I hadn’t consciously realized as I entered the darkened, windowless rooms of the vibrant Long Beach Convention Center, that I was also entering yet another transformational process just by showing up.
Speakers were passionate, educated, dedicated, and there were so many of them that a number of different workshops were scheduled at the same time. (You can purchase cds and dvds, see link below.) This conference gave far more than your money’s worth.
It’s said the hero’s journey starts with a call, and it was at least a mini-call for me to get a media pass, arise early, drive the exotic 710 freeway to that foreign land of Long Beach, and show up alone, despite being tired and receiving requests for readings.
Alchemists believe death and darkness are where the true work begins. “In the midst of where you’re most stuck, if you stay with it long enough, something starts to change.
Consciousness begins to merge out of places where we don’t think consciousness exists,” Dr. Stanton Marlan asserted in his lecture, one of my favorites at the conference: “From A Dead Stone to a Living Philosophical One.”
The Alchemist’s quest is to turn lead into gold. Two primary methods exist for this: in the scientific laboratory, and in the soul where we transform the base metal of our characters into cosmic gold. Internal alchemy is done by reading, searching, and through the depths of the therapeutic process.
Award-winning physicist, Nassim Haramein, (whom I’ve since learned via the internet is also controversial) regaled us with equations in which he proved that everything is connected and therefore nothing can be isolated. We must see the whole in the part and the part in the whole.
Haramein’s goal is to produce clean, efficient energy in a non-destructive way. Energy, he says, is infinite. It’s in the stars, back holes. It is the whole. And what is the one thing everything has in common? Space. Even the densest matter is mostly space.
An atom is 99.99999% space; the little oscillation within it we call matter. “Nothing touches anything,” Buckminster Fuller realized. Setting his hand on the podium, Haramein told us, the atoms on my hand are actually far from the atoms on the wood where is hand was resting.
You have 100 trillion cells in our bodies dividing a million cells a second just to maintain. If DNA were pulled from us like yarn from a sweater, its length would equal…okay, my notes aren’t clear…but something like 6 times from the sun to Pluto and back, and all without being confused, or it…I presume life…would be over.
Haramein quoted Buckminster Fuller who said, “We’ve confused the telephone for the conversation.” For Haramein, the brain is the phone that we’re confusing for the conversation.
Looking to the brain for consciousness is like dissecting a radio looking to find the announcer, he said. He spoke about living inside a worm hole inside a black hole in a holofractalgraphic universe.
In the next workshop I listened to William Henry (Soul Rising, Awakening of the Soul), who showed us sacred art as a doorway into the soul.
Jesus said (though obviously not during the lecture), “Rise and do not be afraid.” Henry believes Jesus transmitted a tone before the resurrection, which he amplified after it as he became a body of light. If I understand correctly, that tone is in the sacred art and in the light body itself.
You are here to learn to manifest your light body/coat of many colors, your rainbow body. Henry believes icons (sacred art, not the Brittany Spears kind) teach us how to embody divine light. Our souls become what they behold. Behold the light of heaven. Use it as a sacred mirror and portal into the divine; trust the image to show the way.
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of every day life,” Picasso once told us. And it truly was inspiring to feast on magnificent images of light and color.
Our skin coats us like orange jump suits; it’s not who we are.
“How much time did you spend today putting on your body of light?” he asked. Are you in touch with the tone of love ringing through every cell? Live righteously in service, love, peace, joy and compassion.
This brings me to Dr. Stanton Marlan, Jungian analyst, whose talk made a deep impression on me.
His room was even darker and stuffy, not ideal for anyone claustrophobic, in case you were wondering. But he also had a presence, a power point presentation, and a powerful intellect.
His theme was the importance of darkness, reminding me of my favorite Roethke quote, “The dark has its own light.”
He talked about the journey into the unknown being like a journey into madness, and the paradox of the poison that also heals. He compared the self to the philosopher’s stone, and said there is no difference between prima materia and ultra materia. Our ultimate goal is reunion with the divine source that never left.
The cycle of death and rebirth can feel like a punishment. He cited Jung’s sense that darkness and/or sinking into darkness is the beginning of the work, and therefore a place of success, though we seldom see it that way when we’re actually in it.
“You must be prepared for the light,” he said, “or you will be torn apart by it.” It’s this process then that must be preparing us for the transformation.
“How could you wish to become new before you become ash?” he quoted Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Facing the darkness and staying with our stuck places leads us to discovering consciousness, where previously there seemed to be none.
You can’t move this energy, these dark places by force of will, Dr. Marlan said. We have to open ourselves to something else that shows us a direction. We don’t know our individual paths until its language starts to speak. As that language is revealed, we begin to understand the unique way to live that belongs only to us and couldn’t be found by just following others’ rules.
There were more lectures and events that night but I felt full to the brim with ideas. I get that way sometimes, as if words are steaming from my head, falling from my mouth, tripping under my feet. So much more was available from the conference, but my highly sensitive self had what it could take for now, and after another swing through the exhibition floor, I really needed to go home.
I’d missed the lecture on clutter by feng shui practitioner Tess Whitehurst, but had read the beginning of her book at one of the booths in the exhibit hall. Booths of clothes, books, scientific paraphernalia, a peace pyramid, dancers, singers, some food, though not enough, William Henry’s icons, a palm reader, a fortune teller, jewelry, t-shirts…
I went home thinking about clutter, that I needed to deal a blow to mine so I could think clearly, write this article, make sense of all I’d learned and was yet to learn. And I wish I’d been rested enough to stay for it all, to drink in the abundant darkness, and savor many more moments for later. But for now, I had so much.
That night I fell asleep. I dreamt about my mother. In the dream, she was still alive and wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. I was staying at my aunt and uncle’s house (as I did on special school holidays when I was young) but it was time to go home, and I was dreading what I might find when I got there.
When I awoke I remembered how much I’d look forward to going to my aunt’s and how sad I’d be when it was time to return. Why have this dream now in the midst of an alchemical weekend?
I consciously went back into the dream, into that time in my life and contrasted my experience at my mother’s house and my aunt and uncle’s.
My mother’s house felt empty; in fact, we might not have food, the refrigerator could contain almost nothing, even the furniture might be gone, or some cheap replica in place of what we’d had. My mother often feared people, disdained answering the door if the bell rang. Especially after my mother went back to work, my sister and I were left alone for long periods of time.
I wondered if my cluttering weren’t a reaction against that feeling of emptiness? Unlike my mother, I have too many projects, so many plans that I’m generally running late.
I couldn’t attend the whole conference because I was doing readings, also writing, and then there were invitations I’d declined. I’m already so full inside myself it’s all I can do to take on any more. And I crave light. My mother needed darkness, did all she could to block out light that hurt her eyes.
In contrast, my aunt and uncle are generous, enjoy people, and are fun-loving. Even now in their 80s, they’re hosting parties, buying gifts, looking for other couples to go out with. “If God had meant us to be vegetarians, he wouldn’t have put chicken on sale at Vons,” my uncle might say while on his way out to buy supplies for his weekly cooking for others spree.
What did I learn at the conference? I like sound bites and simple ways to express things. I’d like my articles to be easier to write. I’m still mining my own past and how it’s shaped me.
When I awoke, feeling pulled into a spiral of feelings from the past, I also questioned what choices I could and would make to enhance the life I choose to lead. And I hoped that next year I’d be able to attend even more workshops at the 2012 International Alchemy Conference.
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Blessings,
Lorrie
Copyright © 2011 Lorrie Kazan
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