Unveiling the Secrets of Passionate Alchemy
“Unveiling the Secrets of Passionate Alchemy: Your Guide to Spiritual Transformation” explores the concept of utilizing memory as a gateway to presence. It challenges traditional spiritual teachings that often view the mind and memory as barriers to awakening. The article examines how memory can serve as a “doorway to the real,” fostering a profound sense of presence. It also discusses the role of experiential awareness in achieving this state.
Memory as a doorway to presence.
In the realm of passionate alchemy, memory serves as more than just a recollection of the past; it becomes a key to unlocking deeper states of presence.
Spiritual teachings are replete with perspectives, attitudes, judgments, and axioms regarding the mind as a barrier to awakening and presence. The mind under the influence of the ego self, with its external orientation and seeking, is like a kid in a candy store – distracted by and wanting everything. To such an extent that it cannot settle or focus.
Memory is often included in the “barrier” column because memory, in one regard, is “the past.”
What if memory is not a barrier?
Another thing we often hear in spiritual teachings is that awakening is remembering our true nature. That we are not disconnected from true nature but have only forgotten it. We need to re-member, to become whole again.
Fresh-baked bread can help.
Who hasn’t had the experience of the aroma of fresh-baked bread whisking them away to the past? (or some other scent or tune)
If we explore this phenomenon, we might discover a very interesting interplay between memory and presence, which could move memory from the barrier column to the “doorway to the real” column.
When the aroma of fresh-baked bread activates us, we’re at a fork in the road. As most often happens, we could take a trip down memory lane. Recalling and thinking about the past, those wonderful experiences of fresh-baked bread. Here, we are in memory as memory.
The other road leads to presence.
Have you ever noticed how these ‘experiences” of fresh-baked bread (and similar types of experiences) are super-experiential until we go too far down memory lane? If we stay with our fresh-baked bread aroma experientially, we soon find ourselves deep in presence.
And this is the clue to memory.
We tend to think of memory as a linear relationship to the past, but this, as Almaas says, is true; however, it’s not all that’s true. It’s one perspective. There’s also the quantum view of reality, where all time exists in every moment.
Since presence underlies everything and is foundational to all experience, there is no moment or experience that is not influenced by presence. The past may not repeat itself because the actual experience cannot be repeated. After all, we aren’t the same person or in the exact circumstances. Still, the insight, the dynamic experiential thread of knowledge, and the forgotten can be re-membered into the moment’s immediacy.
This is the essence of passionate alchemy—re-membering our true nature and becoming whole through the transformative power of presence.
This results in being fully present in a way that challenges our understanding of the past. We can feel like there has been no time between the past and the now. We are part of a continuum of unfolding, deepening insight and knowledge that transcends time. We are the very dynamism of the soul.
This is where passionate alchemy comes into play, guiding us through this continuum and helping us to integrate our past and present in a harmonious flow.
The past is insignificant to the soul.
Here we are in the moment as true nature – nowhere to go, nothing to figure out. Here is the fork in the road once again. Do we stick with the experiential, or do we adopt the habit of the ‘need for meaning,’ which fosters mental understanding and brings in the relational mind – all things memory – this is like that, that is like this.
Don’t wait for fresh-baked bread.
Try this at any time. Your mind is doing its thing. Don’t interfere with it. It’s actually doing its thing in a field of presence. As the mind continues on its merry way, we bring attention to presence, the underlying ground – and the easy way to do this is by employing the ‘fresh-baked bread technique’ – we focus on the experiential field – Sensing, Looking, and Listening into our immediate experience.
We don’t have to forget the mind. We must allow ourselves to be present in the driver’s seat and let our minds go along for the ride.
As A. H. Almaas has said many times, everything I’ve written and said is just different ways of saying, “Be present. It all comes down to sensing, looking, and listening.”
In the practice of passionate alchemy, being present is the cornerstone. It’s about sensing, looking, and listening to the world around us and within us, transforming our experiences into spiritual insights.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and a student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.
Love the simply stated truth!
Lovely and simple example