We are in the fires of change. If you do not know it yet, you will. Make no mistake, this time of planetary metamorphosis will transform us all …unless you are a mushroom. Sometimes we can see changes creeping in on little fog-feet silently, softly approaching. More often, it’s a searing gust, a wild flame, burning ego and heart in equal measure. Zen uses the symbolic, ‘Setting our hair on fire,’ to ask that a Practice be one of waking up, of giving all to the flame, because all too fast it will be too late. In the primordial element of fire we are scarred from the burns. With fortune, those scars help purify. The difficult task is to not only love the scarring, but to use them to become a Phoenix, rising from old ashes. We are being asked, or yanked, to move from ego to heart, from a good ol’ boy’s CW, to spirit. Another request of this transformational time is to surrender outcome. How are we to know what our Phoenix is to look like? Will it have much relation to the old self? In the immolation of terror, loss, depression, and anguish, will we emerge stronger, wiser, more grateful? Will becoming a change-agent make us more conscious of a depth of being? Or will fear harden the heart, and build a higher wall of defense? We have been stuck in grooves, and ruts of what used to be. That world is disappearing. When the known landscape lies burned and barren, only the essential is left. Only seeds that can survive 300 degree heat will germinate. Only strongly rooted trees rise again. The essential Self that moves through this landscape walks in quiet power, grateful to be more alive, able to receive each moment, knowing that whatever… Read more »
Read more