Alchemy
Christmas Eve.
It's very early.
Old Henry woke me up at 4:30 to pee, and I'm glad he did.
It's raining and mild, and the open back door is a speaker, inviting in a lovely sound.
Also, the smell jolts me. It is cleansing and viseral.
I have built a fire for company, and meanwhile inside the fireplace on some piece of metal, rain thumps like a tiny drum. Louder toming is coming from the eaves outside.
Ian's chimes join in. To all the world, it is as if music is playing as I sit with old Henry and read.
Finished the book The Alchemist, one of many that Bridget and Jamie left me when they moved back to England. It's a preachy little book, but I like the message. It is about our connection, through heart and intuition, with the Soul of the Universe. It is about our life contracts. It is about remembering to listen to the beating of the one grand heart that is within; the one we all share.
Alchemy is finding out what we all forget.....that we are not alone.
Alchemy is transmuting the basic corporeal nature of something by summoning the truth of the greater nature of EVERYTHING. Changing the basic elements of anything by tuning into the inner Soul of Universe. If literal alchemy is a myth; a holy grail sought for ions, then spiritual alchemy is transforming the deadness and pain of current circumstance into blissful peace, by discovering the truth of who we are. Turning lead to gold is not nearly as miraculous as turning anguish into joy by the shear mining of this precious metal.
Following the thread of that is the thing.....
As best as I can figure, we make lovely plans on the other side, sometimes with the help other souls, and then land here on Earth with a SPLAT, (which must be confusing); fragmenting and jumbling things up on purpose, so as to have a new go at life......
The trick is to put the puzzle back together in new ways. Maybe to find again, our "True, original course" (thanks you WH Auden).
We beat our heads against the obstacles of humanness....sometimes we don't get through this exercise.....but then sometimes we do.
Here is the fun part.
All this is about an invitation to expand Love (with a big L, not a little one), because Love is it....the Alpha and the Omega. Life, the Universe and Everything. The jet fuel and the airplane, and all the passengers.....
Love is the whole enchilada. By giving into it; by finding it.....we keep creating it.
It is Alchemy, because we must cook it up over and over again, with the ingredients that life offers.....sweet, savory.......or bitter as gall. If God is a great big gorilla, we souls are the beating heart of her.
I might have engaged in some alchemy myself this Christmas. Since nothing has been as I would wish these last six years, and since my efforts to turn my life around through my own muscle have largely been an abysmal failure, I seem to have resorted to holding my breath, jumping overboard and abandoning ship.
I follow the most basic instinct I have. Love.
Let's just say this...only love can come in and wipe clean the chalkboard of my worried mind.
Remind me to forget expectation.
Be humble.
Let it all go.
Surrender, for I am out of bullets.
Love the rain, and the fire, and old Henry instead.
Get quiet, peaceful and still, open up and find the thread again. As I do this, I notice that the strain of it all eases up for a bit, desperation sighs, yawns and goes to sleep. From within, some other kind of love just comes back. It is a bigger, broader feeling....a different animal, one so expansive it must come from somewhere else entirely.
I have come to think of it as a spring or a well, where the water is sweeter, more pure. Infinite. In my solitude I plumb the depths of it. Perhaps turn things upside down for a fresh look.
Maybe untethering myself from the prison of desire, the wild bird of abundance can take flight?
She is a beauty, she is..... Perhaps my love is her liberation?
Maybe then at her whimsy, she will alight on my worthy heart and build a nest there.
And even lay a few tiny eggs.
Meanwhile the rain agrees.....
And takes it's leave.....
As comes the alchemy of dawn
