Tavan on belief

And so Mark moved to sit before the fire with the staff across his knees and his hands lightly clasped and resting over it. Tavan having moved off a bit to the right spoke to his profile.
Tavan; Now rest your eyes and your attention on this fire and as you breath take it into yourself and feel its vibrance permeate your flesh. Feel it beginning in your spine and spreading into your neck and scull, shoulders and arms. With the ebb and flow of your every breath it goes further rising and falling waking the very hairs on your toes."
As Mark followed these instructions, letting the energy of his life bleed into him from the fire, Tavan removed his scabbard and the toothed gauntlets he wore and lay them aside then came to sit beside him before the fire.
Tavan; This is how you might greet the fire within yourself, these feelings of sensation which are running through you and around you are you. And it is here, whilst you take into yourself what is yours for the living of this life and you build your awareness around the sensations of being alive, I will talk to you of belief and how you are as inseparable from belief as you are inseparable from perception.
In this I will tell you nothing fantastical or radical, you would come to much of this with a little consideration of your own, but I would like to say it out in order to form a grounding for further thought. There is no beginning of belief at which I may start this telling, as easy for me to find the beginning of living. In every interaction of every element of your mind there is belief, belief in sensory perceptions, belief in memories and an ingrained irrefutable belief that the world around you is the world around you and that an idea you have is an idea you have. Believing is both the cause and result of choice.
This is not to say that belief can cause results but that beliefs cause your choices which have results and the results of your choices cause your beliefs. I am choosing not to delve into the myriad possible examples of where you may find belief is the conduit for all interrelations in your living in the belief that whilst you greet the fire of life with your breath you may find them yourself. Sit here for a time feeling your life flow within you as you are warmed in the fire of life and consider this, both faith and knowledge are subject to belief which is itself subject to choice."

Reflection of fury

Mark watched as the energy of his sending waned and in the fading of it he saw what he had perceived as demons resolve into fires very like his own before all again became darkness and emptiness. He had not expected there to be anything at all beyond his fires light but even less had he imagined there would be other fires. His intent was only to expel from himself the pent frustration he held over from his recent foray to the outside. Thinking to be cleansed and calmed in the spending he had not even been truly angered or fixed on the expulsion of any particular thought. And now this revelation of others beyond his own set into him a worry over what he had sent. Were these others as like to his own fire, were they lives, were they the life fires of others living, and in this realm, his realm? And if so how had they been affected by his unfocused lashing of hideous and dark vitriol.
Mark: Can there be no expression without consequence, even here where I come alone and none may follow?
Tavan: Always in the all there is result, even actions are but reactions, be they mental or phenomenal. You know this.
Mark: What are they out there, did I harm them with the sending from the staff?
Tavan: They represent the lives of the real, but they are here where none may follow and so they are mirrors. They reflect your sending and react as you, as if you were receiving it. Do you still believe your sending went outward? Was it even rage or just a compounding of emotion now stored as a gift to wake you in the night?
Mark: They represent, so they are not the real themselves but an extension of myself?
Tavan: The illusion of separation is by you believed to be an illusion, this is reflected in the reflection of fury ignited around the life fires which are there beyond sight even here where you come alone.
Mark: Then I have done no harm here with this?
Tavan: You have harmed no other but perhaps you have prepared a future in which you will find yourself harmed. Did you not seize upon guilt in the light of awareness? Having now let it go do you expect it to land outside? Sit and think nothing, hold your hands together so they may grasp nothing. Bask in the heat of the fire while I find something for you to take from this that you may keep with you. And realise you are blessed to hear my voice in this place where you come alone and none may follow.
Mark: Is that some kind of gnostic teaching your trying to imprint on me?
Tavan: Is what some kind of gnostic teaching?
Mark: You keep saying "this place where you come alone and none may follow"
Tavan: You said it first, I thought is sounded appropriate, its a good way to describe this realm because its true. Now try to think nothing, or watch the thoughts arise without being attached to them. Go back to the world, there is pleasure there for you if you stop blocking it with your anguish over your mistakes. You will continue to make mistakes, you are not Iccas yet and yet you will always be connected to this fire. This fire is Iccas and it will ever be the source of who you are and who you become. Let me do the talking for a time and listen well to all that I give to you.

A new begining

Mark glared balefully about the congregation, daring any and all to dispute his ascendancy. For too long now he had played the phantom, gliding from moment to moment believing himself described in all that he apprehended. But in this time, in this moment, he came willingly to the inner cacophony which was in concert with his heart and with this act the Outside was reduced to little more than an idea, merely a part of the puzzle that owned his awareness. They were gathered, he and his thoughts about their usual fire bringing with it's heat the flux of life and animating them into a kind of reality, one that afforded him the impression of being the canvas on which they were painted. In their silence he saw permission although they as yet knew not what they were approving him to do. While he felt other than they he would remain safe as they faltered and collapsed under his scrutiny and he would see if anything could be salvaged from the wreckage he had made of his mind. Mark had recently become disillusioned with the results of his actions and had begun to despair he might never be proof against ignorance and foolishness. That he might always keep himself stuck in the mire of desire and temporary pleasuring of insatiable need . He had for as long as he could remember sought to understand what gave worth to life, his need for an answer had now become unbearable. Mark felt as though if he did not find a vessel that would contain his faith he might forever be detached from the worlds subtler beauty. More and more over years his thoughts had begun to face inward, to gaze into the fire until it was always here he found himself. So Mark decided if it was here he would be then he would be here, and he would know where he was, fully aware that to know where would be as kin to knowing what and who. He brought forth his staff alerting some of his thoughts and passions with it's presence that he foresaw the likelihood of contention, perhaps from any number of the multitude lurking in the periphery of the fires light. Mark knew he manufactured an illusion in the staff, the very act of doing so was his purpose, in exercising his ability to bring about such artifice with a thought he would stay abreast of both potential and limitation. The
staff would act unnecessarily as an extension and holding of his emanation, unnecessary he thought, for the blending of Scorpio and Ox which was his birthright already carried him too far into pragmatism without the use of such a device.
Mark focussed his attention on the staff ignoring the swirling whispers which sought to distract,
pouring his energy flavoured with furious anger into it, building upon it a heat and light unlike that of the life fire, Although the staff tapped that fire and used it also to build on the rage it was becoming. The manifestation of fury Mark continued to send into the wood turned it to white light which brought with it a humming building in intensity at a pace with the growing brilliance of the light. At its crescendo it became a rumbling bass felt more than heard and when the wood would take no more into itself and Marks emotion began to spill wetting his brow, he paused for a moment wondering if this desperate act would yield any benefit at all. He could not see them but he could hear them and feel them and he would have their attention, so he
slammed the heel of the staff into the earth between his splayed feet. The light emptied from the staff into the ground and spread in all directions as lightening and all sound was sucked away with it as though into a jet stream. Under all the darkened thoughts and out into the beyond that is beyond the life fires light the raging incandescence spread. And there it illuminated a legion of demonic forms which dwarfed in numbers the convocation of thoughts and memories and impressions which symbolised conscious life. And all thought about the life fire shrank and brayed in fear even as the demons did the same in reaction to themselves fore never before had they been seen, even by themselves.