dying while still alive / calcination
Today I find myself thinking a lot about an alchemical stage that isn't very pleasant: calcination.
In metallic and plant alchemy, calcination happens at the beginning of the alchemical cycle - and it involves burning the "matter" that you're working with to ash.
In practical magic, the "matter" that you're working with - is you.
{most magical people experience multiple cycles of the alchemical process throughout their life - sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly)...
... and so in magic, calcination usually involves some shattering experience of "loss of face" - you lose your career, your relationships, or your health (or all 3 at once and more) - they burn up in a conflagration of awfulness.
You're left in a helpless state of "what the f*ck just happened?"
I experienced this seven years ago when I fell in love, had a big wedding, and ended up leaving my groom on our wedding night (long story). The point:
I was horrifically ashamed of my wed-'n'-dash behavior, by my out-of-control love and fear - I was radically, definitively humiliated in front of everyone I knew.
I was calcined. My ego was charred to unrecognizable ash.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me - and it ultimately led to everything that's good in my life now.
Still, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. For months afterwards I was suicidal.
Today, 7 years after all of that, I can feel that I'm due for another calcination.
This time I'm hoping to accomplish my calcination through deliberate discipline rather than an unconsciously-generated-horror-show....
.... so I'm pondering the question "how can I die before I die?"
... in other words, "how can I stop guarding the reactive ego attachments that limit me?"
I find one way to get clear about the nature of my current attachments and how I might ultimately let them go ....
... is to literally just pretend that right here as I sit, I'm already dead. "The Carolyn Game" is over. Curtain down. Lights up.
No more left to prove, nothing left to get, nothing to defend. What's left?
What's left - interestingly - isn't morbid at all - it's a bright, fresh, open kind of feeling.
In other words, I notice when I'm not burdened with defending my established ego - I'm a lot more open to change and risk.
So today I want to leave you with this question:
what risk might you take, what journey might you undergo - if you had nothing left to lose and nothing left to prove?
best,
Carolyn
author of Existential Kink
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