From time to time, I lose my sense of boundaries and separation. It is as if I allow the felt separation to dissolve and yield to a felt connection with anyone or anything I come across. This has evolved significantly during my 5 days of retreat. The effect is that I feel an overwhelming vulnerability and a consuming fire.
I have regarded this experience as open-heartedness and open-heartedness continues to be a portal that is open both ways. I am recently intensely aware of the presence of others. That includes people, plants and rocks. I am aware in a deeper more penetrating way. They seem to enter me without resistance and I consume them with my attention. It feels like a fire that arises in me. It consumes everything as it illumines.
At least it is from my perspective that the fire consumes. I wonder if it is anything like that for others. They must know that they can be consumed if they stand too close. In fact, I can see that only a few stand close. I suspect they are the ones familiar with fire. They know its power and have learned to live in it themselves.
For me, this kind of felt awareness is producing an incredible level of vulnerability. It is a level I have never experienced before. The fire seems to have the effect of increasing the tenderness I perhaps only slightly knew before. Tears easily come with feelings. I am wondering if they are already beyond my control.
I think it is a control I have surrendered, and do not intend to take back.
Perhaps it is this surrendering of control that has created, produced the deeper sense of open-heartedness. I have released some of my sense of self and its related boundaries. At least, I now know how to do it. I have learned how to do it with the help of a few of my companions.
The felt experience comes and goes, but I know I carry it with me. For me, this is the meaning of mindfulness, not an intellectual cerebral exercise but a full-body experience of what is around me. It has become a burning fire that consumes me and has the potential of consuming anyone or any thing near me. It is a new felt experience of reaching out and of being vulnerable all at the same time.
It is a strange thing that is happening to me. It has come as a result of deeper opening to the woods and to people while on retreat. It comes with a price of now knowing that only certain people can stand close to the fire, and they may be few. I have a deep sense of potential aloneness while experiencing the power and force of being intensely close. I will trust my companions.
My fire is consuming and powerful at the same time. The energy of its source may be both my destroyer and my connector. Just the same, I intend to fan the flames, in spite of the risk. Stepping into the flames is becoming my way. I am facing total loss and total oneness, all at the same time. It becoming my way of fire.