“Embracing a limitation could actually drive creativity. Learning to be creative within the confines of our limitations is the best hope we have to transform ourselves and, collectively, transform our world.” Phil Hansen This thought belongs to an artist who, before graduating from art school, developed a shake in his hand, caused by permanent nerve […]
According to Osho, “There are two ways to disassociate yourself from false identities. You are not what you have been thinking, feeling, imagining, projecting. What you are is simply the fact of being aware. Whatsoever happens, you remain just the awareness. You are awareness – that identity cannot be broken. That identity cannot be negated. All else […]
The presentation of the stages in alchemy as a symbol of spiritual transformation would not be complete without presenting the stage of conjunction, i.e., union. It is the last of the work with the four natural elements—earth. To this end, I will first recall the previous three: The gift of calcination is the purification of […]
There is a story about a samurai that I like very much. I am retelling it here from memory. Once upon a time, there was a samurai whose master had been killed. He set out to find his master’s murderer, as his samurai duty commanded him to kill the man. When he finally found him, […]
With this article, I want to present the third of the stages of spiritual transformation, which in alchemy is called separation and is associated with the element of air. Before that, I will briefly recall the previous two stages—calcination and dissolution—so that it can be understood in context. The first and most dramatic stage of […]
Dissolution is the second of the alchemical stages in the process of spiritual transformation. Unlike the stage of calcination, which works with the element of fire—human passions—during dissolution (the dissolving), we work with what the element of water symbolizes: emotions, the primal feelings of oneness with the source of life, and the subconscious. This stage […]
The Transformation of Thinking During Calcination For those who are passing through the fire of calcination—the purification of our desiring nature through suffering—there is something else of great importance that needs to be understood. The primary object of transformation at this first stage of spiritual transformation is thinking itself. In other words, at the core […]
This article is a continuation of the previous one on “The Abduction of Persephone,” in which the “abduction,” from the perspective of the ego, appears as a descent into the underworld, but from the perspective of the Spirit is exactly the opposite—a rite of initiation into the depths of the unconscious. It is an encounter […]
“Coniunctio takes place in the underworld; it happens in the dark, when there is no light left at all. When you are completely desperate and consciousness has gone, something is born — in the deepest depression, in the deepest despair, a new personality is born. When you are at the very end of your strength, […]
There is something very important that people who have begun the process of spiritual transformation should know: this process lasts a long time. Very long. Discouragingly long. So long that one always passes through a stage of despair. This is why serious books in the field of spirituality do not give easy recipes like “do […]
The process of spiritual transformation begins with Nigredo—the darkness that enters our lives, dressed in various forms of psychological suffering: depression, fear, a sense of powerlessness and emptiness, loneliness and isolation, unrequited love, and jealousy. The awakening from the trance of the senses, fixated on the world of matter, is triggered by the alarm of […]
Behind falling in love with someone who does not reciprocate our feelings, or who does not give us what we want from them, there is a specific psychic dynamic. Behind the intense emotions of unrequited love stand inner laws of the soul that differ from what appears on the surface. If we understand this, […]
