Meditation: on Fire (Without Burning)

The fire raged on, incandescent, all-consuming. The fire was meant to fuel and warm, yet it incinerated all within the domain of its wrathful eye. From threats, lies and pretense, down to the air that kept it alive. It existed merely to ignite and burn away, never to assess that which it sought to annihilate. Until eventually, its eye reached the Witness, Self.

Early on in my childhood, I remember feeling this internal fire for what might have been the first time. Heat rising up my spine, hair standing on end, eyes wide open and mind focused. It was a feeling that was somewhat like what I had felt when watching or reading glorified depictions of fighting, warring and conquest, except that it was now real, and amplified by several orders of magnitude. I was no longer just watching a fight but was on the verge of being in one. It was over fast, and I remember fear, pain, fists awkwardly crossing. But the part I remember most clearly is how my hands still shook with excitement afterward, even as I checked my knuckles to ensure they had not been broken. It was almost like I was intoxicated by it.

I went home still buzzing and watched hours of Dragon Ball Z and kid dynamite knockout montages that day after getting into my first fight ever. It had all gone too well, felt too empowering to just forget. The anger felt like a cheat code in a video game. It became my means of processing any other inconvenient emotion. And I was good at being angry. In everything I did, there was part of me that saw it as a war I sought out not only to win, but to bleed and if needed, be bled in the pursuit of conquest. My aggression was largely celebrated too, as long as competitive victories outweighed how much trouble I caused getting in fights at school or on the cricket pitch. If I got enough marks or runs or whatever metric made sense for the setting, then the anger was justified or at least tolerated by others. With every celebration of victories won like this, I felt the idea reinforced over and over. This is what it meant to be a man. Worth only as much as the sum total of my fighting and winning, every loss an indictment of my character.

There was no rest and no surrender. Only the ego’s mask, which twisted into something like an Oni. Everyone began to ask why I had such a frown all the time, and I did notice a sort of resting bitch face starting to appear. Not that I cared, anger was cool and normal as far as I knew. A self-destructive streak began to stain darker and wider across me. I drank, ate and breathed my anger and violence inward until I felt numb enough. Eventually, there was not much left to burn but the ego, and the masks of egotism I had painstakingly put on. What was I, if not what I considered a warrior?

“Long in tooth and soul,

Longing for another win,

Lurch into the fray Weapon out and belly in,

Warrior struggling to remain consequential”

Having realized I was burning everything in my orbit in the infantile struggle to remain consequential as a warrior, I called a truce with myself and turned to seeking knowledge and insight. Didn’t matter how esoteric or ambiguous. After years of rage, I felt like that curious kid again, before he became so preoccupied with being a big angry proud man. After a bunch of rabbit holes, from stoicism and absurdism to comedy and poetry, I circled back to the idea of God. This time, as a seeker of insight rather than a mere consumer for intellectual or spiritual conquest. I won’t go into the details of what I consider my personal faith and God but suffice to say, it opened my eyes to how my purpose itself is deeply connected to nature and authenticity.

The more time I spent orienting myself toward nature, love and gratitude, the less I felt the need to conquer anything, internal or external. If the fire had given me the power to be sovereign, this felt like I had been finally dropped in a clear, calm lake, reminding me what that sovereignty was for. And I could drink from this wellspring of peace, swim in it, just allow myself to float in it indefinitely, for it was infinite. The less I sought to control everything, the more I could be, create and expand, paradoxically. All I needed to do was surrender to the possibility that fire is not all that exists within me, and I saw a freedom to be myself without a mask of rage or a shield of isolation constantly distorting who I am and the choices I make.

This is of course, not to demonize the fire. If not for it, I would have no ambition, no desire to be better than I am or have been in the past. The fire itself is sacrosanct, but my blind application of it to every aspect of life was a disservice to both of us. It is something I acknowledge and value as a part of me, but it can’t consume all that I am. Of course, I still find myself fucking things up plenty, but less so out of anger, and with less anger directed at myself for it. Far from a feeling of having it all figured out or having reached some kind of special wisdom, I feel I have become more human, more myself. And to me, I don’t need to be anything more or less than exactly who I’m meant to be. Being a man now simply means tending to my fire and using it for comfort and growth, not pouring accelerant all over the woods and striking a match just to prove I can.

Originally published at https://open.substack.com.