Spiritual Alchemy

Spiritual Alchemy

"Right at the beginning you meet the dragon, the chthonic spirit, the devil or, as the alchemists called it, the blackness, the nigredo, and this encounter produces suffering..." ~ Carl Jung

"I am an infirm and weak old man, surnamed the dragon; therefore am I shut up in a cave, that I may become ransomed by the kingly crown...A fiery sword inflicts great torments on me; death makes weak my flesh and bones...My soul and my spirit depart; a terrible poison, I am likened to the black raven, for that is the wages of sin; in dust and earth I lie, that out of Three may come One. O soul and spirit leave me not, that I may see again the light of day, and the hero of peace whom the whole world shall behold may arise from me..." ~ Aurelia Occulta Philosophorum

THE GREAT WORK

Alchemy is the Great Work, a process of separation, transformation and integration. This is just as true of the substances worked experimentally in the retort as it is of the personality undergoing the transformative process.

Alchemy is an accelerated pathway to self-mastery, to self-realization. It is an alternative, pre-scientific spiritual and philosophical interpretation of life, encompassing its physical, emotional and mental aspects. It is an elegant worldview still relevant in contemporary life. There are many ways to articulate the dynamic process.

The old paradigm was hierarchical; the new paradigm is transformative. In the first, we search for order and security outside ourselves. A confining belief system is the greatest hindrance. In the later, we seek inner wisdom and wholeness, freeing ourselves from external control. It is the paradigm of synthesis and integration. Transformation from within leads to freedom from dependency on the power brokers of hierarchy.

You are the alchemical vessel and the contents of your psyche is the means and object of transformation. The dragon is your own unrealized infinite potential. There are deeper dimensions of soul and spirit beyond ego gratification. Active evocation of the imagination reveals your invisible depths. Understanding of your own essence, unmediated by hierarchy, is like a beacon that draws you into an even deeper connection with the sacred.

Psychologically, the dragon is union of ordinary human reality with the potential of the Transpersonal Self and the passion for transformation. It is a symbol of DNA and/or the kundalini energy. This symbol of the Great Work represents the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, which is the sum total of planetary existence, the holographic blueprint of all being.

Medicine confering the gift of youth can be made from its venom, so the dragon is a healing power. This spiritual food of immortality signifies that the ego assimilates the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This elixir of youth creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone, the Adept whose lightbody feeds on the nuclear core of creation.

As the images and substances change, you change too. You connect with your divine intelligence, your essential nature. The character of your life can supercede even genetic predispositions. The sense of security and belonging of the old paradigm, based in inadequacy and insecurity, is transformed to a unifying vision. You realize you can access your divine essence directly. Alchemy begins working when you design your life on sacred principles.

SPIRITUAL & PRACTICAL ALCHEMY

There is theory and practice in science, and two applications in alchemy -- spiritual alchemy and experimental alchemy involving literal lab work. You can work either method separately or both in concert. Like mystics of all paths who have gone before, we make the experiment on ourselves. Our true selves are beyond what our conscious awareness alone could ever make of us.

Both Jungian and Transpersonal psychology deal far more clearly with the same process we find in alchemy. The nonlinear process is described openly since there was no need to conceal its purpose from a potentially-deadly Inquisition. Astrology, kabbalistic and even chemical elements are seen as archetypal, symbolic forces operating in a holistic system.

You can struggle with obscure alchemical texts, often written by those whose intuitive grasp of the process was incomplete, or you can amplify your understanding with parallel modern work. Alchemy encourages divergent thinking. You can "try on" many ideas and if they don't fit, move on to other working hypotheses. A solid grounding in the basics of process work can illuminate your own quest and help you see where you need to focus more easily.

You can struggle with arcane language or learn to translate it into modern terms. The point is not to be sucked into living in a wormhole of 14th Century thinking but to make it come alive for yourself today, to adapt it to contemporary life. Your own unique fusion ideally is a 21st Century application of this ancient tradition.

Since alchemy delves into the hidden nature of matter, a basic understanding of quantum physics -- how nothing becomes something -- is also useful. A little research will be amply rewarded. You don't need to know the math but comprehend that there are now scientific parallels that support the esoteric intuitions of alchemy.

Some knowledge of other mystical paths is often helpful in drawing parallels and deciphering the literal and spiritual meanings of texts. You can easily find many analogies. How much or how little you apply this method to your own quest depends on your own inclinations. The recipe remains the same, but reading the recipe is not tasting the dish. The secret is that it is an experiential not merely conceptual process.

There is a visible and invisible workshop -- the body and imagination. The creative imagination is a power of soul that helps you extract your hidden nature. Benchwork is a projective mechanism that mirrors your psychic transformation synchronistically. Projection turns into a clarifying image. You gain an experiential knowledge of the elements and materials of alchemy, rather than just comprehending a concept.

TREASURE BEYOND MEASURE

There is a treasure to be discovered; you are mining your own depths. The dragon guards this treasure. Your psychophysical being is a vessel of the soul and spirit. The physical body is sustained by the energy body, the field body and its photonic zero-point component -- the "hidden light of nature."

This is our fundamental nature, our quintessence. We are made of the fabric of spacetime and stardust. Awareness of our true condition in the present moment brings us to the very center of our experience of the universe. Elemental matter is evolving in both the microcosm and the macrocosm. We can take a bottom-up or top-down view of that process.

This spacetime fabric, the groundstate of being, is the invisible radiance of virtual photon fluctuation (ZPE; vacuum potential) that underlies all elements -- the source of matter. Interaction with the vacuum gives atoms their stability. The densest atoms are mostly void. Our own bodies are mostly void, the dynamic fabric of spacetime.

There is a fundmental relationship between space, sound, light, energy, matter, and consciousness. It is the task of the alchemist to observe and experiment with these elements in the microcosm that is his or herself. If that which moves is matter, that which makes it move is awareness.

Like physicists we seek the truth of time and space by digging deep into the veiled secrets of the laws of matter. But we do it with an essentially spiritual purpose in an attempt speed up nature's process of evolution, our own evolution.

The quantum vacuum contains in-formation about all that is. Many suggest this is the basis of consciousness as well as matter -- that it is consciousness. The Vedas suggested as much centuries ago. Vedic seers looked within and grasped the concept of wholeness, of Oneness.

The debate over mind and matter is not new. Clearly, we are psychophysical beings. Body is mind and mind matters. We structurally embody the memory of our experiences. This is the mindbody paradigm of complementary medicine. It is consciousness that seems irreducible but we don't know how mind and matter proceed from it.

The science of consciousness studies is only now catching up theorizing that matter seems permeated by consciousness. Our own consciousness is the first matter. There is spirit in matter and matter in spirit, forming a reciprocal dynamic between consciousness and our biological organism.

Our senses and mentation filter our interpretation of our experience through our beliefs. We have to keep in mind that there is perception and Reality, and not all theories relate to that reality. They are models of reality. Consciousness is the creative core of matter. This is the nature of Mystery and you ARE that.

This cosmic medium transports light, gravitation, energy and pressure. Holographic modulation of waves upon waves of fields keeps us in nonlocal communication with the entire cosmos. Active information is present everywhere, projecting and recording the historical experience of matter. The ancients called it the Akashic field. Such information is called "nonlocal" in physics, and "transpersonal" in psychology. It is distributed in a continuous universal field.

Arguably, such a luminiferous medium -- an infinite luminous ocean -- is analogous to the Clear Light, primordial light or 'ground luminosity' in Tibetan Buddhism. All form is in the Void and the Void is in all form.

Formless awareness is the source of enlightenment; all phenomena are illusions of the mind. Consciousness freed of the bondage of matter is liberated, but the body is an essential part of the alchemical process -- the altar, the temple, the laboratory.

Through meditation it is possible to remove the shadowlike conditioning of the bodymind and remain in the clear undeluded nature, the Body of Light, as a vehicle of consciousness. http://photonichuman.50megs.com

EMPTINESS WITH MEANING:

The alchemical axiom, “As Above, So Below” means there is a universe to explore within yourself and you are not separate from the whole Cosmos in any way. Primordial nature is the dynamic ground of all experience. This emptiness is a plenum that is the root of all form, the source of all conventional phenomena. We work in the gap or empty interval between intention and action.

In terms of psychological perception, all voids are not created equal. There are dead, violent and fertile voids. Some seem like black holes which exert a massive gravitational pull on your being with little hope of escape. They are the imaginal product of the fear of disintegration, fragmentation, fear of the great unknown.

The ego creates its own dead void by separating itself from the whole with existential alienation. The dead void disappears once you connect with the fertile void of the dynamic ground, the formless state of pure potential. First you must endure the overwhelming sensations created by contact with this powerful source. The missing transformative information lies in the very heart of chaos. But there is light at the end of this tunnel.

The nigredo is the call of this emptiness, which initially is depression in its personalistic form and transcendence in its universal aspect. It has been called the Voice of the Silence. The luminous heart of experience is the antidote to the sorrow and suffering of existence, the Universal Medicine or panacea. It is Medicine Light.

The inner light, the vastness of radiant reality, is ever young, NowHere. Wisdom is realizing undisturbed emptiness, the dimension of ultimate reality. Alchemical practice establishes the necessary base for self-reflexive consciousness. But it only works if you apply it to the activities of life as well as meditation.

The raw psychic contents (prima materia) become cooked (ultima materia) when you are released from the shadows of ignorance into bliss. There is no quick fix to the accumulated baggage of life (pride, paranoia, jealousy, passion, dissatisfaction, ignorance, craving, aggression). The method works if you do, but you must be motivated, either by passion or despair to enter into such an arcane pursuit. Old habits of thinking, feeling and doing do not die quietly.

You must dare to seize the noble fruit. The impetus may come from an inexplicable attraction to the experimental alchemical art, life passages, spiritual longing, an illness or dis-ease of body or mind, or both. The force of desire ignites an inner heat.

The spiritual landscape is changing and alchemy offers a safe harbor for the drifting spirit beyond institutional or cult affiliation. Many paths are vying for participants but alchemy chooses you. It is a self-initiatory path that provides a structure or scaffolding for metaphorical death and rebirth, a generic process described in many traditions. But you must remain dedicated to the process.

In exploring the unknown you are exploring yourself. The journey to wholeness often begins with a retreat – into oneself, your interior nature. The experience can be one of darkness, coldness, the isolation of the self-imposed outsider.

Your energy is purposefully turning inward and it is best to follow it, even to amplify that dynamic. Some choose the laboratory, some a therapeutic setting, some plant allies, and others an eclectic self-directed approach.

We all have negative tendencies, self-destructive compulsions, self-sabotaging impulses, or neurotic self-defeating patterns. This is our psychological baggage, including anger, greed, lust, vanity and attachment. This is the lead to be refined into gold.

In his or her work, the novice alchemist channels both the voluntary and compulsive aspects of the depression that can drive the urge to transform. Our perceptions, attitudes and emotions shape biology and behavior.

The alchemical work itself forms a vessel of transformation, a safe place where the alchemist can be fully open to nature and his or her own primordial nature. With alchemy you can work with your thoughts and feelings rather than fighting or avoiding them. Once initiated, the unfolding cycles of the Magnum Opus naturally lead through and beyond the nigredo toward breakthroughs rather than breakdown, emergence rather than emergency.

Fear is an invitation to growth. You must grow and face your fears to solve the problems of multidimensional existence. But to do so you have to make spiritual growth a priority by giving it time and attention.

Only your comprehension of the deeper nature of depression, recognizing the call, and your commitment to the conscious struggle for transformation makes it alchemical. Then you rescue the fragmented parts of yourself. Suffering is meaningful. It leads to empathy, which funds active compassion. Take responsibility for how you interpret your life based on your limiting beliefs.

TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE

Collectively, we are all challenged by the pressures of selfish corporate interests, escalating technology and global crises that threaten the sustainability of human culture and life. Key areas include the environment, economics, energy, the racket of war and social stability. None of us can single-handedly resolve these issues but we can start with the darkness in ourselves. We must evolve to conform better to our real needs in our relationships to one another and the environment.

Part of the art of alchemy is decoding your own symbolic language. Depression means you have lost your dream and have yet to reconnect with a new one, with the new images or symbols that can pull you forward toward your future.

Primal people call it loss of soul. We recognize it as loss of self-worth, loss of hope. You feel hopeless and helpless. Fear and victimization make you easy to manipulate. It's a "No Exit" script.

You hurt so much that you may be convinced you are going to die or even wish you would. But the fantasies of death are telegraphing a metaphorical message. Your old self is on its way out. Getting into this morbid state is the point. You have acute awareness of your mortality. The experience of maximum despair is “hitting bottom.” You are a mess. The good thing is there is nowhere to go but up.

What do you want your tombstone to say? Do you want your core experience to remain one of abandonment, damage, rejection, shame, inferiority or arrogance? You are metaphorically decomposing. This is the paradoxical flip side of ego inflation, toxic narcissism, and shallow self-absorption. It keeps us from responding to even outstanding opportunities.

This crisis is an extraordinary opportunity to re-create your life and world. You have to learn how to use your strengths and skills while you meet multiple challenges and stressors. You need to uncover your buried potential and mine the gold of your buried talents and creativity. You have to leave your comfort zone, break out of your cocoon.

This hero’s depression lifts once you embark on your mission with purpose, based on finding your inner vision. Once you’ve heard the “Call to Adventure” you have enthusiasm, passion, intentionality and direction. You determine to persevere through the crisis, but the road has many trials. The devil comes as chaos, suffering or pain. Psychophysical suffering feels like wandering around in fear and darkness – a dark night of the soul, even a journey to Hell.

The ancient Greek vision of Hades was that of a dark, cold, windy, dry realm. This is a good metaphor of all our early traumas of abandonment, hunger, loss, sorrow and shame that are frozen in the labyrinthine halls of psyche. We cannot meet or accept life's legitimate suffering. We can't grieve these ominous shadows so they pile up on us creating blind spots, despair, denial, and wrongful assumptions. The trouble they cause is their demand to be seen for what they are.

This glacial ice cave houses unresolved issues that continue to affect our relationships with self, others and world. It drives our compulsions for achievement and the pain of loneliness. We all carry the burdens of self-doubt and loneliness. We simply remove ourselves from whatever we cannot or will not process, but they remain alive and powerful though buried or frozen, multiplying in scope and weight as we grow older.

Though lack of unconditional acceptance is a natural part of human experience, these unhealing wounds are the hidden focus of our conscious lives. These early losses hang around frozen in time, as if they are still happening. Simply changing their apparent expression, they obstruct the flow of our lives until we recognize and acknowledge them.

The unhealing wounds of unrealized suffering, self-delusion, addiction, chronic depression, compulsivity, failed relationships and some physical illness present opportunities throughout life to reconcile and resolve what we couldn't heal earlier. The word 'resolve' echoes the alchemical maxim of 'Solve et Cogaula," the liquification and reintegration of essentially frozen psychic energy.

SOUL RETRIEVAL

Heartache and pain, a persistent sense of failure and inadequacy are core human experiences. We feel a hunger or sense we are missing something. The older we get, the more the fear of death creeps in, feeding the desire to numb out and not feel anything at all. Death tempts and attacks us in this predestined confrontation.

This unfinished business locks us into a distorted "virtual" reality, a false self. When we are out of balance and pursue pleasure at any cost, our old wound is showing. If these deepening shadows mess up our lives enough, we are forced to break free and tunnel out of the cocoon of distortions and self-loathing. This deadly and dreaded challenge to your courage can reconnect you with your lost confidence by drawing on transpersonal resources. It is an unavoidable part of the journey to an authentic life.

Constructive discontent can drive our best thoughts, emotions, and actions. But to get to its root you must enter a tomblike passageway, making a journey to “the center of the Earth,” to the center of yourself to gain the treasure, the cure, the grace. This is engagement with power within.

You can't go back so you must go forward. We have the potential to grow beyond mere personal fulfillment to transpersonal experiences. New information you gain from the unconscious helps you create a dynamic new situation, an ever-widening, self-perpetuating cycle that restores flow.

LIVING TRUST

What if you actually believed you are a capable and worthwhile person? How would building and aligning with greater mental, emotional and physical power within impact all facets of your life and relationships? What would life be like if you really opened a new pathway that helps you live, lead and succeed in your purpose, in your essential nature? What is blocking you?

When old defenses no longer work, you must develop new coping skills for developmental challenges. But this initiatory way includes many deaths and rebirths. Nigredo, the blackening, isn’t always the first stage, but may be one of relapse, eclipse or another incubation stage.

Nigredo is a recurrent cycle of desire and frustration with no real beginning. Your energies are sucked from the outer world and turned in on themselves. Normal life is radically disrupted. When you are paralyzed by life there is nothing to do but let go of your control fantasies. An eclipse of the ego offers a way into the deeper energies of the unconscious.

After involuntary or voluntary symbolic death, reborn spirit eventually emerges from the rotting corpse of the old self with its limiting worldview. This death is equivalent to the conception of the legendary Philosopher’s Stone. Death becomes your ally and advisor. Meditators are advised to “die daily” in their practice. The ego is eclipsed but the Stone is born. These trials nourish the Self. Vision expands, wisdom deepens, self matures.

Conscious alchemy offers a direction, an operational roadmap for realizing your highest potential. It is a psychospiritual path, approached experimentally and spiritually. You make the experiment on yourself. It is a whole brain, whole self process, involving both rational and irrational forces.

Psyche has a regressive tendency. If you block the process of growth, depression will recur, again and again. You will regress anytime your work goes awry, you seemingly take a step backward, or circumstances weigh you down. Each octave of work brings exponential results. Over time, you catch yourself in self-defeating acts sooner in the cycle. But the full weight of the dirty business must be born each time disruption intrudes chaotically into your life.

THE NIGREDO

Even the root of the word “alchemy” refers to the black soil of Egypt. This Egypt is an imaginal realm of Hermetic mysteries, which created the dying and rising god Osiris. This root mystery influenced many cultures, including the Eleusinian rites of ancient Greece.

Initiatory rebirth is an awakening into a higher life. It is echoed in the rites of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, and Mithras. Death and spiritual rebirth permeates all the mystery religions. Hermetic texts influenced the growth of European alchemy.

You must bury your old self in that rejuvinating soil for new life to emerge. The nigredo means seeing all through the bleak eyes of depression but it also means “seeing through” the meaning and value of depression. You may belong to a guild of like-minded travellers, but you walk the transformative path alone. It is a solitary journey.

The nigredo is often called the first alchemical operation but there is no distinct order handed down from tradition. It is the first stage of mortificatio – the killing of the old worn out or obsolete personality. Many people seek a spiritual path because of their existential despair. The old self must dissolve, the neurosis must be liquified and reduced to the primal condition.

Only a purging fire will turn this darkness white. It might be the slow heat of a rotting corpse or fetid compost pile but the inner fire is lit. Like a struck flint, flashes of insight ignite the inner fire which leads to searing visions of the truth of your reality and channel your burning desire toward further transformation that brings clarity.

We are all "mortally wounded" and can benefit from understanding what a good death, even symbolic death, means in the face of that grim prospect. We need to overcome our fears and accept death as an integral part of life. The root of that pain is a disconnection from soul. The inward and downward quest re-engages this deepest part of our being. Depth work improves spiritual health, complements physical care and helps us navigate through fear toward a new depth of being.

“Something” in you has already died and it’s beginning to stink. This blackening phase of the alchemical process describes a gloomy time of depression. All the signs seem inauspicious. You feel unlucky, caught in a black mood whose origin may be difficult to pinpoint. This is because your current ego attitudes are outdated.

You feel stuck because you aren’t coping or adapting to present circumstances. These feelings may come into your life due to an overload of stress, financial and relationship problems or clinical depression. Depression is a “no love” script. Love may be there but you have lost the capacity to feel it. You wonder in anguish, “Is this all there is?"
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There are three main types of clinical depressive disorders: major depressive disorder, dysthymia (mood swings), and the depressive lows of bipolar disorder. Mania is a defense against depression. Self-deception, loss of self-esteem and anger are part of it. Conventional treatment freely dispenses antidepressants. However, that just adds to the numbing and fakeness.

Paradoxically, both depression and its medical cure cause the personality to become “flat,” libido is suppressed. An integrative approach includes psychosocial therapy to focus on the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal issues behind depression. A wide range of severe side effects make antidepressants alone poor therapy, particularly for seekers in spiritual crisis. The condition must be actively addressed. Medication suppresses self-expression just like addiction kills creativity.

Poison is in the cure. Research has shown that traumatic experiences can change the way the brain works. So can talk therapy, and even more so, process-oriented therapy, which creates flow experiences. Self-regulation can be learned, using resonance techniques, concentration and meditation. The brain undergoes changes similar to those induced by medication but in a positive, adaptive way that arises within.

Whether we speak of normal experience, chronic depression or grief, it is a fact that frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of life. We are riddled with desires and programmed by ideals. Should some of our real or imagined needs be temporarily met, we immediately begin wishing for more.

Chronic dissatisfaction stands in the way of our contentment. Depression has its roots in failure to adjust to lowered expectations of self, others, and a world that doesn’t meet our childish needs. Overcoming the anxiety and depressions of contemporary life requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not.

MELANCHOLIA

Faust was given power by the Devil on condition that he would never be satisfied with what he has. The advertising myth of the “American Dream” did the same thing to us all. Happiness and satisfaction with life depend on how small a gap you perceives between what you wish for and what you possess. Traditional social shields such as religion, ethnic traditions, patriotism, etc. no longer are effective for many disrupted by the harsh winds of chaos.

Psychic disorder produces conflicting signals that prevent or distract us from carrying out our good intentions. We give this condition many names, depending on how we experience it: pain, fear, rage, anxiety, depression, ennui, anomie, or jealousy. All these varieties of disorder divert and force our attention obsessively into undesirable directions. Energetic flow is blocked.

The new biological explanations of mental disorders as neurotransmitter imbalances make “good stories” but still lack empirical substantiation. Over-diagnosis has led to a “pharmademic” of over-medicated “pod people.” Yet, research shows that talk therapy and self-regulation techniques are as effective as drugs. The cornerstones of psychotherapy are insight and emotional growth.

If you practice alchemy with the feedback of other practitioners, it functions as a process-oriented therapy, allowing for projection and solution of problems. It is one of the most ancient spiritual paths. Spiritual technologies are the intuitive response to depression and the ever-present fear of death.

Many individuals experience a period of melancholia between the ages of 28 to 30 (and again at 55 to 60). Astrologically, this is triggered by Saturn return, the return of the planet to its original position in the natal chart. Classically, it is a time of disappointment, divorce, soul-searching and reassessment of values and orientation in life. It also holds the seed of mastery.

Saturn governs the aging process, since it represents actualization of more and more of one's potential. It presides over lingering death and chronic illness. At its worst, senex consciousness destroys spontaneity, obsessed by its repetitive disciplines into a narrowness of emotions, mental processes, and activities. Saturn has “control issues” and also rules crises situations of life and the mental cravings of “lust for results.”

The planet Saturn puts the accent on responsibility, in this case responsibility to yourself for fulfilling your potential. Finally, you are truly growing up and your destiny begins to take form. You may be pressured into it, even if you resist it, and this is that black mood's positive intent. Suffering becomes a meaningful path.

You may think you are not depressed because your feelings are numbed out or you make sure you stay too busy to notice. You may just be in denial with workaholism, hypochondria, an antisocial personality, substance abuse problem, hyperactivity, compulsivity, oppositional behavior, rage, or other means of devil may care acting out and acting in. You may try many horizontal escapes, but no matter where you go, there you are.

Having lost the sweet savor of life, you may be feeling older than your years, not in a good way but rigid and humorless with a thousand aches and pains. If chronic degenerative disease isn’t enough, there is the continual futureshock of new technology and morphing culture. If you are young, depression masquerades as anxiety, a conflict of opposites, generational and social rebellion, alienation, and angst.

Your behavior telegraphs the underlying depression to those with eyes to see. They know because they have been through it. Often when you are in it, you can’t see it. You might even unconsciously use your predicament to manipulate the sympathy and attention of others. But something’s just not right and you sense it in every fiber of your being.

GOOD GRIEF

Like Charlie Brown with his dark cloud, most of us have felt depressed in greater or lesser degree. Loss is a psychophysical experience. Since everything changes as time flows, and change entails loss, this is not surprising. Sometimes we lose face through shameful behavior, in our own eyes and those of others. There are some things we just need to face directly even if they are scary or painful.

We grow sad and depressed when a person we love dies or a cherished phase of life passes. Grief is universal and normal. In fact, failure to grieve is evidence of psychological abnormality. Staying stuck in grief is not healthy; it suppresses the immune system and élan vital. Process work in alchemy or therapy is a way of moving on. Mourning is work and takes mental effort.

Mourning is characteristically a state of mind, but it is accompanied by a host of painful somatic sensations that are remarkably uniform. In acute grief we experience physical distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath. We need to sigh, have an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and intense subjective distress we call tension or mental pain.

Traumatic bereavement happens in a variety of settings including personal and community violence, even global catastrophe. Traumatic bereavement contrasts experiences of quiet death at home, without mutilation, bodily distortion, shock, threat, horror, and helplessness. Reactions to the traumatic circumstances are different and predict more adverse health outcomes for the bereaved.

Traumatic stress interferes with the grieving process. The emotional aspect of grief is just as painful as the somatic. Inner anguish, loss of interest in a dreary, empty world, isolation from other people, loneliness and feelings of inner emptiness seem to persist for an eternity. In this way, grief mimics clinical depression.

The call to heal and the call to death are ultimately the same call to formlessness, to return to source. Many disorders display symptoms and imagery which represent stalled stages in the natural consciousness restructuring process. We get stuck in our attempts to heal ourselves.