Metaphysical Monday: Lead to Gold

Gathering, mixing, burning, reducing, extracting, repeating again and again and again. The alchemists of old–the forefathers of modern chemistry–are well known for their quest to transmute base elements like lead into something worthwhile, like gold.

What many don’t realize is that their quest for physical transmutation was mirrored in their search for a spiritual one. Because while gold may be useful on the physical plane, purity of spirit and purpose and strength of will are the commodities in the spiritual realm.

And so they worked through ritual and meditation, through action and inaction, through trials and challenges, to find that elusive equation that would get them closer to what they wanted to be.

Even the most mundane of us does the same thing. We don’t always work with the dedication and goal of an alchemist, but (if we try even a little) we all try to be better than we are. We seek to take the base material we were given at birth and transmute it into something more grand–something akin to gold.

It is a long and arduous process. Many give up and settle at a comfortable point of equilibrium for as long as the Universe will let them. Others, though… others continue to press on, often against stupendous odds, until they either achieve their goal or can go no further.

Through it all, we change. You and I are far from the same people we were a decade ago. Some of us are far from the people we were yesterday. Sometimes our experiments are successful and we move forward leaps and bounds, moving closer to the person we want to become. Other times, things go awry and we slide backward into the just-slightly-charred remains of who we once were.

Old habits, they say, are hard to break. And those old ways beckon to us loudest when the going has gotten tough. It would be so much easier, we think, to just go back to the way things were. So much simpler to just stop trying.

Maybe you can do that. But the world around you moves forever forward. To slide against it–especially if you have previously made great progress–can turn out to be more painful than persevering through the current rough spot.

It is easy to forget who we once were. Easy to get caught up in the flare and thunder of the moment. Equally easy to lose sight of our goal to those same things. Joy is as much a trap as suffering.

The alchemists knew. They knew that everything was an equation. Everything had to balance out. Sure, you could change lead into gold, but you needed more than just the lead. There was a process that had to take place. Ingredients that had to be gathered and mixed in the most certain secret and sacred measures.

Then it all needed to be cured. It needed to be mixed and heated for the transmutation to take place.

And that transmutation didn’t just change the lead. No. It destroyed the lead and re-created it as gold.

That is what we do was we move forward with our development. We destroy who we were to become who we are. No matter how much it seems that we sometimes go back, slipping into old habits and patterns, we never truly do. We can’t. The “I” of the past has turned to dust and ash. Any attempt to reclaim that is as futile as trying to hold all of the ocean in your hand.

So onward we go. Through the transforming flame. Through the pressure and heat of the athanor, we simmer and cure for years until, finally, if we persevere, we emerge changed.

We become who we are meant to be.

That destination–that destiny–is ours to choose.

And what a hard choice it is.