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How do you sustain your practice?
As part of the yoga world for many years, even though my personal practice was 95% alone I always had the option to teach or be taught in a group setting and absorb non verbally from others. With alchemical work I don’t have this available network.
Yet this particular practice has chosen me more than any interest in its scriptures or diverse forms. I made the effort over the past few years to absorb all I could through valued and vital transmission in Asheville, summer camps and China. But I am 100% alone in my practice. I am not complaining as much as curious how this is so.
I move to London in two weeks and wonder how to sustain this practice.I find myself attracted to other ways to access and strengthen core experiences and notice I am not as fully engaged in the formulas.
I wonder if this is the nature of inner alchemy. Have I embodied the maps through endless repetition over the past few years and is that river of chi have much broader banks than what I imagine? Is there room for many other practices? Or am I being lazy? Or uninspired? Or in need of teaching or collaborating? (Any leads in London?)
SO I put it out here to you cultivaters and ask your takes on this, thanks, barry
“I wonder if this is the nature of inner alchemy. Have I embodied the maps through endless repetition over the past few years and is that river of chi have much broader banks than what I imagine? Is there room for many other practices?”
This part sounds like You seeing a bigger world that has developed from what you have been doing.
“Or am I being lazy? Or uninspired? Or in need of teaching or collaborating?”
This sounds like you doubting what you just noticed.
-A
Hey Barry,
To me it sounds like you may need to inject something new, but also you may need to watch that you aren’t trying to abandon progress just when it is going to the next level. Examine the motivation. It may need new practices or it may not – but it does need acknowledgement. I get a vibe of dissatisfaction, not strong, but definitely present. (Also a bit of aloneness of course.)
I’ve noticed that whenever I move to a new place, the newness of my life needs acknowledgement. I would use a ritual for that. Also of course if you are open to cool things happening in London they will appear.
I’m not a ‘cultivater’ by the methods of this site. But I do have a very regular ‘training regimen’ and what I do is to train ‘same but different’ as the strength guys say. I always do a certain meditation every day, but I vary the energy stuff and as much of what I do is keyed to the particular day and events in my life as it is to general ‘progress’.
Also I have discovered that when one thinks practices are incompatible, they turn out not to be. When you say
>>Is there room for many other practices? Or am I being lazy? Or uninspired? Or in need of teaching or collaborating? (Any leads in London?)<<
I would answer, all of the above are possible. Yes there is room for more practices. Maybe something neat will show up if you look for them. Yes it could be laziness, or (maybe more likely) a certain kind of shying away from success, as in, when things get good one has a fear of what will open up. Etc.
You need some fire for sure! I recommend falling in love…
best NN
London-Brussels is only 2 hours by train, going under the sea, through the earth, always a thrill to feel deep earth in a fast train… Welcome in tiny Belgium.
no doubt you find people in London and maybe join us in Glastonbury next September with Michael (doing greatest K&L next time), among myself others from Europe (Chris from Canada this year) join and fuse in the cauldron, gives you food for many months, new friends and inspiration…
Hi Barry,
It does sound like your practice has…withered/run dry/hit a wall etc.
This is a time of great opportunity! This is the time when you make the big leap/shift.
How to do that? For me, it is to get into communication with the relevant parts – the parts that “likes to do alchemy, and the parts that “don’t”. Discover what energies/qualities they have. Find out what they want and don’t want. Learn from them, and be prepared to shift.
best of…
ChrisMy first response is that inner alchemy is based on developing free will, so a certain amount of inner motivation is necessary. I have also been practicing alone for the most part for the past six years. I have also been dealing with quite a bit of resistance mainly of a sexual nature, as well as other types of addictions that distract me and take up my time. In the last year or two, though, I have been feeling a shift from being fed by those outer types of polarized stimulation to being sustained by and accepting the inner neutral field, and finding it much more enjoyable, and also beginning to merge with my outer life.
I have noticed a lot going on in the frequencies of first the stars, the planets and the inner earth in the past few months, so it may also be that you are making an adjustment to this change, it may be too much to absorb through practice. I have found that after completing all the alchemy formulas, I am focusing on bringing the energies of those stellar and planetary forces into my vital organs, and that has helped to dissolve some resistance as well. Attuning with the sun after doing greater kan and li has been huge, it sort of “tunes” and resonates with your energy body.
I think also that it is necessary to have periods of “gestation”, or acceptance of the change that has been activated through practice. In the past few years I have been so busy with work that I have not had time to practice every day, but have found that the process has gained more substance and has gone deeper when I return to it. Of course, if I were not so busy, the practice would be deeper still, but one has to balance the outer and the inner methods of how you live your life and how you cultivate on the inner planes.
I have noticed that my jing qi has changed from being a sort of slow and thick type of energy to vibrating all through my bones, and being. I wonder if there is a point where the alchemical combustion process takes off on its own, and is able to self-perpetuate itself, sort of growing exponentially (of course still sustained by practice). Thoughts?
Thanks Alexander for pointing out the endless paradox of my inner voices. There is a call to trust in the mysterious unfoldment that isn’t on any map and also know that this is how it has always been for those on a conscious journey.
The lives of the masters in the past seem so ‘static’ when read encapsulated in a book but they faced the same mystery inside and chose their course not unlike what we face. I forget that as I look outside myself for answers. Perhaps they left a map but that isn’t as important as the journey. barry
Funny you should say that NN as that is the reason I am leaving my 52 year US hearth and home- to follow love, marriage and also revisit past choices made on the work front and so re-create. It is a challenge blessed with fire. (though that is a very mixed blessing many moments as I move into the shift emotionally)
Your practice attitude makes a lot of sense. Tune into the day and time and also your general process.
I notice stagnation enters when I don’t feel witnessed (perhaps what you mean by acknowledgement?). I get a bit lost. It is in witnessing myself that movement happens which is why teaching is so attractive. Voicing myself here serves that function as well.
For example I am an avid user of ritual of no particular tradition. Your reflecting back to me reenforces its power where somehow it gets lost in the skirts of all the emotional furies. Thanks, barry
Yes, I am amazed at how close places are n Europe after a life lived traveling the immensity of the US. To consider another country but two hours away just tickles me. It is like a child’s fantasy. But I am the classic closeted American in that way.
I spent a long week in Glastonbury this summer before your gathering and soaked up the Tor and Well. My plan is to attend this September (though Michael sent me a cryptic message suggesting NOT doing Greatest this year but some revision of the primary formulas) as I am ready for that next Kan and Li transmission.
Wherever I have moved in the past it is the trees especially that speak to me. They have embraced me in England. It isn’t a verbal sort of appreciation as much as a full bodied psychic conversation.
If I didn’t feel that I probably wouldn’t have chosen the move.I imagine you can relate.
I am certain we will meet in the chi fields, Barry
The more I reflect on the gestalt process you describe the more I see it as a spiritual practice of communication with all parts. It is useful to be reminded there is no Voice not worth listening to..barry
It sounds from what you describe you are embodying this self perpetual combustion more and more.
When I began Kan and Li and the Primordial Form a few years ago I distinctly felt a dialogue open with my center, the neutral field, from a platform that felt more spacious, inviting and consistent than other strategies I have explored.
What my mind experienced mostly was a distinct lack of center and personal weakness. This preoccupied me and fell into the foggy bog of self pity. But the practice affected my outer life without me really knowing it. Within a short while I was making life altering decisions I never could have before. So underneath my seeming weakness there seemed to be a strengthening of center.
I do that dance of doubt courage doubt courage doubt courage all the while watching what decisions I am making. Somehow the outcomes of my life reflect my changing center more than my day to day appreciation for what this practice does.
I am absorbing not only my deepened practice from my trip to China (which rests under my consciousness like a sleeping dragon)but from the radical outer choices so maybe giving myself a break and gestating is the skillful approach to take to my turn away from active practice.
Thanks for reminding me, barry
funny you should mention how the practice affected your outer life, I am also dealing with making some unpleasant but necessary decisions right now.
“I wonder if there is a point where the alchemical combustion process takes off on its own, and is able to self-perpetuate itself, sort of growing exponentially (of course still sustained by practice).”
As far as my own practice has been going this is absolutely true. In fact, I have been seeing that it is what it is supposed to do. In other words, I feel that it is an organic development.
Also, it is important to take into consideration that the field of the earth has been radically shifting, taking the “alchemical combustion process” (and us) along in its stride. I had been asking myself recently whether my well-intentioned relentlessness had been causing me to experience the greater connectedness and flow, and the experience of things taking off on their own in new directions or whether it was the field. And I have to conclude that I can’t separate them, really.
I am feeling that we humans are so conditioned to believe that everything has to be hard and take a long time and that we have to do it all ourselves and mostly alone that it is difficult to conceive of a time when “effortlessness” may become our reality. But I think that is what we are facing now. And it makes sense since we are told that as we develop the lifeforce does more and we do less. So, since many of us have put in the work to open the channels, clear emotional stuff, build our relationship with the planet…the vehicle is ready for the next step.
Alexander
It seems that this is the largest part of the process. The ego tends to want to hold onto control and familiarity and can be expanded or transmuted only when we get to a place of real surrender. “The mysterious unfoldment that isn’t on any map” – Yes. All the outer stuff amounts to being only “leads.” You have to make it all your own through practice and leap! when it’s time.
Nice sharing with you. Alexander>>Funny you should say that NN as that is the reason I am leaving my 52 year US hearth and home- to follow love, marriage and also revisit past choices made on the work front and so re-create. It is a challenge blessed with fire. (though that is a very mixed blessing many moments as I move into the shift emotionally)<>I notice stagnation enters when I don’t feel witnessed (perhaps what you mean by acknowledgement?).<>Your reflecting back to me reenforces its power where somehow it gets lost in the skirts of all the emotional furies<<
Ha! This is like what Kafka said once about the 'ghosts' that swallowed the letters he wrote to people, between the time he posted them and the time the recipients opened them.
I notice in one of your other posts you said courage, doubt, courage, doubt, etc. I wondered whether you mightn't want to think of it all as little more as playtime. The c/d/c/d thing might come from thinking you are gaining or stand to gain etc., the monkey mind. Just a thought. Maybe just notice and don't keep score…
NN
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