Flames

Life itself – our life as it moves through experience leaving only memories; the mystery of consciousness underlying our personality. Flames can also indicate passion or anger. See: fire; candle; fireman.

Although a flame is very real you cannot grasp it. In a similar way you can’t grasp your own life or consciousness. So flames sometimes show the burning flame of personal awareness that leaves only ashes behind. Flames can also be an expression of love, passion or anger.

Sometimes a flame, a passion, a love, is passed on through the generations.

Flames can be warming or destructive, as can be your life. So a flame thrower could indicate destructive emotions directed at someone.

People like Victor, the young boy raised by animals in France, and studied by Dr. Itard, never attain self-awareness. Lacking human contact in childhood they do not develop a human personality. They have never been handed that mysterious gift that transforms them from an animal lacking self-awareness into a person. The absence of human contact meant they were never given that precious mystery that constitutes the human soul – i.e. conscious decision making and self-awareness..

This mysterious gift from one human to another is often symbolised by a flame or light. We are given a soul by those who share themselves with us. Perhaps through their act of accepting us a fellow human. This divine spark, like the flame from another lit candle, becomes ours personally as we live our life. We can pass that gift on to others by letting our light, or flame, fall into their lives. The Christian mystery of baptism is when we are ritually given a name and are accepted as a human person in the society of our birth. Of course this is a formalised dramatisation of the mysterious process of passing on the flame of self awareness – the soul. But the lit candle, lighting others is a beautiful symbol of this. The flame itself may represent the life, the mystery which, although we make it ours by living it, is beyond us, is universal, like the flame that can light a thousand other candles. It remains individual and collective all at the same time.

That mysterious flame is as old as human beings. It is a mystery no one really understands yet. So we represent it in religion with various symbols. Nevertheless it is the common daily bread of our life experience. If some care not to acknowledge that flame and its strangeness that is their loss. They never kneel before it and bathe in its depths, and gain from it the sharing in its eternal life. For beyond our personal colouring of the flame, it has a universal life, touching all beings, gathering them into itself. Without some wonder in us we never share, through it, the community with all other beings. This is the meaning of the sacrament of communion using the bread and wine.

Example: Now we are very close. His shirt is off. He has beautiful golden soft skin. I want to caress it. I’m laying very close to him. He says, “I see your candle. Is it the one I gave you?” I look at it. It’s a beautiful candle, a soft fragrance, pretty color, with lovely colored flames. I say, “No I burned your candle. It’s all gone. But I got this one because it’s like your candle and I liked it.” I am embarrassed because I am indirectly telling him I like him.

Flames coming from the head: We all have areas of the brain that are seldom developed – you know the old story of only 10% of our brain is used. The flames show that in some way you are awakening those higher brain functions. You may at times while awake feel a tickling or tingling feeling on the top of your head, and that may be a sign of the awakening.

Idioms: Baptism of fire; between two fires; fire up; go through fire and water; play with fire; under fire; add fuel to the flames; old flame; the old illness/love flared up.

Useful questions and hints:

Is this flame acting as light, as warmth or destruction?

In what was is the flame being used?

How am I responding to the flame?

See Colour and Energy in Dreams – Clicking On – The Dream as a Code