The Flame
We are all a part of the Divine. Sentient and self-aware projections of the Universe, we are part of a greater Whole, and yet individual. And we, collectively and individually, are part of the Divine, and able to change It.
As we improve ourselves, we improve the Flame of all as well. However, self-improvement can only occur when basic needs are met. Therefore, to improve the Flame, we must help all have access to the basic necessities of life: food, clean water, shelter, and medical care. Those that seek to survive cannot care for more esoteric things, for they are constrained by survival needs.
When survival needs are met, then we can seek improvement for ourselves and others. No one has the right to stand between another person and the fuel for their Flame, or the basic needs they must fulfill to become able to seek their Flame.
Our Flame burns most brightly through proper fuel, through feeding our souls as we feed our bodies. We feed our souls through caring, through love, through creating. Through finding our passion, and then sharing the results of that passion with others. And through helping others find fuel for their flames as well, helping others learn and grow. We all benefit from each other's Flame's burning brighter.
We are an interdependent species, reliant upon one another for our very survival. However, we are also separate individuals, with our own desires and needs. We must learn to nurture our own Flame while constricting others as little as possible, to let each Flame burn brightly without inhibiting another. We can, if we so choose, help everyone achieve their goals. For the first time in human history, survival to old age does not need to be in doubt through lack of basic necessities, if we choose to make it so.
Like any fire, however, we must also be sure to keep it fueled only by appropriate things, and burning controlled. Simply desiring something is not enough of a reason to obtain it. We must school ourselves to feed our souls what is appropriate, what nurtures us, what helps us grow and become better people. Our Flame can be bright and warming, nurtured carefully and a joy and blessing be part of, or a raging forest fire that consumes all that it touches and brings only destruction.
All which is, is Divine, part of the self-aware Universe. There is nothing in existence that is profane, no split between the body and the soul. There is nowhere and nothing but the Universe, physical and spiritual. That is not to say the physical world is the sum total of existence. The Universe is bigger than any one mind could hope to comprehend, and the layers of existence and possibilities are endless. But there is no beyond to move to, no better life elsewhere. What is here, is.
Many people speak of "seeking God" and talk of places to look to find the Divine. And they define God, and place limitations and strictures upon what God can and cannot do. And people say how one can and cannot reach the Divine, and where God is and isn't, and refuse to acknowledge that God may very well choose to ignore human strictures. In many ways, the defining characteristics of the Divine is that human strictures are ignored, and that the Divine is free to all humans, irrespective of social status. We like to limit what God is, and pretend we know what is and isn't what the Divine wants of us, and more, of other people. The truth is that we can only surmise what the Divine wants of us, and work as hard as we can to be the best we can be. Any rules we try to place to comfort us, and place sections of our life as safe from Divine intervention, are doomed to failure.
We all like to believe we're good people, and seek ways to prove that belief. However, we also all like to be lazy and seek the easy way out of things. We like scapegoats, villains, a bad guy that tempts us to do what we already know is wrong. We want to believe we are good; that someone else is evil and not us. And we seek to justify those things that we do and we know are wrong, and find ways to make our transgressions correct while punishing the transgressions of others.
We need, to become whole individuals, to learn to accept our own faults and flaws as well as our virtues and abilities. We are human, we are divine, and we stand wholly responsible for what we do. The constant struggle to justify, to explain, to create excuses, only keeps us mired in confusion and sorrow. When we can truly accept our mistakes, learn from them, and take responsibility for them, then and only then can we grow beyond them and cease to make the same mistakes again and again.
This is not an excuse to play the blame game, however. Only we know the real reasons why we do things, and no one else can decide what is someone refusing to live up to responsibility. All the blame game does is make everyone wrong, and confuse the real issues that people need to deal with on their own.
There is no way to avoid misfortune in our lives. Bad things happen to everyone, including people that seem to have done nothing wrong, and our problems are always bigger to ourselves than other people's problems. However, although our problems are always biggest to ourselves, it is a falseness of context to believe that our problems should be as big to other people. The difference is how misfortune is handled, both in ourselves and other people. We need to learn to face the vicissitudes of fate with grace and poise, and to keep from getting knocked down more than we get back up. The more we glory in our own misfortune, and label ourselves by our failures, the harder it will be for us to succeed. And when we glory in the misfortune of others, we simply lessen ourselves and dim our Flame.
Penance and forgiveness are unpopular concepts today. We want to believe that what we do is okay, as long as we had a good reason, and that feeling sorry for our mistakes should be enough. The truth of the matter is, good intentions only carry so far. Good acts, repairing ones mistakes, those are the acts of a good person. We will make mistakes. There is no way to live life without sometimes making horrible mistakes, either of action or inaction.
Questions:
What are your flaws? What are your virtues? Which question was harder to answer and why?
What feeds your Flame? What stifles it? Which do you court in your life?
How do you nurture other people’s Flames? Allow your own to be nurtured? Do you live in a nurturing environment?
As we improve ourselves, we improve the Flame of all as well. However, self-improvement can only occur when basic needs are met. Therefore, to improve the Flame, we must help all have access to the basic necessities of life: food, clean water, shelter, and medical care. Those that seek to survive cannot care for more esoteric things, for they are constrained by survival needs.
When survival needs are met, then we can seek improvement for ourselves and others. No one has the right to stand between another person and the fuel for their Flame, or the basic needs they must fulfill to become able to seek their Flame.
Our Flame burns most brightly through proper fuel, through feeding our souls as we feed our bodies. We feed our souls through caring, through love, through creating. Through finding our passion, and then sharing the results of that passion with others. And through helping others find fuel for their flames as well, helping others learn and grow. We all benefit from each other's Flame's burning brighter.
We are an interdependent species, reliant upon one another for our very survival. However, we are also separate individuals, with our own desires and needs. We must learn to nurture our own Flame while constricting others as little as possible, to let each Flame burn brightly without inhibiting another. We can, if we so choose, help everyone achieve their goals. For the first time in human history, survival to old age does not need to be in doubt through lack of basic necessities, if we choose to make it so.
Like any fire, however, we must also be sure to keep it fueled only by appropriate things, and burning controlled. Simply desiring something is not enough of a reason to obtain it. We must school ourselves to feed our souls what is appropriate, what nurtures us, what helps us grow and become better people. Our Flame can be bright and warming, nurtured carefully and a joy and blessing be part of, or a raging forest fire that consumes all that it touches and brings only destruction.
All which is, is Divine, part of the self-aware Universe. There is nothing in existence that is profane, no split between the body and the soul. There is nowhere and nothing but the Universe, physical and spiritual. That is not to say the physical world is the sum total of existence. The Universe is bigger than any one mind could hope to comprehend, and the layers of existence and possibilities are endless. But there is no beyond to move to, no better life elsewhere. What is here, is.
Many people speak of "seeking God" and talk of places to look to find the Divine. And they define God, and place limitations and strictures upon what God can and cannot do. And people say how one can and cannot reach the Divine, and where God is and isn't, and refuse to acknowledge that God may very well choose to ignore human strictures. In many ways, the defining characteristics of the Divine is that human strictures are ignored, and that the Divine is free to all humans, irrespective of social status. We like to limit what God is, and pretend we know what is and isn't what the Divine wants of us, and more, of other people. The truth is that we can only surmise what the Divine wants of us, and work as hard as we can to be the best we can be. Any rules we try to place to comfort us, and place sections of our life as safe from Divine intervention, are doomed to failure.
We all like to believe we're good people, and seek ways to prove that belief. However, we also all like to be lazy and seek the easy way out of things. We like scapegoats, villains, a bad guy that tempts us to do what we already know is wrong. We want to believe we are good; that someone else is evil and not us. And we seek to justify those things that we do and we know are wrong, and find ways to make our transgressions correct while punishing the transgressions of others.
We need, to become whole individuals, to learn to accept our own faults and flaws as well as our virtues and abilities. We are human, we are divine, and we stand wholly responsible for what we do. The constant struggle to justify, to explain, to create excuses, only keeps us mired in confusion and sorrow. When we can truly accept our mistakes, learn from them, and take responsibility for them, then and only then can we grow beyond them and cease to make the same mistakes again and again.
This is not an excuse to play the blame game, however. Only we know the real reasons why we do things, and no one else can decide what is someone refusing to live up to responsibility. All the blame game does is make everyone wrong, and confuse the real issues that people need to deal with on their own.
There is no way to avoid misfortune in our lives. Bad things happen to everyone, including people that seem to have done nothing wrong, and our problems are always bigger to ourselves than other people's problems. However, although our problems are always biggest to ourselves, it is a falseness of context to believe that our problems should be as big to other people. The difference is how misfortune is handled, both in ourselves and other people. We need to learn to face the vicissitudes of fate with grace and poise, and to keep from getting knocked down more than we get back up. The more we glory in our own misfortune, and label ourselves by our failures, the harder it will be for us to succeed. And when we glory in the misfortune of others, we simply lessen ourselves and dim our Flame.
Penance and forgiveness are unpopular concepts today. We want to believe that what we do is okay, as long as we had a good reason, and that feeling sorry for our mistakes should be enough. The truth of the matter is, good intentions only carry so far. Good acts, repairing ones mistakes, those are the acts of a good person. We will make mistakes. There is no way to live life without sometimes making horrible mistakes, either of action or inaction.
Questions:
What are your flaws? What are your virtues? Which question was harder to answer and why?
What feeds your Flame? What stifles it? Which do you court in your life?
How do you nurture other people’s Flames? Allow your own to be nurtured? Do you live in a nurturing environment?
posted by Vieva @ 3:14 PM
5 Comments:
At 10:17 AM,
Star said…
I've got a half-formed thought here, so please forgive me if I'm not clear. It's early (OK, not so much, but it feels like it), I'm only mostly awake, and I can't think of good examples here, so this probably isn't going to be very helpful... But is there ever a situation where something that provides fuel for one person's Flame could diminish another person's rather than making it grow? Not necessarily a good example here (like I said, still sleepy), but what if someone had found food for their soul in some super-fluffy doctrine based on revisionist history (and perhaps even outright stories made up from whole cloth), and someone else pointed them toward information which disproved some of the things the doctrine was based on? (For the sake of argument, let's assume that this is a newbie rather than a true fluffy, and they actually listen to the person giving them better info.) Would that not feed the informer's soul, having corrected misinformation, but sort of wipe out what had been the fuel for the newbie's Flame?
(Partly just being Devil's advocate here. If I think about it I can probably come up with an answer to that which fits in with the essay, but I want to see what you think... And also pose the general question, not just the one example.)
Did that make any sense whatsoever? *G* (And have I asked you that before? If so, my sincere apologies for forgetting...)
BTW, I really like the extension of the fire analogy to acknowledge that just because it's fire/Flame doesn't mean it's under control, or doing good things. The forest fire part is a nice touch.
Question re: glorying in the misfortune of others... Does that include situations where others' misfortune allows you the opportunity to look good by helping them out? (Being proud of volunteering at a shelter, for instance.) Or is it just situations where you feel good that other people feel bad, full stop? (Like, say, if someone did something really awful and then got a really harsh punishment for it, and you felt good that they were hurting.)
I was going to answer the study questions while I was at it, but I find that I have trouble coming up with answers... Which is not to say that they're not doing me any good, though. While I don't have specific answers, the thought patterns the questions prompt do point me toward something. Ultimately, I think the answers point to a desire to nourish my Flame, but... finding it difficult, I suppose. I've always had... problems with self-image and self-confidence, I guess, which I'm reluctant to talk too much about lest I develop some sort of "poor me" victim complex about the (silly, stupid) reasons. I've worked on those issues a lot, but they're still there. And once again they're getting in the way. And that's really what the answers to all those questions come down to. (Now, if I could just figure out what the hell to do about it.)
Wow, that was a long and rambly comment...
At 10:40 AM,
Vieva said…
I think I understand where you're going with your first example, but with the way you posted it ..
I can't help but feel that accurate knowledge is CRITICAL. If someone's nurturing their Flame out of false information, it's being supported on air. ANYTHING can mess that up. So while getting accurate information might knock a person down .. it's a case of that person falling over sooner rather than later, probably. While one can be inspired off of false information, building a faith off of it is .. dangerous. Sooner or later, reality bites back.
In general, yes, a person can do something that feels good to them but hurts another person. I think that's morally reprehensible. I also don't think that nurtures EITHER person .. it may *feel good*, but it's not nurturing. Which feeds into your next example.
I think being proud of working in a shelter is a good thing .. but it's a better thing if you're also working to get the people in that shelter into real housing, or at least not blocking that process. Some people get so wound out into the concept of *giver* that they don't recognize that they can't give what people don't want to receive .. you have to give because you can afford to give, not because you want to get. Sometimes we get so caught up in the identity of giver we never notice that we're not really being giving .. we're just using it as a power play.
It's also about feeling good when someone hurts, of course .. that's never a good thing. But how we identify ourselves around people that are in need is also part of it .. while it's still a good thing someone's working at that shelter, it's NOT a good thing if the shelter becomes more important than the people it serves. (A common problem, actually, with charities and government agencies. and lobbying groups).
and if you ever figure how to get over the "gods I suck" mentality, lemme know, hmm? :D {{{{{Star}}}}} (besides, it's not true. if you were icky, I wouldn't like you. and I do. so stop that!)
But they're not easy questions. And looking hard at yourself in a mirror .. well, it pretty much universally sucks to start with. no argument.
At 10:54 AM,
Star said…
Re: the first example, OK, I see what you're saying. (And I should have known that's what you would say for that specific situation--still not awake. And not the best example, like I said.)
Not sure whether you answered the general question or not, though. (Which I mean totally literally, not in the "I really don't think you did" way that people often mean that phrasing.) It looks like you're saying that "feels good" doesn't necessarily equal "fueling Flame"... That someone could do something that feels good but hurts other, but that's not necessarily fueling either Flame. Does that mean that it's impossible to do something that fuels your Flame but diminishes another's?
*** and if you ever figure how to get over the "gods I suck" mentality, lemme know, hmm? :D ***
Heh. Yeah, ditto. This issue probably deserves more discussion somewhere... I think it's kind of a tangent here, though, in that I'm meaning a discussion of "How DO you solve problems like this?" rather than specifically how it relates to the topic at hand. Maybe a thread at TC or something...
*** {{{{{Star}}}}} (besides, it's not true. if you were icky, I wouldn't like you. and I do. so stop that!) ***
((((Shad)))) Well, you stop it too!
*** But they're not easy questions. ***
And they shouldn't be. I hope I didn't imply that I felt they should. :) And I'm not shying away from them either. (OK, maybe a little, but I'm trying to force myself to face them.) I just meant that I was coming up with a sort of collective answer, but having trouble sorting it out into "this piece is an answer to that question, and this one to that..." ;)
At 11:44 AM,
Vieva said…
I honestly don't know if it's possible to fuel one person's flame while diminishing another. I assume it's possible in some circumstances that I can't think of, 'cause ain't much impossible in this world .. but please don't ask me for an example. :)
and I'll talk about self-esteem .. when I figure it out. :) But I have figured out .. we have a right to exist, because we do exist. we have a right to the good things in life we can achieve, because we can achieve them. And we have a right to nurture ourselves, because if nothing else, when we nurture ourselves we make the world around us better. :D (how's that for a selfless reason to be selfish?)
At 7:11 PM,
Anonymous said…
In my opinion, the style you're affecting hinders communication by making your essays difficult to read. I think you need to let someone edit your essay. There are too many commas, which is a sign of redundant phrases, unclear sentences, or both. It is difficult to parse the sentences to figure out what you're trying to say. Many of the sentences seem like they run on even if they aren't grammatically run-on sentences. Your responses to comments are much more readable. I think this is because you're trying to affect a certain style in your writing. It might be helpful if you let someone read your essays out loud to you to illustrate what I'm referring to. I don't think the style you're using facilitates communication. I think using shorter and more straightforward sentences would improve the overall readability of your essays.
Enye
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