself. Let them merge and fill yourself.

Breathe the Flames, in and out. (not literal flame here, clearly!) Let them swirl around you in your mind, and feel them surround your body. Let them expand around you, and share them with the Divine. Let it continue to expand from your body, and feel your Flames merge with the Flames of those around you, out and out until you can feel the Universe breathe two Flames with one Breath.

Slowly, reverse the process. Breathe with fewer and fewer people until you are again alone within yourself. Open your eyes. And remember, you breathe with the Universe.

Last night, I dreamed. I dreamed that my body unzipped and my soul flew free upon the air, and I was greater than anything I had ever imagined.

I dreamed that I was the sky and the earth and the waters of the ocean. I breathed through it all, and all of it dwelled in my soul. I was all that was, and everything was within me. I could dance upon the smallest flower and hold within me the largest whale, all at once.

There is that within us that is greater than we could ever imagine, for we are the Divine. We can be greater than we could ever imagine.

Unzip yourself. Let your soul fly free upon the winds and through the earth and in the deep ocean. Join me there, and you will find that you have found yourself.

We are the Divine. Breathe the Universe.

This was a hard post for me to write, and writing about it is harder.  I’m playing with Mystery here, and that’s something that never translates well into everyday language.

Here, the Mystery is that everything, absolutely everything, is sacred.  And it’s hard to see that sometimes.  We don’t look at food and marvel at everything that happened to get it to us.  At least, I usually don’t.  I look at the price and the quality and how much I need to feed my family.  And whether or not my son will eat it.  I’m trying to start thinking about how the animals were treated and how the vegetables were grown and things like that.  But it’s not the way we tend to think.  (although?  I think, especially with the food scares, that it’s getting more and more important TO think that way).

It’s amazing, when we think about it, how full of Mystery and wonder the world is.  The sun, which keeps the planet warm enough that light can continue.  The moon, lighting the nights, entrancing people for centuries.  It’s entirely possible that without the moon and the tides it causes, there would be no life on the planet.  The stars out there, each of which is potentially home to people that would probably look nothing like us, but might have minds and be looking back and wondering too.  There is more we don’t know than we do, and all of it is balanced together.

Questions!
how do I see the mystery in life around me?  It’s something I’m working on, because it’s something I recently became aware of that I don’t do.  I take for granted that the sun rises in the morning and the grocery store is full of food.  The only mystery I see regularly is the miracle of my little boy.  Though I do appreciate him!

What in my life is mystery?  My son, definitely, and I do celebrate him when I’m not run ragged.  He’s astonishing to watch, and I adore him.  But I can’t think of anything else that’s an *obvious* mystery that’s regularly in my life.  Which probably means I need to pay more attention!

Life without mystery: I think it would be pallid and boring.  Sure, life would still go on, but we wouldn’t have so much to marvel at.  See things through the eyes of a child, with everything different and new.  And then imagine that never happening.  Without mystery, life itself becomes a series of routines we go through by rote, not a world we enjoy and revel in.

It’s easy to look at objects and see them from a scientific perspective. We see the sun and it’s a ball of fire in the sky. The moon is a glowing rock reflecting sunlight. And these are truths, but are they the whole truth?

We have stripped the mystical out of our world, leaving everything just the physical. We see the trees, but we don’t see them with spirits anymore. And while populating the world with many spirits all out to hurt us (a common view in old mythology) isn’t necessarily a bad thing to leave behind, removing all the spirit from our lives isn’t good either.

The sun is, yes, a fusion factory that just goes. As that fusion factory, it doesn’t care about us, it just is. But the sun can also be seen another way: as the force which warms and nurtures the earth. Whether or not it is viewed as a god directly, it gives us a chance at life the earth wouldn’t otherwise have.

This is not to say that the sun, or any other parts of our lives that make life possible, should be worshipped directly. But I’m also not saying they shouldn’t be. We should be aware of the power and mystery of the sun, not take it for granted. Just as we should be aware of the mystery and power of the carbon-oxygen cycle which makes it possible for us to live, and the moon which gives us the tides and the light at night, and the stars, distant suns which give us dreams.

We are surrounded by mystery, if only we allow ourselves to think about it. Be aware of the Divine, and the pieces of the Divine which are visible all around us.

Questions:
How do you see the mystery in life around you?
What in your life is mystery? Do you celebrate it or try to avoid it?
Imagine life without mystery. Is it better or worse than life with it?

Words are my life.  I spend my time trying to craft them in fiction and tell stories with them.  What they are and what they’re worth is therefore of critical importance to my life.

Anyone that’s ever been insulted knows that words can hurt.  In our law, we say that words are not illegal and only hitting with physical action is.  That doesn’t change the fact that words can hurt.  Words aimed to hurt can last far longer than the bruises from a physical hit.  (Not that I’m saying you should hit people instead of insult them!)  But we do need to be aware of our words and how they will be received.  It isn’t enough to say that we didn’t mean it the way it came across.  It’s not enough to claim we were “just being honest”.  While there are times it is impossible to come across well, it is necessary to try.

What we say is are the words of the Divine.  Are the words you say ones you’d want to hear coming from the Divine?  Can you stand by them if they are?

Questions!
What does it mean to speak?  It means to communicate, to use symbols to represent things.  (often other symbols.  Speech is very complicated!)  It is to be part of something greater, because it is with speech that we become a community.  Without a method of communication, we are all isolate within ourselves.  To speak, to communicate in any way, is to become part of something greater.

What would it mean to be unable to communicate?  It would be isolation.  To watch a baby scream, unable to say anything more than that something is wrong, is incredibly frustrating to both parents and child.  Imagine living that way through your entire life, unable to do anything but scream to try to communicate.  Just one word for a multitude of experience.  There would be an eternity of seeking after thought that there was no word for and no way to express.  This would be, to me, one version of Hell.

When is speech sacred or regular?  I think all speech is both.  It is sacred in that it is a statement to the Universe.  It is regular in that I’m talking to someone about mundane issues.  I don’t think the Universe is vastly changed by my statement that I want a cheeseburger, for example.  But how I say it, and the respect or lack for the food and for the person I’m asking for it, matter.  If I’m ordering my husband to go get me a cheeseburger, I’m showing disrespect for my husband with my speech.  If I’m asking politely or we’re discussing dinner plans and I’m stating a request, then I’m showing respect.  It’s not just the words, but the entire spectrum of communication which matters.

It is very easy to ignore your words as meaningless.  But what you say are the words of the Divine.  As are these.  Communication is what makes us more than isolate.  Use it well.

Our words are the words of the Divine. When we speak, the Universe speaks through us.

What does this mean? It means we must be careful when and how we speak. Words are powerful symbols of what we perceive reality to be and what we think reality should be. What we say is a statement to the Universe.

This doesn’t mean we should only speak when we have a request to make. Communication is sacred in and of itself, because when we communicate it binds us together and makes possible knowledge and understanding. Words are too important to be kept only for the sacred. This doesn’t change the fact that words are inherently sacred, however.

We need to be aware of how we speak and what we intend when we speak. Because our words recreate the Universe.

Questions:
What does it mean to speak? What does speech mean to you?
What would it mean to be unable to communicate with language? What does communication mean to you?
When is speech sacred? What does sacred speech mean compared to regular speech? Is there a difference?

Someone was commenting when we were chatting about FlameKeeping that they were having a problem with the bright and dark flames, because I had them separate when they were “clearly” one thing.  And while they are one thing, they aren’t one thing the way she meant it.  But it got me to thinking about how things get put together.

It’s easy to look at the bright flame or the dark flame in isolation and concentrate on one or the other.  It’s a lot harder to see them as one doubled flame, shedding light and darkness together.  But every time we look at things in isolation, we rob them of at least half of what they are.

Everything belongs in a system, and that includes us.  There’s something we call the Unique Snowflake issue, which is where “I am a unique snowflake, there is no one else like me.”  Well, that’s true, but also meaningless.  We are all embedded in systems: people we work with, people we live with, even people we see on the subway.

Everything integrates together.  It’s not enough to pull them apart and look at each piece, although that’s important too.  But we also need to put it all back together and make certain the pieces are where they belong.

Questions:
What do I separate out in my life and why?  I separate my religious writing from my fiction.  It’s taken me years to even accept that it’s a semi-false separation, given that everything is affected by my religion.  As far as why I do it, it’s because I want something that’s “mine” and not “the gods”.  Which is silly, given that everything is part of the Divine, and it’s impossible to have a piece “for myself”.  But that doesn’t change the desire to have something that belongs to “me”, and I don’t think it’s a problem.  After all, we’re capable of the concept of “I” and “mine”.  If the Divine didn’t want us doing things as individuals, why would we have that ability?  (and why would it spur so much of what we are?)

Are there things I refuse to see in connection with other things?  Perhaps, but if so I can’t see it.  This isn’t a question that can really be answered off the cuff.  It could require years of thought and hindsight.

What do systems mean to me?  Systems are everything.  They’re critical.  It’s how we put everything that happens to us into some kind of sense and order, even if only chronological.  When we look at things as systems, we can start to see which orders matter and which things we do that are counter-productive.

This doesn’t mean any system will do, though.  It needs to be a system that works.  But everything can be integrated together in our lives, because we’re only living the one.  If something happens that can’t be integrated, that needs to be looked at very closely.  Because it’s all one life and one seamless whole.

Life is one cohesive whole.  We see bits and pieces as separate, with our work life over here and our home life over there, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is all one life and all one whole.

We need to take all the bits and pieces of our lives and integrate them, just as we need to take all the bits of FlameKeeping and integrate it into one religion.  As a whole, it’s just too big to focus on.  So we split things into pieces and look at them closely, examining all the nooks and crannies.  This doesn’t make the pieces actually separate, though.  Sometimes we need to put them together and look at the joins, too.

The more we separate things, the more we have to work to put them back together, too.  When we refuse to look at the systems, we get a false view.  The individual parts are meaningless without the context they belong in.

It’s easy to separate things.  It’s easy to look at this and not that, and refuse to see how they work together.  It’s easy to profess religion on one day of the week and ignore it for the rest of the week.  It’s easy to see that something is wrong without seeing how we do it in our own lives.  It’s very easy to be an armchair moralist.

The question is, how do we integrate it?

Questions:
What do you separate out in your life?  Why?
Are there things you refuse to see in connection with other things?  What and why?
What do systems mean to you?  How does seeing things as part of a system change them?