The Black Monday Murders: Issue 04

As I was reading this latest installment in the arc, I came upon a quote that really struck me.

The world we see is smoke… and it’s all the evidence we need to know the flames are real.

At first I thought about the nature of our perceived reality, that it might be just illusion, nothing but smoke and mirrors. There are spiritual traditions out there that posit this belief. But then I started thinking about the flames, and my interpretation of this quote broadened.

Flame is a symbol of change, of metamorphosis, of the purging of the old to make way for the new. Those of us living in a period of change are not able to see the change directly; we only see the residual effects, the smoke, letting us know that something unseen is occurring. I sense that we are in a stage of transition in our world, and that the fires of change are stoked and spreading. Everything that we see going on around us—all the crazy current events, all the powerful environmental and social upheavals—these are just the smoke signals letting us know that change is underway.

We like to think that we are powerful, that we have the ability to change the world around us and alter events. But do we really have that power? By the time we become aware of changes, they have usually already occurred. We only experience the smoke and ash of change. Sometimes we play a part, but are we conscious of that part that we play? I wonder.