I first learned about alchemy thirty years ago when I began studying the work of Carl Jung. Jung realized that the images and symbols of alchemy were an “historical counterpart” to his psychology of the unconscious. Alchemy provided an apt description of the process of individuation and awakening, i.e., the transformation or evolution of consciousness from the ‘prima materia’ or raw material of the unconscious, to the gold or ‘philosopher’s stone’ of awakened consciousness. Thus, when we engage our own unconscious via dreams, fantasies, active imagination, we are engaging the alchemical process. We pay attention to the dream image, for example, and it begins to change, the next 'chapter' of the dream unfolds before our eyes. We are not doing it, it is naturally happening, and much learning and healing can be gained from this process. This unfoldment is alchemy.
When I was first learning and exploring Samyama, I was directed to place my full attention into my heart, into whatever emotion I was feeling there. When I learned to sustain my attention on an emotion held in my heart center with Samyama, the emotion alchemizes. It simply changes naturally, organically, perhaps by becoming more intense at first, bigger than it was, and then, gradually, the intensity lessens, and the emotion may change into another one or dissolve altogether. This brings relief from the pain if it was a painful emotion, and a dis-identification from it. A feeling of peace or spaciousness often follows. We go from a conditioned feeling that may or may not be painful, through its dissolution, to no longer being identified with it, to unconditioned awareness.
The Inner Witness is also cultivated in this Samyama process, because while we are full feeling it all, we are aware of what is happening. We are witnessing this alchemy of the heart. Healing happens, as does awakening. Our ability and capacity to be with what is, as it is, develops. The center of our consciousness shifts from head to heart. All kinds of amazing changes happen within us and in our lives if we work with Samyama consistently. You can read about other people’s experiences with Samyama at http://www.temenoscenter.org/
Emotions, whatever they are, change when held in the heart center and attention is sustained without splitting off into the story or other thoughts. This last part is the key to the alchemical process. Sustaining the focus of attention without having attention on the story or thoughts. This takes practices. We are not changing the emotion—it morphs on its own with our focused attention. Even the feeling of ‘being stuck’ changes when we sustain a focus of attention on it. This works with any emotion, including the deepest rage or heartbreak. Every emotion can be the portal to this Great Heart, including love. The challenge for most people is sustaining focused attention in the emotion in the area of the heart chakra, and it is a skill that you can learn. It takes practice. Sustainability grows, capacity accrues with each practice session. It's a little like bushwacking a path through a thicket. Each day the path becomes more defined and deeper into the heart.
Many years ago, in a Continuum workshop led by Emilie Conrad, I heard her speak of the sperm of attention. I love that phrase. Samyama is a process of directing the ‘sperm of attention’ into the womb of the heart—and a creative process begins. We are a creative process, just as living a human life is a creative process. Stuckness and stagnation are names we attribute to certain emotional states or conditions that feel like nothing is moving, but they are not static. They are very dynamic, necessary 'stations of the cross' also, phases of the journey that are part of the creative process, as well as the individuation process which brings forth our natural wholeness.
In the myth of Inanna, the centrality of her journey is her descent into the underworld where she is slain when ‘the eyes of death’ are cast upon her by her sister, Erishkegal, Queen of the Underworld. Inanna is then hung upon a peg—a meathook—until she turns to ‘green, rotting meat.’ Not a pretty thought, but we all have our meathook experiences that feel interminable when we are in them. The meathook is not static, it is a dynamic process, even though we feel horrible and like it will never change or end. Doing Samyama when we are ‘on the meathook’ is a wonderful way to be fully in that experience, and see how dynamic it is. Resistance, which is natural, creates persistence, so Samyama is a way to be with what we resist or with the resistance itself.
Sometimes in Samyama, one emotion will dissolve to reveal another, and then another, beneath it. Sometimes it feels like there is 'nothing' there, and we can attend to that ‘nothing’ and experience what unfolds. Sometimes there is so much intensity, we can only nibble at the edges of the feeling before we can enter into it fully. Other times, we hit the wall of resistance and that works, too—we just feel resistance, invite it via breath to become as deep and big as it needs to be, and stay with it until it alchemizes. Memories may arise in the midst of it all, taking us back to the root of the emotion we started with. All kinds of captivating things happen in our very own heart center, that soon fascination with the practice overrides the seduction of the mind and its stories.
While our emotions are arising from our conditioned self, when they dissolve they are dissolving into the same unconditioned awareness from which they arise. We may experience this unconditioned awareness as stillness, silence, spaciousness, peace, love, or compassion.
What I love most about Samyama is that it supports us, invites us, to embrace our humanness, to feel everything, the holy and the horrible and everything in between. We don’t have to deny it or cut it off, we can fully embrace and embody our humanness. We ultimately find, through our own direct experience, that the holy and the horrible are not separate. They, and everything else, are sourced from the same source. Samyama is not a spiritual bypass, it is alchemy, the transformation of the emotion by way of feeling it so completely and fully that it morphs and ultimately dissolves in the ‘solution’ of what I call the Great Heart, the unconditioned spaciousness from which everything arises and to which everything returns--including us.
If you would like to learn and practice Samyama, there is an mp3 download called "Always at the Beginning" in the Store on the Temple of the Sacred Feminine site: http://www.templeofthesacredfeminine.com/Temple/TempleStore/index.html
There is also going to be another Samyama teleconference on February 5 @ 7pm MT. Please email me for further information: temenosctr@aol.com or to subscribe to my newsletter/flyer.
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