Alchemy means to change a base metal into a precious metal. It means to change something plain and ordinary into something beautiful and incredible. The word derives from an old French word and from the Arabic meaning “the art of transformation”. In the seventeenth century the name of the practice called alchemy was changed to chemistry.
Alchemy, or the transmutation, the changing of one thing into a more special thing, comes from the ancient chemists and sorcerers. It meant two things. One was the material meaning of changing common metals into gold. The spiritual meaning was of achieving ultimate wisdom leading to immortality. What sprit-humans do not realize is first and foremost, alchemy was a spiritual discipline and the material aspects were metaphors for spiritual realities and transformations. The alchemical process is a spiritual process, not what we call a material process. The transmutation was referring to the alchemy of the mind, not of what we call ordinary matter. However, when we apply the secret of alchemy to our mind, what we call material changes also. Remember, the essence of everything we call “physical matter” is an manifestation of a spiritual reality.
One way I explain the key to transmutation is with what I call the ‘Two Incredibles”. Truly comprehend the “Two Incredibles” and you will know and have the keys to transmutation of the ancient alchemists.
The first incredible is the “existence” of ANYTHING at all. The existence of ANYTHING at all ANYWHERE in the perceived universe is truly BEYOND what the word Incredible can even express. It makes more sense that there is NOTHING at ALL. It makes more sense that there is nothing, never was anything and never will be anything. No God, No time, No space, no matter. Time and space alone are even beyond the ability of the word incredible to express.
The second incredible is that you have had a chance to experience ANYTHING at ALL.
If you were not aware of existing, of being aware of being aware, you would not know of anything, and nothing, nothing at all would matter to you as you would not even exist to have anything matter.
You would NOT EVEN KNOW you DID NOT KNOW.
The second most incredible Miracle in the Universe is the simple fact that you are Aware of Being Aware.
Truly appreciate your Awareness of Being Aware and you will know the secret of the Alchemists.
There will be nothing that is common, ordinary and mundane. There will just be incredible upon incredible perceived through an incredible mind that is incredibly capable of the Awareness of Being Aware.
Over 40 years ago I married. My wife became pregnant. We were so happy. One day after we were married two months, I woke up and found her dead in the bed next to me. She had died in her sleep of an overdose of drugs. She had a smile on her dead face, but how could I smile? I was devastated. How could I go on living with both my wife and the pregnancy being taken away from me in the twinkling of an eye.
For two years I lived in hell. I cursed every thought and concept of a God, if there was even a God to curse. I looked at someone who had has 30 years of married life and a child or two and I said, “Why them and not me?” I was robbed. I was cheated. I was let down by everything I had considered God to be.
Then one day, after two years of living in hell, I woke up and read about a young man on his way home from his wedding. On the way home, he and his wife were in a car accident. His wife was killed in the accident. He survived. All of a sudden, I had a realization that taught me the secret to alchemy, the key to paradise right here and right now.
If I compared my life experience to the married couple of 30 years with the children and the wonderful grandchildren, yes, I was cheated.
However, if I compared my life experience to the young man who lost his wife on his wedding day, I was truly blessed. I had two whole months more than he did of the beauty of marriage. I even had a few days of the joy of expecting to have a baby and to be a father.
I realized that what happens in life is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. Good and bad are points of view of “what is”. What I chose to compare my situation in life with, would determine whether I viewed my situation in life as a blessing or a curse. I would choose what to call my “experience” based on what I choose to compare my “experience”. Based on these thought of comparison, I will experience the emotions of blessings or curses, of heaven of hell.
Whatever the situation is, we are the ones who choose what we compare it to.
If you truly appreciate how incredible just the awareness of being aware is, then how can you curse life. Without the awareness of being aware, you would know of nothing. You would not even know that you did not know. Ugh, what a horrible thought.
A friend of mine was paralyzed when he was 12 years old when he was bicycling and a car hit him. He was a quadriplegic for over 10 years. This means he did not have the use of either of his hands, arms or legs. In fact, the only thing he had the power to move was his eyeballs and his eyelids.
After 10 years of therapy, he finally was able to walk again using crutches and leg braces. He wobbled and jerked side to side when he was walking but he was walking.
One night we were having something to eat at a restaurant and I said to him, “Johnny, what was the worst part of being paralyzed for ten years”? The simplicity of his answer really surprised me. He said to me, “The worse part of it was when I felt an itch and I could not scratch it. And I could not even tell anyone that I had an itch and beg them to scratch it. I had to just lie in the bed and suffer through waiting until the itch went away”. Every time I tell this story, even now as I am writing this, I start to get one or more itches. Excuse me while I quickly scratch them.
Whew, I just had five places on my body that were itching. What pleasure it just was to scratch them. Can you imagine going for ten years having to live through every itch in every place on your body imaginable? Wow, what a terrible thought.
Truly appreciate how incredible it is that you have the ability to scratch your itches and you will be well on your way to understanding the secrets of alchemy and being able to turn the key to the transmutation of all that you experience into a divine experience.
I just had to scratch a few more times.
Have you ever heard of Helen Keller? She was deaf and blind by the time before she was two years old. She actually graduated from Radcliff with a BA degree and wrote ten books.
A little poem I say to myself every day helps me to keep this sense of appreciation in my mind is:
They say the sky is a pretty blue.
They say the sky is a pretty green.
But what is blue,
And what is green,
To a child who has never seen?
To sum it up, here it is in a nutshell. Say it out loud as you read it. Every time you say it, you turn the key a little further in the lock opening your own transmutation or process of spiritual transformation.
is the key to paradise.
THE EXISTENCE -- OF ANYTHING AT ALL.
MY AWARENESS -- OF ANYTHING AT ALL.
Everyday experience becomes divine experience.
