Posted by Lani on October 23, 2000 at 05:29:38:
In Reply to: Re: Firewalk Initiation 2 posted by Lani on October 22, 2000 at 23:09:50:
Firewalk #3
What is a "Firewalk"?
The word "Firewalk" is an idiom. That is, it is defined as really a phrase meaning something else than what appears on the surface. A Firewalk is anything which requires the sacred fireimmunity to be present to accomplish the task without undue injury.
Normally and usually when Firewalks are presented to the public they are done on fire made sentient. But this is only a small example of the protective miracle of Fireimmunity. Unfortunately for me, just about all Firewalks require you to actually endanger your life to see if "God" or your Aumakua or the goddess Wahinenuiho`alani or Jesus or Allah or Krishna or Miriam or the Saints Constantine and Helen in the Christian tradition of the Firewalk, etc. will save you.
It isn't a game, although it can and should be approached with a cheerful heart. It is a serious thing. It is dangerous. If your God doesn't do something to save you, you will really be harmed.
But if you pass through the test you will actually know yourself what you could only have guessed before. You are known to the Universe, or however you conceive of God. And you are precious and if approached in the PROPER way, it will respond to your cry. BUT if you are arrogant or do not approach it correctly, the sentient fire will hurt you and injury will become your teacher. It doesn't seem to make any real difference to the sentient fire. It doesn't seem to get coarse or cross with us. If our soul is on the mark, it saves us from harm. We are arrogant or distracted, it burns us. No problem.
Why Firewalk?
Oh, that's easy for me. But you'll have to find your own need. For me it is the ONLY way to actually prove the nature and character of Reality all around us.
I have spent my life doing religious healings and exorcisms, but they all require you to be sick in body or mind or spirit for you to actually feel the Grace or mana of Io. If you were well, this knowledge was beyond your grasp. Now it is here. The Truth stands before you, if you have the courage to grasp it. Otherwise your fear will lead you away from it.
The Firewalk has been said by some that it is a metaphor for life. It isn't. Life is a metaphor for the Firewalk.
I stood at the edge of the Firepit. My body shaking in the fear. I melt my mind into the fire and it challenges me to love it, and take what consequences I may have to live with. It may hurt me greatly, for REAL!, or it may love me and hold me harmless (as it usually does for the Firewalkers). But my fear isn't a joke. Isn't a metaphor for anything else. It is real. And has perfectly sensible reasons for its existence. My "normal" life isn't this clean cut. My reality not so quick and personal and very very real. A few people have to be hospitalized after a Firewalk in which they didn't listen to their own heart. A few people die in the sentient fires each year (usually not in the USA).
No. If I am afraid to ask my boss for a raise, if he denies it, he won't also cut off my feet. If anything, life is a metaphor for the Firewalk. I am beginning to see now why some tribes worship the fire. I never really saw faces in the fire before…
The only common denominator is the fact that we allow our fears to block us. And here the fear is very real. We stand at the edge of the raging inferno. Our fear blocks us from passage. Suddenly someone we know overcomes their fear and calmly walks across the fire. We are encouraged. We slowly overcome our fear, and wonder of wonders, we are sustained.
What it looks like on the outside isn't what it looks like on the inside. On the inside, you can't really think too much. You're trying to remember the mental steps to take. You remember that you have to surrender something. But what?
You feel a sudden wind which no one else can feel. It comes for you alone. You have to actually STOP your body from walking into the fire. You have to actually stop yourself from your arising fear, to not prevent your body from walking. Your body will carry you over the fire harmlessly if and only if you have already gotten your duckies in a row, then give up completely in faith.
There is the fire before you. There is a feeling of a spiritual wind. You hammer your fear for a second. Then the fire is behind you.
And I wondered how it got behind me? People are congratulating me. Why? What happened? Did I miss something. Are my feet OK? Am I hurting anywhere?
Others now who were behind me have found their courage. They too face their fears. They seek to overcome their fear. To master their own lives, oddly, by submitting them to their God; in whatever name or guise it has for them. Sometimes the fire will nip at them to teach them they are a little off. Or throwing up some arrogance or distraction or thinking that the fire doesn't burn.
My kumu calls these bites, "symptoms". That is so much more friendly than "burn" isn't it?
Upon no occasion are all of us "kissed" by the fire or have any symptoms on the same night. On almost no occasion are not at least one of us bitten in playfulness and instruction by the fire.
But even then there is the sacred and disturbing fireimmunity. The blisters disappear later that night. In the morning, normally, nothing remains of the hurt.
I have never in my life before had a blister disappear on me. In the sentient fire, it happens all the time, to all of us. I wonder why I find this also disturbing. Again I feel the mental sand and floor of my reality shifting. It sort of numbs my mind. Each morning when the night before I had symptoms, now there is nothing on my feet to give testimony. There is no soreness left in them.
The Firewalk of the Arrow
All my Firewalks scared me. I can overcome my fear usually about them. But the fear never goes away. In my ignorance beforehand I had imagined how things would be. They didn't turn out that way. What a surprise.
I had thought it might be a hunting arrow. But it isn't. The only others I've used are target arrows, but this isn't one either. The metal point is shaped like a metal leaf. It stands off from the shaft a little.
Something in-between a hunting arrow and a target arrow. It is new and obviously a common commercial arrow.
I had imagined that there would be a slow pressure. I would never have thought that it would demand speed. I thought there would be some warning if the fireimmunity failed and so one could stop the process. I was wrong.
Usually the nock of the arrow is braced against a wall. The point of the arrow is placed in the small of the neck, right there just below the Adams apple. In that little "v" shape on the lower front of the neck. The fireimmunity state achieved. And then a quick thrust of the whole body into the arrow.
If it is a scientific thrust, your neck will be punctured, your throat pierced. If you don't die from asphyxia or blood flow into your lungs, you might survive the trip to the hospital. but Martial Arts students will recognize that spot as the most lethal part of one's body.
Nothing can save you but your God. It is simple. Your God protects you or you die or are badly wounded.
Our kumu, Michael McDermott decides he wants to be looking at us during this, so that he can do the best he knows how to open us to our deity's miraculous protection.
I can't really believe this is happening. I recognize the danger. Nothing here is faked. There are no tricks. It is real. Too real.
He holds a board up to him. I place the nock end of the arrow on the board. The point I place on my neck. Then apply a little pressure to hold the arrow in place, and let my hands drop down to my side.
Michael is talking to me, I'm trying to follow what he is saying, but I really can't, the sudden fear is too great. I feel a sudden wind at my back. I don't make my body move forward, but I don't prevent it. I feel my body's motion. There is a loud report. I'm looking down at the pieces of my arrow now on the floor. People are congratulating me. Why? I don't really know what happened. It all seemed to happen so fast.
I am really beginning to feel sorry for Keonaona. What have I gotten her into now? An odd vacation opportunity I have presented her with.
To be continued…
Lani