“You are SO real,” said the shaman’s girlfriend. Her eyes were a bit glassy from the sacrament. I also took one, but since this was my first journey the shaman gave me something simple. “Don’t worry,” he told me, “I remember you.” “You remember me from the future,” I replied, from a place that did not come from my ego-controlled reality. That was before I took the sacrament.

 

Once everyone in the group had their capsules in hand, we were directed to swallow them together. Then we finished watching our movie. It was about a man who was taught how he shaped his own reality by the spirit of a soul mate who chose not to incarnate with him. With a simple awakening, the man recreated his life into one of success, joy and beauty.

 

I knew I was ready to go on the journey as soon as the film ended. My body had chills like those when I took mushrooms back in college. Sure enough, when I got to the picture window overlooking the river, my mind and eyes felt clearer than ever.

 

Every plane, satellite and perhaps other flying objects blinked through the entire night sky. From under the river it seemed, there was a glow of light. A glow befitting a man who could see the water as his unconscious, and the light as one of his spirits ready to emerge.

 

The threshold has been crossed, I thought after that evening of joy and light. I wrote a friend about the experience and she told me the universe had given me a bag of golden keys. All I had to do now was to find the locked doors, 12 of them, read what they had to say and then use the right key to open them.

 

A dream from many months ago had to do with 12 doors. Twelve births rather. I was in a grand house, near the front door. Houses in dreams usually represent the self. I had the sense there were 12 births that had occurred in the house. Though the house held secrets and told about some of them, it would not speak of the 12 mysterious births. I knew I was one of them. Yet it would not yield.

 

My friend knew nothing of this dream when she told me about the keys. So the keys lead to the doors which lead to the births. And I had unlocked one already. 11 more to go. But who are these birthed beings? They are me. Each represents an aspect of me that is mirrored in my own life by a friend, a parent, a healer, a lover or an enemy. By unlocking a door, I unlocked part of my soul so it could enter my body.

 

That’s why the shaman’s girlfriend could see I was so real. It wasn’t I who crossed a threshold as so much as it was a disconnected part of me that was freed up to become part of I. Part of me here in the physical world.

 

Now my job is to find the other doors and match the right keys to them.

        

For the past year I have put myself through the wheel of the Tao time and time again. It's different every time. Sometimes it's a pleasant surprise and like taking a breath of fresh air. Other times it strikes like a snake bite and I'm stumbling around in a daze holding on to the dragon's back as I go down into the depths of mystery, darkness and water when at some point my inner light returns. And somehow, I'm no longer the man I was moments before.

I don't know exactly what force it is in me that drives me in this. Part of it has always been there, as though long before I knew what alchemy was I was doing it. This makes me feel like the process is an innate behavior for us. Part of our collective culture. And after a year of practicing it with more clarity I can now see more of the results, or the gold that shows up in my life after taking the time to bring bits of my own darkness into light and consciousness.

For example, synchronicities have  become more common in my life lately. One day I'm meeting the student of one of my mentors who comes up to me when I'm reading a book about Jung. On other days, as it was last week over the Winter Solstice, it's the perfect timing of every clock in the universe striking a bell in unison.

We had a winter storm. Several inches of snow were dumped on us and that prevented me from joining friends on a planned trip out of the city. So, with my weekend completely free I burrowed into my bed and surfed the internet. An online aquaintance, one I'd never met, posted some holiday photos. I made a comment about them on his page and just hours later we were talking on the phone making plans for me to meet him. This fellow's name and his work were not entirely unknown to me when we connected online a few months ago. A bell went off in the back of my head when we connected. It seemed to say, "You'll come back to this. There's something special here."

Now I'm getting off the train and in front of me is the real person behind the name, his work and his online persona. "Click." The world slowed down for a split second as a cylinder tumbled inside a huge lock. The sound was like the flap of an eagle's wing. We embrace and get into his car. He's showing me around this charming hamlet that's glistening in over a foot of snow. A few minutes later, this basic stranger says, "I don't know what your plans are for later today, but I'm joining a group of people to work with a shaman I've known for years. You are welcome to come along." "Click." The second cylinder in this huge lock echoed as it dropped. The world did not slow down this time, it sped up, for I recognized this moment was a synchronicity. The purpose of my visit began to be come more clear and more complicated. I was no longer simply making a new friend under the pretense of enjoying some local holiday decorations. I was awakening to my connection with this soul that had opened up so I could look inside. And I had chosen the moment for this event on the very day a traveling shaman was in this particular town where I'd journeyed spontaneously following a powerful storm of white flakes that washed away all my other plans. This was gold showing up in my life. I immediately had the image of my new friend reaching down to me from the top of a cliff. He took my arm and pulled me up out of the cravasse. The image opened up to me as a new insight. There are heights yet for me to reach and this person recognizes me as someone who belongs up on another level, so he chose to give me a helping hand. I needed no further encouragement to accept the offer, yet a friend with whom I'd made a coffee date for later in the day had indeed canceled on me. So off I went to meet the shaman with my new friend.

So on the final evening of Autumn I crossed a threshold into a new place of being myself. The final cylinders in the lock fell one by one and great cellar door creaked open. I'll write more about this in a future entry. For now that I had spotted gold in an instant, what would I do with it?

        

Here is the most normal blog post to date that is directly tied to alchemy.

I had made plans with a new friend to meet for lunch over one week ago. We both belong to a men's group and one of our agreements was to meet outside of the group as a way to get to know one another.

Today I arrived at our appointed place a few minutes early. The hostess gave me a table where I could face the door when my friend arrived. Things happen in New York City. They always do. New Yorkers like myself expect it. However after waiting 20 minutes I decided I needed to act.

Unfortunately I had not put this man's phone number in my phone. I sent him an e-mail via my phone instead. Then I took advantage of the phone's multi-media abilities and used the internet to find his number and make a call, send a text. Meanwhile, the waiter wants to know if I'll order. I'm holding him off though I see the restaurant is filling up fast.

Forty-five minutes after we were supposed to meet I was still sitting at the table alone. I felt like Whoopi Goldberg in Jumping Jack Flash when she waited for Jonathan Price to show up at a fancy restaurant and he never did. Was I worried? Yes. Even in New York when things happen someone calls or texts. Was I angry? Hell yes. Was I embarrassed to be sitting alone? I ordered lunch.

My phone rang while I walked back to work. It was him. He was very sincere. He forgot. This is not his typical behavior. I believed him. We made a date to try lunch again.

My feelings however, could not be placated. I carried them with me into the office. My men's work as well as my own work teaches not to stuff feelings down, not to hold them inside. I carried my anger, my fear, my shame with me for the rest of the work day.

The alchemical payoff has already begun but I don't realize this yet. See, I did not explode at this man. I did not explode at work. Nothing from my unconscious felt the need to take over and react violently. That doesn't mean I was not hurt deeply, either. My heart ached.

But my practice in Alchemy has helped me bring some of my unconscious from darkness into light. Because I've chosen to explore those areas and pull out prima materia so it can be seen I could channel my emotions directly. The funny thing is, I was explaining the situation to a co-worker who understands some of my process. And as I was explaining about bringing what is in darkness to light - correlating that with my feelings of fear, anger and where they come from in my own life, the feelings shifted. Their grip was lost and the hurt evaporated in that instant.

Alchemy can't protect me from feeling hurt and it's not supposed to. But it did allow me, when I gave it a chance, to work with what is under my feelings so I could heal. That is golden.

        

For the past few days I seem to have been absent. I wasn't really paying attention to the fact that some old habits had crept back into my life. I was telling myself I was fine and everything I was doing was under my control.

Then I woke up from a dream. With my eyes open to my bedroom, a figure was present at the foot of my bed. I've seen these figures in my room before as if feeling into a presence and never paid them any mind. But with my focus on dreams and the archetypes held in them, I did not let this one go so easily.

He was a young man, dressed in crumpled black clothing. Though he was dead, he felt so alive and present with me. It was as if he were hung from a noose. It took several seconds before I could see through him to the bike that hangs from my wall. I could not shake this image so easily. I wrote it down then went back to sleep.

Later that day when I had to get up for work, I woke with a pain in my lower back, on the left side, below the kidney. This pain stayed with me through the day.

Today I decided to look at these events that seemed to be related to my behavior. But not before coming across an article by Paul Levy.
Paul works with Jungian ideas and creates new ways of working with the concepts. What inadvertently caught my attention was Levy's statement that in order to heal we have to focus on the complex and not the dreams that arise from them.

These past few months I have been engaging the figures in my dreams in dialogue. Seeing them as archetypes for aspects of myself that were in conflict, I simply created a stage in my conscious mind for them to act out with me. Though this seems abstract, it's much easier than going right for the complex, an elusive thing as I discovered.

I went into the bath where I always do my psychospiritual work and journeying. The first bath was to let out all the chatter and wait for it to settle down. Then I drained most of the water and filled it up again. This is where I go deeper. I held the idea of my back pain, and this figure from the dream, but instead of engaging them I just held the concept of what they appeared to represent: the complex at the surface for me this weekend.

My heart began to race and fear came over me. I got out of the tub. I knew I had found the base material or prima materia, that was the lead I wished to turn into gold. This is my alchemical process at work. Once I was clear about why I was going back into the tub I affirmed to myself how I would make it safe to do so.

I would not force anything. I would check in with my elements, usually water, to allow flow and see where it's blocked, but I would not blast through. I'd only hold this space in love of my whole self. Once I was ready to let go of judgments I went in.

Third Bath: My whole body was submerged except for my mouth. I placed my philosopher's stone on my lower abdomen near where the pain had been. Then I just took deep breaths. No process. No intellect. Just breath.

Soon, a sound came through the breathing. My old, deep, chanting sound. It took me into vibration and into my body. Then, I heard other voices in chorus with me, but one notable one that was not my own. It was from the archetype I hold in me of THE LOVER. He came in clearly and strongly. I was ready for him and glad for the help. I went deeper. We chanted together and created a connunctio, or inner marriage. The LOVER got on top of me. My chanting rose as I climaxed.

All I focused on during this time was that space in my back. In chant, I could see my body filled with green and white light from the sound, but for a black hole where the pain had been. So I placed my awareness there. And stayed there. I chanted with love, only love. No ideas of removing the black, filling it in or other ideas. I knew I needed to let it shift on its own. Soon, it did. The light inside my body became a fist that grabbed this blackness. It wasn't letting go. Paul Levy said that these complexes had many tricks and the only way to deal with them was to put light on them and bring them into consciousness. So that was my intent as I remained in love of this mysterious part of myself. Soon, all the blackness was light. More so, it became gold. It became fire, That is when the climax happened. Now all of my elements were balanced. The light from the gold was bright and strong. In chant, I floated back down and returned to my physical body.

        

Alchemy is like going on a long journey for me. I take steps, I stop and look around, I take more steps. The end of the journey is often surprising. Right now I consider the end to be when I come upon the inner marriage, the conunctio. I'm discovering that this event can happen in different ways. I've experienced it as a physical shift, a literal melding of two separated parts within me. Dreams can be the forum too, but the event is no less subtle.

My acupuncturist and I exposed an inner, young, bright light - a core essence of me that had been shrouded in fear. Because I go to my acupuncturist to aid my alchemical journey, she knows to lead me through the psychic elements of where this fear comes from in my past and this comes up for me in images embedded in my body as memories and concepts.

In order to hold the window open for this light to shine, which was in my gut, I felt pain. I'd felt this same pain and fear in other parts of my life, such as when I perform in public. At Halloween I gave a performance at a spectacular party attended by close to 1,000 people. My light came through when I first began to sing and it came out so forcefully that I was an octave higher than where I planned.

The inner marriage had already been offered to me in a dream the night before my session, just a few days after this performance. I was coming to work with a glass topped table. In the lobby, many people asked me to make way, I was in the way of the exit by one of our better known personalities. A group was there to celebrate and praise her, while another group was there to "protect" her. She entered the lobby and went right for me. We were chummy, smiling together and acting like good friends. At the end of the dream she handed me her wedding ring to protect and care for.

My acupuncturist reminded me that all of these elements in the dream are parts of me: the light is that personality, that gift of creativity and ebullience. There are parts of me to protect that and parts of me to celebrate it.

In acupuncture, we agreed to support that light and the window open to it. Because acupuncture is based on the Chinese elements of Water, Fire, Air, Wood and Metal, the session included support for my water which is a strong element in me that I always refer to when checking in with myself. It's helpful to see/feel where the water is stopped, how it flows in me and what is going on around that.

With the needles in me, I went deep into the water. It felt like I was under water. For the rest of the afternoon I held that space as I walked around. I was in no rush to return to regular activities. Time was needed to sit with this experience and allow it to congeal when it was ready to do so.

        

 

Putting myself out at work has paid off nicely. By asking for the job I wanted I got it. I’ve had to create it and the work is rewarding. If I had said nothing, and did only as I was asked, then I would be earning less and not so happy about where I would be.

 

Since water seems to be my major element, I’m listening for it, feeling it and looking for ways to keep the flow while maintaining my container.

 

On a recent walk in the woods though, I deliberately avoided the lake. Instead, I climbed high on the hill, finding a moss covered rock to sit on like a good “Green Man.”

 

After checking in with my breath and listening to the trees whisper I start down the hill. I “became” the water. Finding the little cracks and valleys where water would surely flow down to the lake is how I made my way down. After taking some time to notice the berries, the flowers, I reach the edge of the lake.

 

As a symbol of myself, I throw a stone into the water- to make the journey complete as an affirmation to bring my masculine right into the great feminine.

 

Along the lake there are trees. They offer shelter from the chilly wind. Here is where I approach the water and look in. I see what’s under the surface. Rich plants, grasses and rocks. Also, there is blackness and depth. Finally, my reflection is there.

 

Back on the hill before my journey’s end, thinking of the masculine and feminine in my life I see my nakedness. My hairyness is my masculinity. My clothes, especially the ones piled on the floor in my bedroom like a chaotic flood, are my feminine. That flood needs an outlet. The stagnant water needs flow and a strong pathway, otherwise it will remain as it has for the past few weeks.

 

This brings an image to my mind. Water usually represents the feminine (matrix) therefore the patrix, or masculine, is naturally my container, my body and my mind. Often I have been told that my container to hold higher energy wasn’t strong enough to hold all that I could bring down into my life. So in seeing the water more clearly, I make choices to strengthen my body, my mind, my container in order to create balance on a level to hold more of what I wish to manifest.

        

 Though I have not posted in this blog for months, I have not been idle. What’s so remarkable about choosing to work with the images your own self puts in front of you is that they evolve over time, they grow, they adapt – as you do.

 

In the previous post, I was told to stay grounded and let the winds howl around me. Indeed they have. Whenever I worked with that “water” inside my body, that is, finding that metaphorical dam and removing it so the water can flow where it needs to go, then I felt not so much in a flood but a hurricane.

 

Issues at work, in relationships and at home came to the surface of the storm. I did my best to follow the advice I was given by my self to remain anchored through it all. If petty dramas surfaced at work I did not play a role. I left the stage. A new urge to share ideas at work came through. It’s been a way of “putting myself out there” that I haven’t done at work before.

 

Also, much of what’s been coming to me hasn’t been so clear in the logical sense. I’ve felt changes at home, and shifts about how I handle relationships old and new. These changes seemed subtle. But after a reading from my astrologer, what I felt was made clear. Our bodies speak to us in ways easy to forget. Always, my intent is to increase awareness of these archaic body languages. It’s been said that evolution “throws nothing out.” So all of that talking to plants, walking near water, listening to nature: we can still do it. It simply requires practice. The idea rises to that over-simplified “we are all one.” But it’s there in practice. Give it a try.

 

Much of this time I have felt confused. At first, my actions when I followed my gut did not make sense to myself. I was not to worry about what others would think. Fortunately, that mysterious wisdom we carry inside knows better than we do. I’m ending this summer so proud of the work I have done inside.

 

The work continues. That male figure wanting to remain inside me has altered his message. He’s been playful and romantic lately. This was the most confusing of all. Why should he act like that? And what of that man in the real world, not in my life, but inside my being? There’s a duality there and there’s not. A fine line exists between honoring my whole self, even the parts I simply do not understand, and that of holding on to an exterior force or person who simply isn’t there anymore.

 

Clearer understanding of this came during a recent acupuncture session scheduled during the exact time of my solar return. My birthday. As the sun entered my body on the table with needles everywhere, I released what my acupuncturist referred to as those damn dams.  She can sense my water being very clearly and helped me remember that I prefer to let that water flow forward, like at work with those new ideas.

 

With this image of a man, really an ideal man that does not exist in my life, she thought I was choosing a decent and upright expression of inner self to bring playfulness and romance into my real life. She was right. What more validation did I need for the righting of my romantic compass than to know that I was choosing the metaphor of my ideal man to play the masculine role for my inner marriage. So, on that table as I let this image be his playful and romantic self, through the sunlight came a feminine presence. Her skin was pure white (the male was dressed in black so there’s the yin and yang.) and her luscious lips were hot pink. Very youthful and vibrant. And large! I really didn’t see her face. Just the lips. It was an amazing expression of sensuality and willingness to form a “conunctio” for this inner marriage.

        

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Acupuncturist, teacher, author and mentor Lorie Dechar spent time with me to talk about alchemy for Shirley MacLaine (dot) com.
We talk about how acupuncture, when used in the ancient traditional Chinese sense, is part of a philosophy, a healing modality and a product of thousands of years of archaic consciousness which our bodies are innately connected to today.

We discuss the origins of the alchemical process and its world reaching practices and concepts from inner knowing to making our world a better place. For more on Lorie Dechar and her work, please read my previous entries.

        

As I had hoped, what followed the chaos was a form of bliss and peace. I was happy, even joyful. My soul seemed to be breathing relief, but also felt more vibrant, alive and ready to charge on into the soup so to speak. Even more so, life seemed “eager to meet me” again as various personal and professional opportunities presented themselves at my door.

What I could see now that I couldn’t see in the chaos is that underneath my anxiety and physical symptoms were issues related to confidence in my creativity and putting myself out there. That was one facet anyway. I had many dreams and the image that comes up over and over for me first in therapy and now in alchemy is that image of a baby. Pregnancy, gestation, birth and nurturing. In this dream I happened to be at the birth of an unexpected baby. It was given to me and rather than give it away or contact the proper authorities, I just took the baby. We had formed a connection instantly. This meant that I had to protect the baby from the outside forces of society that perhaps would put it in foster care or unsatisfactory conditions for the special attributes of this particular baby.

The themes of pregnancy, birth and nurturing will keep coming up in this blog for sure. There is an alchemical concept known as “the eternal fetus” that refers to the lower abdomen as a cauldron where the metals: gold, lead, mercury, cinnabar…sit and bubble. I could write a great deal on them at this moment, but the story wants to move on.

I continued to be joyful but I noticed that I was sensing “water” building up in my abdomen. I kept having this feeling of being bloated. Why, I wondered? Also, the recent dream with my former therapist returned in my thoughts. I had not really understood it.

So all of this waiting and gestating felt like it was giving birth to something. The key was in this dream, in the image of my former therapist. What Lorie Dechar taught me in her workshop and her book is to use Carl Jung’s process of active imagination to cull from the dream the innate knowledge my body already had inside. Instead of thinking that I would be receiving a message "from the heavens" or through a channel far above and disconnected from me, what I really needed to do here was go deep inside and speak to the parts of me represented by this image. What I would hear was coming from me and me alone.

I had to “talk” to my therapist again. Not the real one, the imaginary one. He had answers for me and I had to let ego aside in order to allow those answers to come forward in truth.

With a piece of paper and a pen I focused on my dream again. I invited my therapist to tell my why he had come and what it was about the two drawings that was important for me. “The drawings,” he said, “are Patience and Fortiude. You will need them in order to receive your ‘gold’ but only after you go down deep into the black muck. Like ‘the dark night of the soul.”’

I asked him about how he could help me with my alchemical process at this time. “Stay grounded, rooted in yourself. The anchor is there. Let the winds howl around you. The leaves that fall away are no longer a vital part of your being and they will make room for new leaves to grow.”

He also gave me some specific steps for how I could follow this advice. But I had to ask him first. This is how active imagination works. It’s a great tool. You can talk to your heart or to a guide, or your father. But you will really be talking to a part of YOU that's represented by these images. It gives you the power to heal. It gives you the security of knowing that all you need in this life is truly inside you.

        

When I began this blog I thought I would be diligent about posting once a week. It seemed as though this was enough time to process another bite-sized chunk of the alchemical process, especially as I continue my early workings in it.

But as you can see, it’s been weeks since I felt like writing anything about my process. Instinctively I knew that waiting for something authentic to come to the surface was correct. And yet, as time went on, I began to doubt my intentions for this blog as well as my ability to maintain it. So I let go of the blog and focused deeply on my process, becoming more familiar with alchemy.

What came up instead of a dream, or an outright shift, was an alchemical function called chaos. Chaos, I’m told, is a necessary pathway towards what Lorie Dechar calls an “alchemical upgrade.” Meaning, we never go back to our old, seemingly secure selves. We never go around in a circle, but rather in an upward spiral. The turning point or crux towards "upness" is where chaos happens. I drew my life in a spiral. It ended up looking like a tree actually, the spirals working their way to one point, with a star on top.

I felt myself slipping into the darkness. My nerves and anxiety were kicking in. There was no remedy for them. I decided to take a bath, which is a great tool for alchemy, and go deep into myself. I remember being very alive in my body, the physical side of it. There was this sense that I chose such a strong body for this life and the work I wanted to do. I sensed the detail that went into what my body would tolerate and how attractive it would be. There was also this sense of going back to the time of my birth and getting in touch with the fluidity of that moment.

I say fluidity, because there was chaos then. I was born two months early. On a soul level I wasn’t ready to take this body. To be in my bath now reminded me of breaking water at birth and the feminine energy around birthing fluids: blood and water, coming from a yin masculine fluid of semen.

The message here for me was to absorb this suffering in the chaos and let go. The only way to rid myself of the anxiety and see what was underneath it was to let go. Just as I let go when my soul descended and chose to take this perfect body.

Letting go meant surrendering to the sacred feminine, then as now. As an infant I put all of my trust in my mother and now it is time to bring “mother” back into my life. Not literally, but through alchemy.

Descending into chaos, birthing, the fluids and the belly – this is feminine territory. For the first time perhaps since my birth, I experienced this sacred space. One of the first images to come up for me was that of a dream shared with me by a former therapist. He was walking and saw a woman, decaying, with her arms extended toward him asking for help. I now truly understand the reason he shared this with me. My own sacred feminine needed help desperately. Or dramatically, like Sarah Bernhardt. Images from dreams can be so potent.

The chaos lasted for a week or so. Naturally I fought against the letting go part so there was a tug of war between my ego and my self. I have no therapist now, so going though this alone felt terrifying. Letting go really meant letting go of everything and yet there was still work to go to every day, friends to talk to and chores to get done.

My former therapist appeared in a dream, something that never happened while I worked with him. This was significant, but of what? He showed me two drawings and we were both happy. That is all I remembered. Since there was no resolution all I could do was wait. It’s the hardest thing for me to do, in anything. I don’t like to wait in lines at the theater, in traffic or on the phone. In alchemy we wait and observe. We do nothing until we see something happening. Now I was Sarah Bernhardt thinking I would just die.

Something did happen. A light emerged from the dark water. Another dream. I was at the house where I grew up. It is an image that comes up often in my dreams. This time, on the porch were all these bags of white dust. It felt like I had thrown them out a long time ago, but here they remained. Some of the bits inside had not yet fully transformed into white dust. I took them in one by one, knowing that I would sift through them and look at what I had thrown out, my garbage. You know what I mean here. But I could and must take my time sifting through each bag.