Alchemy

William Fettes Douglas - The Alchemist

When we hear the word ‘alchemy’ we probably think of chemists trying to turn simple metals into gold during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But, in truth, alchemy has a fascinating history. Dating back to centuries BC, many famous people, including Einstein, have studied this subject. Alchemy or transmutation (a modern word for alchemy) is more common than we think. It occurs in the physical world and in the metaphysical realm of the transcendental.

We are all aware of nuclear alchemy (transmutation) when radioactive elements, because of their unstable nuclei, literally change into different elements. One way is through alpha decay – or the loss of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. You see, it the number of protons in the nucleus of any atom that identifies what that element is. The number of protons is the ‘DNA,’ so to speak, of that element. So, for example, Radium will become Radon. Lately, however, I’ve been drawn to the deeper meanings of alchemy.

Alchemy for people can happen in an interesting variety of ways. Sometimes the change is sudden. Something unexpected, usually unpleasant, happens and we are changed forever. Some who have experienced NDEs find that their approach to life changes. They can never look at anything in the same way ever again. They disregard the scientific need for proof, because as far as they are concerned they have all the proof they need – their own direct experience. And that direct experience has brought them closer to understanding their own true nature.

photo by cincooldesigns

A more gradual experience of alchemy includes those with a spiritual practice. They understand this process of change as they undergo their own metamorphosis leaving the chrysalis of their ego behind to embrace a freer, truer experience of Self.

I feel humanity is on the brink of alchemical change. There is no doubt that life on this planet today is changing  – at its very core. The old paradigms do not work anymore and even though massive efforts are being made to keep the world as it has been, it is becoming more and more clear that these efforts are futile. We are jumping down the rabbit hole. We have taken the red pill. And nothing will ever be the same again.

So, it’s time we release any notion or attachment we have about how things ‘should’ be. It’s time to release outdated notions or attachments about who we think we are. There is an old saying in the metaphysical genre, “We are not human beings having spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences.” As we break free of the limiting structures of ignorance that encase and enslave our egos, alchemy begins.

So release the old patterns, habits, and thoughts. Free your mind.

Heart vs. Mind – Reconciling Knowledge and Wisdom in Spiritual Practice – Part 2

Wisdom as truth

Humans cannot come to Truth through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest, or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. They have to find it through the understanding of the contents of their own minds, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.” ~ J. Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti recognized that “Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized…” What he meant, of course, was that no amount of intellectual study or organized ritual can bring truth. And truth is the essence of wisdom. There has to be some internalization process that happens, some form of direct experience, which brings the seeker that which he seeks. Being regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers, it is interesting to note that Krishnamurti failed his courses at London University. And even though his brother, Nitya, passed with honors, Krishnamurti’s professors claimed that he had a much wider grasp of large concepts. His ‘mind’ was the bigger of the two.

Thinking and doing from the heart

As we have seen, the limitations of thought are many. Eckhart Tolle in his “Power of Now” addressed this issue by reminding us that one of the ways it limits is by trapping us in time and space. “This is what I think today, tomorrow I might think something else.”  See what I mean? Tolle goes on to use the following example –  If you asked your cat or dog what time it was would it look at a clock? Of course not, its answer would be “now”.  If you asked your pet where it is, you think it would say “I’m in the living room?’  No, it would say “here”.  Staying present seems to be a criteria for reaching that part of ourselves that transcends time and space. We can achieve this in deep states of meditation. All matters of form (time and space included) dissolve as we lose the boundaries of our physical bodies and nothing is left but our true selves. Our minds don’t get in the way anymore. Since thought implies the mind, it can be argued that thought arising from the true self or heart is not thought at all.  What is it then? Maybe it’s truth, wisdom. That indefinable something that can change the way we see the world.

A friend of mine e-mailed me recently about not always knowing the right thing to do in certain situations. She commented that she “is not sure what the boundaries are. I’ve stepped on enough landmines to be wary. Hate those explosions!” She is approaching with her analytical mind, instead of seeing the situation from her heart. Maybe we need to forget about boundaries. Maybe we need to love those explosions. If we think with our hearts instead of our minds we will be acting from a place of love…..and wisdom. The boundaries fall away and transformation, the alchemy, begins.

So ask your self, “How do I see? With my eyes? My mind? My heart? Try using less mind and more heart. See only with your heart. Your mind doesn’t know what you want. Listen with your heart and it will tell you. I asked a wise soul what my current preoccupation with “heart” was all about. I was told, “Heart is love. Love comes from the heart. Do everything from the heart.” Which, of course, means do everything from a place of love. The Beatles’ said it all with their lyrics, “…love is all there is.”

The Pitfalls of direct experience

We applaud and reward academic achievement. Pride is felt as one can attach letters at the end one’s name. One’s salary and status usually improve. But just as our egos can be stroked by acquiring knowledge, it can also be deluded into feeling superior through experiences. We begin to judge our ‘progress’ by another arbitrary standard. As our searching has us abandon trying to find the answers in books and we begin to experience what we have read about, another kind of pride is felt. We might begin to feel competitive thinking “Look at my experience. It’s better than yours. Therefore I must be further along the spiritual path.”  This is normal in the beginning. But we must remember that alchemy, the true transformation of knowledge into wisdom, does not begin until we get past our egos. My teacher has always told us that if we feel we must gauge our progress we should, “look to the changes in our character.” When that happens, your ego gets out of the way, and a kind of humility sets in. A simplicity in one’s character emerges. That simplicity is wisdom.

Taking the first step

Become the watcher. William Ury, the author of many books on conflict resolution, refers to this as, “going to the balcony.” He suggests that when you find yourself in conflict remove yourself mentally and become the observer of what is happening. Go to the balcony of the theater and watch the play. An interesting choice of metaphor. Of course, you don’t have to be in conflict to do this. It is a good idea to watch all you do, think, say, feel. Watch as if you are a character in a play. Watch as your role is being played out. This provides detachment from any situation, thought or emotion.  The more detached we are the more present we become because we are disentangled from the mind and the judgments that keep the mind going. The ‘watcher’ is coming from a different place, the present moment.  The watcher then has the direct connection to heart.  It removes the middleman, the ego, from the play.

We can all use a little alchemy in our lives. Think how the world could change if our actions were led by our hearts, our inner wisdom, instead of the external machinations of the egotistical mind? Healing the universe is an inside job.

Heart vs. Mind – Reconciling Knowledge and Wisdom in Spiritual Practice –Part 1

I was always a good student in school, placing a high regard on learning and acquiring knowledge, even at a young age. My mother always wanted me to go into some kind of profession. She recognized that society placed importance on these externals. Having a curiosity about life and all of its workings, I wanted to be a scientist. I played with chemistry sets and microscopes. Instead, I became a teacher, and though life has taken me through a number of diversions, teaching remains a profession I love.

I approached my spiritual seeking through the same academic lens I viewed everything else. In the beginning, I guess like most of us, it was all about learning something. The idea of directly experiencing what I read about never really occurred to me. I felt it was out of my reach. I didn’t have a teacher, a guru, available to dispel the darkness. So I stayed in my ‘learning’ mode for a long time. The more I learned, however, the more restless I became. I began to notice that I was missing something. What was the point of all this knowledge? Nothing was really changing for me and wasn’t that the point of all this searching?  I began to ask myself, “Is that all there is?”

Wisdom as Alchemy

the goal of yoga, union with Spirit, can only be known through experience, not through simply relying on understanding with the mind.”  ~ Upanishads

If knowledge is power, then wisdom is alchemy. It’s true that most of us get wiser as we get older, simply because living has transformed or transmuted what we know of life into something more profound.  Our experiences change us. How many of you (of a certain age) have said to someone that you are no longer the person you were 10 or 20 years ago? But if you try to describe that ‘new you’ to put words to it, you may find that difficult. You can say you are a ‘freer person” “stronger” “more compassionate” etc. but do those words truly convey the metamorphosis you know you have undergone through your life or do they fall short. Does that explain why when we try to give advice to a young person, he/she doesn’t understand anything we attempt to say, even if “it’s for his/her own good.” Young people respond to the concrete, the immediate. Wisdom is neither – knowledge is.

When I began my ‘active’ spiritual searching more than 20 years ago, I read as much as I could get my hands on. I tried to memorize the spiritual jargon thinking that if I could use those words in a conversation then I would be regarded as being on a spiritual path. If there were people who “knew “ more than I did, I felt that they were further along on the path than I was. I felt inadequate. I thought I had to “know” something. But it wasn’t long before I realized none of the mental gyrations I went through qualified me as a spiritual seeker. Listening to others explaining “this is this …and that is that….” only left me with more of an empty feeling. And words, no matter how many or valid, could not fill that emptiness.

So how powerful exactly is knowledge? Swami Muktananda said, “Knowledge of the external world is the root of all sorrow when it seeps inside and we identify with it.”  He goes further when he quotes the Siva Sutra 1.2, jnanam bandhah, “Knowledge is bondage.”  If we live steeped in our social agreements, that is to say the labels or false identities we use to define ourselves and our place on this planet, then we are missing the essence of who and what we are. The mind has created and perpetuates the illusion of separation.  Only when we free ourselves from the mind, can we begin to understand our true nature. This is when the alchemy – and real transformation – begins.  So it is only when knowledge is treated as an end in itself do we get into trouble. We need to get out of our heads and begin experiencing with our hearts. That is where wisdom lives.

Direct Experience vs. Intellect

Most of us do realize this on some level. And when we do, we usually try to augment our intellectual searching through some kind of sadhana or spiritual practice. Meditation is a common way to still the clamoring of the mind so something else (our true selves) can be acknowledged and heard. The four yogas (used to attain union with Spirit), Raja, Jnana, Bhakti and Karma are sometimes treated as separate paths, but that too is an illusion

created by the mind. When studied with the heart, separation dissolves into oneness. The idea of a “path” which has form disappears.  From that experience of oneness comes wisdom and the union with spirit we are striving to attain.  Direct experience transcends the mind and therefore thought.  As soon as we try to put words to describe our experience it seems to diminish it somehow. Something gets lost in the translation.

Something else begins to happen. I’ve noticed that I no longer care about the ‘workings’ of spirituality from a mental level. I don’t particularly care to have anything explained to me. My teacher gave a wonderful example of this. None of us are really concerned with the mechanics of how a TV works we just want to click the remote to get our programs. When you turn on the faucet to get water, do you really care where it comes from or how it gets to you? I don’t know about you, but I don’t. Indeed there was a time when I would’ve wanted to know and understand everything. The need to neatly label and file away information into mental compartments is disappearing. What is happening to me? I seem to be suffering from a shocking lack of curiosity.

I’m not diminishing intellectual curiosity, I’m just warning against giving it too much credit. It is a known fact that the greatest spiritual beings that have walked this planet were not Ph.d.s. Some never had any traditional schooling. The East does not recognize this as an impediment to spiritual growth or the attainment of wisdom. Only here in the West do we still hang on to outward forms. We always need to know a person’s credentials before we will even listen to what they have to say, much less judge it as acceptable.  (Part 2 will follow in my next post…)


 

The Alchemy of Yoga

One day, while taking my yoga teacher training at White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara with Tracey Rich and Ganga White, Tracey had us take a block of time to do a creative practice where she gave no formal guidance or instruction.  She told us to let our bodies move guided only by our own intuition. I stood on my mat staring as if I was looking for something. My intuition perhaps? Well, I can tell you, I didn’t find it. I moved awkwardly trying really hard to figure out what posture my body felt like moving into.  My perception of that exercise was that I failed miserably. I attributed my failure to a lack of knowledge. A lack of not having enough asanas (postures) in my repertoire to access. It took years for me to realize that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was using my mind the whole time. I was trying to think my way through the practice.

Yoga helps to establish the mind/body connection, but there is really more to it. Tracey was trying to get us to transcend thought  just like what we do in meditation. There is no thinking or analyzing at this level.  Intuition is a state of ‘knowing.’  It does not rely on information from books. And intuition does not originate in the mind in the way we normally see the mind (as the brain). Or maybe it does in some part of the right side, but it wasn’t in the part of the brain I was functioning in. The point is that we can’t ‘think’ and ‘intuit’ at the same time, no matter how good we are at multi-tasking.

In addition to this state of ‘knowing’, intuition is a ‘feeling.’  “I have a gut feeling about something,” means I know something without having any information that would logically lead me to what I feel.  So in this yoga exercise, I should have been ‘feeling’ what my body needed and how it wanted to move, instead of rummaging through my mental hatha yoga catalog trying to pick a posture.  Yes, I needed to have an academic knowledge of asana. But, as with any kind of knowledge, there comes a tipping point where true integration takes place.  That point where the depth of knowledge triggers a change or transition into the expanded awareness from which intuition shines through.  This profound change is alchemy. We literally become the practice.

I’ve gotten much better at allowing intuition guide my asana practice.  If you are used to popping in a DVD all the time when you do your yoga, try letting your intuition be your guide and feel the difference. Experiencing your practice as a moving meditation can be more purposeful and transformative than always following a set routine.