Alchemical Lives

If we are to live, we are to be blown off course.  It is the willy-nillyness of the blow that calls spirit down off its high horse in the high heavens so that we learn to wallow.  It is in those dark hours, as we perch precariously between the moat of crocodiles and a fire breathing dragon, that we wake up and come alive.  In ancient alchemical tradition, this blackening process was the beginning of transformation.  Blackening has everything to do with going down, being off-course, and suffering.  It is 2013, another year in the 21^st century.  It still the same, time worn process.

As a society, we have grown more and more masculine; working longer, taking on greater responsibility, trying to be more spiritual, if not religious, and attaching ‘excellence’ to all of it.  These are ego driven elements of fire and air.  They hope to push and pull us out of the mundane, off the earthy, to take flight.

What balances this yang expression? The yin of earth and water.  The higher we ascend, the more fiery and ballistic we react, the more we require the grounding of practical earth solutions, and slower muddy waters of emotional silence.  You can’t see very far from down below.  The only exceptional view is within.  Ascending a spiritual mountain, home to gods is far easier.  There is nothing wrong in standing tall among at the peak, except it usually comes at the expense of suppressed yin.

When we don’t use or allow balancing yin energies, there is a rise in violence, addiction, depression, and illness.  They behave as un-invited guests at the bliss-banquet.  It is the old spell of the 13^th fairy godmother who was not invited to Sleeping Beauty’s christening.  As you know, anything not invited, not listened to, or un-acknowledged arrives like a SWAT team to grab our attention with hungry, chaotic and destructive manners.

We did not enter this earth-life to have full control, or be massaged in happiness.  I suspect the soul chooses this planet to learn how to heal its brokenness, its empty spaces to become whole.  This is not a spiritual endeavor particularly.  It is about the task of embodying, requiring yin and yang in equal measure.  It is the gristle of each day’s efforts and failures, especially the failures.  This is the blackening, alchemical process to let in the light, and call the soul to its most creative, its most human experience.