Meditation on the Flame of Others

This is a meditation that follows from the Meditation on the Inward Divine. http://flamekeeping.blogspot.com/2006/01/meditation-on-inward-divine.html

First try this at home, then try it actually out with real people.

Think of four different people: One you love, one you hate (or can't stand, or at least irritates you beyond belief), one person that is a friend/acquaintance, but not of strong emotional feelings, and one stranger/acquaintance, someone you know vaguely but have absolutely no emotional investment in.

In each of these people, visualize them as Divine. See in them the Flame that you see in yourself from the Mediation on the Inward Divine.

Now pick a day in which you see all these people, and try to see the Flame in them while interacting with them. Deal with them both as a person and as a piece of the Divine.

Celebrate them as Divine and part of creation.

Moral Flame

What is the point of a religion? Is it to dictate morality, or to define and aid in connection with the Divine?

FlameKeeping does not speak directly of morality. There are moral implications, but not a code of defined behavior. The only true moral stricture is that we must all treat each other as Divine, with all the respect and care that implies.

So how will people be moral? That is up to each individual, as it always has been. There are extremely immoral people of all religions, and moral people with no religion whatsoever. God does not and really never has inspired any to be truly moral people.

FlameKeeping believes that humankind is Divine. This implies that we are good people, or at least have within us the ability to be good people. Lists of rules, and an assumption of humanities "fallen" nature, does nothing but encourage lists of laws, and just as many attempts to get around these laws. Assume humankind is fallen, and it will live up to that assumption. Assume we have within us the ability to be Divine and surpass ourself, and we will do our best to live up to what is expected of us.

So there will be no lists of rules, no commandments. Those who need them would probably not follow them anyway, and those who do not need them would be more likely to be led astray by those things that are not mentioned than guided by those things that are. There are only two clear moral strictures, and all else comes from them.

1. We are all Divine, and must be loved and respected as such. By this I mean that we need to treat ourselves and other humans with as much respect and love as we can. Every time we treat another person as a means, every time we denigrate someone because they are not what we wish they are, we are going against our own nature and against the Divine. We are ALL holy, not just the people we like, not just the people like us. Everyone. Even the people we hate. And we need to respect them as such.

2. We must improve the Divine as we can. The Universe is not already perfect, it moves towards perfection, and we are a part of that. When we see something we think is wrong, we should act to fix it as we can. And we should also be aware of what lies behind the problems we see whenever possible: it is easy to say poverty is bad and to place a few dollars in a fund drive once a year. It is much harder to look at the systems that benefit us but encourage poverty, and to try and find ways to change the system to keep poverty from happening. (In the meantime, of course, we should also continue to give those dollars. There is no virtue in working for the long term and letting the short term suffer needlessly).

Questions:
What does morality mean to you? Do you judge it in positive terms (you should) or negative (you should not)?
What does it mean to see everyone as Divine? Is this hard for you? What moral strictures does that rule impose on you?
What does it mean to improve the Divine? Is this one difficult? Again, what strictures does this impose on you?

Meditation on the Inward Divine

This is an expansion on the Meditation on the Nature of Flame. http://flamekeeping.blogspot.com/2005/11/meditation-on-nature-of-flame.html I would suggest waiting until you're comfortable with that meditation before you add in this part.

When you have the bright flame and the dark inside you balanced, let them merge together. One flame, throwing off brightness and darkness both, in the center of your being. That Flame, bright and dark both, is the Divine. Let it expand to fill up all the corners of your body, bright/dark, powerful. Let your body resonate there.

When you are ready to come back to yourself, let the feeling flow out of you. Open your eyes and see again the burning and unburning flame. And know that the Flame is still within you: dormant, but ready to spring back to full strength when you need it again.

blow out the candle, and say "I participate in Creation."

Sacred Body, Sacred Soul

I speak a lot about the individual being sacred, but not exactly what that entails.

We are holy, body and soul. (of course, so is everyone else). How we treat ourselves directly affects how we are able to treat others and how well the Divine flows through us. When we treat ourselves as though we are garbage, we lose the ability to improve ourselves or the Universe around us. When we treat ourselves well, we can grow and improve the Universe.

How do we treat ourselves well? Part of it's obvious. We need to eat right, we need to exercise, we need to care for our bodies. A sickly body is a time sink, one that requires us to take effort to care for our body at the expense of things we'd rather be doing. We take preventative maintenance for our cars, but we sacrifice our bodies for things we see as more important. Pounds and inches aren't what's important. Health is what matters. We need to find a place where our bodies are healthy, not losing that last five pounds or getting that perfect sixpack of abs.

Our minds are also sacred. What we are, in many ways, is our mind. It's how we define our personality. And how we treat our minds is important. It's easy to fill our minds with garbage, to focus on nothing of substance because it's too hard and to treat ourselves as though we didn't matter. But that's harmful, just as harmful as trying to live off nothing but potato chips. We need to nourish our minds, to give ourselves things to think about that aren't just easy. That doesn't mean we can't do anything but read great literature. But it does mean that we need to be aware of what our minds focus on, and to take care that we don't spend our days thinking about things that cause us harm. We can control our inner chattering voice, if we're willing to learn to try. And what we let that voice say has a big impact on our lives.

It's difficult to realize how much our minds can be controlled by ourselves. What we believe, what we think the world should be like, it affects us. We see the world as we wish it was, as we fear it is, as anything but the truth. We fill our minds with casual violence, with casual pain and hatred. These things are poison to us. The more we think about anger, about pain and hatred, the more our minds become programmed to think of pain and anger and hatred. This is not to say these emotions are bad, they are not. Emotions simply are. But choosing to dwell in them (and it is a choice) can destroy a person.

We are worthy. We are loved. We are sacred, and of the Divine. We need to treasure that.

Questions:
How do you take care of your body? your mind?
Do you think you do a good job celebrating your sacred nature? Why or why not?
How do you love yourself (keep it clean, folks!)? How does that self-love interact with your sacredness?

On Love (and I mean the mushy stuff)

Love is a goal and desire for many people. We fall in love with love, with the idea of finding a perfect person to fill the holes in our lives. It's the focus of much of our artwork, our efforts, our stories. We can't conceive of a world that doesn't involve the romantic love story.

But what is the truth behind the story? How do we balance the story of a perfect love with the reality of our lives, with an appreciation of the sacredness of the one we love?

The story involves two people becoming one whole, never complete again without the other person. In reality, though, this is a terrifying thought. Finding happiness with someone is desirable, but losing your identity to get there isn't.

Love needs to be seen as two people coming together and finding strength and joy in that companionship. No identity loss, no one person being absorbed by the other. Love is people choosing to walk together, finding strength and comfort in that companionship. As soon as it stops being separate people, though, and becomes me-and-shadow, it's not love. It's using a person. When the identity of the other person becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that someone is there, you're not in love with the person. You're in love with love.

Romance is a wonderful thing. Being in love can be life changing. I have a husband I adore and would give up for nothing. But love in and of itself is not enough. There needs to be respect of the other person as individual, with his own needs and desires. Each person needs their own space at times, as well as time together. If we lose our identity in love, we become inherently unlovable, because there's nothing there to be loved.

In no other aspect in life are we as likely to try to change ourselves and other people than we are for romantic love. People give up their hobbies, their jobs, pieces of themselves, all for the hopes of a perfect love that will rescue them from their lives. But there is no rescue. If we take an offer that involves sacrificing ourselves for love, what we get is neither ourselves nor love, but instead a prison of our own choosing.

We need to find ourselves before we can find a partner. Or all we are is sacrificing ourselves and ignoring our Flame.

Questions:
How does being Divine relate to your love life? How does your partner being Divine relate? Which is harder to deal with?
What happens when you don't see both yourself and your partner as Divine?
If you had to choose between being whole yourself, or being in love, which would you choose? Why?

Fifteen Minutes of Emptiness

We live in an overscheduled world. Every minute must be filled with something, every moment accounted for. Are we living as fully as we can? Are we busy? Can we prove we’re doing something with our time? Do we have an excuse to not do something we don’t want to do because there’s something better going on?

We’re afraid of emptiness. Of actively sitting back and letting our mind wander. We’re afraid of finding out we’re actually hollow inside, that we’re nothing more than packaged images from the television and sound bites from politicians. But the more we run from introspection, the more we need it.

Introspection doesn’t mean that we sit there and beat ourselves up for what we have or haven’t done in our lives. It’s not a time to be self-critical, but instead a time to be self-reflective. It’s a skill many of us aren’t quite sure what to do with. After all, if we look at ourselves, we may find something we don’t like. And what do we do then? Introspection can be quite scary, when we’re not sure what we’re going to find.

On the other hand, whatever it is we’re afraid to see already exists. We are what we are, and the longer we keep from facing ourselves honestly, the longer it is that we may be something we’d rather not exist as. Whatever we are already exists. The question is whether or not we can face it. And, certainly, if what we are is something so terrible we cannot face it, it is also something we should not be anyway, and need to learn to change.

“But I don’t have the time.” We do have the time. We just fill up our time with stuff so we don’t have to fill it with thought. We crave and consume entertainment as though we cannot find fulfillment and interest in our own minds. And as long as we fill up our minds with other things, we keep from seeing ourselves.

Take fifteen minutes of emptiness, and learn to meet yourself.

Questions:
Do you know who you are? Do you like who you see?
What does emptiness mean to you? Stillness? Is it a concept you can deal with?
What are the advantages of taking this time? The disadvantages? How do they look to you?

Balancing Action and Judgment

We are doomed, as humans, to make mistakes when we act. And yet it is impossible to not act. And when we fail we judge not only ourselves, but those around us; those we have failed, those that observed. Those that judge us as well, and often more harshly. And it is often through external censure that we learn the inappropriacy of our actions, as well, making judgment not only inevitable but necessary. But our judgments are also frequently based on incomplete information and not quite correct on the circumstances. So how do we act, and judge, as best we can? And how can we correct our mistakes when we do make them?

Whenever we interact with people, we affect them. Something so little as a smile or a frown can change another person's day, even when you don't even see them in the crowd. Which means we are always interacting with people and affecting each other. The question is how we do so in an ethical manner, what is appropriate, and how we make amends when our actions have unintended negative effects. And things like the Golden Rule are incomplete at best, for there are many situations where we don't want what the other person does. So how do we act? How can we be the best people we can be?

It starts with mindfulness. We cannot simply act on instinct as we fly through life and not dim Flames, both our own and others. It is very easy to be caught up in the moment, in the everyday, and simply respond to things. And it is also easy to become mired in a sea of confusion, and realize that we can't know for certain how people are going to react, and what the best path is, and choose inaction over action, in the belief that if nothing is done, there is no fault. But fault is irrelevant, and inaction is just as much an action as anything one chooses to do. So try we must, even though we know that we are sometimes going to make horrid mistakes. And when we make those mistakes, instead of throwing our hands into the air and giving up, we must then do the best we can to fix them.

We all have the right and duty to help make the world a better place, to better ourselves and others so that we improve the Divine with our existence. We do not have the right to corrupt Flames, our own or other people's, or otherwise injure the Divine. We are all part of the Divine, and as such, to injure ourselves or each other in any way is also injuring the Divine. While we cannot be perfect, we have to be the best we can be.

How do we accomplish all of this? There are many ways, many possibilities, and we should be open to them all. The most important thing one can do, however, is care about and love one another. The Divine in each of us recognizing, no matter how much we can't stand someone, they, too, are Divine. And as we are all Divine, we all deserve and require our basic needs met, a chance to pursue love and happiness, and a chance to improve ourselves. While we cannot help but act, and judge others only as harshly as we judge ourselves.

Questions:
Why is fault irrelevant? Do you agree? Why or why not?
Why is inaction an impossible choice? Why does inaction have a moral quotient to it?
How do we get past confusion to action?

Demands of Friendship

Friendship is a skill that takes work, skill, and determination. It keeps us together, makes us human, gives us comfort and meaning. But what is it, and how do we treat our friends correctly?

Friendship is a recognition of commonality, a recognition of some form of sameness between two or more people. This commonality can be, and often is, anything from living nearby to taste in music to hair color, and it can be a recognition of what we are, or what we desire to be, or a mixture of both. When this appreciation is reciprocated, it is a friendship.

This appreciation of commonality is what starts a friendship, but it is not enough to sustain it. Whatever the start of the friendship, to maintain it requires a give and take relationship, and understanding of balance between each other. One cannot give or receive exclusively. To give without receipt sets up false expectations as we suffer in silence, and to take simply is not friendship, only using.

To treat our friends correctly is, in part, simply what we should do to treat all people correctly. It is easy to "demand" that those close to us accept and understand our anger, our problems. But our friends, too, are of the Divine, and worthy of respect and love both for themselves and their Divine nature. We cannot separate out our friends from that Divine nature and truly consider them friends or ourselves religious people.

Of course, our friends are not simply people off the street. Friends are special, different, and to not understand that would be a lie. Friends are people that can make us stronger and better, or casually cruel, or anything in between. We care about how our friends see us, and we should. Of course, we can use that same power of approval over our friends, as well, and we should. Caring for people, and caring for their approval, is part of being human. We need to feel for each other, and we need to be worthy of being cared for.

So how should we choose our friends, and then how do we treat them? They are related questions. We should choose to associate as much as we can with people that uphold attitudes we find uplifting and moral, to associate with people we like being associated with. We become like those we associate with, over time, so if we allow ourselves to associate with people that are not as we wish to be, we will become lesser than we were.

We need to be the sort of person we would want to be a friend to, willing to share, willing to give, but not being a pushover.

Questions:
What do you give to your friends? What do you receive? Does it change by person? Is it, to you, balanced?
Why is it wrong to expect people close to use to “understand”?
Are the people you consider friends “safe”, or do they challenge you to be a greater person than you are?

Sharing the Flame

When I started this blog, FlameKeeping was a religion of one. As I write this, it's a religion of two. (That I know of, at least!) It was a way for me to get my thoughts out about things that interested me, that disturbed me, that struck me as true about humanity and the Divine.

But this is not now nor has it ever been intended to be my thoughts alone. The Divine thrives on the exchange and growth of information, not stifling and hoarding of it. FlameKeeping is the combined work of everyone that is part of the religion. As such, contributions to the body of work is part of sharing in the religion.

We all discover things we need to work on in our lives, thoughts we need to think, ideas we need to change. These essays are my way of sharing my thoughts on some of these issues. When other people find FlameKeeping the way of their life, they too can add to this body of work, sharing their own thoughts and transitions. Everyone that is a FlameKeeper adds in their own way: through service, through writing, arts, music, or whatever else their skills are.

So if everyone adds, what part is authentic, and what isn't? The answer is that it's all authentic, even the parts that contradict. Different people come up with different answers to the same questions, and the Universe is big enough to encompass that, too. That doesn't mean everyone will follow everything. What it does mean is that each person is going to have to evaluate what essays, what questions have meaning to them, and which ones don't. If people find an addition doesn't work, it's clearly not a correct addition to FlameKeeping. Only those pieces that are accepted by others are truly part of the Flame.

For those for whom FlameKeeping finds resonance in their minds, the Flame is theirs to fan in themselves and others. We share our minds and our hearts with each other in the hopes that we can all grow and bring out the Divine in each of us. Let the Flame grow.

I would be happy to host or link to writings or other media made by others involving FlameKeeping.

Embracing one's Path

We all see the Divine as different things. Truth, beauty, God, mathematics, science, or anything else we find that makes our heart sing and gives us a feeling of being where we belong. There is that spot when everything comes together and we find our place, where it seems like we have found the path ordained for us. While I do not believe these things are fated, that sense is holy and should be followed whenever possible.

For each of us, depending on the direction we take in life, there are places and choices that can lead us to that feeling of completion, of finding our place in the universe, of meeting the Divine. And that place, be it as a parent, as a teacher, a scientist or anything else, is the place you belong and need to find a way to be. It's not always possible, of course. We need money, we are bound by regulations and idiocies that block us from our desired path, all kinds of things can stand in the way. But there are ways and ways to find these places in our lives: if the standard way is blocked to us, we should find another way to the same goal. We can trap ourselves in expectation, believing we are only a teacher in the classroom, only a scientist in a lab. We forget that a label is just a definition, not a trap, and that we can follow a calling without any official sanction whatsoever.

Our callings can and often do change over our lives as well. We need to be willing to bend with grace, to shift to a new perspective when our world demands it. The only constant in our world is change.

Questions:
What is your calling? Do you have one? More than one?
What have you given up for a calling? What have you gained?
Is there a calling you wish you had but don't? Something you've always wished you could do? Is there a reason to not try?