“Truth” is only relative to “experience.” Objective reality creates and influences the subjective reality. Subjective consciousness is influenced by the subconsciousness or unconsciousness. Consciousness is recognizing the many factors that create “realty” through comprehending the Separation of the Three Essentials (Body, Mind/Soul, and Spirit) and integrating them into a complete whole. This integration is the alchemical process of transformation. There are no short cuts to achieving this process. Each individual has the responsibility to become conscious whether they believe it or not. Obtaining consciousness is the only meaningful purpose of life. It is becoming your own individual within the whole of the cosmos. It defines one’s place and relationship with All that is. It is for that reason that becoming a conscious authentic being should literally be they most crucial objective in life.
In order to experience “Separation,” the journey through “Calcination” and “Dissolution” must occur. It is only in this context that spiritual transformation can occur.
So, who are you? Do you have a personal definition or has your entire life consisted of stories to “please” everyone? Evaluating life ambitions and determining if they were built on the precepts of other’s ideals of success can be enlightening or maybe, . . . just daunting. Is embracing this self-definition of who I should be out of a need for religious and social acceptance. Why am I me? How did “I” come about?
Humans have the ability to subconsciously construct worlds that are built to separate and isolate themselves from everything. Fear of being distinctly different motivates them to hide within a personal fortress of solitude where every human connection becomes hollow and meaningless. The process of finding validity and questioning one’s own integrity brings forth the possibility that everyone else could also be in violation of their true intent. Coping mechanisms of isolating barriers develop such as empty interactions with “friends,” filing unwanted social idealisms, leadership positions masquerading as empty acts of service, avoiding any form of true intimacy by alluding any emotional conditions. All of these being symptoms of self-delusion that are only actions of narcissism.
As life unfolds, inner desires of soul scream to be let loose. Something greater begins driving an ambiguous desire to give meaning to existence. Choosing to hold a deaf ear to those realization out of fear of finding demons inside our minds creates a war that consumes and devour life-force.
The powerful intuitive knowingness of inevitably facing the destruction of a socially-individualized “reality” obliterates personal progression and becomes fuel for sustaining the procrastination of the egoic demise. Scenarios of friends walking away; religious leaders declaring heresy; expulsion from organizations; disowning of family; complete loss of all stability and support gives rise to the conclusion, “why wouldn’t I be better off dead?” How does anyone exist in a new unforeseen world?
Suicide can become the prevailing conclusion of this realization if life has no purpose or meaning to hold onto. This revelation leads to unconscious preparations of ending the current misery or destroy the current reality. But then we discover that suicide is just a metaphor symbolizing being reborn into a new self-individualized awareness. Our deeper consciousness was preparing the road to great transformation. But it was necessary for us to be completely ready to let go of EVERYTHING, even our physical existence, to make this transformation.
I often think about prewar-Germans that worked in concentration camps. Not the prisoners but the actual guards. What would it have been like to have so much fear that you could commit crimes against humanity? What justifications and rationalizations could have enough power of persuasion to overcome a literal nightmare of circumstance and breed such hate and bigotry? What does that do to the Mind/Soul?
Parallels of this metaphor kept expounding. Is denying reality and every moral code that one professes to believe as reasonable justification to exist? And at what level of wrongdoing does it become unacceptable. This becomes the greatest façade–existing out of a powerful need to conform to a social meme. How can judgments of the atrocities committed during wars be condemned when humans are still entangled in the same spiderwebs of despair, and hypocrisy? Is this reality completely invalid!
“Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between the individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, represents an office, he is this or that. In a certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality, a product of compromise, in making which others often have a greater share than he. The persona is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality.”
– Jung, C.G. (1966), Two Essays on Analytical Psychology – The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.7 (2nd ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, para. 246.
Amazingly, Carl Jung introduced the principle of enantiodromia which is in essence the third phase of the alchemical process of spiritual transformation. Besides founding analytical psychology, he was also a mystic and published several works on alchemy. So, why reinvent the wheel? Let’s look at what he had to say.
I will take some liberties in changing some of his terms to stay within the semantics of previous entries and older mystical teachings.
Enantiodromia is a principle introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung in his work the Psychological Types.
Jung defines enantiodromia as “the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counter position is built up which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control.”
Carl Jung. Psychological Types. p. 426.
It is similar to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance. When things get to their extreme, they turn into their opposite. However, in Jungian terms, a thing psychically transforms into its shadow opposite, in the repression of psychic forces that are thereby cathected into something powerful and threatening.
This principle was explicitly understood and discussed in the principles of traditional Chinese religion – as in Taoism and yin-yang. A central premise of the I Ching is that yang lines become yin when they have reached their extreme, and vice versa.
“Individuation means becoming a ‘single, homogeneous being, and in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it “also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate ‘individuation’ as ‘coming to ‘self-hood’ or ‘self-realization.’”
Jung, C.G. (1966), Two Essays on Analytical Psychology – The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.7 (2nd ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, p. 171.
When considering what would be the most important philosophy that could be passed onto future generations, it would seemed be some kind of hope in overcoming base human experience and transforming it into something beautiful and profound.
Great thinkers and doers throughout history shared their discovery of a journey into consciousness by incorporating teachings into symbolic metaphors that have come to permeate all of human culture. They probably desired to pass down their own terrible adventures into Self-Individuation to be a beacon of hope in surmounting the dark-night-of-soul. Extinguishing ignorance leaves a hole in the soul and a desperateness that yearns to be filled. Avoiding this inner pressure to do “something” leads to all sorts of negative psychological issues or trying to be re-enveloped into a new “belief system” that would set progress on its side and delay evolution. Existing with meaninglessness creates undefined depression and anxiety. Our Shadows stirring in the depths of our Souls.
The alchemical progression of the transformation of base matter (lead) into Gold is a powerful metaphor of an evolution of consciousness or spiritual transformation. It lets us know that there are more steps yet to be achieved. Don’t stop yet, your half way there and only 50 years-old.
The Alchemical Process being a seven-step process that has been hidden in plain sight for centuries. Compared with the geocentric model of the solar system as a metaphorical symbol of surmounting each orbit and arriving at a central celestial state.
We are born into this world unconscious. We stay unconscious until we begin the journey into awareness. And it seems at times, that our entire culture and society is built around preventing this discovery of self-awareness. Even families and religious doctrines advert this progression. Even the true meaning “self-awareness” has been extracted from logos by redefining its very nature.
We are all on this journey even if you don’t recognize it yet or believe you need to start. An inward journey that EVERYONE must take; No shortcuts or CliffsNotes! Unconsciousness is the trap; a “Matrix” of objectively structured “Reality” based upon what others have told you to believe. Those who have endured the journey and performed the transformation want nothing more than to help others begin the process. Inferring that someone may need to begin that journey is usually met with egoic monoliths of pride. The nature of the resistance and arguments reek of ignorance but fills the messenger with great sadness. It is why the masters stay hidden until the student is ready. “You can’t fill a cup that is already full.” Yes, an Avatar quote, but knowingly done so to reveal the story behind the phrase.
Buddhist Parable
Scholar Tokusan, who was full of knowledge and opinions, came to Ryutan and asked about the specific teachings of the Buddha. While refilling Tokusan’s teacup, he did not stop pouring when the cup was full. Tea spilled out and ran over the table. “Stop! The cup is full!” said Tokusan.
“Exactly,” said Master Ryutan. “You are like this cup; you are full of ideas. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full; I can’t put anything in. Before I can teach you, you’ll have to empty your cup.”
By the time we reach adulthood our consciousness is full of information and misguided wisdom. We might consider ourselves to be open-minded, but in fact, everything we learn is filtered through many assumptions and then classified to fit into the knowledge we already possess. We exist out of context with “truth” and have an unwillingness to recognize truth as only an illusion of our mind. We are unwilling to surrender our subjective experiences out of fear of discovering how wrong we have been all along; the pride of ego. Many lay on their deathbed without gaining this realization.
As the world speeds up, so do we. Are we running to something or away from it? What is the purpose of this acceleration? Is it just another means of occupying objective consciousness in a self-subterfuge to hide what is really occurring? I think we are in freefall off the preverbal cliff of the combined mistakes of humanity doing everything possible to avoid the idea that we will ultimately come to a very unpleasant abrupt end.
Sometimes it feels like the combined human consciousness is subtlety preparing the average person for the reality that the apocalypse is forthcoming; just holding our breath for the terminal end of everything. If you’re a doomsday prepper, your braver than most. Why would anyone want to hold onto such a meaningless life in such a bleak world?
But, that’s not really the meaning of apocalypse.
“To uncover, disclose, reveal.” Revealing “reality” as the illusion and discovering that our own inner worlds are the reality. Stepping closer to the utopia that humanity yearns for and fights against in the same instance. Each Soul taking responsibility for their place in the Cosmic. Each individual consciousness adding drops to an ever expanding ocean of Divine Love. We can’t change the world, but we can change how each of us lives within the world.
The natural outcome of Individuation is the complete wonder and immense gratitude for life. It is experienced as an opportunity to embrace “reality” on all its levels. Love for SELF becomes the watermark for interactions and relations with others. The obvious miracle of this planet Earth overpowers the need of greed and personal ambitions. Others are seen as Souls yet not awake but brothers and sisters trying to discover truth. Patience and reverence supersede anger and fear. Anxiety transforms into explorations of truth.
“I Am” the Apocalypse. The world just needs more of us to go thermonuclear in a conscious way.
Alchemical Symbolism
“The birds of soul and spirit dig through the remains of the previous operations to save the genuine parts that remains of Calcination and Dissolution. This is the first coming together of Soul and Spirit, and the newly acquired vantage point allows the discernment of what is worthy of being saved from the two previous operations. It is the process of breaking down of habits and crystalized thoughts (assumptions, beliefs, and prejudices) and hardened feelings (emotional blockages, neuroses and phobias). The Separation process is the rediscovery of our threefold essence of Body, Mind/Soul and Spirit that was previously rejected by the masculine, rational part of our minds. It is for the most part, a conscious process (that has become conscious through the process of Dissolution), in which we review formerly hidden material and decide what to discard and what to reintegrate into our refined personality.” [Above assembled from many different texts and sources and extracted from The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation by Dennis William Hauck.]
