The Cocoon (or, How Initiation Works) Part 3: The Second Meeting - FIRE
“Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the farthest end of the wilderness, and came to the mountain of the gods, to Sinai. A messenger of Yhwh appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush, and Moses looked and saw that the bush was burning with fire, but it was not consumed. He said, ‘I will change direction in order to see this great vision, why the bush is not burnt.’ And when Yhwh saw that Moses had changed direction in order to see, he called to him from the midst of the bush, saying, ‘Moses, Moses.’ And Moses answered, ‘Here I am.’ And Yhwh said, ‘Do not come any closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing, she is holy ground.’”
A couple weeks after my encounter on the mountain, I find myself invited into another waking vision-dream. These have become so frequent, I’ve stopped recording them anywhere.
The four I’ve included in this series on the cocoon were offered to me with obvious links, connection points, and shared meanings; it wasn’t for a long time afterwards that I was shown they are the four quadrants of a whole unit.
This time, I’m in the fire and it blazes around me with a fearsome roar. There is another figure there with me who can speak without words, reminding me that once I come out of the inferno, I won’t even smell like smoke. The fire-angel weaves into my breaking heart’s wisdom the mythology of dragons and invites me to remember that dragons breathe smoke, and use fire to stoke their powerful bellies, to fuel them for their long flights, to keep them warm.
She welcomes me into the energy of the dragon and teaches me to breathe deeply through the pain, through the burning, and to let my breath be smoke, and to let it rise around me, smudging me and cleansing me of all that no longer fits, clearing away all that is dying. She sits in her resplendent calm, crossed-legged across from me, and she breathes with me, holding steady eye contact, midwifing me through the blaze.
The gift of the cocoon from the fire stage is the releasing of several powerful psychological strongholds, including the idea that who I am and how I choose to live my life should always make sense to Other People, and that I am somehow failing my children.
The previous stage teaches me that I am my own belonging. I only just have time to catch my breath on this new horizon before the fire comes to burn away anything I don’t need anymore. Which is most things, as it turns out. This stage teaches me that we really need only one thing: unconditional love. And that is always available to us, as close as our next breath in this abundant universe stitched together by Love. Anything that cannot resonate at the frequency of unconditional love now has to go. And so the fire is here for it. And with the fire comes grief for what is burning.
“The fire rages within and without, outside of time and space. It burns wherever it needs to, in ways that I can only just understand now because the cocoon has rendered my consciousness soft and pliable. Mystery and paradox can now be entered into and experienced, but not yet understood or communicated. The silence of the cocoon at this stage is a blessed relief. And I marvel that I can stay inside it whilst going about my normal routines.”
Laundry. Meals. Dishes. Cooking. Cleaning. Working. Sleeping. Playing. Resting.
All these activities, I am now learning, can take place while I am cocooned. And while I am in the midst of a furnace.
The fire, in its fury, turns all I once thought I knew to ash. It is all in the crucible now, being melted and refined, until only what is helpful, pure, and necessary remains. Once the fire has done its work, I realise there is no more judgement or blame, only curiosity and compassion. During this fire I have learned mastery over body, mind, and soul at a new level, and I realise now that this human form - which has always felt like an unfair burden for my mind to have to carry - is, in fact, a powerful gift. Strong and tender, vulnerable and fierce, soulful and sacred all at once. It speaks to me about the intersection of the holy and the mundane, and the truth that there is no separation shifts from an intellectual understanding to an embodied wisdom. I begin look upon my own form with new respect and reverence. I seek her forgiveness for the ways I’ve overlooked her needs and forced her into rhythms that went against her own wisdom. At the end of this stage, I am astonished to discover that all the wounds left from where others coerced or forced my body are now also healed. The fire teaches me humility and respect for skin, bone, muscle, and my own soft belly.
I am paying attention now, tuned into the wisdom of the body, and this is my second homecoming.
What the fire has left, once its work is complete, is beauty. The kind of beauty that radiates from within and manifests in the faces of others. The faces of my children, my patients, my team, my friends and family, the workers at the supermarket, the petrol station attendant – all radiate beauty back to me. Now that I’ve seen beauty, I can’t un-see it; it’s everywhere. And I start to understand how beauty will save the world. Warm, glowing, and alive; the cocoon is not finished with me yet but I am starting to liquefy into total surrender, and to meet there my own total annihilation. But I am no longer scared of being annihilated… any more than the mountain is scared of air, or the dragon is scared of fire. I have become one with the alchemy and have started to willingly co-create my own descent into death. My initiation is unfolding, and I am unfolding with it.
In fleeting moments of wonder, I sometimes find myself thinking, “Is this what true power feels like? Is this how union with the unconditional love of Divine is achieved? Is this the process, the mechanism, the narrow path? This death, this annihilation, this deep participation in the divine dance?” And the answer comes to me over and over and over again, echoed back to my beating heart through moon-rise and starlight…
Yes, yes, yes.