Abba Paul went to see Abba Basil and said, "Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I read and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?"
Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he responded, "If you will, you can become all fire. You cannot be a monk unless you become like a consuming fire."
When you enter the stillness of the eternal now by letting go of the fictional me, you see that reality, enlightenment, or God is like a flame. It’s alive, ever moving, and ever dancing–the flame is always here. But the flame is impermanent. There is nothing about a flame that is permanent, static, or stable. If it were, it would be dead. Reality is alive, ever on the move, like a flame that leaps up from the log into the air.
The human heart has been so made by Love that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evolved by music and harmony, and renders us beside ourselves with ecstasy. These harmonics are echoes of that higher world of reality which we call the world of spirits...they fan into a flame whatever love is already dormant in the heart.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or Fire.
"Okay–what are the other kinds of fire?" my father asks as he adds a stick to the fire at his feet… "There’s a fire you must tend to every day. The hardest one to take care of is the one right here" he says, tapping his finger against his chest. "Your own fire, your spirit. We all carry a piece of that sacred fire within us. We have to honor it and care for it. You are the firekeeper."
Invite the Sacred to participate in your joy in little things, as well as in your agony over the great ones. There are as many miracles to be seen through a microscope as through a telescope. Start with the little things seen through a magnifying glass of wonder, and just as a magnifying glass can focus the sunlight into a burning beam that can set a leaf aflame, so can your focused wonder set you ablaze with insight. Find the light in each other and just fan it.
The inner fire is the most important thing humankind possesses.
As the flames of all the lamps of the Festival of Lights celebration burn brightly and reach upward through the entire night, they show the possibility that, with the removal of darkness, grossness, and ignorance, the tiny flickering light in our hearts can also shine brightly, illuminating the whole universe. May we see all progress speedily to the highest levels of spirituality–from darkness to light, and beyond.
May the blessing of light be on you,
light outside, light inside.
May the blessed sunlight shine upon you
and warm your heart till it glows
like a great fire, so that the stranger
may be warmed at it, as well as the friend.
And may the light shine upon your eyes
like a candle set in the window,
bidding the wanderer in out of the storm.
Silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept.