Can We Take The Heat?

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 is lost will abide in some form. This is the Zen teaching of emptiness, so un-American. Can we take the heat? Can we grow Zen seeds in time to survive the fires?

Asana: Instead of working on a physical Pose this week, I propose we take into our hearts the 29th Radiance Sutra from a version of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.
29. Live continuously for a few days in the meditation; I am immersed in the flame, the flame of Life. The universal fire flows through me without resistance. Step into that fire fully, wholeheartedly, starting with the toe of the right foot, and then surrendering everywhere. Only the not-self, which doesn’t exist anyway, is burned. Your essence will emerge renewed in the flame, for it already is flame and knows itself as flame since the dawn of time. (This translation is by Shiva Rea)

Health Notes: The heart generates fire/energy in the body. The condition of the heart is the condition of the physical body, and in turn, the condition of society. Scientists are discovering more data to prove that the heart may be directly involved with our intuitive perceptions through its marshalling of internal fires, and that its field of information may include subtle energetic fields outside the body.

Astrology Notes: * For those of you taking classes, you have heard me speak of the cycle of Saturn/Uranus face offs, with the third, (of five,) oppositions perfecting Sept. 15th. It is not only the past sparring with the future, it is form opposing chaos, stability vs. revolution. This opposition occurs every 42-44 years, provoking the world to create a better future through courageously facing fears of the unknown.

Ayurveda Notes: Be Zen, sit with what is. Radiate joy, eat radishes under the full moon. Become the moon. (These are personal instructions, not particularly Ayurvedic, though an Ayurvedic doctor would not argue with creating a peaceful heart of pure fire.)