ANGELIQUE ELECTRA
“Alchemy” is the art and process of elemental transformation. It consists of using pre-existing elements to form “gold.” Human alchemy is forward-creating using select elements from your past experiences and memories, your gifts, skills, talents, imagination and vision. When these elements are stripped of their impurities and combined with your own unique stamp, there is precious gold. Manifestation of the life you want requires developing the art of “Life Alchemy.”
The impurities in our lives can consist of unforgettable trauma, dark childhoods, oppressions, deep losses, negative core beliefs, painful relationships and anything else that has hurt us, stifled our true self-expression or suppressed our personal freedom to be authentic. I am calling this bundle, the “Woundings.” So, to transform Woundings into the materials needed to create the gold in our lives, it is necessary to take and transmute them through your own inner tools of self-transformation.
Michael Meade, author of “Genius Myth” shares that our “genius” – that part of your soul that knows why you are here, is directly related to the Woundings. Woundings often ignite the creative force in us to listen ever more deeply to our calling. The narrative of our lives can provide the basis for uncovering that part of us that knows why we are here, who we are meant to be and what we are meant to do.
Meade shares:
“When we unfold the story wound within our souls and untie the knots within us, we add presence to the world and contribute to the spirit of life in a specific and authentic way. As we transform ourselves from within, we also help in some way to transform the World.”
If we do not use Alchemy, the Woundings can behave much like a Black Hole in space, pulling the light within us like a vacuum and impeding our efforts to progress — keeping us in an ever deepening darkness of struggle. Our ability to share our true gifts weakens and can invite deep depression or anxiety.
Reframe
What do our Woundings teach us? What qualities have emerged as our strengths and virtues? Resilience, courage, inner drive, self-reliance, determination? How do our Woundings ignite our dreams?
Often a wound fuels a determination to help others address and transcend the same or similar Woundings. Once unwound and examined for what they really are –thoughts an memories about the past, then, through support vehicles (e.g., therapy, coaching), Woundings can be transmuted into new fuel for empowering personal insights and discoveries.
For example, by deeply experiencing childhood abandonment, you may have learned that you developed self-reliance. Through every romantic break-up, you may have experienced insights as to what and who IS right for you. By deeply examining the lives of your parents, and transmuting them into vulnerable human beings, you may begin to forgive them and achieve healing. By bringing your negative core beliefs to the surface to question their truth, you can become empowered to choose differently when triggered. Through your pain, you may discover the beauty of your creativity.
To bravely call out Woundings and transmute them into what gives your life meaning and direction, is true alchemy. Allowing Woundings to sit within and fester, will continue to dim the Light within you, and make faint the voice of your calling and fulfillment.
A key alchemical tool is Reframing. How do you take what is dark and transform it into Light– or even into spiritual Enlightenment? With cognitive reframing — having a willingness to see a thing differently — we can open up to our possibilities. Our thoughts drive us everyday, many of which are not even true. When we take a roadblock away that represents a lie we tell ourselves habitually, we have another, better path to drive –toward new choices and experiences which invite our authenticity. If we avoid ways to see things differently, the road never changes, and the results of our lives don’t change either.
If you lose your job, do you go back to the Wounding of rejection or abandonment, or deduce that your spirit is guiding you to another, better opportunity? If you become ill, is it a wake-up call for more self-care about your health? Even if hit with a terminal illness, is that really a message to finally fully live? If you lost a parent at a young age, is that a road to building strong resilience and self-reliance that serves you well today?
Ultimately, the question is: Does our past keep us prisoner, or do we lead our lives with transformative work?
Journal
Because our minds race and usually betray us, journaling becomes almost necessary to lock your thoughts for examination in reducing them to writing. Daily journaling can allow your thoughts to settle long enough for you to go deeper. Coming back to your journal days later to review earlier writing can be very revelatory. When you write, you will be able to access a deeper self who has the wisdom and guidance you seek. Responding to your own self-coaching questions can also open up the opportunities for reframing.
Here are some questions to consider for journaling:
What is the story about my life that I tell myself? Am I mostly cast as a hero or a victim? What is the ending of my story likely to look like if nothing changes?
What Wounding especially needs to be reframed? Journal at least 3 reframes of the Wounding experience.
What are the strengths and virtues I recognize within myself. How do they show up in my life now?
How do I evidence self-care in my life? If not enough, what more can I do?
Do I long for another kind of life? If so, what are the differing elements? Do I feel deserving of that life?
What are the core beliefs that work against me? How true are they? What are the payoffs?
If I take those core beliefs and examine their opposite meanings, what would be more true than not?
If I look deeply at my worst experiences, what were the most positive gains to my character, my virtues, my learning, my successes and my current convictions?
If I were to mentor a young person embarking with independence, what wisdom would I impart based on my own experiences?
If I were to mentor new parents with advice, what would I say to them?
What would I hope someone would say about me at my memorial service about how I lived my life?
Where am I not being true to myself?
What if my soul is a benevolent guide and designed the initial circumstances of my birth? What would be the purpose of my soul? What am meant to know, to learn, and to create?
Alchemize with the Four Elements, plus the Fifth One
Earth – Ground. This means settling into the current realities in your life and to reframe them to know that you are completely present (and not in the past) to your experiences and emotions. You find your baseline and dare to grow beyond it.
Water – Flow. As you are present, you realize that life evolves, and that you evolve. Becoming more receptive, as you grow more resilient, allows you to welcome change and opportunity.
Air – Ideate and Imagine. This allows your creativity to flourish. This is the space of “visioneering”– of seeing through new eyes and shifting perceptions about what your life really means and what you want to invite into it.
Fire – Ignite. Set fire to your Ideas with concrete action and create connection with like-minded others to support you. Fan the Flames. Grab partners. Dance to your rhythm–and take the time you need to get to your destination.
Quintessence –this is the fifth element — that soul element which inspirits and enlivens — the element where your own “genius” resides. Nourish the spark of the Divine within you through self-inquiry, meditation and journaling. Learn to enjoy your own company and revel in the wisdom that comes to and through you.
Alchemize through Life Visioning
Begin to retell your life’s narrative and project the course of your life and its promise along the themes and desires that emerge from reframing and journaling. Begin to formulate those next doable steps to concretize that new narrative. Track your progress and celebrate your wins. Challenge yourself with acts outside your comfort zone to build resilience and strengthen your commitment to your new narrative. Consider how your story can help others and how that relates to your calling. Bless yourself along the way. You are pure Gold.
Reformulating and transforming your thoughts about the promise of your life is essential for full Alchemy. The impurities of Woundings can be released through the new choices you can make everyday–choices that affirm your own “genius” and lead you to your own pot of gold–the True You!