The Consuming Fire of Spirit - The Dragon Who Breathes the Fire of Life

“If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.”

— Chinese Proverb (1)

In Chinese and Japanese lore, the goddess Kuan Yin is representative of the Divine Feminine. She is the female Bodhisattva of the Buddha. She is also the goddess of the sea. She represents the power of all that is the feminine in our lives, including emotion, healing, romantic passion, depth of wisdom and birth to life. As the Eternal Mother, Kuan Yin is often depicted holding a child in her arms, much like our other feminine deities, including the Mother Mary, Isis, Hera, Demeter, and of course Gaia, who is often shown as a pregnant deity holding the world in her belly.

What is different about Kuan Yin is that she is the representation of light and compassion, dressed in white, flowing robes and crowned with a veil, much like the halos over all of the divine beings in all beliefs. She is also kin to Shakti, Pavarti and Sita, the highest maternal goddesses of the Hindu pantheon and special wives to the gods. In the study of the Ascended Masters, Kuan Yin as the Mother of Compassion is known as “she who harkens to the cries of the world.” (2)

What is significant about her character is that she is the original “mother of dragons” (which is an excellent use of character depicted on the famous book and television series, Game of Thrones). Kuan Yin is often depicted in art riding on the back of a sea dragon that rides through ocean waves. She calmly surfs the dragon, which represents raw potentiality, terrifying transformation and death of human negativity and evil. The waves represent the overwhelming emotions of grief, loss, pain, renewal and release. As life gives us its storms of fear, we call upon Kuan Yin for her compassion to overcome the challenges we face before we drown. The dichotomy of a dragon of the sea that breathes the fire of transformation within its core is what we face every day of our lives: the choice to be overcome or bury all emotion or to face the fire and ride the surf of awakening.

So with this kind of awakening being so hostile and painful, why would we want to go through it at all? Well, often as in my case, it was a necessary life process given to me, not something I particularly “asked” to experience. But I do realize that those of us that are awakened are in the positions of changing the world. We couldn't do what we do if we didn't face the fire of transformation. Dragon energy represents infinity, longevity, wisdom, the depths of the Universe, and rising from the ashes. The Phoenix is the feminine Eastern dragon of rebirth, corresponding to the masculine water dragon that we see Kuan Yin riding. Phoenix energy is pure death and rebirth—out of the ashes. This kind of transformation is even more striking to those of us that have taken it upon ourselves to face our Dragon energies.

What transforms us into Dragons who embody Spirit? Why are we different than other spirit creatures? I wouldn’t want to run into a Tiger spirit in the dark of the forest. Nor would I want to be confronted with the giant Whale spirit that dwells in the darkness of Neptune’s playgrounds. Yet Dragon spirit appears as the most lethal and difficult to master. Recently I have been asked, “How does one become a dragon?” This is not an easy, how-to manual of steps to finding one’s inner dragon. However, if we examine the characteristics that dragons possess, we can see how Dragon spirit has manifested in our own lives.

The first of Dragon’s characteristics is fire. Fire represents emotions such as anger, passion and rage. It comes from deep within, often associated with lungs and heart, the fourth chakra. Fire also is colored red, orange and yellow, tapping into the lower chakras of physical, emotional and relationship change. Around a campfire, we huddle and sing and cook and invoke sexuality. Winged insects are drawn to the flame. The candle is a fire that illuminates a space and allows us to see. So if you incorporate these elements of fire into your Dragon transformation, you are invoking the passions within you that radiate heat, light and energy into the darkness. You are also awakening the pleasures and provocations of relationships, from the depths of lust to the fury of facing one’s enemies. Fire is painful, burns flesh and purifies soul. Witches were burned at the stake because men feared their power. Dragons too have the element of invoking fear due to fire. This is the awakening of Dragon spirit.

When you face your demons, examine where your anger is focused or confront your inner passions, you are invoking Dragon spirit. When you are feared by others, you are emanating that spirit. How about when you are protecting your children or have an overwhelming sense of compassion? These too are invocations of Dragon spirit. Each has its own resonation, its own flame color, but they are all manifestations of the depth of wisdom dwelling within.

Dragon also has scales and claws and often is depicted with a vicious tail. These elements are representation of the armor of Dragon spirit. We have the ability to protect our massive hearts. We can use our scales to reflect energies of those who want to control or hurt or steal from our deep fire within. We can pierce the armor of our enemies and oppressors with our powerful claws. And we can knock over those who fear our power with the force of our tails. Invocation of Dragon spirit's armor helps you go within when you feel attacked or take the time to stalk the enemy within that is eating away at your soul. When working with Dragon spirit, remember you are not alone. It is a powerful message for those who have lost a spouse or a child. Our scales may appear to keep us from being "warm" to the outside world. But we are in this together, Dragons, and even in our solitude we have a clan of souls to draw upon in our journeys to wisdom.

More powerful yet are the teeth and jaws of Dragon. There is a saying “for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup” that is a description of how we can use our Dragon teeth to swallow our enemies and those who want to come after us with pitchforks. Fear is the Dragon’s favorite food. We eat our fear in order to transform it. The confrontation of Dragon’s fiery breath and massive teeth can make anyone tremble. So the lesson we learn by invoking the physical characteristics of Dragon is that we can become a greater presence if we fight the powers that be, invoke restorative justice, and destroy those characteristics even within ourselves that limit our potentiality, such as cowardice, the inability to see the truth and the pride of haughty individuality (i.e. narcissism). Better yet, these transformative teeth give us the sustenance to survive the explosion of ended relationships. We can eat those false expectations and bitter words that were shot like arrows into our massive scaled frames. Use those teeth to remove the arrows and swallow the darkness. Transform those experiences into the pure light of compassion--let Kuan Yin ride upon the waves of your memories.

Many dragons also have a powerful similarity in strength—either a dragon has wings or the ability to fly through water at rapid speeds. Whether your Dragon spirit soars into the Universe and astral projects around the stars or it can dive into the darkest depths of oceans and surface many continents away in record-breaking time, all Dragon spirits have power. This kind of power is exactly why others become terrified when you transform. This is gut-wrenching, heart-pounding power that makes any Halloween costume appear cheesy in comparison, no matter how dark and scary. Dragon spirit power uses all its characteristics and gifts to manifest this atomic energy into an explosion of devastating proportions. Invoking this strength of character often manifests into gentleness, so don't limit your power by creating power just for power's sake. Harness your wings and soar into higher consciousness.

This is important to know because it can also unintentionally burn those around us. Often we don’t mean to hurt our loved ones, but in a rage of Dragon fire, untamed and unchecked, we can destroy those souls that mean the most to us. Those that fear us often have a different version of a story to tell about our manifestations. On the other hand, sometimes the fear-invoking power is a way for others to blame us for their insecurities and inabilities. We must remain true to our power and harness it with wisdom to separate those explosions of rage and the true transformation of fire that burns those out of our lives that have taken a lesser path.

When you choose to take the path of the Dragon, be humbled and ask Kuan Yin for her unconditional compassion. Find ways to breathe the power of fire into your relationships, your children, your work and your passions. Make a safe place to learn about your transformation so you can heal from your scars and wound and invoke your beautiful scales to protect your heart. Breathe deep into the fire of meditation. Fly high into the realms of possibility. Use your speed and power to dive deep into the oceans of emotional healing. And when you become the Dragon spirit, look at yourself in the mirror or the water below as you fly over it and grin with those massive teeth as you prepare to swallow those fears around you. And we will all ascend to the mountaintops and into the ocean depths together. Just look for others who radiate with light. We will all come together when we are needed. Don't be afraid. Now is the time to manifest your Dragon spirit.

Quotes from the following pages:
(1) http://personaltao.com/services/school/
(2) http://www.lightascension.com/arts/Ascended%20Master.htm

Meditation on Doubt - Why People Don't Want Us To Be Joyful

This morning I was meditating and led my thoughts and studies randomly to the book Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch. I am a proponent that all works, whether claimed to be a direct line from God (Divine Source, Universe, Fill-In-The-Blank) are truly the experience of the writer. We are ALL here to have our OWN experiences. Therefore, in my meditation and reading I have found that I had a basic question I had of my Divine Creator this morning: Why do people want to rob us of our joy?

The answer is simple yet profound: Once we have the concept, enlightenment and revelation that all our experience is allowed and our life is Divine, those that do not have what we have become jealous and become our mirror catalyst to show us doubt. Here is what I read:

"...the ultimate outcome is assured. And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt. It is this doubt about the ultimate outcome that has created your greatest enemy, which is fear. For if you doubt outcome, then you must doubt Creator--you must doubt God. And if you doubt God, you must live in fear and guilt all your life. If you doubt God's intentions--and God's ability to produce the ultimate result--then how can you ever relax? How can you ever truly find peace?"

This quest for peace therefore is fueled by the question of whether our path is consistent of allowing our Divine self to set intentions, to MAKE our own world, to connect with the Universe to choose to find happiness daily. When you wake up in the morning, what do you do? Do you first make coffee like I do? Do you lucid dream and write down your intentions of the day? Do you struggle to get up and several hours later you finally allow your brain to engage in the daily regime? Or do you arise and thank the Source for your life?

When you go through your day, do you have a sense of peace?

Once you ask yourself that question, then what is your next step? Who do you engage in to find community in your day? Your spouse or partner, your children, your coworkers, the attendant at the gas station or at Starbucks? Who do you first speak with during the day? And my question to you is this: how do you feel about those with whom you encounter?

The reason I ask this is because they are a mirror--do they give you grief, apathy, patience, anger, fear, resentment, affection, or love? What emotion do you see in those you encounter? Write them down. Go through a list of who you have seen today and write down what responses you have received during the day with them. Are you receiving more positive-based responses or negative ones? This is a crucial question because if there is an imbalance in what you are seeing in other people, then do you have doubt about your own joy???

The next part of Walsch's writing states that if you choose to live your life as the Buddha did or as Jesus did or "as did every saint you have ever idolized", those around you will respond accordingly. Here's what he wrote:

"Yet, as with most of those saints, people would not understand you. And when you tried to explain your sense of peace, your joy in life, your inner ecstasy, they would listen to your words, but not hear them. They would try to repeat your words, but would add to them. They would wonder how you could have what they cannot find. And then they would grow jealous. Soon jealousy would turn to rage, and in their anger they would try to convince you that it is you who do not understand God."

This is where the doubt comes in. When you encounter others, when you listen to your own inner voice, do you doubt your importance? Do you doubt why you are here? Do you feel disconnected or disjointed or lonely? Or have you made the choice daily to seek the Divine in your life and thus you encounter others who do not understand you? Do you find yourself attracting those who criticize your motives when you only want to be living a godly life?

Walsch continues: "And if they were unsuccessful at tearing you from your joy, they would seek to harm you, so enormous would be their rage. And when you told them it does not matter, that even death cannot interrupt your joy, nor change your truth, they would surely kill you. Then, when they saw the peace with which you accepted death, they would call you saint and love you again. For it is the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which they value most."

When you went through puberty (assuming you have already gone through it), remember those feelings of doubt about yourself? Did I hit a nerve? I sure remember feeling insecure. I had no idea how to live and be a part of the community of other puberty-experiences classmates and still survive life with my parents who couldn't possibly understand how I was feeling and my siblings who teased me relentlessly (their job). I was constantly in a state of self-doubt. But in that living, I found solace in my spirituality. I discovered that I had a reprieve from my lack of self-esteem by placing my faith in a Divine Source. When we are young, we truly believe only the Divine has peace and joy and we will have to live here to suffer and to struggle. In our quest to mature, we eventually come to one of two conclusions: We are disappointed in life and we are unhappy when others find peace or we realize that we are here to be on a quest to change the doubt we are riddled with during the formative years.

So ask yourself today: which side of the fence are you on? Are you the one seeking joy or are you so unhappy or fearful that you seek to destroy the joy in another? Is someone in your life making you so miserable that you cannot be happy? Or are you working toward that peace in your life and another is trying to rob you of that peace? If that is the case, think about this--maybe you are on the right track and you just don't see that those who attempt to steal your serenity as a mirror in which you can find an area in your own life to repair your own balance.

This challenge appeared recently because we had a roommate who spent every waking moment attempting to steal the joy from each other member of our household. If my partner and I expressed love and affection, she would take us aside individually and badmouth our partner to us. I began to doubt my partner, my joy, my peace and my life path. So did he. So did our other housemate, who was led to believe she too was not on the right path. This person who worked so hard to steal our serenity was finally asked to leave. Her response for an entire week was violent outrage, anger, passive aggressive theft and actions that attempted to "push our buttons" and regain the control she doesn't have within herself. She even resorted to lying, claiming we were aggressive, using substances (which she told all the neighbors), and we were preventing her from getting her belongings (which was just the opposite: we were trying to get them out as fast as possible.)

This lesson has brought me back to meditation and to center. I am grateful for the mirror of her doubt and unhappiness because it has given me the realization that I am on the right path! Here is what I have discovered:

1. We are connected to a Divine that wants us to be connected with the Collective Conscious.

2. We are meant to be here to have a peaceful, joyful, thriving experience.

3. We are meant to commune with those around us who also have a connection with the Divine.

4. At some point on our journey, we may have a revelation that leads us to internal peace and thus we are less and less affected by the doubt of those around us as we once were. Trust me, if you have not yet experienced that revelation, we definitely need to talk.

5. The connection we have with our Divine becomes internalized. We thus realize the Source is not apart from us, but is within us!

6. We recognize that those that have never quite found their connection to the Source to be internal will continue to try to take that Source from those that have internalized it. We face others around us that want to hurt us to get at the Source they cannot believe is attainable within. We call these people psychic vampires. Many of them are within our own community and most often they are found in positions of power because they believe power over others will relieve their doubt and their lack of connection to the Divine.

7. Our role on this planet is therefore to learn to connect with the Divine, connect with others who thrive on the same path, and be as honest and open to oneself and others in order to show our Divine by example. We only have to be aware of it, be conscious of our choice, and then be content with our path. It's not an easy task, nor is it insurmountable. All we have to do is take our path one step at a time.

So do you still doubt why you are here? Did I answer the question well? I truly believe others rob us of our joy so that they can continue to live in a belief system, in an illusion, that allows us to keep the "status quo." The oppressors want to stay oppressive rather than be oppressed. Those with affluence want to remain affluent. The lifestyles of the rich and famous teach us that we will only be happy with recognition and material possessions. And those who use their beliefs to control others do so because truly they feel out of control in some way. This is a given.

Challenges are hard and learning from growing is most often painful. We don't want to feel pain. So we run from it or try to give it to someone else. It is easier to doubt our perfect creation rather than to allow the Creator to work through us. It is also a pattern that those that are enlightened (above referenced Buddha and Jesus being examples) are historically persecuted. So of course we don't want to experience this kind of destruction.

So I implore you to allow yourself to take in what has been given to you in this lifetime. Be aware of everything around you and how you feel when you are with each person. Take your own inventory of how you treat other people. And create a plan. And finally, ACT upon it. Don't just talk about your connection with the Source, seek it.

Remember that when someone tries to rob you of your joy, you are already whole and they need to find their own path. They won't need your serenity because they have it within themselves. So remember to focus on your own guaranteed outcome. And be willing to share what you learn with others. And if you continue to doubt yourself in any way, there are many of us who will remind you what you are meant to be and do.

"The beginning is God. The end is action. Action is God creating--or God experienced." - Neale Donald Walsch. Thank you again for writing what we already know.