ON ALCHEMY AND SHADOW

“You are an alchemist;
make gold of that.”

– William Shakespeare
Timon of Athens

Transmutation is alchemical process (the conversion of base metals to gold). Stated even more plainly: to transmute is to change something completely from one form to another.

One way in which I serve others is by helping them embrace (rather than deny or repress) their shadow selves. Why? Because it's only in acknowledging shadow as inextricably partnered with light; freeing it from judgment and criticism; increasing awareness of the feelings harbored within it; revealing the roots of those feelings by asking productive questions of them, then being courageously willing to hear their answers; and, finally, liberating their energies such that they might best deliver us to what IS (rather than what we imagine) that we're able to land in our authentic mindbodies.

When we circumvent the integration of ALL our parts, we've no choice but to be left splintered, and therein lies the germ of deep suffering.

We can't know ourselves fully—including our astounding capacity for compassion—if we recognize only the aspects of ourselves that bypass discomfort.

We can't know ourselves intimately if we're unwilling to accept that our beautiful complexity is flecked with things we don't find 'pretty'.

We can't arrive at the inevitable conclusion that the facets of ourselves that we've declared "bad" are essential to the good work of growth, development, and evolution... not while refusing to see and, yes, LOVE them (that is to say: extend grace toward their resolutions... their role in our reconciliations).

We don't have the opportunity to discover, for that matter, that our shadows contain more than just "bad" stuff; they often hold the medicine we've withheld from ourselves and the world because at sometime, somewhere, someone convinced us that it was our worst feature—and we, being more familiar with their authority than with our agency, believed them.

Our intention, via the integrating methods/systems/technologies we undertake in sessions is transformation... transmogrification... transmutation, and we find, time and again, that the changes in form are from projection to ownership, from illusory reality to alignment with Truth, from fear to Love.

♥︎ Patsy

For a hand in being re-membered to wholeness...

patsycounsels@post.com
1 + 818.791.0064.

photo by Stefano Pollio/Unsplash