I wonder when I am mesmerized by a flame devouring a log. Is it like hunger? Is it a need? – not my hunger or need, but the fire’s. I mean by the longing and hanging on until the last moment.
If you watch a fire and enjoy it at the end of the evening, you observe the last flames. You might have a full firepit of embers, but there are a couple of burning pieces of wood still flaming. You can watch the flame keep trying, keep trying, holding on in little bursts, little bursts up and down the log sometimes, but not quite as far this time as the last time. The flame wants to stay alive. It’s trying, but it has to let go.
It’s hard to imagine that it’s any more than a physical law – there’s still more fuel, more oxygen, heat. Yet there’s no proof that there does not exist some sort of fiery ego in there too, fighting for its life. Egos do burn; they devour, they crave. Egos want that sense of belonging, meaning, empowerment, and importance. But what is beneath all that?
So we might wonder, the flame has some material existence, but does the light from the flame have a material existence? Does fire have some ability to perceive itself? Just like ego? Or are we just projecting, anthropomorphizing?
Our ability to sense light arose through eons of qualiadelic relationships; what does fire sense? Is there some sort of qualiadelic selection that might bear reflective, mindful fruit one day in fire, in snowflakes, in plants and animals? Or is it already there, looking away from us and our egos, a contentment that sees beneath, to a mystical wholeness, to the clear light of true wisdom, to the Tao of ecosystems?
We, observing from our chronically discontented human perspective, grant matter “ego.” Well, if we really want to have qualiadelic relationships with fire or snowflakes or plants or animals, we have to take care what we put out there. It won’t do to project egos that reflect the human landscape – that would probably not be good. But if we can project what ecosystems are already putting out there – alertness, faith, and belonging – that would be good. Then plants animals and the rest might actually start paying attention to us.
Honestly, though, maybe these good qualities are being projected to us, by them, for us to notice and reflect on. Yes, restore our faith in ecosystems, fellow earthlings, please!