Session 005: How Do You Make Fire Happen
Banner Photo Source: Simon Matzinger on Unsplash
Picking up from last week's class where we talked about the importance of finding out what's truly important to us, today we discussed the process of making that what's important to us happen, the process of realizing it in our daily lives.
Using the metaphor of making a fire, we presented how to create the right conditions of our goals and outlined the three pillars that support the experiencing of these goals.
Today’s session started out with the talk this time and then a guided meditation. In this blog post, you will first see the video recording of the talk, then the video recording of the meditation and then the handout text.
Talk
Meditation
Handout
The 4-page handout that we gave out in today’s class is posted below as blog content for you.
This same content + an additional guided visualization is in the PDF handout. You can download it by clicking on the button below:
How Do You Make Fire Happen
Session 005: Feb 5th, 2020, by Sophia Ojha Ensslin and Cristof Ensslin
For making a fire in our fireplace happen, I need wood, air, kindling material, and a spark. First, I position the kindling material plentifully in the fireplace and lay a couple of logs of wood on top of that. Then, I make sure the flue is open, so the smoke can escape. Air containing oxygen is already all around us, gratefully. Then, with a spark from a lighter or a match, I can ignite the kindling material. If that burns long and hot enough, the wood logs will catch on fire automatically, which in turn creates a cozy atmosphere and a warm home.
I did not make the fire happen. All I did was to create the right conditions for it to happen. There’s one more thing we need as part of these conditions which I will get to later in this chapter.
What Do I Want to Say With This Metaphor?
To make anything happen in this world, we have to create the right conditions for it. We have to think about what would be in our power that would create the right conditions for the desired end result to happen. To think like that places power and responsibility in our court. For example:
For eating a nourishing and delicious meal, we need to gather ingredients of good quality, then cut them, then cook them and we need a good recipe.
For earning our livelihood, we need to learn a skill that others need and are willing to pay for, then position ourselves for these others to find us, then perform the skill and collect the check.
To find out what’s truly important to us, we need to remove the non-essential, the extraneous, the superfluous, all that is extra and excessive. To get down to the core of what really matters, sometimes we have to start with an empty canvas, an empty room, an empty page, a blank slate. Tabula rasa.
Similar to the process of making a fire, for a peaceful meditation to happen, we need to find a quiet place, sit down comfortably, and become mindful of the present moment, our thoughts, sounds, feelings, and sensations, until our mind has settled down so we can just observe our breath (or whatever our object of meditation is).
Get to Know the Conditions
For eating lunch or dinner, we all have already created a habit to do so. The first meals we cooked were probably far from perfect. It took a while to learn how to actually make the food tasty. But we learned from our Mom, books and cooking shows.
For earning our livelihood, we have created a habit to go to work and serve our boss or clients. Here, too, we first had to learn how to do all of that - going to school, read books, take exams, and mentors - trial and error.
For building a meditation habit, we have to create the habit to take the time and create the right conditions. Every day we should make it a priority to find the time and space to do so. It may be right that we meditate right after waking up and brushing teeth, or maybe after breakfast, lunch or dinner. Try what works best for you.
As for learning how to meditate, you all have already come to our class here and done so regularly, that’s wonderful. In your daily sessions at home, trial and error can be used as well: see what type of meditation works best for you. Additionally, learning from experienced teachers is essential: either by letting them guide us (the YouTube and podcast channels of BSWA or BSV are phenomenal for that matter) or by reading a few minutes before each session (we have found Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm as well as The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh extremely fruitful).
And we can all well imagine what powerful changes would happen in our lives if we made it a habit to think in terms of creating conditions for desired results to happen!
Three Pillars That Support All Conditions
The conditions are what will help us. It is helpful to know that any goal or task we want to accomplish has certain underlying conditions. And these conditions are in turn supported by three pillars.
In all of these examples, we’ve highlighted that the conditions need to be right for the task or the goal to be accomplished. Although the specific conditions may differ, all of these conditions have three pillars that support it. These are three common trajectories, three common characteristics that will help us experience the goal that we want to experience.
We need to be acutely aware and convinced of the benefits of said goal.
We need to ignite a desire to experience the benefit.
We need to do it over and over to get good at it.
1. Be acutely aware and become convinced of the benefits of said goal
If I were not convinced that the fireplace provides me warmth, I will not expend my efforts towards gathering the kindling material, the wood and prepping the flue and creating a spark. I will just go make me a hot cup of tea, bundle up in five different layers and call it a day.
When I know that the fireplace provides me warmth, that’s a benefit of the fireplace that I am convinced about.
2. Ignite a desire to experience the benefit
But what’s more important is the desire to experience that benefit of the fireplace for me and for my individual life experience. Not for someone else down the road but for me. If the desire is not there, there will be no fire. This desire feeds intention and with intention comes the motivation to take action.
3. Do it over and over to get good at it
“...it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.” - Aristotle in Ethics, Page 12, Book 1.
After the first two conditions are met, I can start making the fire. But I will not be successful in making a good fire until I have practice doing it over and over. I remember the first time I started to make the fire at our fireplace, I was at a loss on how to help the wood catch fire. I experimented with different kindling materials and different ways of placing them under the wood. The more times I made the fire, the more attuned I became with what the fire needs. At what point do I need to add more wood? Do I need to move the log that’s on fire in a certain way? Shall I add more kindling? Does it need more air? All of these decisions and actions come with greater ease and clarity the more often I attempt at creating the fire.
So get clear about the end results, be convinced of the benefits, do it over and over again. And then let go of the goal, and just focus on your efforts, the actions you can take to create the right conditions for the goal to be accomplished. And by focusing on the efforts, you can stay in the present moment.
Create a Virtuous Cycle of Peace
We practice getting and staying in the present moment by practicing meditation. So, the more we practice meditation, the better we get in being mindful. We can apply this mindfulness in every waking moment. As a beneficial side-effect, we become adept in knowing what is really going on at all times and, along with it, what’s the next right thing to do.
Practicing mindfulness in every moment will, in turn, improve our ability to meditate. A virtuous cycle has thus been established which puts the power (and responsibility) back into our own hands, not just to make a fire in our fireplace and many other things happen, but to live a peaceful, happy, and content life.
Thank you! See you in class next week!
~ Sophia + Cristof
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