In Monday’s channeled message, Jeanne spoke of achieving balance through limitation. In her Wednesday blog, Jan wrote of the alchemical process of transformation through fermentation. The agent of that alchemical change is the limitation of a sealed container that sets the stage for nature to transform. Today, I focus on shaping and curing that sealed container. Like a ceramic vessel heated in a kiln, the container for our inner process of individuation must prove worthy of withstanding the many trials of heat that arise and serve our quest for wholeness.
Since waking this morning, the creative daemon has been stirring: fire energy, trial by fire. Already I’ve seen three people. The universe aligns with the creative daemon as I see its challenge reflected everywhere. I carefully channel it. Now, in an open space of time, it’s time to write my blog, but the creative fires are way too expansive. Everywhere I turn the world is ablaze. If I try to write now, I’ll be taken too far afield. The fire is too unwieldy, ungraspable except in its most gaseous intuitive sense.
The real trial is one of containment, and so I know I must find my way back down to earth, into the containment of the cool soil. I turn to the matter of my physicality, my body container as a form to regulate the fiery energy and expansive pressure of the creative daemon.
I’ve been gifted the images of the praying mantis and Buddha beneath the bodhi tree this morning. Images of stillness. Heeding these messages from the universe, I roll out my yoga mat and facing East, the direction of the rising fireball of the sun, I invoke the stillness of the Buddha and perform the Buddhist magical pass of prostration. Then I sit and engage in yoga pranayama breathing. The mind stills as the fiery energy begins to settle more into the rhythmic waves of the ocean. My awareness flows deeper into connection and regulation of the energy contained within my body. Deepening awareness of blockage and tension flow into softening and release. I move into yoga’s magical passes of asanas, working calmly with the creative fires still vying for my energy, my attention, my awareness.
“Not now,” I tell it. “Now is for forging the calm, preparing the container to channel your creation, your message, in a blog, soon to be undertaken.”
I finish yoga and choose to forego food or a magical walk. The body is calm and I know not to disturb it now. I’m ready to take on and be present with the daemon, to work together in the process of creation.
As I open the door, inviting the daemon in, the energy that greets me is intense. I remind myself to breathe, to unclench my jaw, to pause and release. My body has been forged as the container for this alchemical process of transforming the creative energies within me into a—hopefully—cohesive blog.
The body is our container in this world. The body is the vessel that connects us to the wellspring of our instinctive energies, as well as the infinitude of our energetic essence. When we walk, run, do yoga, golf, go to the gym, do magical passes, swim, exercise or meditate, we are forging our alchemical vessel to better serve our deeply sought after transformation into wholeness. Each time we are overwhelmed by the fires of recapitulation we are challenged to turn to the body container and engage in forging activity, just as I did this morning as I wrestled with the overpowering energy of my creative daemon. Eventually, we discover that out of the container a new calm, cured, self emerges.
Okay, now I can set this down, a message released through the alchemical process of containment. And now I may nourish my physical body in another way, with some fermented food, and then go off to a walking meditation, calmed and slowed by the midday sun for further curing of my vessel.
In calmness and containment,
Chuck