Once you’ve been burned, it’s hard to come close to the fire.  There is light and warmth but also the danger of being badly injured or consumed.  The metaphor is very appropriate, because it captures something crucial: why something we want so dearly and enjoy so much causes fear.  Pain creates a deep groove in the mind, tracks the mind will follow again and again if we allow it.  Then, as we come closer to the possiblity of having that same experience, the body trembles, anticipating another round of pain.

Of the many strategies for coping with such fear, there is only one that cuts to the core for me.  I can tell myself that everything will work out, and I believe that, and I can try to manage each situation with greater wisdom, and that is something I value, and I can take a deep breath, and all these things ease my mind for a time, but none of them dissolve my fears the way love does.

Fear requires a closed heart, and love opens it, and when love opens the heart, fear is impossible.  Fear balloons as one’s self-focus becomes more intense, and fear also encourages a stronger self-focus, so there is a feedback loop.  You concentrate on your individual survival, your own bodily integrity, and anxiety rises and spreads like a mold.  Then, anxiety shifts attention further towards one’s own survival, and this changes how everything looks.  We start to classify things into two categories: safe and dangerous.  As our mind becomes occupied by concerns about our self and potential dangers, it’s easy to forget to love.

So I take a moment and remind myself that I’m not the only soul with fears and dreams.  I’m not the only soul who needs love and compassion and tenderness.  Shifting the focus ever so slightly from self to other, like a crack in the curtains, a ray of light pushes through, so warm and beautiful, and it opens my heart.  Individual survival ceases to matter; danger ceases to matter.  It ceases to matter, not because I no longer care for my own well being, but because the danger turns out to be an illusion, and I find well being, paradoxically, in the unconditional wish to give it.

I run into the fire.  Although it seems foolish at first, somehow the love coming out of my heart forms a mist around my body, and I don’t get burned.  Instead, the fire moves straight into my heart and becomes even more love, until I think I’m going to burst, and the beauty of it makes me weepy with gratitude.

Our fundamental need is not to find some perfect person to satisfy our heart… but for our heart to open… and to stay open, unwaveringly.  Whoever can enable that in another, what a blessing they are.  What a beautiful blessing.

So why run into the fire?  Do it out of love, the way you would rush into a burning building to save a child.  You don’t think about getting singed.  All you think about is the beautiful child inside, and nothing else matters.  In that love, courage comes unbidden.