Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Alchemy 2

Alchemists see things that other people don’t - patterns, connections and relationships that are invisible to others. And they use the power in these relationships to turn lead into gold, struggle into flow.

The most powerful pattern they see that we don’t is the connection between everything. While we tend to see things in either/or terms, as disconnected and mutually exclusive, they see things in both/and terms, as connected and inclusive.

Let’s draw that. Please take out a clean piece of 8x11 paper. To an Alchemist, struggle and flow are not mutually exclusive, they are connected, opposite polarities, on a continuum. At the top of your paper, draw a straight horizontal line, from left to right. At the left end of your line, write “struggle;” at the right end, write “flow.” See, they are connected. That’s what a continuum does, it connects things. To an Alchemist, the continuum shows that flow may be found within struggle and therefore, because they’re just opposite, but connected ends of a continuum, it’s possible to transform struggle into flow.

Now drop down, leave some space, and draw two circles about the size of eggs. Write “struggle” in the circle on the left, and “flow” in the circle on the right. Here, struggle and flow are not connected and never can be. This is either/or thinking, the everyday world’s thinking. No magic here, because there’s no connection. It’s either struggle or flow, lead or gold. The magic is perceiving a connection others don’t.

Which kind of thinking would you prefer? Which would give you more power and bring magic into your life?

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