Mapping the Great Journey, Alchemy Step 6

Welcome to our 1,500+ new subscribers! We are currently exploring the map of alchemy as a way to frame the COVID-19 pandemic and move through it with more conscious leadership. While this is only one map of many, its potency has proven to offer guidance through the challenges of our personal lives, our leadership, our products and services—any journey that seeks to evolve our “base metal” instincts toward the refined “gold” of pure consciousness.  

To recap, alchemy begins with a blazing fire (Step 1), brings on an immersive flood (Step 2), and asks us to sort through anything still standing (Step 3). Once we have made a union with our inner king and queen—also known as our will and our imagination—we are graced with the pregnant spark of Something More (Step 4). The joy is temporary, however, as we are far from striking gold. Soon enough we find ourselves gestating in the muck and mire of a slow-burning inner compost pile (Step 5). 

The selling points of alchemy thus far are, admittedly, meager. Which is why I often say it is rare that we take this journey by choice. Usually, we become aware of it only once we are well into it. In the case of COVID-19, for the first time, the whole world is journeying together through a forced round. While we are collectively far from the beauty of Step 6, it’s good to know what is coming and what can be done now so that when we do arrive at this step, we can move faster and with more ease. 

By the end of the fermentation of Step 5, the benefits of our great quest are beginning to show. The arrival of alchemy’s signature rainbow—in chemical alchemy, a rainbow appears to prove the work, while in personal transformation this is a sure signal we ourselves are becoming Something More—feels nothing short of miraculous. Our hunch that the journey is worth all that it has cost grows stronger. We are onto something and we know it. 

Though the road has been rough, we are like those who have had a round or two with monsters such as a nasty divorce, a rough round of cancer, or even an edge-of-death dance with COVID-19. Once fully out of the woods, we turn around and—with some trepidation, to be sure—name our monster as the best-worst thing that ever happened to us. 

While no one in their right mind would have wished for it, it is now clear that something important of spirit and soul has been transformed through our initiatory fire. Something worthy of the journey. Something that goes beyond what we could have imagined at the start. While most people toss around words like vision, meaning and purpose, these ideas have come alive within the aspiring alchemist. They are not some hopeful ideal but a living and vital reality within. 

Even so, it is tempting to put on the brakes. 

Grateful to have made it this far, we are excited for the new life that has emerged from within and around us. Why not rest, or even settle into this space, what with all the beautiful glints of alchemical gold flickering here and there? Besides, how do we know for sure there is actually something solid at the end of all this? Maybe alchemy is just a fable after all—a mere fabrication to help us make sense of life’s batterings and bruises. You never know. Bird in the hand, that sort of thing.

Yet whatever objections our culturally conditioned self tempts us with, by the time we reach the threshold of Step 6 we’re usually only half-listening. Our old, worn-out stories rise but then quickly show themselves for what they are—temptations to take a train that has already left the station.

Somehow transformation has a hold of us and, disconcerting or not, a deeper aspect of us likes it. While it is surely possible to resist and turn away (with effort—like running to catch a bowling ball after it has been thrown down the lane), we begin to see that if we just allow it, this alchemical journey will naturally take us where we need to go. 

Not that there is not hard work ahead. There is. Dedication, perseverance, fortitude—all the usual virtues will be required. But equally true, we need only allow alchemy to quietly, even invisibly, lead the way. 

“Allow,” however, is no small word. 

Despite all that is coming through, letting go to “allow” the journey to progress as it will seems to be the least smart thing to do. In our contemporary world, we are accustomed to personal choice as a sign of freedom and agency as a hallmark of individuation. How can we say we have won the game of life if we are moved along by forces greater than ourselves? What personal pride can we take in that? 

Also telling are the low-grade fears running in the background of our minds. Who will we be on the other side of all this? We’ve already changed so much. Will we even recognize ourselves when this journey is complete? Collectively and individually, at this moment we simply cannot fathom this much change. Yet here it is. 

And what about our life companions? Will those we love come with us, wherever it is that we are going? Or will they fall behind, or think us too different and too crazy to want to join us? If the great divide runs along the lines of those who will grow and those who will not, which of our beloveds will make what choice? Will we be left awfully alone? And what about the world as a whole? Will there always be this great gulf between us and the majority of our fellow beings? 

With each step on alchemy’s journey, we are aware that we are less and less in resonance with the dominant cultures around us. This makes us feel profoundly unsafe, even as we are simultaneously glad to be more ourselves than ever. How confusing! These ups and downs are the telltale sign we are exactly where we are meant to be—at Step 6, also known as distillation, where our fears rise and fall as readily as our visions.

So begins alchemy’s most famous instruction of “as above, so below.” 

Our alchemical journey has had us unite our inner queen (imagination) with our inner king (will). Without our imagination, we cannot see the brass ring we are reaching for. Without our will, our higher visions will not become tangible in the “real world” (and yes, that is important—this journey is not only for our own personal pot of gold.) Most individuals have a preference for one—either imagination or will—but greatness requires both. 

Once this horizontal union of our two inner natures is made, we have access to our full selves. Now it is time to take the resulting spark of Something More and distill it through a vertical refinement. In this process, we travel up and down the great axis of our inner selves to connect to a higher consciousness than our own. In our bodies, this would be the space between our tailbone and our deepest capacity for mind (which is far more than our thinking brain). 

Note that you can call this higher aspect you are reaching for the inner divine, or God, or Universal mind, or pure consciousness, or whatever you like. The terminology does not change the experience, only the limited interpretation of it. As proof, consider the progressive journey detailed through native shamanism and religious mysticism. It’s the exact same journey, only with different terminology and referential contexts. 

Likewise, you can move along the vertical axis through prayer, meditation, using a martial art to raise your chi, practicing kundalini yoga to allow the energy trapped in the base of your spine to rise, tapping into your deep imagination, or any other practice that “lifts” you beyond your ordinary life and self. Alchemy doesn’t care or offer a preference. This is one of the reasons I like it so much. It’s spiritual, not religious, to use a current catch praise. 

You laugh, but it’s true. 

If all this still sounds hokey, I assure you that looking upward is natural and commonplace at any moment of great stress. What person in a long quarantine is not turning inward to think about life, and relationship, and the myriad of choices ahead? What COVID-19 sufferer doesn’t turn toward some kind of higher intent—even if only the higher aspects of the will to live—as the fever spikes? 

Through distillation, we repeatedly travel up to capture our vision and some greater essence of life. Only the essential and best parts of us can rise, and they are captured and returned back to everyday reality. Through our everyday experiences, the process happens again and again. In each round, we let go of more and more of our “base” metal and gain greater access to our innate gold. So long as we look upward in some fashion, we automatically refine ourselves (or our product, service, marriage or whatever element we are in the transformation process with) each time. As with all distillation processes, with repeated rounds we become more and more potent. 

Our task, then, is to submit our troubles, our triggers, our fear, and any other base instincts to become the kindling that causes us to look in and then up. By the time we are done, we will have tapped into an imagination that is not ours alone, but also that of a greater transpersonal mind.

Think of Einstein’s years of ruminations to find E = mc2. This resulted not only in his personal success, but offered the greater evolution of all science. Think of runner Roger Bannister in 1954 breaking the four-minute mile and seemingly paving the way for others to break it very soon after. Think of Nelson Mandela in jail for so many years, steeped in his personal limitations even as his vision for a greater South Africa became purer and purer. This is the kind of transformation we are after. 

At this point, I can guess what you are thinking: who are we to reach for such heights? To this I say, who are we not to? After working with many leaders from around the world I feel confident in saying that everyone has a “Who, me?” voice inside. Good leaders who aim to be great use their imagination and will to push past such meager and miserly inner naysaying. 

The pushing past sounds heroic, but in the moment it feels quite ordinary. 

However mystical all of this may sound, distillation is a natural process used in countless ways. Think of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent research that it takes 10,000 hours to reach the genius level of performing any talent or skill. In the beginning, when the field is full of would-be’s, the hours are long and progress is slow for everyone. We run into the same sorts of troubles again and again—and not a few of them have more to do with who we are than what we are working on. Once days and months and years are behind us, we gain proficiency, and fewer contemporaries remain. With each added hour, we become better and better. Then one day—supposedly about 10,000 hours in—we realize something has shifted. We can perform brilliantly with or without our limited brain doing the thinking. Our bodies know the core. Our souls and spirits are on board. There is no resistance left. We are not only in possession of the skill or talent, but equally possessed by it. We have broken through and truly brought genius to the table. We are among the best of the best. This is why we are so very close to reaching alchemical gold.

If the best of the best seems too far out of reach to your thinking now, consider the story of an athlete-turned-businessman who dreams of building the perfect running shoe for marathoners. It seems an achievable goal, except for that ever-problematic heel. (Mythologically, we can call it the Achilles heel.) Testing some 54 heels from every imaginable angle over many years, the mark is never quite hit. At heel #20, the shoe becomes viable. By heel #34, it is solid and respectable, yet so very far from our athlete’s vision of running nirvana. While good enough is always an option, and sales are sufficient to let it go, this creator isn’t going to stop. Following some impulse that feels both larger than life and appears ridiculous to others, our athlete digs deep, imagines high, and pushes on. 

Night after night there are dreams of the perfect shoe (night dreams count as climbing the vertical axis, by the way). Then, near bankruptcy of wallet and will, one day something happens. Who knows why, and especially why now? On a vacation in Paris, our athlete happens to be seated next to an elderly Italian shoemaker having a tiny espresso in a nearly-as-tiny cafe. The Italian, who happens to overhear the frustrating running shoe story, kindly leans over and whispers that the problem is actually in the curve of the toe. With one small fix, our athlete flies through the next 26.2-mile run and knows the journey is complete. Not only has the shoe been perfected, but through the long journey of effort, so has the athlete. 

Through distillation’s steamy process, we separate what is pure from all that is not and try, try again. As we go, we leave behind anything that stands in our way. Our bad habits. Our slothful impulses. Our perpetual worries. Our thoughtlessness. Our hangups. Our triggers. With each rising and falling, we are closer to the magical eureka that is almost always provided by a source outside ourselves. 

A process this deep requires a fair amount of isolation, which COVID-19 is offering in spades. 

While we will have friendships, families, romances and more, the reality is that the deepest work must be done alone. Otherwise, the work may be contaminated by our surface culture, the “helpful” input and pulling needs of others, or even some guru selling us the way forward. In this journey, at this juncture, it is almost always you and alchemy, alone together. 

It can at times feel like the seemingly endless task of the lonely Sisyphus, condemned to perpetually roll a rock up a hill only to have it fall back again. Sometimes we feel mocked, abandoned, and useless. Other times we feel surges of joy and great progress. All alone, something within tells us that Something More is happening. 

Once fully distilled, peace and equanimity permanently bond to our personality.

Whatever existed before distillation, once we are complete we are truly transformed. Our lives have a strong yet subtle sense of fundamental wellbeing that never wavers. This invisible, intangible reality rests easily with us regardless of any and all circumstances. Triggers have been deconditioned. Emotions are harmonious to the point they may seem to disappear altogether. This is the perfect disposition from which to wisely inherit an endless supply of gold, don’t you think? Even death holds no threat to us. We are living the promise that water will not wet us, winds will not blow us, fire will not burn us and the earth will not consume us. 

All that is left is one more critical step, Step 7, and it is a beautiful one. 

For those who lead…

While the COVID-19 crisis is still in the early stages of the alchemical process, and while the view will undoubtedly change directions again and again over the next months and even years, if we can bring ourselves to the distillation process, we can get ahead of the waves to come. And it will be a series of waves. 

COVID-19 is not our only problem by far. Catastrophic economic losses, broken systems in virtually every sector from education to government to healthcare, our environmental crisis and our AI future—all will be in need of a greater imagination than we currently have been working with. We were heading for a cliff like a herd of wild animals, maybe knowing we should stop but not knowing how, and now we have stopped on a dime. As we start up again, everything will require the repeated higher vision of distillation. 

In the meantime, those of us who lead have the opportunity to get ahead of things. The way to do that is to take our own distillation seriously even now, before many if not most have begun to realize how challenging the days to come will be. 

The following suggestions come from actual conversations I have had with leaders from around the world over these past few weeks. These leaders are serious about the world to come, and many have the power to do something about it. As ever, anything shared here is with their blessing. 

• We can find our 10,000 hours and practice. It seems so simple, but there is an essence behind our skill or talent, and nothing situational keeps us from refining it. If we are managers, we can manage ourselves and our home/home office. If we are public speakers, we can speak on Zoom to five people with as much clarity as we do when we are standing in front of a stadium full of people. We wear our good clothing head to toe not because we have to, but because that’s what great speakers do. If we are the caring figurehead of our organization, regardless of our job description and how it has changed, we can find ways to care more and care better. We can also look to those we lead and help them find their essential 10,000 hours and then encourage them to practice. 
• We can bring our inner will and imagination to the question of our next, truest and most clear vision. We must not allow ourselves to feel so silly or embarrassed by the “Who, me?” to stop the process. This vision may not yet have form, but we know enough about ourselves to know that whatever it is, it will be infused with the essence of our unique blend of gifts and talents. 
• We can look for any patterned habits that get in the way of following our visions and willingly submit them to the process of distillation. While nobody builds on a bridge—and make no mistake, we are in a bridge time—we can refine our building materials so that when it is time, we are ready to do even better work than before.
• We can still decide to become the kind of person who is committed to excellence even in times of uncertainty. The brain does not like a world in chaos—too much change and it feels like it will burst at the seams. It begins to act as a kind of mental auto-immune disorder, turning against itself in protest. It needs rest, but won’t let us sleep. It needs exercise but prefers not to think about it. It wants meaning and purpose but finding none, reaches for potato chips. When these things happen, we are already too far gone, but we can reset ourselves in our temporary new normal—every day if we have to. Though we are tempted to “set it and forget it” (our brains love the promised ease of this) this is one of the critical things that successful leaders make a conscious effort to avoid. 
• We can let our identity evolve. We are learning so much, aren't we? This is the highest form of letting go and allowing things to unfold. Yes, we will collectively and individually be different on the other side of COVID-19. No, we don’t know exactly how yet. But we can trust the journey, our will and our imagination to make us and the world better. If we do, our post-COVID-19 world may indeed become the best-worst thing that has ever happened to us.

I'm Robin Rice, a senior advisor in conscious leadership for individuals and organizations. I lead, mentor and teach at the intersection of work, personal relationships, and social impact. I invite you to connect with me here on LinkedIn or through my website at RobinRice.com.

#Consciousness #Leadership #Alchemy #COVID-19 #Insight #Strategy #Results