Lizard in the Fire Chapter 8 Final Chapter
Chapter 8 The lizard in the Fire story. Final Chapter.
Here is a piece that actually belongs in the previous Chapter. Chapter 7 I have added it there for those who have already read chapter 7 and so missed it. So, here it is.
There is a second aspect of this fire or to this fire. That aspect is there is a space between the elders and the youth. This space has been called a “field-of-imagination” by Michael Meade. It is a place where the Elders are watching the youth like in the story of “The man in the village”
This field of fiery imigination also exists between the Grandparents and the Grandchildren. Grandparents having (for the most part) being relieved from the day-to-day necessities of living. Unfortunately, this is not true in rural South Africa where the grandparents tend to care for the children while the parents try to find work in the cities.
Grandparents now have time to see their grandchildren. To see their talents, gifts, predispositions, interests, and passions. Often the grandparents see things in the children that the parents have no time for or are prejudiced against by the need to be acceptable to the status quo.
Acceptability by the status quo is one of the main stressors and drivers of behaviour in our culture.
The parent’s behavour has to be acceptable to the status quo to keep the household going. The grandparents are not so much under the domination of the status quo. They have less to lose and been around the block a few times, so they are more comfortable in their own experiences and are less driven by the status quo.
The Grandparents and or Elders create a space for the youth, to test and experiment with their gifts and talents as they grow into young adulthood. This field of imagining is extremely important for the development of these nascent gifts. Like any budding growth, it is especially vulnerable to disapproval by the status quo and needs to be nurtured in a protected encouraging environment until these gifts are strong enough to live in spite of the world around them. It is up to the grandparents and the Elders to recognise these gifts for what they are and nurture them.
The old idea was that we each bring healing for each other and gifts into the community for the community.
This field of imagination is also represented by this particular fire the community (Elders and grandparents have built.) It burns to create a passion that will sustain this relationship through life and through this marriage. What can be created by this union for the community at large and the future?
To go back to the closing text of the last chapter.
Now in the story, the Crone arrives. The time is NOW. (decision time)
The Crone takes the lizard from the girl and turning to the village’s gathered announcers “This is the situation now, If the lizard lives the boy will come back to life. If the Lizard dies the boy will remain dead”.
The parents run towards the Fire, the narrative says they were beaten back by the flames, it wasn’t their Fire. The community built the fire for the young couple, not the parents. The parent’s inability to enter this fire is another way of saying that the parents cannot initiate their own children. There is too much tension between them around expectations. It needs to be done by the other Elders of the community.
The Girl (our Soul) knows this fire, she is partly made of this eternal fire. The salamander represents immortality, rebirth, passion, and the ability to withstand flames.
She leaps into the Fire and throws the Lizard of immortality and rebirth out of the Fire. Like the sun in the east as it rises a new day is born and a new life for the Boy our newly transformed Ego.
When did this transformation take place? During the night-sea-journey How do we know this transformation has taken place? By the way we answer the next question, the one asked by the Crone.
The Crone picks up the lizard and hands it to the boy. “here is the situation now, if the lizard lives, the girl dies. If the lizard dies the girl will live but your mother will die. What are YOU going to do??
What are YOU going to do???
What to do, what to do what to do??
Find out the consequences of this decision. Chapter 8.
What a question.
Now we, you and I stand now with the Lizard and the power of death over not only our mother but our connection to Soul. Mankind is given free-will absolutely to make this choice. At any given time, all we have is choice or no choice. “I had no choice” so somebody or something outside of us makes the decision for us. We become victims of the opportunity.
In stories of this nature, there is no death in the physical sense, rather there can be a psychological death. This death for the young girl (our Soul) means we lose our connection to her. Then we live the life of the living dead, we fall back into the wasteland portrayed in so many movies like Mad Max and the actions of the Zombies in the Zombie movies. The mindless creatures driven by collective appetites at the extreme end of the spectrum.
When we lose our connection to Soul all atrocities are possible. We lose our connection to each other, to the community, and to nature. We lose our connection to that which makes us human and different from the animal kingdom whose body our consciousness inhabits.
Because mankind is granted free will absolutely and without our Soul’s compassion and love to guide our action. Our actions can be much more extreme than the instinctual consciousness of the animal kingdom will allow for animals.
This is at once Mankinds’s blessing and our curse.
Loss of Soul ”Having lost our connection to soul we are unable to take part in society, rituals, and traditions” We become the living dead, our “connection” to family, to totem, to nature, is gone.
Until the soul is regained true humanity is not possible. Such a person is “not there.” (Far out) It is as though that person had never been given a name, never been initiated, never come into real being. Soul may not only be lost, but also may be possessed, bewitched, ill, transported into an object, animal, place, or another person in the Shamanic world. Indeed, bits of Soul can be lost in other lifetimes.
Without Soul the sense of belonging to a community is lost. Also the sense of being in communion with the powers and the gods They are no longer reachable: no prayer, nor sacrifice, no dance, (No psychotherapy, no counseling, no rehabilitation) can reach them. The personal myth and the connection to the larger myth of community as a reason for existence are lost. Simply the soul is lost, and death may follow. Here too we hear a description of depression, where along with the Will forces the life force has left the body or is not psychologically available.
Our root metaphor from a parent’s and guardian’s point of view has to be that.
”Human behaviour is understandable because to us it has an inside meaning”.
There is also the aspect of Soul loss which is a result of Ego formation. In stories, this is sometimes called “The loss of the Golden ball” as in “Iron John” or the creation of Shadow.
Soul retrieval
If Soul can be lost it can also be found. Soul retrieval is the purpose of physical life even at the extremities of the human experience through the redemptive moment of understanding or action of redeeming one’s past.
Life’s events ask of us a response, as Victor Frankel discovered, the meaning of life may be reversed, it is life and events that ask us to give it meaning and awaits our response
One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is a specific opportunity to implement it”.
What has to die in the fire for the Girl to live? The Lizard of our world, the animal that slithers along the ground eating, dying, and procreating in the endless cycles of nature and instinct. Yes, I know it’s difficult to hold both versions of the lizard at the same time. As humans also have this difficulty of being a spiritual being inhabiting an animal body. We to hold this duality all the time.
Why does the lizard have to die? To make a one-to-one relationship with Soul we (our Ego) has to die to our Shadow. Most importantly to die to our destructive attachment to the need for acceptance by the status quo which created much of Shadow in the first place.
The lizard symbolizes our personal Shadow as the snake does in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In this case, as is with many cases in the animal kingdom the lizard sacrifices itself in the fire of transformation built by the community to free us ritually, to be ready for this union.
To die to something is not a physical death rather it is to step outside the possession of its behaviour. When we live under the thrall of the status quo we are always attempting to fill the attendant lack of purpose and emptiness with distractions. We buy into the short-term promise of fulfillment and suffer the long-term effects of its emptiness.
What does it mean if the Boy’s mother dies? Now we come to the issue of the in-laws.
The Crone gives us the Lizard “If the lizard dies the girl will live but your mother will die”. What are YOU going to do??
It comes back to the question of a one-to-one relationship. If we chose mother over Soul, we automatically lose Soul, a psychic death follows, we fall back into the living death of the wasteland.
In order to make this one-to-one relationship with Soul, our mother’s influence over our psychological life has to die. Our Mother is by necessity the midwife of the status quo. She taught us from the breast how to fit into the world we incarnated into, how to be successful in her world. That was her willing sacrifice for us. Like in the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk she kept us safe from giants until we were ready to face them. We owe a huge thank you and blessing to our mothers for that if nothing else.
Now as arrows we have to fly free of mother’s bow. As we fly free from the bow we have to seek our own destiny, not the desires of family and the status quo.
Cleaving to our spouse. In our personal relationships, we have to cleave to our spouse and put our spouse first above all things, even our own mother, family, and the status quo. In this way the story says that our mother has to die, she too has to sacrifice her attachment to her son for this relationship to work. Sometimes this is called cutting the psychic umbilical cord with the mother.
Psychotherapy and the parents. Modern psychotherapy spends a lot of time looking at our parental home to seek answers about our unresolved issues. Read Shadow. Looking only at the parental home without understanding the role of the domination of the status quo in this context almost guarantees a failure in the integration of Shadow content. Shadow is clever and slippery and is very supportive of us barking up the wrong tree.
At a psychological level, we need to be ready to sacrifice the past and make the decision to cut away from the past. To die to yesterday in order to live tomorrow. As the sun dies every day to live a new tomorrow from our perspective.
On Marriage
Then Almitra spoke again and said, And
what of Marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you
shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white
wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the
silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance
between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from
one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat
not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each
other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain
your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near
together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow
not in each other’s shadow.