The Lizard in the Fire Chapter 7 The Fire, the Lizard, a new day and a new life.
Chapter 7 The Fire, the Lizard, a new day and a new life.
Now in the narrative, we have arrived at the village meeting place. A place where the business of the village’s wellbeing is discussed and well as the challenges and disputes settled. The projection of Shadows one against another can be worked out.
Here the Ego lays passing through The Night-journey. The hero’s journey if you like. The descent phase. The story and the father say something has to die when you make love to that Feminine for the first time. For tomorrow to be truly born we all have to die to yesterday. This love-making with Soul by a mortal Ego is an initiation into creation itself. This is the work of the Great Mother. In our world, we consider sexual activity entertainment or a sort of biological stress relief. That is not what is meant here. At this point of initiation, we are talking about initiation into creation itself. Of life’s longing for itself. Therefore, at that point, it is experienced as death to everything we have experienced up to this point in our world and awakening to a new life at the village or community fire.
Children are part of creation and as a metaphor, a “Child” can take many forms. A poem, a piece of music, a work of art, dance, etc.
‘Your Children Are Not Your Children’ — Kahlil Gibran Was Right
Comments by Annie Reneau. I have used her words as they cut right to the chase.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Ouch. Right out of the gate, he hits us where it hurts. That first line evokes a visceral response in most of us parents, who feel a biological, emotional, and spiritual instinct to care for our children. We chose (perhaps) to have them. We are conscientiously raising them, teaching them, loving them. What do you mean they’re not our children?
But, of course, they aren’t. They do not “belong to” us. We don’t own them. We may have chosen (or not) to conceive them, but we didn’t choose who they are. We are the means by which they came into the world, but we did not design them. A force greater than ourselves — God, nature, “Life’s longing for itself,” whatever you want to call it — is responsible for that.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
Not only are my children not mine, but also, let’s think about our own mortality. Ouch, again.Seriously, though, this is so true. Children come with their own unique identity, and their own unique part to play in this world. We can’t imagine what potential lies within them, and we certainly can’t imagine what their world will be like in the future.
We can care for them and offer them what we can, but we can’t make them think like us or believe like us. And we shouldn’t want to because they will need different thoughts and beliefs to navigate a world we can’t foresee. They are living in their own time, just as we are. And they were created for their time, not ours.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
Parents understand this concept of passing time better than anybody. There’s no halting time, and there’s certainly no reversing it, no matter how much we might wish to do so. Time marches forward, and we all move forward with it. (except in a good story)
It’s so tempting to want to make our mark on — or through — our children, but they have their lives, and we have ours. They have their own destinies to fulfil, and we have ours. Our destinies are interwoven, but they are not the same.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
I feel this bending now, as my oldest prepares to make her way out from under my wing. Perhaps this is why parents say parenting doesn’t get easier. The closer we are to sending our children out into the world, the further we have to bend. We get stretched to our limit, and before we know it, they are off. But the bending and stretching are painful. I love this analogy illustrating that this pain has a purpose.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
What a lovely reminder to find joy through the pain, because we and our children are loved by the Divine. And to be strong because our stability will help our children to fly.
Our children. Our children are unique, individual human beings, with whom we are only together for a spell. Our children will help move the wheel of humanity a few feet farther than we’ll be able to see. Our children who have their own destiny and their own purpose separate and apart from our own.
“Our children who are not really our children at all”.
So, back to the story
The girl goes to the village and explains what has happened and asks them to build a large fire in the village meeting place. The mother and the father are distraught, aren’t they? their boy is dead.
The Fire. This Fire has an aspect of transformation in it and it burns with purpose. This Fire is the Fire of the community. The Crone through the Girl (our Soul) asked the community to build and light this fire for the express purpose of bringing the Boy (us) back into the world of the community. To pull the Boy back from the underworld and into a life of service. It’s dangerous to stay in the underworld too long, the longer you stay the more difficult is to come back.
The idea in the story is that the community builds the Fire. What is in this Fire then? The community has needs that need to be fulfilled outside the desires of the Boy and the Girl’s personal needs. It’s easier to think of this in terms of a small village rather than a sprawling metropolis like Johannesburg.
There is an old idea that we each bring gifts into the world for the healing of the problems of the world we incarnate into. This another way of describing the way the community builds this Fire. Cause and effect are just swapped.
All the logs in this Fire are at once a prayer of supplication and a blessing on the marriage that is implied in the story. This is not just an ordinary marriage rather it is a marriage that could save the world.
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 imagination 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.
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 for the future of the couple and the community?
The old idea was that we each bring healing for each other and gifts into the community for the community.
Mankind requires meaning to life.
There is no way for him to be fulfilled without it.
Indeed, there is no way for him to even matter without it.
Without our WHY, we wither away.
Like vagabonds, we wander the wasteland that our lives have become.
Lonely. Miserable. Afraid. And so since meaninglessness is so devastating to a man’s sense of power and fulfillment, you’d think most of us would do everything in our power to find it.
Alas, my experience suggests this is not so.
So many of us have become numb and domesticated by the status quo.
Searching for distraction rather than meaning.
Remembering what this lizard represents— The ”salamander” it represents immortality, rebirth, passion, and the ability to withstand flames. … As a symbol of the firemen and the name of their trucks, the salamander symbol also reminds the reader that fire is the foundation of this dystopian world and that Firemen represent power, protection, and immortality.
Characteristics of the Status Quo. or a Dystopian society.
- Government control.
- Environmental destruction.
- Technological control.
- Survival.
- Loss of individualism.
Sound familiar?
So now in the story, the Crone arrives. The time is NOW.
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 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 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 in Chapter 8. The mother-in-law. Who and what has to die to make this relationship work. Cleaving to your spouse.