The ancient alchemist

In a dream last week, an ancient alchemist leaned in close and shared his advice: “When you work with the feminine, work with earth. When you work with the masculine, work with metal. When you gain clarity, work with Perspex.”

The previous day, I had been puzzling over the way to approach the next step in a project. There were several possibilities, each quite different. I had been working long hours and knew that a good night’s sleep would refresh my brain and give me clearer perspective. I also trusted the age-old wisdom to ‘sleep on it’ whenever there’s a key decision to make. The alchemical combination of restorative sleep and insightful dreams has the potential to transform a rusty heap of mental overload into a gleaming gold solution.

It’s the job of the dreaming mind to process your conscious and unconscious experiences of the last day or two, to do a bit of mental and emotional housework, maybe even, occasionally, a major spring clean, to create a sense of order, to tie up loose ends, problem-solve, and find perspective. On an ideal dreaming night, that’s what happens.

On a less than ideal dreaming night, the mental and emotional housework gets as far as gathering all the loose ends and stuck patterns of thinking in a big pile and leaving them all there, an unresolved dream.

When you learn the art and science of dream interpretation you can explore that pile and discover why your dreaming mind is currently unable to resolve issues and challenges for you, why clarity has eluded you. You’ll discover unconscious limiting beliefs and associated emotions that are limiting perspective and blocking effective solutions.

When you become proficient at understanding your dreams, you’ll welcome those stuck, messy dreams, and enjoy doing the detective work, gaining new self-awareness, and applying dream alchemy techniques to magically untangle the mess and remove the blocks to moving forward in life.

There’s still a little dream work to do on those magical mornings when you wake from an ideal dreaming night, glistening gold in hand. It’s the work of cherishing the dream, reliving it in your mind’s eye and heart’s beat so that it stays with you to light and inspire your way.

I loved that my dream gifted me an audience with the ancient alchemist, my time-transcendent inner wisdom accessed through my restorative sleep-on-it night.

When I reviewed the project I had been working on, I saw that it did indeed begin with working with the feminine, working with earth. That was the fertile, creative, nurturing, inner world phase, the essential energy of the writing and dream work that I do.

Once that part of the project was established, it did indeed move on to working with the masculine, working with metal. That was the mental (metal) work, the outer world phase of building of the structure, of manifesting the project into accessible form.

The third phase, clarity on the next step of the project, had arrived now that my refreshing sleep had delivered and I had woken with clear vision. As my ancient alchemist advised, when you gain clarity work with Perspex, which, in dream speak (I love the play on words dreams employ), is a poetic way of saying clear perspective.

Maybe this is universal advice, helpful for you too. Begin with the inner work then move to the outer work. Allow for the clear vision that birthed the project in the first place to shift and change. There’s alchemy in doing any work, any project. Expect to be transformed by the work. Anticipate a shift in perspective once you’ve completed the feminine and the masculine, the Yin and the Yang. Let the scaffolding, the bits and pieces of building detritus, the long working shifts, the tired brain, go. Sleep on it, invite fresh perspective in, welcome it, and work with it – work with Perspex – from that point forward.

P.S. As I sat down to write this, I absentmindedly shuffled the Wise Yogini oracle cards that are on my desk, cut the pack, and looked to see what came up. Here it is, The Sun, “Clarity emerges from the long dark night. Awaken from the dream, open into the light, and shine, at one with the source, lightened and enlightened.”

I had to smile, because the words are mine (I wrote the texts for the Wise Yogini oracle designs), as were the ancient alchemist’s words in my dream. (Every character in a dream represents an aspect of the self.) We’re in accord.

 

You might also enjoy