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Traversing hot coals in search of enlightenment

by Joe Tarr

Human beings have an average temperature of about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Water boils at 212 degrees. You’re supposed to cook chicken until its internal temperature reaches 170 degrees; hamburger to 160. Paper ignites at 451 degrees. Aluminum melts at 1217 degrees. Flesh can scald in water at about 120 degrees.

I don’t know what temperature my own flesh burns. But the coals I’ve been invited to walk across are supposed to be somewhere between 1200 and 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.

People pay money to take a chance on singeing their soles on a bed of smoldering coals. Walking on fire is supposed to help people come to grips with making decisions, to empower and inspire them, by defying what seems like a fundamental law of nature: fire burns, fire hurts.

I have no desire to walk on hot coals, and I don’t really care whether I can or not. I don’t discount the New-Agey tales of spirituality, but really, the idea never crossed my mind. Until the Center for Peace in Seymour invited Metro Pulse to take a few steps torward enlightenment. Pain, anguish, suffering, torture and torment often make for good writing, so I thought I’d give it a try.

A day before the firewalk, I talk with Katy Koontz who works at the Center for Peace, a spiritual center that offers classes aimed at fostering inner peace—sweat lodges, dances, meditations, fire ceremonies, drumming, yoga, etc.

Koontz did the firewalk a year before, and she warns me not to have any expectations. She says the point isn’t to walk the fire. “It’s really about being able to make a choice at a time of extreme emotion. The point is not to walk. The point is to make the decision at that time. If you’re OK with the decision not to walk that’s just as much of a victory as deciding to walk and doing it. It’s about being able to make a conscious choice at a time of great emotion and know it’s the right one.”

I’m horrible at making decisions. I wake up on Saturday mornings and do nothing for hours because I cannot decide what it is I should do. When I want to cook, I can spend hours paging through a cookbook trying to settle on a recipe. I annoy hiking partners with my indecision about which route we should take. I tortured at least one ex-lover for years with my inability to figure out whether I wanted to commit or cut loose. I defer every decision I can to someone else. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have even tried firewalking if my editor hadn’t suggested it.

So I start to think maybe firewalking has something to offer me. Perhaps I will find the clarity I need to act.

I arrive at the Center for Peace right around 6 p.m. Saturday. A small group of men sit around, their T-shirts damp from sweat after a day of yard work.

Patrick Connelly will be leading the group. Other participants slowly arrive—the youngest a 16-year-old kid from Oak Ridge—as we sit in an air-conditioned living room at the center. Connelly shows around pictures of previous firewalks.

“Kids and pregnant women, they do best. Because they’re already full of energy—they just redirect it,” he says.

“I’ve had only one person burn real bad. It was after everybody had done it. He thought he knew what the trick was and jumped out there. Then he had a war flashback and looked down and lost focus. Then he got off,” Connelly says. “So he spent a couple of days with his feet in the air.”

All types of people are drawn to firewalk, he says. One woman had had 60 percent of her face burned in a kiln explosion. “Her firewalk ended up with her walking up to the firebed and smiling at it, ‘I know what you’re about, I’m not going to let you scare me.’

“Firemen are a trip. They’re fun. It lets them realize fire doesn’t have to be an enemy. Fire heats our homes, cooks our food, keeps us warm.”

None of this makes me all that eager to step onto hot coals. I don’t fear any serious damage, but I do worry that I’ll be unable to walk for several days. I also worry that I’ll be the only one unable to conquer my fear and step onto the coals.

After about a half hour, we go outside and walk down a slight hill to a large meadow at the Center. There are 11 of us. In the muggy heat, we crumple paper and stack up wood in a long rectangular pattern. Connelly takes care to leave “fuses” so the whole thing can be ignited. Perspiration drips from my chest and belly, soaking my shirt.

As we work he talks about how the wood we’ll be burning is made up mostly of 25 years of stored energy from the sun. He rattles on about how all matter in the world and in our bodies comes from stars that exploded—“the very substance of your bones was formed in a star 6 billion years ago.” I have trouble following him as I imagine the wood consumed by fire.

Finally we start the thing, each of us taking a turn with a lighter, igniting a different section of fire. Soon flames are spitting up in the air. The wood cracks and pops under the heat and water sizzles out of the logs. Every now and then, Connelly douses the grass around the pit with a hose to keep it from spreading.

Now begins our wait.

Throughout the evening, Connelly gives a little history of firewalking, the reasons that people do it. “The whole idea of a fire offering is transformation—turning something solid into gas. You’re releasing something back to the spirit world.”

He talks about how our mind records experience for reference and how we get conditioned to believe or not believe. He tells us that fire can burn us. “There’s no trick. It can be done, but there is a real chance you will burn,” he says. “Don’t decide one way or the other until you step up to the coals because no matter what you think it’s going to be like, it’ll be different.”

To prepare us and keep us from getting bored, Connelly leads us through a serious of mental and physical exercises. Here is where I start to struggle. While none of this New-Age philosophy is distasteful to me, I’m resistant to any kind of spiritual guidance, no matter how loose and liberal it might be. But like psychotherapy, you must allow yourself to give up some control. I participate with all the sincerity I can muster. I dance and shake a plastic-egg rattle around the fire, I hold hands and sing songs, I open up about my life when we all must share what crisis or question we bring to the fire, I punch a piece of wood with my palm, breaking it in two.

The worst comes when Connelly hands us a piece of paper that reads “Reality Management: No Fault Empowerment Tools” at the top. It’s a form that asks us to pick a “trigger” from our lives that upsets us. By following the instructions, filling in the blanks and checking various boxes, we’re supposed to see that it’s our own reality that really causes this grief or anger.

My first choice for a “trigger” is George Bush, but that seems a little too complicated to relate to my own life. So I pick something more practical. As Connelly leads us through the steps I feel as though I’m filling out a tax or unemployment form. Except it’s a feel-good document, with parenthetical notes reminding you to breathe after several of the steps.

Then I realize that in this particular instance, Connelly is my trigger. It’s not that I think he’s a bad guy. I like him. But I get fiercely annoyed when people try to prescribe some path toward enlightenment. When I read the line “Punishment and blame are not my friends” I hear Johnny Lydon’s glorious growl in my head, “Anger is an energy/ anger is an energy...”

As far as I can tell, the message isn’t that anger is bad, but this form does nothing to help me direct it or deal with it. At one point Connelly makes eye contact with me, and I wonder if he can feel my negativity. Am I disrupting the group vibe?

I keep reminding myself to breathe. I’m nervous. We move on through several other mental and physical exercises and through each of them I worry that I’m not in the proper frame of mind and I will surely burn for this.

I was raised Catholic, and although I long ago lost faith in just about everything (except my friends, my feelings of love, my belief in humanity), I carry with me the sense that I am due punishment. My reckoning will come. Fire awaits my flesh, craves it; it will not be denied, only deferred. And I flirt with it back. I don’t envision hell as flames, but as total abandonment, the end of possibility and redemption. I prefer my death fantasy in the form of freezing or perhaps falling, but fire will do in a pinch.

I empathize with what the others have brought to this ritual and care about their struggles, but in the end I don’t buy into their philosophy. I know that I am connected to the world, other people, that my actions have consequences, but in the end I am simply insignificant. I do not matter to the universe. I’m here by chance, and chance will soon sweep me away.

Or as Annie Dillard once wrote, “We who breathe air now will join the already dead layers of us who breathed air once. We arise from dirt and dwindle to dirt, and the might of the universe is arrayed against us.”

So go on flames, take me. (Or in this case, just scorch my feet a bit.)

After about three hours, the fire has burned down. We rake the coals; lift out the last few pieces of wood with a pitchfork. It is dark now. The clouds rumble off in the distance and the glow from the coals is the brightest thing around.

There are different theories about firewalking. New-Agers and advocates believe mind-over-matter makes it possible. Your body knows what is happening and prepares for it. The physicists and skeptics believe that firewalking is possible because wood, ash, and coal are poor conductors of heat and because people are in contact with the embers for the briefest period and because your skin offers some protection. One scientist walked through a firebed with steaks strapped to his feet and showed that they were not cooked. He then put them in a metal grill sitting in the coals and it was seared. (The New-Agers responded by walking through the grill unharmed.)

Astounding feats have been recorded. People have walked through coals measured at 2200 degrees. Others have walked across beds 165 feet long without injury. There are reports of tribal people “swimming” through hot coals, rubbing them all over their bodies.

Connelly believes, in short, that we’re all part of the universe and that our bodies have an awareness of energy that our conscious minds do not. “When you decide to do something,” he says, “the universe lines up behind you.”

Our fire bed takes six to seven steps to traverse. And now Connelly finally tells us how to walk. March or walk briskly; don’t run (or you risk tripping). When we approach the fire, we’re suppose to hold our fist in the air, envision ourselves on the other side and then see ourselves walking away. Listen to what your gut tells you, not your head. Which option feels better? Then act. At the end is a wet towel to wipe off any glowing chips we might have picked up. He asks only that we at least approach the fire and stand in front of it. There is no shame in walking away.

We march around the embers, some of us beating drums or chanting. I practice breathing. Connelly approaches first. He warns us that he might not go through if it doesn’t feel right, but today he walks.

I pace off the steps on the side, trying to imagine myself going through. For courage, I think about the people in Knoxville whom I love. Their names are written on a piece of paper in my pocket. A few people go ahead of me and I become agitated, impatient, but I circle around a few more times, hesitant.

Finally I toss my egg rattle aside, approach and raise my fist. I picture myself walking across, but before I can finish the meditation I’m walking through. Five, six, seven steps? I don’t remember how long it took. There is no pain, not until I reach the other side, let out a mighty whoop. Then I notice a small spot on my right foot burns slightly. Nothing serious, just a hot spot. The left foot is fine. I continue walking around the fire, but never approach again. A couple of people go through several times. One man—who firewalked a year ago—approaches three or four times but never steps into the fire.

Koontz and Connelly told me this experience would stick with me for a while. That when faced with future challenges I would think, “Hey, I’ve walked on fire, this is nothing.” I don’t quite see it. I’d take fire over public speaking any day. I’d take the fire over deciding what to do next with my life.

But it was cool as hell. I walked across fire. I bet you can too.

It might burn a little.

July 15, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 29 © 2004 Metro Pulse