Fire

About the Fire Element

The positive aspect of fire is the capacity to create, to initiate projects on every level, and to accomplish what creativity sets in motion. Intuition is related to fire as is enthusiasm and excitement. Balanced fire results in inspired undertakings, happiness with work, and accomplishment. Fire is related to a bliss and joy that is different from the joy of the water element, which is connected to contentment and acceptance. The joy of fire is more related to enthusiasm and bliss in the body, and the joy of waking experiences. The higher experience of fire is the bliss of being. Its highest expression is the development of the wisdom of discrimination.

People with too much fire are easily agitated. Simple things ignite their irritability and they may react impulsively, lashing out without thinking, in angry words and gestures. Lacking tolerance, they can be annoyed by different religions, different races, different philosophies. They even can become annoyed by the way someone else is sitting or talking.

Because fire is the opposite of earth, too much fire often results in a lack of grounding. There is a lot of fast movement and instability. If there is also a lack of water, there can be a persistent discomfort and restlessness. It’s difficult to sit still for five minutes; there’s always something to do. Silence and stillness can be bothersome. There are difficulties sleeping. People with too much fire often like to talk a lot, and quickly. The next idea arises before the present one is articulated. Everything just keeps coming.

In meditation practice, too much fire results in thoughts that come fast and are hard to control. New ideas continually arise that seem too important to put aside. There’s a lack of calm, a lack of peace, and too much agitation and restlessness. The agitation may be arise from a relative lack of water; the instability may be a lack of earth.

Without enough fire on the spiritual path, the practitioner lacks the energy and inspiration required to do the practice or has a difficult time finding joy and bliss in it. Instead, practice is done by rote, without the inspiration to make the leap to a new understanding or a new experience. As a result the development of the practice is much slower.

When fire is deficient, there is also a lack of vitality and a lack of inspiration. There is no enjoyment in work. There’s no enthusiasm. Nothing new arises. Life can be a cycle of routine, plodding existence. Or, if fire is deficient when there is a preponderance of air, there can be movement, but it is repetitive and uncreative. Intellectually the person can be very sharp— due to the air—but not be able to create from what is learned.

Practices that develop fire are the inner heat (tummo), made famous through the documentation of practitioners sitting in snow, drying wet towels solely with the heat of their bodies; the practice of the external rushen, in which one surrenders to the experience of karmic tendencies in order to differentiate them from pure experience; and some of the physical yogas.

~Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche in Healing with Form, Energy, and Light