What if you could create an alliance with your Anger, Fear, and Jealousy and let them work with you?
What if you could heal and let go of the past without having to relive it?
Imagine accessing the unlimited power, magnetism, and information in your e-motions (energy-in-motion) to power up your body, your life, your relationships, and work, to create abundance and prosperity in a new way.
According to ancient legends, alchemists use a magical philosopher's stone to transmute lead into gold. In Emotional Alchemy you can use this alchemist metaphor to transform emotional confusion (lead) into insightful clarity (gold). And what does the magic stone represent? "Mindfulness," a lifelong practice that can bring readers more joy and contentment than the gold. Mindfulness means seeing things as they are without trying to change them. The point is to dissolve our reactions to disturbing emotions, being careful not to reject the emotion itself.
I loved this show Magicians on Netflix and I will never forget the line about their theory of the strongest magicians:
“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special?
Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.
Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” ― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
Emotion is what fuels magical practice because spell work begins with what you want to have happen. If you cannot feel, then you cannot want and feeling is emotion. All intense emotion is high energy and you can, with rational thought and careful planning, direct all the intensity of that energy toward your goal. Passion will spike energy right off the meter, whether that passion comes from lust, anger, fear, or exultation. High emotion of all kinds: love, fear, sadness, anger, frustration, etc, can fuel your magical energy like a stoked furnace. But should you?
As most people are aware, high emotion can render us unreasonable and irrational, which is not the optimal mindset for magical work. The competent and responsible magical practitioner objectively determines whether they are in a mentally stable place to approach spell work. The primary question regarding high emotion is motivation and intent. If you are using your magical energy to create a positive outcome for yourself or others, then that is a pure intention and you should move forward with confidence. If you are using your energy to get revenge on someone else, it may not be a good time to go into ritual.
Hormonal shifts can play with our emotions and cause us to have unbalanced reactions to situation for both males and females. Fatigue, illness, or intoxication can compromise our good judgment and weaken our magical push. Ideally, we want to go into any magical working with a level head and a spirit that is full of strong intention fueled by positive emotion. That positive emotion often takes the form of faith and magical confidence, which may not successfully root until we have a history of optimal results from our magical work.
To perform effective spell work, we do not have to live in a world of rainbows, puppy dogs, and roses. We should make sure, however, that when we go into ritual, we are pure of intent and thinking clearly, which many of us do not embody when we are working with strong emotions.
3 Key Ways to Transform Your Emotions into Their Higher Qualities
1. Don’t act out the emotion.
Acting out any emotion discharges the energy that is actually needed for the alchemy. Learn to contain the emotion you’re experiencing by breathing, grounding the energy of the emotion, and exerting the mindfulness practice of awareness.
But let’s face it, sometimes an emotion has too much “charge,” and you cannot easily process it. That is a natural part of life and being prepared for that situation will help you safely and consciously release that emotion and energy.
2. Don’t suppress or avoid the emotion, instead experience it fully.
Invite and engage the emotion by taking the attitude of curiosity and allowing. For example, how does hatred or anger or fear feel in your body? Anger has a lot of dynamic energy, often in the arms or jaw. It wants to strike out. Hatred is cool, contained deep in the body. Hatred can be found in the forehead, the eyes, and contractions in your core. Anger wants to strike, but hatred wants to annihilate whatever threatens you in a cool, calculated way. (Think the cool, contained, calculated power of Darth Vader.)
Pain is another reactive emotion. There are many causes of pain and many kinds of pain. Pain is a hurt, a wounding and a sense of loss. Often when you think you are feeling pain, you are in fact more likely thinking it than feeling it directly. Pain is often sensed as a contraction in the area of the heart. You might have learned to cut off pain, or rationalize it, or discharge it through emotional drama. Humans often judge themselves for feeling pain. But when you actually feel your pain without trying to get rid of it, you open the door for compassion to take its place.
3. Develop a sense of truth and understanding.
Everyone has different ways of managing their emotions. Sometimes you may judge them, thinking you are weak for having certain feelings. Or maybe being afraid to give them up because they have protected you for a long time. It is important to understand the relationship you have to your emotions in order to move forward.
Hatred is a great example here. As a society, we tend to judge this emotion as bad or think that feelings of hatred make us a bad person. Hatred arises from a deep hurt, often a perceived betrayal, or a deep fear of being annihilated. It’s a natural defensive emotion. Jealousy, self-rejection, disdain, contempt, arrogance are all variations of hatred. While it can be dangerous to act on hatred or turn it against yourself, the actual feeling of hatred is a natural protection.
Clearing out your judgments toward emotions like hatred is a core component of the alchemical process. Have you ever forgiven a friend for a personal slight and felt an immediate lightening in your spirit and mindset? Once you allow yourself to understand the root of your emotions, breathe into it, and open your heart and mind, you will begin to transmute that emotion its higher aspects.
留言