INNER FIRE

THIS ESSAY IS ON THE INNER FIRE.

Your Inner Fire

You might have come across a video, movie, story, podcast, socials post or written text before, in which I refer to ‘our Inner Fire’. This essay is dedicated to provide you with a clear understanding of what this ‘Inner Fire’ refers to exactly.Where it comes from, what it's inspired by, how it fits in THE MAKING OF YOUR DREAM as one of the key components, and how to potentially use it as a tool to ‘realize’ Your Dream*.To know what Your Dream is I suggest you read the essay; THE MAKING OF MY DREAM.

Our Inner Fire, a spark from the heart and the key to LIQUID GOLD.

Storytelling is an ancient survival tool, ingrained in the DNA of all humans.

The inspiration.In the fall of 2023 I visited a good friend from Lithuania who was living in the Netherlands for a few months. For privacy's sake, we will refer to him as ‘Black Bear’. A strong, healthy, fit and clear-minded 39-year-old man with a black beard and long black hair. We met for a day and went on a walk to the forest and hills surrounding Nijmegen. But ended up going on a journey. A journey into the depth of our soul in conversation. My friend Black Bear was in the middle of the darkness. Lost and in a lacking sense of direction in his life. After just discovering things about himself he did not directly speak of to me, leaving him with many questions on what to do and where to go.The last moment we had contact before this day, he was sitting at the fire next to his little hut in the woods of Lithuania, looking at the stars, debating if he should get the plane to the Netherlands the next morning or not.He did, and I’m happy he did so, because the next day was life-changing, or at least life-enriching, for the both of us.

From a young age I am a visually oriented person. My mind is conditioned to create visual metaphors naturally in order to remember things and categorize them. When it comes to complex philosophies, concepts and deep mental emotional experiences it's of great usage not only for myself to understand the rich inner world of life experience as a human, but also to explain it to others. Even so much that whenever others are trying to figure out and formulate their own deep inner experiences, my soul is inspired to help them with my visual mind to ‘represent’ it with the power of ‘imagination’. Often not only helping others to express what they feel, but also to understand it better even and create distance from it whenever needed to have a bird view. Visualizing helps to navigate and find solutions in the imaginary landscape of the metaphor. In this case, the vision of an inner fire keeping us warm, during the darkest times of our life came to me as we waited for the traffic light to turn green.

My words hit like an arrow striking the heart of Black Bear and he introduced to me his most favorite word of all time; ‘Kindling’ he whispered with an introverted, yet excited tone looking at the sidewalk.‘I forgot to kindle my inner fire. That’s it!’. And so we sat down at his fire. We transported from the traffic lights and car roads to the dark open fields next to his fireplace and the rest of the walk through the hills of Nijmegen, we spent traveling through the visual metaphor.

The metaphor evolved in a dialogue of questions and answers, gradually mapping out the total landscape surrounding the fireplace to kindle.

The visual metaphor stayed with us both in our lives after that day. The power of contextualizing one’s life through visuals and storytelling has not only proven to be of great help navigating challenges in my own life, but has also proven to be of value to others.It's not rare that friends as well as strangers find me at times of help and guidance reconnecting to a sense of direction, purpose and value in their life. Two times I suggested to use the visual metaphor of the Inner Fire. One time in a guided meditation, and another time in an art-therapeutical exercise. Both with great result, helping to ground into the right state of mind. Unlocking the ability to contextualize, relate and have agency over challenging times in life.

Some metaphors stick with us. Evolving and expanding in complexity and usability to different situations in life. The Inner Fire is one of those. For a year it went with me everywhere I journeyed to, being tested and applied in a wide variety of contexts and dialogue with different kinds of people eventually becoming an essential element relating to the original visual metaphor of LIQUID GOLD. Together these two are the powerhouse to guide anyone towards the ‘realization’ of THE MAKING OF YOUR DREAM’.

Fire.The so-called spirit of fire as an archetype is very well described in the science of Alchemy.Fire is the first element of 4 (5 if you include the ether); it’s the spark, the idea, the gift of inspiration, passion, motivation, it's action and aggression.To contextualize the element fire I would like to apply the alchemical transformative journey of the 4 elements applying it to the process of a sculpture development.Fire is the idea and raw inspiration, we are more motivated than ever and feel passion from head to toes. We feel the need to start inspired more by feeling than a clear image of what we are looking to create. The next stage is water. It’s the element of creativity. We start to explore the idea like a river in a riverbed. Trying out materials, sizes, tools, methods. Water is emotion, flow, sensation, feeling, creativity, exploration, relation. We explore the physicality of the earth and what we can do with the project in real life. Then water becomes Air; the archetype of the mind, the idea, the water has absorbed all the experience from the experimentation phase, now it's ready to evaporate and crystallize into a clear idea. We reflect, we rationalize and plan ahead before we enter the final stage. Earth is the production stage. We’ve planned the project, know what to do, what not to do. What we want, and what we cannot do according to the limitations and conditions of the physical world. Once it has become earth, it has a life on its own. The sculpture is made. We have given birth to it. It can exist outside of our heartfelt passion, creative emotion, or rational mind. Now it lives in the physical material world for anyone to touch, see and experience without you needing to be present.

Throughout all of history, fire has helped humans be human. Not only in the primal physical sense but also the spiritual, mental and emotional dimensions of being human. In shamanism, fire is a sacred element of purification. Casting away evil spirits, and cleansing anything unholy. We have always had a very deep and long cultural, societal and evolutionary relationship with fire. A place of safety, community, a ceremonial and sacred place for music, initiations, and wisdom shared through the ancient craft of storytelling.It hurts my heart knowing that there are countless children and even adults in modern-day society, that have never ever had the foundational experience of sitting next to the fire in the darkness of the night. Knowing what it means to have an active conscious relationship with an external source of heat during cold days. Reminding us how magical and grateful it is to be alive under difficult conditions. To have a place where everyone gathers for no other reason than being warm. Embracing and accepting one another’s presence, setting differences aside. Even inspiring us to not let differences get in our way during the day, for we know, we will have to sit next to one another at night.

The Fire has been taken from us in this world by top-down governmental regulations. And with it, a spirit of passion, action, righteousness and hearty aggression has fallen asleep in our being.

Yet, I found myself many times at places while traveling as a busker, where the spirit of the fire was more than present in a non-physical way. The spirit was there in the midst of all the people. So much even that it would not be rare for someone to mention ‘the only thing that’s missing here is a fire in the middle’. Even though the physical fire has been taken from us, the spirit of the fire lives within us. But only if we take care of it.

KINDLING THE INNER FIRE.From the moment we are born, we are given a metaphysical fireplace (meaning it’s not a real fireplace but essentially an imaginary one that has effect on our real life experience).As a child this fire is bright, full of light and warmth. It keeps us light, and it’s not a coincidence that children are often referred to as ‘pure’. The fire within them is constantly purifying them. Keeping negativity, bad spirits, worry and depression far away naturally. It’s only as we grow older, that we need to learn how to KINDLE our fire. To kindle our fire, we need kindling tools. One starts with the hands, reorganizing the wood, carefully touching it with our fingers. In this time we learn about our body. How does it work? How does it relate to the outside world? When do I burn myself and how do I manage my inner fire well?

During this time, we will be confronted with a lot of external stressors such as metaphorical wind and rain.

We develop and explore new kindling tools, enabling us to kindle the fire with more care. Our relationship with our inner fire becomes more refined and conscious. We discover what kindling tools help the fire grow and glow best, keeping us warm. These kindling tools are metal forceps, metal poking sticks among other things in the metaphysical world of the visual metaphor. But in the real world they might be totally different tools and even activities. It might be drawing, or cooking, reading or running. Everyone has a different set of kindling tools to explore, gather and optimize for ourselves. And every time we use the tool, our inner fire heats up. We get warm, we get calm, harmonized, inspired, excited, fulfilled, and grounded.

Just like fire has become a recreational activity in our modern-day society, kindling our fire and our kindling tools are often also categorized as hobby activities. Few people dare to make their passion into their work, which leaves a dangerously great gap of neglecting our inner fire once we lose time, sight and motivation for our hobbies. Eventually resulting in an inability to enjoy daily life and getting stuck in mental emotional ‘flatland’ with all the desperate attempts to compensate for this state of being which you can fill in for yourself.Some are even more challenged in this life. They have not had the opportunity, environment or situation to go explore kindling tools as they grew up. Most kindling tools are creative activities, and our current education system does not support that, nor value it on its relevant importance for a holistically healthy lifestyle.The people who are a victim to this conditioning, grow up with a fire that died right before they entered puberty. The fire collapsed to a little pile of ashes with only some small glowing coals craving oxygen.What happens is they take a small candle, and go explore the world with it. Forgetting about their own authentic fire, finding fires of other people. Joining them and hopping from place to place without any clear sense of direction. Along the way they find a small candle to hold in front of their eyes. Keeping it and its little warmth very close to their face. But once they enter the ‘dark woods’ they will see nothing else but the light that’s right in front of their face. Everything further than two meters has become black as the sky without stars. Desperation and a lack of perspective let alone a sense of direction occurs. The best thing to do is kill that little candle that is blinding and numbing your vision with its false light keeping you warm and dependent. For in the true darkness, we learn to see. Our being adapts, our vision expands, and we have to trust in our intuition. Eventually finding our good old neglected fireplace, remembering who we are, what our passion is, what keeps us warm and what we are here to do. …which leaves a dangerously great gap of neglecting our inner fire once we lose time, sight and motivation for our hobbies. Eventually resulting in an inability to enjoy daily life and getting stuck in mental emotional ‘flatland’ with all the desperate attempts to compensate for this state of being, which you can fill in for yourself.Some are even more challenged in this life. They have not had the opportunity, environment or situation to go explore kindling tools as they grew up. Most kindling tools are creative activities, and our current education system does not support that, nor value it on its relevant importance for a holistically healthy lifestyle.The people who are a victim to this conditioning, grow up with a fire that died right before they entered puberty. The fire collapsed to a little pile of ashes with only some small glowing coals craving oxygen.What happens is they take a small candle, and go explore the world with it. Forgetting about their own authentic fire, finding fires of other people. Joining them and hopping from place to place without any clear sense of direction. Along the way they find a small candle to hold in front of their eyes. Keeping it and its little warmth very close to their face. But once they enter the ‘dark woods’ they will see nothing else but the light that’s right in front of their face. Everything further than two meters has become black as the sky without stars. Desperation and a lack of perspective, let alone a sense of direction, occurs. The best thing to do is kill that little candle that is blinding and numbing your vision with its false light, keeping you warm and dependent. For in the true darkness, we learn to see. Our being adapts, our vision expands, and we have to trust in our intuition. Eventually finding our good old neglected fireplace, remembering who we are, what our passion is, what keeps us warm and what we are here to do.

This is the basic setup of the inner fire.The terrain of the visual metaphor can be and has been expanded to a wide range of variations and, so to say; side quests. I invite you to fantasize on more variations relevant to your personal situation with friends or family or contact me to have a creative dialogue. Some examples to think in the right direction: what if we run out of firewood? What does that represent in real life? What is firewood for you?What if someone is so greedy that they get lost in the woods hoarding firewood, forgetting to kindle their own inner fire?What happens when someone joins your fireplace?When have you joined someone’s fireplace and how did that affect your own inner fire when you came back to it?Who are people that know how to help you kindle your fire? And who are people that come and sit next to your fire occasionally?What are the conversations you’ve had with yourself or others sitting next to the intimate space of your inner fire sometime?

The Inner Fire metaphor is one I apply directly and indirectly in most of my art and narratives. Every medium allows one to explain and explore a different aspect of it, all adding to the holistic usability of it in life. Have fun exploring and recognizing it! It just might spark your fire, for it all comes from the big one I kindle in my heart.

INNER FIRE AND LIQUID GOLD

As last, it’s important to highlight the relationship between the Inner Fire and LIQUID GOLD.In case this is the first time you hear the term LIQUID GOLD: the definition of it is; the fragile energy in the smallest moments of connection with strangers, making for the true value of life.LIQUID GOLD is the energy to follow if one wants to ‘realize’ their DREAM—meaning to first understand, as well as cultivate, their main objective in life. It’s the authentic ‘feeling of our dream’ as our personal northern star to follow, rather than the image of our dream to chase.The characteristic of the INNER FIRE is that it's something we do for ourselves. It makes us warm, no matter the weather, condition or circumstance. It’s an unconditional holistic medicine tool we own. This fire is something people tend to feel somehow. It works like a real fire, and once you’ve got it burning well in a public space, you’ll find people in need of light, warmth and inspiration with a strange attraction to your presence and what you do. No matter if it’s something to share like street music or food, or if it’s reading a book on a bench in a park. The fire within you is like a safe space for people to come close to you, for they feel a sense of inner warmth, love and hospitality.This inner fire of yours then melts an energy I call LIQUID GOLD. GOLD in alchemical science is the highest and most precious achievable state of matter. The practice of Alchemy is aimed at cultivating inner gold through different practices.This GOLD can be seen as the essence of your true authentic self—also referred to as your soul—which essentially is a pure expression of love.Once that inner fire is burning, and we get together around it, the GOLD starts melting and we feel it in the interaction and reflection with others around us: an honest, true, authentic and fully present state of being in the moment we share with others.

This is as far as I will go in the definition of THE INNER FIRE in this essay.Feel free to search on INNER FIRE on any of my platforms to get sidenotes, sidestories, projects, and even guidance to reconnect with your own to help everyone express their inner LIQUID GOLD as much as possible in this beautiful and magical world.

Thanks for your presence.

All the love,All the essence,Ian Merkoulov.