Have you seen a wildfire burning in a field or forest. A single spark ignites a fire that engulfs everything in its path. Furthermore, the spreading flames seem impossible to stop. And, this destructive pattern is what happens to thoughts and emotions within an unaware person. Therefore, conscious presence and living in unattachment are essential in smothering these out-of-control thoughts and feelings.
Mental and emotional wildfires usually consume your presence primarily due to unawareness and conditional behavior. Let’s use an everyday occurring example to illustrate. You experience a moment of serenity and nothing, not even your own mind, distracts or burdens you. Suddenly, a spark as a thought ignites in your mind. This thought kindles another thought and another. How is this possible? You are no longer at peace with yourself. Now, agitation and confusion consume your presence of being. Thoughts burn out-of-control within you.
You ask yourself how this can happen. And, you assume that work, a traffic jam or a crying baby cause your frustration and lack of conscious presence. But you should not base any experience on what you think in that moment. Instead, how you experience your own presence decides how you will live. This involves how you observe the moment, how you respond and how you behave. Conscious presence and unattachment to the wildfire of thoughts shift your state of being away from the mind.
Your Unaware Presence Ignites a Thought Wildfire
Confusion, anxiety and fear are prime examples that ignite the fire of thoughts. These traits, due to basic and conditional behavior symptoms, are usually not noticeable to you. Fear, also in example, ignites into a wildfire due to thoughts of past, present or future illusional mind scenarios. Here likewise, you usually do not notice this mind behavior as it literally consumes the presence within being. Thoughts and emotions literally inflame your presence until you are able to consciously observe your role in this wildfire.
Then, the fires cease and you experience freshness and spaciousness within the unfolding of life. It is possible to stay one conscious step beyond the fire. Allow the flames in the form of thoughts and emotions, to be what they are in any moment. Thus, the mind wildfires will come and go. Non-attachment to the mind offers you radiating color, life and clarity where there was once a charring landscape of confusion.
