by user_dd | May 21, 2020 | Community Conversations
If you’re like me, times like these make you pensive. I mean, I was already pretty pensive but I’m good at distracting myself so my head doesn’t explode at the end of the day.
Now, with so much slowing down around me, I’m bored with my distractions, and I can’t help but move deeper into my meditation practice. That means buckle up, because we’re about to save the world. Well, mostly my world, but maybe you’ll find something inspiring inside of my inquiry that applies to your world as well!
As Without, So Within
You may find yourself outside your normal or habitual patterns due to physical distancing measures due to the general life disruption caused by COVID-19. When we find ourselves outside a normal behavioral pattern, our frontal lobe kicks into high gear (which is part of what makes this time so exhausting), because it needs to find novel ways to interact with our new environment.
And while our homes or living spaces themselves may not be new, using one for a home office where previously it was just a hang out and rejuvenate space represents unique challenges to your mental health. Where do you go to decompress if your work is sitting right in the middle of your happy zone? Why bother tidying up if you’re going to be right back at it tomorrow for who knows how long? The purpose of the space we inhabit gets reevaluated, and *spoiler alert* there’s no clear alternative or solution that allows us to go right back ‘to sleep’ living in our old patterns.
If this is happening outside, the Hermeticist is trained to look within as well. In what ways are you currently reevaluating YOUR purpose? In what ways are you re-examining what fulfills you? Those ‘new’ ways that you’re living, how do they challenge your perspective or view you have of yourself? And what new trails are you blazing as a result? Feel free to share in the comments.
Transform by overcoming inertia
When we talk in the context of transformation, one of the forces we are trying to overcome is inertia. This is the tendency to stay the same, because staying the same is almost always easier.
This tendency is highlighted when we are developing new habits. If something becomes unbearably uncomfortable, we are much more likely to (be motivated to) change it. There are many strategies people use to artificially enhance the pain associated with failing to perform a new habit so that they get over their inertia in changing it. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but that strategy may have been practice for the challenges COVID-19 is throwing our way.
COVID-19 is an opening for transformation. Of course, there are many people suffering and dying as a result of this virus, it’s not just “uncomfortable” for them. That’s why we need to reach out, recognize what is going on, and extend an offer of support if we are stable to assist others who are not. Who have you checked in with recently?
If you are retracting inward, cutting yourself off from others, then you are not serving and expanding the love available. Love is connection and expansion, not retraction. We are not social distancing, we are only physically distancing. Challenge yourself to check in with someone in your network every day.
Upgrade your Consciousness
Remember that your actions are ultimately a result of your consciousness. What you perceive, what you pay attention to, to where your inner compass is leading all are a result of the level of consciousness that you have cultivated in yourself. When was the last time you attended to or took care of your mindset? How do you recognize when your mind is sick and needs care to get better? What is your treatment plan to get you back to a healthy mindspace?
Your allopathic doctor has nothing to help you with here. Here’s a hint— inquire within and use this time to get past any inertia which has held you back in the past from making important changes in your life patterns, behaviors and goals.
Share with us below in the comments what you are going to do differently!
Ready to Evolve your Consciousness? Click the image below to learn more:
by user_dd | Feb 26, 2019 | Alchemy, Transitory Thoughts
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In the last post of this series, we covered the second stage of alchemy: dissolution. We also reminded ourselves that it’s important to remain non-attached. At the same time, you will not complete the alchemy process powerfully without uncovering your ‘burning desire’ that drives you towards your goal. Without the attractive force of this desire pulling you, you are in danger of getting lost in the journey of this alchemical transformation. Finding your way out is impossible until a concrete goal emerges.
Into a million pieces
As life continues to throw curve balls, we get thrown out of our normal routine, and start to see what the essence of our life is. Normally, this essence gets drowned in the day-to-day dross of our waking life, and sometimes we access it through the subconscious when we sleep. But overall, we are usually unaware of the influence this essence has on our thoughts, behaviors, habits, and outcomes in life.
When we get out of our normal routine, or try to alter our life in some way (like learning a new habit), it’s not uncommon for anger, resentment, frustration, and depression to emerge. We can often have trouble with emotional boundaries as well, not being sure exactly what we want, which has the unfortunate bonus feature of making us more prone to conflict in our relationships.
Have you ever felt so emotionally fragile like you could burst into a million shards of glass on the ground at any moment? That’s separation.
There is perspective to be gained by separating and distinguishing the parts of our life that often go unnoticed. Human beings are meaning making machines, and we go around constantly making up stories about what others think of us, how otherwise meaningless actions have ruined our day, and what we’re going to do about the past when we act in the future. Most times we are not actually present to (and appreciating) what is!
Taking a moment to see each of those stories for what they are, mental objects that take up time and energy, that drive our thoughts, opinions, and actions. They enable us to move those otherwise subconscious drives to the conscious mind where we can evaluate and choose our relationship with them, rather than be driven by them. Freud was a big proponent of this theory of unconscious drives, and ended up taking it further, forming the concept of the id (or instincts/drives) as opposed to the superego (or conscience), which, from a metaphysical perspective, is necessarily aligned with our Higher Self.
In this stage of alchemy called separation, we separate out the parts of the whole that we were not noticing before, and we look at them. We start to see all kinds of relationships we never saw before. We compare and contrast the different parts of ourselves that make being a human so rewarding, giving color to our experience and rhythm to our steps. We have to have the honesty and integrity required within ourselves to acknowledge those parts of us that we don’t necessarily like before we can move towards wholeness.
Seeing the unseeable
After a particularly nasty breakup with his ex, Riley basically repressed her feelings for a year and it took her awhile to feel open to dating again. Understandably, when she put herself out there to date again, she had all kinds of caveats. “I’m never dating that kind of person again,” she decided. So she evaluated every prospective partner that came into her life from the lens of that list of traits she’d rather like to avoid, lest she find herself in the same position as last year, emotionally bruised and battered, closing herself off again to the happiness she was sure she could find if she just had another (not so crazy) partner.
She had one particularly memorable dating experience where, after dinner, she was feeling particularly attracted to her date, and decided to invite him over to her house for an after dinner aperitif. No sooner had they entered then the comments began. “Oh, what a nice space. I really like your sofa. How long have you lived in this house? Where did you get those curtains?” Riley was beside herself, one of the things on her list was no critical comments, because she felt emotionally shunned by her ex, who was always evaluating and criticizing her. Riley felt like she could never live up to his standard, so she ended the relationship.
Now it was happening all over again, except that it was happening with each person she became close with. Once the intimacy started to increase, she would start to get these comments. First they were relatively innocuous, but then later, there was some tension or even outright conflict. Riley didn’t know how to resolve this recurring issue.
One day, while at coffee with a friend, Riley was detailing how her most recent date wasn’t going to cut it again, when her friend stopped her and leaned over to say, “Riley, don’t you see a pattern here. Whenever you want to get intimate with someone, you immediately close yourself off, which defeats the whole purpose!”
Riley started to look at her most recent dates, and she was flabbergasted. Her friend was right, she always reacted with resistance whenever anyone got close enough to ask her a question that really mattered. She withdrew as soon as people were just getting to know her. This was no way to create a relationship.
Once Riley saw this in her behavior, she was able to catch herself going down that trail, and decided to she her experience differently. “No, he’s not trying to criticize me, he’s just curious because he doesn’t know! I haven’t shared that part of myself with him yet.”
After this, Riley was able to have a relatively long-term relationship again. Though still looking for that life partner, she is enjoying emotionally-fulfilling relationships both with her intimate partners and her friends.
Reflective Quote:
“He [William S Burroughs] has no patience for my kind of neurosis, I know… But since then I’ve been facing my nature full in the face and the result is a purge.”
― Jack Kerouac, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters
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by user_dd | Jan 18, 2019 | Transitory Thoughts
When I was young, I wanted nothing more than to be Merlin, the magician. Our weekly trips into town to visit the library from our rural Ohio farm allowed me to fill my imagination with epic fantasy stories and romantic Arthurian legends. 
I could almost see the mists of Avalon opening before me when the fog settled on the fields, making the grasses glisten in the early morning sun, as it often did in early Summer. I had the benefit of lots of free time, and 80 acres of wild forest to explore. My favorite moment was falling asleep in the branches of my favorite tree, confident it would hold me safe, until I awoke again.
Now, I wonder if I ever woke up from that tree. The world continues to surprise and delight me, being full of fantastic people and things and experiences. Miracles happen all around me everyday. They get so little fanfare however you’d barely notice they happened, but they’re there. It’s amazing how little we see of what we don’t expect to see.
A crevasse of my own making
I didn’t always see life from rose-colored glasses though. There were years where I was hiding so no one would see me. I developed elaborate ruses and games to elude anyone really trying to know me at all. I was a master obscurer, but what I didn’t realize was that I was only tricking myself. While I left others confused, I was in an even deeper crevasse of my own making. I couldn’t access my strengths and gifts, because I separated myself from their power. I didn’t want anyone to know my true powers, my true gifts. I didn’t want anyone to SEE ME!
I hated expectations, I feared assumptions, I definitely did not want to be put in a box. I was allowing others to imprison me in my own mind. They were just trying to ‘get’ me, I was too busy running away to see that.
It wasn’t until I leaned into my discomfort, and got really uncomfortable, that I started to see what was going on. My third grade teacher taught me the benefits of discomfort when I cried my way through a book report presentation in front of the whole class. Surprisingly, I’m not afraid of public speaking today. Another time I felt a lot of discomfort was pretty ironic when you think about it: I was admitting the truth of my sexual desires to my partner. He’s still around, haha!
It’s amazing how the most true things about us, deep down inside, can be the source of so much fear.
What happens when you encounter fear is that geometries of thought and emotion get thrown into your aura as you try to make sense of the new information. But they don’t stay there forever. They do muck you up for a time, but depending on the strength of your energetic systems they either get pulled back into your system and re-assimilated, providing a new puzzle for you to solve, or they get pushed out of your system and recycled back into the universal symphony, interminably singing it’s glory all around us. Remember, everything is energy and energy is vibration. Who doesn’t like to listen to music?
I like to listen
Eventually I had help. I found a path, the initiatory path, the path of of my soul’s progression, and I began walking down it to see what I would find. I didn’t just happen on the information in the above paragraph. I sought it out. After moments of intense desire and prayer, I started to get little hints. Later I realized I was guided, and thus I got there a lot faster than many of my peers. And now I see what’s happening and I have tools to handle it because that guidance helped me resolve and release what was holding me back in life. That way I could get back into the game, winning life one step at a time. It ain’t always easy, but it’s a helluva ride!
I think at this point, you’re probably pretty convinced there’s a higher power helping out, guiding your life, assisting you in times of need. I believe that too. And whether it’s true or not is not really what I want to get into, but even if you just pretended for a moment that it was true, how would that change your life? How would you act differently? And even if you didn’t believe in some invisible force that can’t be truly understood or measured, what if you heard some good advice from a spiritual friend? Would it change your what you do at all? Would you listen?
I think the answer is ‘yes,’ because the more assured you feel, the more confidence you have, the more risks you’re going to take on this crazy trip called life. And there’s nothing truly great achieved in life without taking risks. The worst that can happen here is that you don’t get the result you’ve been looking for. But if I told you people have been walking this path of thousands of years because it works for them, do you think it’d work for you too?
If you’re curious, come learn more at my upcoming lecture on “Upgrading your Energy Body with a DNA Life Activation” Jan 29th at 7pm at Incite Healing Center. I promise the information will only help you on your path. It did when I heard it six years ago, and my life continues to accelerate in the most beautiful ways.
I pray you have peace, and joy, and I pray I get to see you soon so we can drop into some conversation over tea. Life begets life, how will you live yours? Covered up like I was for many years, hiding from the Light, or will you come out and play to discover where the seat of your joy lies?
The invitation is open to you.
by Matthew Koren | Oct 12, 2016 | Alchemy, Transitory Thoughts
FIRE OF THE ALCHEMISTS
Fire is powerful. Its essence can be found in the Big Bang, the formation of the Earth, and the symbol of the phoenix. These all give clues to the secret of renewal. The science and art of alchemy sheds much light on this.
The ancient and medieval alchemists pursued far more than making gold. The creed they followed most was “As above, so below,” a mystic axiom that asserts the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm in a holographic, Russian doll kind of way. In other words, they followed very specific physical procedures, yet these processes always mirrored internal psychological and spiritual states. Their goal was to perfect matter while perfecting their own inner natures simultaneously.
One of the first processes in alchemy was called calcination. This was the stage of subjecting something to enough intense heat and fire that it would produce white ashes, called a “salt” by alchemists. It was a preparatory step in producing an elixir, as it purified the physical ingredient. Every alchemist was both a proto-psychologist and a shaman of sorts. In calcinating a substance, he or she would strive to also calcinate the mind and soul.
THE ALCHEMY OF LIFE
Sometimes we find ourselves in a calcinating event or even stage of our life. We can choose to repress our feelings toward this, or acknowledge them and use the event or stage as a growth opportunity. Signs that you’re experiencing calcination are that your world is crashing around you and you don’t know who you are anymore. You get the sense that you have to let go of a lot of things you’ve been holding onto. The funny part is, most of those things were just limiting you, being dead weight in your journey. Now you can actually walk your Path with momentum.
Calcination may occur with most intensity when we’ve been ignoring the baggage we’ve been carrying for awhile. We get comfortable and lose touch with our true sense of purpose. Getting comfortable really just means getting habituated – even to something soulsucking or painful. The calcination process removes those anchors, whether we like it or not. Essentially, it’s an omen from our Higher Selves or Providence saying “You’re off your Path! Here’s a wake up call!”
Once we are purified through this spiritual burning, we can move forward with more freedom and buoyancy. We don’t have superfluous things restricting our flow. It can be scary relinquishing those things, because we’ve become so reliant upon or used to them…but the magic happens in letting go!
That’s really the key to moving through calcination: surrender. Give in to the process, relax, and have faith that there’s a bigger picture to all this. Spiritual traditions the world over, from Buddhism to Christianity, advocate the power and freedom of nonattachment – if you’re to have any peace amidst calcination and truly grow, you must loosen your grip on what you think is important.
Here’s a little story to flesh this all out…
THE CRUCIBLE
Mark is an attorney who’s been working for the law firm Josef & Leibermann for 15 years. He works 50-hour weeks, and lives in a 3 story house in a beautiful gated community. Unbeknownst to him, however, the law firm is downsizing and pruning off anyone it sees as less than exceptional. Even though Mark has been there for years, the executives don’t quite see him as being up to par with their top attorneys. He’s informed, very suddenly, that he is terminated.
Furious and dejected, Mark binges on alcohol. He doesn’t see how this happened, and feels it’s incredibly unfair. He’s even considering suing the law firm – before drinking another few glasses of Pinot Noir and laughing at how much of a train wreck that would be!
Mark’s friends and family try to console him, but after seeing him go into the fourth week of binge drinking and posting vicious comments on Facebook, they start to back off. He keeps to himself, splurging his savings and sinking deeper into depression.
One day, a documentary comes on TV about big businesses influencing politics to get their way. “What!?” Mark exclaims. For some reason, his interest is piqued. He devours online articles, books, and more documentaries, and learns about the destruction to the environment caused by some of these big businesses, and how they keep politicians out of the way. Mark is fired up!
The more he researches, the more he forgets to drink. He’s even started going to networking events and lectures to learn more, which is a miracle, considering he’s getting out of the house. Eventually, he meets Sandy, a 35-year-old lobbyist working for the Earth Defense Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting environments around the world and native wildlife. She tells Mark they’ve been needing a person with extensive legal experience to help them in trial, decode laws, and draft proposals. Mark is instantly ignited, and she gives him a number to call for more information.
The next day, Mark dials the number and his enthusiasm is so obvious, that he gets an interview. A few days later, during the interview, Mark realizes that throughout his career, he didn’t like working for people he’d describe as scumbags – people who were clearly guilty and had no respect or remorse. Mark comes to the sudden insight that this is why he wasn’t considered a “top performer” at Josef & Leibermann. He just never felt right about helping guys he knew were in the wrong. The interviewer, however, sees great knowledge and integrity in Mark and decides to hire him!
Working with the Earth Defense Group proves to be a blast, although Mark is still often busy. But he absolutely loves what he’s doing, and feels this is really what he was meant for.
Mark had to let go of his old career and his old identity, and embrace a new way of life. This was too much for him, at first, and he didn’t know what to really do with himself. But, as he let the past burn away, he was able to embrace something new, something more empowering and life fulfilling.
Calcination is “step one” in alchemy (it’s not always in the same order). Get ready for the remaining 6 steps!
Can you remember a harsh period of your life, when you came out with more self-knowledge? Did you let go of anything in order to move forward? Please share below!
Reflective Quote:
“If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the Kingdom.” – Jesus
Would you like to learn more about this process? Click on the links below to follow the progression by stages or jump to the stage you’re interested in most.
