Kneading needs activates passionate alchemy.
Dive into the world of “Passionate Alchemy,” where the art of kneading isn’t just about dough but a transformative journey of self-discovery. Just as alchemy transcends the ordinary, this exploration goes beyond the surface, delving deep into the soul’s needs. Discover how the simple act of kneading can be a metaphor for emotional and spiritual growth and how it can lead to a perpetual process of metamorphosis. There’s more to alchemy than meets the eye; it’s a dance of passion, resilience, and endless fascination. Are you ready to embark on this alchemical journey?
Kneading dough creates uniformity in the dough. It gets smoother with more strength. As the dough bakes, the matrix of proteins created by kneading will trap gas released from the yeast in the dough, helping the dough rise, resulting in a light and airy baked bead.
It’s not a huge stretch to use kneading as a metaphor for practice with merit for emotional and spiritual growth.
The Dough of Life
Ever tried making bread without kneading the dough? It’s a bit like trying to understand oneself without a touch of introspection. You end up with a flat, uninspiring loaf, much like a life without passionate alchemy. But throw in a bit of elbow grease, and voila! You’ve got yourself a fluffy masterpiece, both in the kitchen and in the soul. Remember, life isn’t about avoiding the knead; it’s about embracing it with gusto!
Human beings have basic objective needs: food, water, shelter, social bonds… and subjective emotional/psychological needs ensnared in early childhood conditioning. Working with early conditioning is vital to liberating oneself from the past.
The phrase ‘kneading needs’ popped into my head while transitioning from sleep to wakefulness. I am blessed with vivid dreams and this fertile ground between sleep and awake. A phrase like ‘kneading needs’ takes on a life of its own often resulting is something like this post.
A connection to the enneagram immediately arose as I find the enneagram useful in bringing awareness to character-structure needs.
Working with or kneading needs involves bringing a specific need like the eight’s need for independence into foreground awareness and its opposite, dependence. The kneading of needs won’t work as a wholly mental process. The body and the heart, affect and sensation, need to be more foreground and dominate in the kneading process.
Yeast, Meet Ego
Think of yeast as the ego – always rising, always wanting to puff up and take more space. But without the right balance, you’re left with an overinflated sense of self, much like an over-proofed bread. Passionate alchemy is the salt to this equation, grounding us, adding flavor, and ensuring we don’t rise too high too fast. After all, nobody likes a loaf with an identity crisis!
How does one knead needs?
You move between the opposites, embodying each as fully as possible. In this case, you feel independence as fully as possible. You feel the sensations a fully as possible. You allow the experience to ‘have its way with you’ – meaning the experience of it, the full impact of it on your subjectivity.
The mind will get active with all kinds of thoughts, ideas, comments, and associations. You want to keep the body and the effect in the driver seat – foreground. It’s all grist for the mill, but the effect is the agent of change, the yeast.
Then you embrace the opposite in the same way. You keep working both ends with passion as a kneading process, folding each into the soul, the medium of experience. Again and again and again, folding (embracing, embodying) them into lived apprehension until they are equally present in subjective experience. As this occurs, the experience will shift from a sense of the equal distribution of opposites to the ground or noetic form from which the opposites arise.
In the beginning, the self will prefer one end of the pole. So, the work may be more challenging for kneading the needs I reject or defend against.
Resiliency rewards kneading
The more we knead, the more resiliency we nurture in the soul. The more resiliency, the more freedom, and the less fear.
The more we “get into” the kneading, enjoying getting our hands into the dough, the more energy of joy arises. The kneading process will bring the heat (passion) for the alchemy. It becomes a perpetual process, a source of endless fascination and enthusiasm for self-discovery, a passionate alchemy of constant metamorphosis.
The Crust and Core
The crust of bread is its protective layer, much like the barriers we put up in life. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find the soft, vulnerable insides. It’s a reminder that beneath our tough exteriors lies a world of emotions, dreams, and desires. Passionate alchemy is the knife that slices through, allowing us to explore our innermost layers. And just like with bread, sometimes the real magic happens inside. So, are you ready to slice and dice through the loaf of life?