Inner-Freedom Fire Ceremony

The air was chilly at 5:15 A.M. To the left of the chruch coutyard, just above the roof of the stone chruch, I could see the moon shining brightly in the darkness of the predawn sky. In an instant, I heard the crackling of dry sticks and branches in a large barrel. The priest had lit the fire for the beginning of an ancient ceremony, dating back to those first century Christians. Small white candles were handed out to each of us in the congregation. Standing in a crescent shape by the blazing fire, we watched the priest light the large, white Christ Candle. Eventually, the fire was spread to the single candle held by each and every one of us. First, two of us received the flame directly from the Christ Candle. They both turned to light another’s cnadle who in turn lit the candle of someone else until all of our candles were lit. The ceremony corresponded to the vow we all shared later in the service: “to seek and serve the Christ in others.” Alice Howell’s comment came to mind, “There is one flame but many candles” (see blog entry entited One Flame . . . Many Candles).

What else was God, the Divine Beloved, revealing to me that was a refinement of what I experinced in the sacred fire ceremonies of the Maya? The fire ceremony of Easter morning reminded me that we have within us all a small flame of the all-consuming and, paradoxically, all-embracing, fire of God’s love. I say paradoxically because I find myself remembering the Burning Bush scene with Moses (Charlton Heston) in the Cecil B. DeMille classic The Ten Commandments. Rather than consume the bush by buring it to a crisp, the fire of God simply contained (embraced) the bush. The Christ Candle is a symbol of how the fire of God’s love was exemplified in the life of Christ. His great love, compassion, and capacity to forgive was both all-consuming and all-embracing, by being extended to the discarded and rejected of society—the lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors (April 15th is getting closer), and beggars.

That was it! God, the Divine Beloved, was showing me somethig to share with you about how Christ forgave those who crucified Him. He asked His Father to forgive them in their ignorance of what they were doing. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:24). Jesus appeals to His Father, the I AM THAT I AM to forgive them. He did not call out from the cross, “I forgive you.”

I wondered what this might mean for us as a model for how we can learn to forgive and find inner peace? Sure, it means we can simply pray and ask God to forgive those who hurt us. And, we can also ask God to help us forgive. To me, it also means that we can place the offending person, object, or situation into the sacred fire of God’s all-consuming and all-embracing love. It struck me that the fire of all the little desires fueling our emotions can be consumed by the fire of the greater desire for inner freedom and peace.

Visualizing the all-consuming aspect of the sacred fire was what I learned from the Mayan fire ceremony. We could place into the fire the stress of our inner life of desires and emotions, especially what Swami Rama called our “psychological trash” (see blog entry entitled Sacred Fire). But today’s ceremony revealed a way to deal with the stress that can arise from surface differences. We can seek to remember the one spirit (flame) of love hidden in the surface diversity of our various shapes and sizes of soul suits, our corporeal costumes as well as the surface differences in race, religion, culture, education, etc.

Moments after the service ended, my reflections on the sacred fire were interrupted. A woman I know, a self-taught biblical scholar, took me by the arm and led me to an icon hanging on the church wall. Excitedly, she told me, “On icons of Christ, you will see Greek words contained in the nimbus, the cloud-like halo. They translate as, ‘The One Who Is.’” I was receiving an answer to my thoughts in the daily dialogue with the Divine. I then thought, this “is” is something fundamental and universal that is beyond the boundaries and forms of any one relgious tradition. “Is” is in Christ (Chr-is-t), Krishna (Kr-is-hna), Vishnu (V-is-hnu), Isis (Is-is), St. Issa (Is-sa), the name given to Christ in India and Tibet, Ishtar (Is-htar), and, let's not forget Islam (Is-lam), though many angry Americans might like to since they mistakingly equate terrorism with this sacred tradition.

“Ah ha!” I thought. “The word ‘is’ contains a message.” Peace comes when we are still, cease striving, and rest in just being, not in doing, getting, or having. Rest is found in aligning with the awareness that I AM. It is the recognition that I simply exist beyond labels and conditions. By bringing our attention to this simple, unadorned truth, we find rest from our hectic schedules. Worn down by wearying days of doing, we find a brief respite in simply being one who “is” with no place to go and nothing or no thing to do in that moment. We enter the timeless of what we might call no-thing-ness. We get out from under all the “things” or “thingness” weighing us down. “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, “ Emerson (Ralph Waldo, that is) once said over a century ago.

• Today, resolve to get back in the saddle by taking a moment to just BE, before you begin your day. Instead of starting your day by praying to God for certain blessings, conduct your very own inner-freedom fire ceremony. Take some slow, deep breaths and visualize a fire on an altar before God, your Divine Beloved. This fire is the sacred inner fire of your being, the flame of the one who simply “is” within you. This fire is the flame of the I AM consciousness within you that is not identified with anything but just being. Now, reflecting on the day ahead, place into this fire all your desires, hopes, dreams, plans, frustrations, fears, anxieties, joys, resentments, loves and hates, and son on. With each breath, imagine you are enflaming the fire with fresh oxygen until all that is left is the fire burning brightly. Feel the peace of being at one with God and the sacred fire of God’s all-consuming yet all-embracing love. Take a moment to repeat this during the day when you feel stressed and remember the one flame of the One Who Is resides in us all despite our surface differences.