(Soulbonding) The management of fire and anger | Lighting of candles

Two weeks ago, Fire Lord Zuko and I had a small exercise which went a little bit off tangent – the after effects were a little bit unpleasant, and both of us didn’t expect that to happen, although it seems a logical enough aftermath.

What happened was that Zuko thought it would be a good idea to teach me where the source of all my rage and passion and everything intense came from, and how to bring it up and direct it in a safer way. Of course, all these stem a lot from one of the strongest points of energy in the body, the dan1 tian2 in Mandarin, known also as the base chakra.

He taught me to acknowledge that I have a much, much larger source of rage than a lot of others, and to control that rage, I have to learn how to redirect it in a safe manner. So he made me release all the molten fire from my dan tian, and let it fill my whole body, first down to my thighs and groin and feet, and from there rising upwards, spilling over into my arms and palms, and then rising more into my head till my whole body was glowing. He taught me a lesson on how to balance the fire just at the edge of my body, with the tension balanced just nice enough so that the fire didn’t coalesce back into my base chakra, but also didn’t explode outwards suddenly.

The whole lesson took almost forty-five minutes, and when he finally allowed me to collect the fire back into a more manageable ball, my body had an averse reaction of nausea and dazedness which was most unpleasant. He felt extremely sorry after that, but I developed a fear of the nausea and hadn’t trained with him for the past two weeks until today.

However, he had also taught me a sort of half-dance, half-martial arts which allowed me to release a lot of the fire/rage through my fists or palms outwardly, without attacking anything in particular, much like making an opponent winded before attacking (just that this is simply making the rage winded). It’s a very circular dance, with fire lashing out like whips but keeping them in circular motion, much like those Chinese dances using long flying ribbons. In a way.

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Today, I was pissed off about something and almost ready to go insane with rage all over again with nothing to lash out. Perhaps, having been a very very angry person before, Zuko understood what I was going through, and felt empathy for me enough to keep an almost constant rapport between us so that he might help whenever he can, or whenever I needed it.

So, he actually kind of dragged me into my “mindspace” of sorts, and I saw hundreds upon hundreds of white and fat candles placed at various heights in neat rows. He knew that the dance wouldn’t be enough this time, that I needed to direct my rage and fire at something. So he told me to use only my second and third fingers of each hand in the traditional Chinese swordfighting martial arts style, and light each and every candle in sequence.

There were a few times during the lighting of those candles I lost it, and he made me focus my rage on him by rapidly holding up the candles and making me light them with precision while he held them, all the while trusting I wouldn’t hurt him with my own fire.

Apparently, as he explained to me after that, the candles are somewhat a representation of my rage, or the fuel of my rage. The flame is the attack, the point of the candle which can burn and hurt. It is up to me how big or small I keep the flames, or how I use the whole candle as I wish to. I still haven’t grasped the whole concept in my mind, and this will take further experimenting with.

All in all, I have to thank Zuko for being a willing master. I have been better able to control my rage without lashing out with the same frequency or intensity since he has taught me.