Have you ever wondered… about alchemy? I have. Not as an outward practice to develop a philosopher’s stone but as an inner practice to purify my lead and dark parts into bright and shining gold. I suppose you could say that, as a result of my alchemical work, I want to be golden. I want to transmute the coal in my own stocking into beautiful ornaments.
Let your mind wander in the pure and simple.
-Chuang Tzu
Be one with the infinite.
Let all things take their course.
One part of alchemy that many may struggle with is the idea of balancing out your sides. Finding the pure middle ground between your masculine and feminine aspects. We all have them even if you choose to deny and ignore it. Carl Jung often referred to them as the Anima and the Animus. Can you fully connect with your unconscious inner self?
It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman-manly, or a man-womanly.
-Virginia Woolf
Another part of Carl Jung’s work that I only recently learned more about is the shadow. We often focus on its dark side and what negative aspects we are repressing, but there is also a golden shadow – all of our positive potential and purest purpose that we often avoid and self-sabotage against. We tend to lack full expansion and total expression in all directions. Layers upon layers and masks atop masks cover up our pure persona that patiently persists at our core. Are we willing to peel back the layers and put aside the masks to burn bright and true? Can we learn to fan our flame of pure transformation?
Genuine transformation doesn’t happen in comfort. It happens in the fire.
-Alan Watts
Alchemize your suffering into wisdom, lessons learned and self-improvement. Alchemize pain into purpose, wounds into healing, hate into love, shame into sanctity, guilt into guidance, doubt into determination, fear into fortitude, sadness into serenity, melancholy into mindfulness, and cold into warmth. Allow everything to serve as fuel for your fire as it slowly burns brighter and truer within you until all that remains are the purest and most principal parts of you. Any blemishes and impurities will not withstand such blistering and searing heat. Wield it well, and control it consciously. Pouring forth gold is a delicate and divine art form to carefully cultivate with smooth and graceful precision.
The world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it. There is nothing purer than that.
-Rupi Kaur
When life hands you lemons, are you making lemonade or lamenting your lot and luck? Are you using the fuel available to you or wastefully and wistfully wishing for something different? Purity rests in acceptance of the present moment. It leverages the ingredients at hand to make the best of each and every situation. Can we wonder why certain events and moments are not better or easier? Yes, but what good does it do? Why waste our energy with impure thoughts of delusional distractions? This part hurts me at my core because I honestly have a lot of room to grow here. However, recognizing that fact shows me a stockpile of fuel to now dump on my faithful fire in order to smelt a lot of new gold.
To the pure,
-Marcel Proust
all things are pure.
You were born to be glowing. We all were. It is up to each of us to reclaim purity.
Maybe it is wise. Maybe it is dumb. Time will tell. Stay wondrous, y’all.