alchemy

It takes a relative amount of courage just to get out of bed each day. There are those who are stronger in their courage, and they help to compel us along a little further in the fulfillment of our faith.

Transcendence is more about the personal act of not engaging the enemy, finding a way out of the cage that is being designed for you at a particular moment by others, circumstance, or your own bad habits and ignorance.

My take on personal evolution is largely about the spirit of connecting and disconnecting things, relating to what I call __he gap_ or time and space between things. It is also about becoming practical in all this, developing the power and precision to simply bring the grand ideas home, to compress the paradigm of perception/choice/action/result into a single gesture.

The infinite possibilities that exist in any given moment cause infinite possibilities in response. The wording is correct here; the possibilities exist already, and have already caused the existing possibilities of response.

The exact proportion and combination of the qualities within you, as they are, even while you search and struggle for them to be different or better, is a unique beauty.

Transformation, on the other hand, is creating beauty from horror or destruction (or, for beginners, an actually pleasant evening with the usual family problems).

The composite of what you know to do__hat which compels you, that which you are naturally already drawn to, that which exploits the unique potentials inside you, that which you know you are capable of doing, that which will build a bridge between imagination and reality__auses a relationship that obliges sacrifice.

If your curiosity reaches a breaking point (compelled actually means that you only have the remaining choice to act on it, having tried all the other options before), and becomes fascination with mystery or truth, you find what you need. Maybe it__ a person, maybe it__ a tragedy, maybe it__ an explosive recognition that, __y God, I__ still alive.

Of course, the self-righteous demand and expectation for love, and exactly how it should be expressed, is not the most streamlined method for producing it in another for you. That is, it does not compel or create the love itself. You__e neither loving nor producing that which would compel the love toward you. You__e compressed between them both and incapable of accepting either. And rightly so. Which then accelerates the accumulating suffering.

Transcendence is a word I don__ use often; I prefer transformation. Why? Because the essential game is about using what is in front of you and in you exactly as it is, but finding a way to do something with that that is surprising and an expression of inspiration and intuition. You engage reality and make something out of it that only you can, alchemizing limitation, conflict or what appears to be bad into something else.

Sometimes I wonder how much of our suffering we allow or impose on ourselves simply in search of our worthiness to accept our own respect and appreciation. I__ written before some years ago that we often cause suffering in another so that we can then love them, as in, __ou have suffered for me, so I can love you now._ The eventual shock of realizing the sacrifice made for you destroys the walls of self-righteousness and protection. The suffering sacrifice of another creates the willingness and capacity to do the same. Finally, love and respect (respect is part of the body of love) come from the recognition of something else already given up for them.Within the individual, you or me, a similar process takes place toward oneself. It is as if we know some- where that we are not worthy of our own love or respect until we have earned the right to it, and that is mainly through some kind of suffering. That suffering may be generic, as in a life lived in which tragedy after tragedy accumulate, or it may be specific, as in the constant sacrifice of other easier things for a being or vision. Or, perhaps more correctly, it is either consciously chosen or not.

Together we are learning to move from raw emotion and frozen muscles into a flow which emerges deep from within. We are learning to dance our prayers, bleed our words onto the page, laugh our images onto canvas, build our dreams in the world _ to transmute and transmit the energy of the Feminine through our bodies and out into the world.

Witnessing is not flowing with the current of the river but observing the flow from the bank of the river.

Witnessing is the alchemy of enlightenment. It can transform mud into gold.

The alchemy of life is to turn coins into cents, by making sense of change.

My goal is not to upset the apple cart, but to make it more accessible.

In these times where it has seemed dark indeedwhere integrity appears solely buried in legend and lore, it is an opportunity in contrast to the shadows, to create miracles...by choosing first courage, then diligence, standing, opening our mouth and speaking the truth that in rare moments, may ignite the light.

Is it a weakness not being able to hate? Or is it preparation for what is inevitable, the ability only to love.