A key ingredient of alchemy is heat. Heat is power and heat and power create change. The end result of alchemy is transmutation, transformation, and change.
Some form of “heat” is involved in creating change in our lives. When one is suffering from emotional or physical pain there is heat thus resulting in some kind of change and transformation.
When one is in love with someone, a cause, some form or work, life, nature, etc. the passion of love creates heat. This passionate heat also contains the power to create change.
As we step into the new year, typically a marker for many of us in linear time where we hope for change, let’s use the basic and fundamental principle of alchemy. We can transmute, transform and create change with the heat of our passion. The door has always been through our hearts.
Think about what you love and have passion for. Commit to doing what you love. Heat up the alchemical cauldron of your life with what you have passion for and watch and observe as your life unfolds to a new level of evolution empowered by love.
At the beginning of the new year many of us work with making resolutions. Besides committing to what you love, I will plant a seed of something to think about and be with during this time.
Last month I wrote that everything manifests in the spiritual before manifesting on the physical. This is a truth known in all spiritual traditions.
In working with this spiritual principle there might be some “spiritual corrections” we need to make so what starts on the spiritual is not created as chaos on the physical.
During the next few weeks use shamanic journeying or your meditation practice to ask for guidance on what spiritual corrections are required for you to truly manifest “your heart’s desire”.
In the last few months I have written about using focus as well as the rest of the formula for transmutation to create a new dream. The need for visionaries and new dreamers include the children of the world. How do we help children become visionaries? Nancy has given me permission to share a project she was directed to start. I hope this inspires you in some way.
This is a letter that Nancy wrote to art teachers:
Dear Art Teacher, Like you, I am sure, the range of emotion I have experienced since the 9/11 terrorist attack on The United States has left me feeling helpless and somewhat exhausted. For the last week I have been looking at ways to empower my community, and empower myself so that we face what the future holds with a secure vision of what our ideal world is.
The more energy we can generate to hold such a vision, the more power we will have to make it visible to other communities and the rest of the world. Less time will be spent on fear of the unknown if we can hold the known close to our hearts, and one way to know our vision is to make it concrete.
While thinking along these lines I envisioned an art project that could be used by Schools and Libraries, and perhaps museums to help people, and especially help children, to hold a secure vision of community, and understand that their voice is heard within their community.
This project would involve making or acquiring a large container, appropriate to the scope of the project in your school, and making it beautiful. This container would represent an ideal community. Then each participating student would be encouraged to think of something that in his or her opinion is necessary for the vitality of a perfect community. The student would then make a visual effigy of his or her thought with art supplies appropriate to the age of the student. These effigies or symbols of the ideal would be placed with some care or ceremony into the container. A book might be kept listing the contents of the “Community” and the finished project could be displayed along with the book.
I have put a bowl, a small pad and some colored pencils, and fimo clay in the entrance to my home for this purpose. Family and guests have made images of the sun, the moon, food, a heart, animals, and different colored people hugging. There is a vial of pure water, and a little bundle of fertile soil in the bowl. There is an acorn, some rice, and a peace sign. There will be a cross, and a symbol of Buddhism by the weekend. There are little folded pieces of paper with words and poems. Someone put a dollar bill in the bowl, and someone else added a chocolate bar. The enthusiasm and positive emotion put into this project are less visible but by no means less tangible.
On another note some friends of mine have alerted me to a situation little known to the public. Michael and Lori of Wild Angels have great passion about this issue, as I am sure many of you will.
Here is what Michael wrote:
The Hopi elder pointed to a bend in the parched, sandy river bed and said, “This was always our swimming hole”. But now the water is gone. The springs and streams that the Hopi have depended on for over a thousand years are dry, or going dry. The cause? Peabody energy pumps more than 3.3 million gallons of pure, drinkable water from the Black Mesa area’s sole source aquifer every day to move coal through a pipeline to a power plant 273 miles away in Laughlin, Nevada.
Wild Angels, the nonprofit group working to save the dwindling freshwater resources of the Hopi and the Big Mountain Navajo, has achieved some breakthroughs in this crucial effort. The group got a revealing article published in Time magazine and initiated a shareholder’s resolution in the parent company (Lehman Brothers) urging an end to the draw down of the aquifer for coal slurry. In other words, there is, at last, some significant movement on this issue. Active participants and funding are needed to propel this important work to success.
If you can help with funding or have funding ideas please contact www.wildangels.org or phone Wild Angels at 505-989-1818.
Continue to practice staying in your heart and let the power of love and appreciation fuel the changes in your life.
Please join us as we continue to create a human web of light on the full moon January 28.
I wish you a joyous and passion filled New Year.