Hello beautiful human.
Welcome.
You are so welcome here and I am so happy to welcome you back to the third part in our little mini course that looks at longing and sorrow as a practice.
So we've spoken a little bit upon longing and sorrow and how this is very much part of our human experience and it might be a part of our human experience that causes some unease,
It's uncomfortable,
It's heavy and how a lot of that is tied up in the fact that everything is impermanent,
Nothing stays the same and this can be really difficult for us to deal with.
So in the first week we made our altar to impermanence and again I'm curious how is your altar doing?
And last week we did a practice on self-compassion,
Quite a powerful practice and I know that you do so many things for other people.
You do so many things for your friends and your family and your colleagues and your community and for the earth and you're probably a very understanding,
Compassionate person to other people but are you able to accept that yourself and that is often harder for many different reasons.
So this week our practice is lighting a candle for that which is too heavy to carry and the candle is really a miniature representation of a fire and so if we think about how we make a fire,
We take the tree and we cut the tree down and we put the logs in the fire and we set them alight and they burn and they burn and they burn and then they are transmuted into ash and then the ash in turn will be returned to the earth and the ash will offer nourishment to the earth to grow more trees and so fire as an element is really one of alchemy and transformation and while cutting down a tree and alighting a fire might be a little bit beyond most people on a daily basis.
I don't know maybe it's not but for most of us it is.
A candle is something that is more accessible and so if we think about what a candle symbolizes,
Candles are used in many many ways.
So if we think about the symbolism of a candle in art,
A burning candle might symbolize the passing of time or a candle that has just gone out might symbolize death or the afterlife and if we look at different religions that also use candles so Buddhists often have candles on shrines and this is a mark of respect and it's also evoking this remembrance that everything is impermanent because the candle won't burn forever right and that everything changes and the Sufis use the candles symbolically to represent the divine light or the light of guidance from the divine and in the Quran the candle is sometimes referred to as the divine candle or the light of God and these ideas of light and holiness are also used in Christianity and so there's a lot tied up in what a candle symbolizes and it might symbolize different things to you and the invitation in this practice is to light a candle for that which is too heavy to carry and sorrow and longing and grief and these heavy emotions that sometimes they are heavy and sometimes they feel too heavy and we feel like we can't carry them or we can't feel them and so the lighting of a candle in this practice is an acknowledgement that some things are heavy and that's okay and that we can invite self-compassion into our physical bodies and we can do something symbolically and with ritual that acknowledges this and you might find a way of incorporating this practice over the next week into your daily routine perhaps you have a nighttime routine already and you might be able to slip in you know lighting a candle as a remembrance that some things are heavy and that's okay or it might be that you're lighting a candle in remembrance of someone and that's something that we often do as well right funerals and transitions often marked by candlelight and it could be that you place your candle by your altar or you could have it somewhere else so again it's really finding what works for you what's going to work for you over the course of the next week maybe you have an evening bath every day and that would be a good time for you to incorporate this lighting of the candle so lighting a candle for that which is too heavy to carry and by lighting the candle really you're shining some light onto onto these feelings and onto these themes these broader themes it's a lightning candle for that which is too heavy to carry which is a remembrance and an acknowledgement that some things do not feel easy in the body and so you might ponder now if you have a candle already and it doesn't have to be like some super ornate fancy you know it's got dried pure a pot puree is that how you say it tried flowers and the top of the candle and crystals and you know it doesn't have to be like a five-wick huge candle monstrosity it can simply be a tea light and actually I use tea lights quite a lot so if I know that I have a few hours before I'm gonna get ready for bed I'm gonna be doing something quite a restful position I might burn a tea light and I might let it burn until I go to sleep so it doesn't have to be you know extravagant it can be something very simplistic and so this is the invitation for you beautiful people if you are called to so lighting a candle for that which is too heavy to carry and it might be that you are in a position where you could actually have a fire you could have a fire outside of the garden or you know you've got an appropriate place to burn something bigger than a candle and that's definitely something that you could explore but a candle is something that we can bring into our homes into our routines and is a powerful symbol ritual and a metaphor for our sorrow and for our longing thank you so much beautiful people for again your courageous hearts and the fire in your belly that is lighting your way on this path of practicing longing and sorrow and I'm wishing you a beautiful illuminated week that's full of ease
