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Grandma has a scrumptious, old-family recipe for chocolate pecan pie that melts in your mouth. Uncle Bert whips up a killer BBQ sauce for ribs (or grilled tofu). I've discovered a more direct route to happiness'a tantalizing recipe for alchemy!

According to Webster's dictionary, alchemy is not simply change, but rather 'permanent transformation.' Alchemy is a metamorphosis'a lasting, complete change in form. Transmutation.

Alchemy is like the caterpillar after it comes out of the cocoon, having morphed into a butterfly. If that butterfly doesn't eat the 'right' foods, or meditate every morning, it doesn't boomerang back into a caterpillar! It's a butterfly for good. Thank God!

So, when we manage to open to true alchemy in our lives, we are forever transformed. We've broken through to the other side via a one-way portal. The gains we make will last. The progress we've achieved will not reverse itself.

What's Going on Here?

For thirty years with my friends, clients and myself, I've witnessed permanent alchemical transformation. Dramatic healings of long-standing physical ailments. Deep emotional and karmic releases. Breakthroughs with money and love. Spiritual awakenings. I always ask myself, "Why do some people heal, open or wake up after only one special experience'and for others it takes 20 to 30 such experiences? And for some people "it" never "takes" at all!

The Secret Ingrdients

My recipe for alchemy is simple. Mix in equal proportions the following qualities:

1. Safety
2. Eternity
3. Reality
4. Honesty
5. Ecstasy

You can add these ingredients to your life in any order because they all spawn, feed and reinforce each other.

A Cup of Safety

What I've observed is that people shift toward health, harmony and wholeness when they know that they are safe. When people feel secure, they relax in mind and body. They release their minds' 'death grip' on having to monitor and control each and every aspect of their lives in order to survive.

They no longer have to be right about everything and have all the answers. They feel secure enough to allow some fresh solutions or options to enter the picture. Thus, they can let in a fresh approach or angle that can shift them into a new and better place.

When a person feels safe and relaxes the grip on the body, the body is free to shift, rearrange and adjust'and thus, it balances, harmonizes and heals itself. Even traditional medical doctors admit that the body knows how to heal itself'if we allow it to!

Get to know yourself psychologically. Pay attention to how you respond to different elements in life. In what environments, situations and relationships is it safe for you to relax, let go and open up? Seek and cultivate those spaces and people.

A Dash of Eternity

People feel secure when they experience themselves as being connected'part of'something eternal. When people allow themselves to love, or be loved, they open to the experience of someone, or something, outside themselves, larger than themselves. They feel timeless, serene, at one with all life. The aborigines of Australia greet each other daily with the salutation, 'The forever part of me greets the forever part of you.'

Walk on a beach at sunset, sit on a mountaintop, or let yourself fall in love with someone or something. If you allow yourself to be deeply touched by any aspect of life, that life will bestow upon you a glimpse of eternity.

A Good Dose of Reality

When people feel they are in touch with something authentic and genuine, their world feels solid and real. When people feel grounded, anchored and centered within their body and world, they feel safe and loved. When life feels safe enough to relax into, people feel connected to the Oneness and a sense of being eternally taken care of.

Seek friends with whom you feel safe enough to be real. Find physical activities through which you can get grounded and anchored in a solid, tangible ways to the Earth, to your body and to life. Garden. Hike. Dance. Paint. Sculpt. Massage somebody. Pet a dog or plant. Hug a rock or tree. Do tai chi or yoga. Play a sport. Construct something with wood.

An Ounce of Honesty

People are in touch with what accurately and authentically exists in their world when they are honest about how they feel emotionally. This is a major reason why people like the reality shows that are so popular on TV right now. The show participants are entangled in real life situations, presented in fairly authentic ways, within familiar, relatable everyday situations.

Place yourself in situations and with people where it's easy and possible for you to feel deeply and honestly. Find at least one person with whom you can be genuine and spontaneous'and from whom you feel safe to hear frank feedback.

Also, seeing the practical value of honesty makes the 'truth' more attractive and exciting. When you're honest with yourself about what truly is, and isn't, working in your life, then you're dealing with what is really so in your life'instead of what you hope, wish, think or believe is so. When you're working with the truth, the changes you make are beneficial and lasting. You master practical alchemy.

The more you realize that you can manifest solid, permanent, desirable results in your world, the more secure you feel. And when you successfully use your innate power to manifest your soul's desires, you get in touch with your true nature, which is eternal. To the same end, when you explore your world truthfully, you discover that you are, in reality, eternally safe and loved.

And breaking through into honest enjoyment of your true Eternal Self is an ecstatic experience. You feel real joy, bliss, orgasmic exhilaration. You're 'in heaven.'

Ecstasy Pie

The word "ecstasy" comes from the Greek meaning of "ec" (moving out of) and "stasis" (status quo, static, fixed, stagnant). Alchemy is moving out of an old, fixed, stuck place into a new, flowing world. As the Doors' Jim Morrison reminds us, when you "break on through to the other side" of any stuck condition or limitation, you enjoy the freedom to experience life in fresh, different and exciting ways.

Break on through to Alchemy

Ecstasy is a fun and easily attainable state'since it is, after all, our natural state of being. Give it a chance. Relax that grip on your old picture of yourself and what you think is possible. That's all it takes to activate alchemical magic in your life!