Graceful Alchemy
By Kevin Fortune

Kevin Fortune, longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister, offers sexual counseling in our Sexuality category.

The ability to transform is within you. It has been said that great transformation often comes as a result of illness, accident, or some other traumatic event in one's life. While I have learned from those big "wake up calls" in my own life, the actual mechanism of shifting was, and is, often very simple and graceful.

An emotion is a reaction to a thought. The thought may not be a rational one that you're consciously aware of but if you're feeling an emotion, there's a thought at the core of it. The first step in this "graceful alchemy" is to pay attention to your attention. What do you notice about the experience while the emotion is happening? I'm not talking about denying the emotion and going into your head but being present to the feelings, allowing them to be there while observing.

Allowing your body to move and express if it needs to. What's happening in your whole body? What are your thoughts? "Well, I'm not thinking, I'm just angry!" or "I'm just crying." You are having thoughts all the time. If you look more closely, you may discover that the thoughts appear as images rather than words, associated with events, people, places, times, and things. When you keep having the same thoughts about the above, you'll keep having the same emotions.

The next step is to cut the cords to all those associations and experience the emotions purely as an energetic event that doesn't mean anything. Interrupting the story, the images, and judgements. Nothing is good or bad, it's now just energy moving with no content whatsoever. This begins to free you from the 10-ton weight of your history, and what you don't focus on starts to dissolve. Next, focus on what you do want. With unlimited possibility, what can you imagine for yourself?

"How the hell am I supposed to think of all that stuff when I'm so upset?"

You prepare these new thoughts, images, or feeling states for your brain during a time when you're not emotionally triggered. So again, with unlimited possibilities, create your new life beginning right now. Make sure your new choice is not dependent upon the outside world. "I feel joyful and alive in this experience (as long as it's not raining.") Drop all conditions. Even though we can't control what happens on the outside, we do choose the quality of the experience we're having.

So, back to the triggered emotions that you have cut the cords to what they're associated with and are now seeing as only energy: Hold the new image/feeling state of what you want and use the current energy to feed and nourish it. Doing this literally forms a new neural pathway in your brain and you now have a more grounded choice. You're bringing your new life into reality. It is more than an affirmation. ("How can I affirm something I don't really believe?")  It is an invocation. You're calling it in and feeding it, and as you do, it will get stronger and stronger.

While I've said that this concept is simple, I did not say that it is necessarily easy. It can be intensely challenging to deal with so many conflicting voices and emotions. I've written a very basic process only. Obviously, there is much more to all this and many techniques (Tantric, Buddhist, etc.,) to support this kind of mindfulness.

It takes discipline and courage to drop the self-judgment and doubt when you don't feel successful and think you're hopeless. It takes strength to be kind to one's self. This is a daily and a life-long practice. The most important element of all is the foundation of Self-love. With this graceful alchemy you can turn the lead of your past into the gold of being in the present. It's a wonderful life.

Kevin Fortune
510-301-8872