Notice What You Notice

After sunset in the spring, when the air cools off at night, I like to sit in front of an outside fire place and marvel at the dance of flames, listen to the crackles of logs, watch smoke rising and enjoy the blanket of warmth the fire wraps around my body.

However, none of these things we call flames, crackles, smoke or heat are the fire itself. In fact, we do not see the fire, we do not hear the fire and we cannot touch the fire. What we see is the light emitted from wood or gas, which fuels the fire. What we hear are the crackles of the wood as it is consumed by the fire, and the warmth we enjoy we cannot touch, as it is the hot air rising from the fire pit. 

Where does that leave the fire?  The fire itself is the conductor, orchestrating a magical spectacle of elements that makes it look so seamless, that all of the actors come together as one.

Is this not a great parable for life itself? We do have experiences of ourselves, other people and situations in every day of our lives. This is the wood that represents all of our actions and interactions, which are being transformed energetically into the smoke, crackles and light, which are nothing more than our experience of our experience, that, which allows us to have opinions and judgments; yet as conscious, unique emanations of the Divine, we have the awareness of us having the experience of an experience; and this witness consciousness, brings it all together in plain sight for us to see, which is the magic of the fire itself: 

We are the conductor, who gets to notice what we notice and to see the many as the One!