What Does the Trial by Fire Mean in the Bible?
The trial by fire is the test of whether we are able to remain present in the present. Within the past, the future, and the imagined worlds constructed from our current knowledge, reality does not appear. We must first recognize this in order to direct our attention back to the present.
According to our current knowledge, we imagine what will happen and what ought to happen. Yet our expectations are not always fulfilled, because we do not know every law that is manifested in reality. Moreover, our knowledge also contains errors because we continually evaluate the appearance of reality.
Evaluation means rejection. We reject the reality that we devalue and seek to eliminate it, while we seek to increase the reality that we value positively because we want more of it. This is a necessary process, because it creates contrast and thereby makes reality perceptible. However, as a consequence, the intellect formulates the laws manifested in reality differently from the way they actually exist: free from evaluation.
The experiences manifested in reality appear under the influence of every law. Therefore, within reality there is no contradiction, no evaluation; there is only that which exists.
The trial by fire is, in reality, a continually present process in which the difference between the future we expect and the future that unfolds reveals the value of our knowledge.
We imagine the future according to our knowledge, but when that future becomes the present, it is revealed whether what happens is what we expected or not. If it is, the experience confirms our knowledge. If it is not, the experience weakens it and burns away what is false.
Whenever reality contradicts what we expected, our mistaken knowledge is brought before consciousness, and we are compelled to revise it according to the experiences that appear.
The fire is always burning. Life itself is the fire that tempers genuine knowledge while burning away what is untrue within us.
The trial by fire means something more than the fire itself because we are not always present in the present. Throughout our lives, we develop increasingly complex ideas about the laws according to which the world exists, and our imagination continually recombines and presents these ideas as imagined futures and imagined pasts in countless variations.
The deeper we wander into the jungle of our imagined worlds, the less present we become. When we travel through various worlds on the wings of our imagination—worlds constructed from our current knowledge — the appearance of reality does not reach our consciousness. We do not perceive what is actually happening, and therefore the fire cannot accomplish its work.
The trial by fire is the examination of the experience lived in the present and its comparison with the content of our current knowledge. This requires being present in the present, allowing our attention to examine the experiences that are unfolding now.
The trial by fire is the test of whether we are capable of being present within reality, or whether we live instead within our imagined worlds, being present in reality only to the minimum extent necessary.
We become capable of being present in reality only when we recognize that we spend a significant part of our lives living within the worlds constructed from our current knowledge. That recognition redirects our attention back to reality — to the experiences that are appearing in the present.