So two weeks ago, I began what I thought was going to be a two week series that now I think is going to be a three week series.

And it's based on a story from the Upanishads about a young man, a young Indian man named Nachiketa.

And Nachiketa, for those of you that are tuning in fresh, got into a conflict with his father and his father publicly rejected him saying,

I give you to the Lord of Death, and he basically said go to hell.

So Nachiketa went searching out Lord Yama, the Lord of Death, and he found his place, his kingdom, and endured a lot of pain and hunger and fatigue.

Lord Yama wasn't there, he for three days and three nights waited for the King of Death to arrive.

And when Lord Yama got there, he was so impressed with this young man's sincerity and commitment that he offered to grant him three boons, three gifts that could support him on the path.

And now just to keep the bigger frame in mind, when Nachiketa chose his three gifts, he could have anything.

He chose them when he was in the face of the Lord of Death, he was facing in permanence, he was recognizing the truth that this life is fleeting and that it's precious.

And that wisdom guided him and his first boon, the first gift that he asked for was the gift of forgiveness.

He wanted to have a forgiving heart so that he wouldn't carry that armoring of hatred and blame towards his father or towards anyone.

So much in the way that if we were attuned and we were in some way getting it that, wow, this might be the last time I ever see this person.

You know, I could die tomorrow, this person could die tomorrow, how quickly we would drop at least many layers of our resentments and blame.

So it was that Nachiketa asked for that first gift and he was granted it, the gift of forgiveness.

Tonight, in this class, we're going to be exploring the second of the gifts, which is called the gift of inner fire.

And if we cover that and we have time, then we're going to explore the third gift, which is called the mirror, where we actually, we're Nachiketa asked that he could actually realize the truth of who he was, come to realize reality.

But we might have to wait for next week for reality. We'll see, we'll see.

So the inner fire, first what is this inner fire?

And I think of it as the energy that moves us on the path and it comes from some very pure experience of love, of loving life, of loving waking up, of loving freedom.

That we would not, you wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be listening.

If there weren't something in you that's energetically alive that has this calling to experience something deeper.

It's not like we practice mindfulness, we wouldn't practice coming back to the breath if it was for the sake of some skill in staying with the breath.

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