Alchemy and the Dark Side of the Moon

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” ~ Nietzsche

We battle all throughout our lives to be ok, to get better, to not fall down. We avoid pain - our own and others’ - with a fervour so great that we would rather become addicts or worse in an attempt to not feel the sorrows at the depth of our being.

And yet…

There is something hidden in the depths of our pain that is so monstrous, so feared and so utterly transformative - yes, transformative - that we will do almost anything to avoid it.

It is as if we know, in the heart of our being, that when we dare to step into the abyss of our shadow, that we will never again be the same; that when we brave the dark, murky waters sitting dormant at the base of our Soul, that it will transform us in ways we might not be prepared for.

Like pushing out a child, a woman will reach the limits of her threshold; she will literally rip herself apart to birth a human being. And it changes her.

We will either go voluntarily into the abyss or we will be taken by force. But we will all go. It is the hero’s journey of being alive. It is the choiceless journey that we all sign up for in these human lives of ours.

When we go voluntarily, we go in with a cautious awareness. We know we’re about to wade into the darkest corners of existence and we’re scared shitless, but in we go. And because we’ve walked in voluntarily, we’re somewhat prepared (if not naively overwhelmed) for the onslaught of the alchemy.

And this is an alchemical experience.

You can’t walk head first into the scariest room in your house and not come out the other side a changed being.

The past few years for me have seen me through some of the darkest rooms of my own inner being. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it as such at its inception, but now, on the other side of this journey, I can offer some light for those who dare to enter their own shadowy realms.

The North Star for each of us journeying here on this planet is experience. Whatever your experience is, and whether you like it or not, it is the richest teacher you will ever have. And when experience gets painful, it is the invitation of a lifetime.

Experience asks us not to analyze or fix it. That would be an attempt at annihilating the experience. Let’s just call a spade a spade.

Rather, experience invites us in to sit a while. To slow down, move extraneous clutter off the table, and to BE with what is unfolding; to BE with our own reaction to what is unfolding.

It asks us to pull up a seat and listen.

When we’re in the darkest corners of life, the only sane option is to surrender.

You’ve been there before. You’ve been at the table with pain and you’ve fought and kicked and screamed and, lo and behold, pain still sits and stares you down.

So you give it a rest and gather up your strength and you go another few rounds until you finally figure out that you can’t fight your way out of the darkness.

“She put up a good fight…” Notice how when we describe ‘a good fight’ that it typically ends badly for the one in the ring?

Whether it’s from sheer exhaustion or you’ve simply run out of options, you finally come to a state of surrender.

Like Five Stages of Grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance - the final step that is taken is one of embrace. This is where we turn towards what has been tormenting us and finally give it its nod.

What we don’t realize (and we can’t know it until we know it) is that the surrender or acceptance is enough. It is the last step that requires no further action.

Its not as if surrender opens the door to another set of instructions; it doesn’t.

It IS the instruction.

It is the agreement with reality.

It is the sanity at the door.

It is the nod to the Universe that it has always known what it was doing.

In the surrender of the darkness, an Intelligence is activated. Surrender is, itself, intelligent. It is the immediate unlocking of the door of Transformation.

And here is the good news: The Transformation is self-directed.

It knows what to do, where to go and how to get there.

All that was ever required was to Surrender.

So what does that mean, exactly?

It means letting things be exactly as they are. It means laying down our resistance to reality. It means embracing what is here even when it is painful; especially when it is painful.

It means having faith that we exist within a Divine play that knows what it’s doing.

Might this be blind faith? Yes.

Do we have any other option? I don’t believe so.

So, we can go kicking and screaming into the dark, scary basement or we can open the cellar door and walk down voluntarily.

The invitation won’t always be extended, thank God.

But when it comes, we have a choice.

Like The Wheel of Fortune in the tarot deck, we will have cycles in our lives that are ‘up’ and we will endure cycles where we find ourselves ‘down.’

The secret that must be revealed is that the ‘down’ is what brings us back ‘up’ again. That if it weren’t for the ‘down’ we wouldn’t even know what ‘up’ felt like.

Like the phoenix that rises once again from the ashes, reborn, so it is with our darkest days.

Only in the dark do we alchemize into our highest natures. It is here where the gold is revealed.