How does one become an alchemist? In what ways have you transformed yourself? Have you moved through a restraint, a negative personal experience or a handicap that has informed you on a new level? Have you been an alchemist in your life?
Mother Gaia is moving once more through the seasons with the Equinox having just passed. For some of us the nights will grow shorter and the season will move to Spring and then Summer. For others of us the nights will be longer and we will move into the darkness of Fall and then Winter. This is a potent alchemical time whichever season you are moving into. Change is a-foot and the opportunity to create transformation is close. I’m sure you can feel its presence.
It is a potent practice to understand how you personally move through change. In this busy world you probably barely have time to get your bed made let alone take some time to be with change. It tends to happen to you instead of you guiding yourself to and through it. Being aware of the times, moments, situations that have the potential to transform us is a learned mastery but there are ways to facilitate the change so that it is transformational and expansive. Understanding your own nature – what feels good and right to you – is one of the highest accomplishments you can perform in your life.
Each breath you take is an alchemical process. You take in the life giving air and your body uses it in a myriad of ways to give your cells the nourishment they need to sustain you. Your out-breath, in turn, nourishes plant life and the processes that are outside of ‘you’. Yet these processes are you. You are tied to the bigger picture. You are an alchemist in nature.
When you pause during your day to just ‘be’ with all that is going on in your world you are being an alchemist. You are taking everything in and allowing a moment for integration to occur. Your yoga, meditation or even exercise practice is alchemical. Many different processes are going on in your body/mind/spirit during activities like these even if it is simply five minutes of presences and awareness of what ‘is’.
In your deepest relationships you are the alchemist when you choose compassion and love in the face of adversity and angst. Seeing through a lover’s complaint to the hurt is alchemy. Holding an aging parent’s hand through a difficult transition with patience rather than guilt or resentment is alchemy. Learning new things in the face of not really knowing why you must do it is alchemy. Every moment has the possibility of being the Alchemist’s tool for transformation.
Creating a practice of noticing more often when alchemy is happening and how to actually court it is the process of becoming the best ‘you’ you can be. Acknowledge it when you see it. Call it to you when you can’t see it. Create ritual to acknowledge alchemical transformation. Cultivate consciousness at your source – you are the source.
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