Fire brings sorrow to desire.
Sometimes I am so on fire with love of the world, that there seems nothing to do but grieve. I ache with a deep understanding, the comprehension of what Gurdjieff called “the terror of the situation.” We must come to know ourselves. We must come to love ourselves. We must come to love each other. There arises in us a deep respect when we allow love to enter. There is greater impetus for movement when we allow the fire of will and desire to meet the grief that we usually see as a watery thing… But sometimes grief can cut right through to the core of things. It can burn away the extraneous and leave us standing, naked, in front of what is truly important. We are all we have. This life is as good as it gets for now. What choices are we going to make if we are not looking to blame or to be rescued?
Call up that fire, in the midst of your great sorrow, let the fire move you forth. When we allow our sorrow to inform is, and we meet this with the fire of will, we can move mountains. Grief does not have to cave us in. The deep sorrow of the understanding of the human condition can give us exactly the compassion necessary to do the work we are most called to do. And for those of us still waffling, it can make clear what that work is, finally. No excuses anymore. There is this task on front of us. The world is waiting.
When we allow ourselves to be on fire for something – when we risk that great emotional Exposure- we finally find our full engagement, which is what our heart and soul have been waiting for. We do it. We just do it. No turning back.
Fire. Sorrow. What can these two things teach us? They teach us that we can feel. They teach us that we can know. They teach that what is important to us is the thing that can move us forward, rapidly, rather than holding us back. Fire, coupled with sorrow, shows us that sorrow doesn’t have to be a thing we sink into, rather it can be the thing that makes us finally say, “Yes, this!” or perhaps, “Enough!”
[Photo (c)Tomo.Yun]
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