Well, spring has sprung here in Chicago. Barely. It isn’t snowing or blowing as much and the temperature is creeping (slowly) upward. It’s funny how we have come to call this season “spring.”

I suppose it would be awkward to refer to it as the Days of the Vernal Equinox, although Vernox would be fun and sort of appropriate in a Dr. Seuss sort of way. The Lorax is definitely a springtime fable in my book, all about the environment and how we relate to the world around us. We even have a tendency to refer to the beginning of better things to come as “springs,” like the Prague or Egyptian Spring, although Libya might have to wait until Summer.

So, as the perky little shoots of this and that (micro flora to be exact) spring forth into existence through the muddy clumps of mushy leaves I am confronted with matters of life and death, or more intellectually speaking: deterioration, disintegration and resurrection. In fact, I need only look to my hallway closet for evidence of this cycle of life. Last week I discovered a Tupperware container full of red worms, newspaper and old banana peels tucked between a stack of clean towels and some rolls of paper towels. My wife’s new composting project would have won me a science fair “honorable mention.”

And yet, it’s all really about composting, isn’t it? As a relationship focused fella, I don’t need to travel far to make the connection between past relationships and the composting required to sprout new strengths, abilities and insights for emerging relationships. Indeed, without allowing old incarnations of relationship to decompose we run the risk of spreading hopeful new seed onto the same old, tired, stuck soil.

I have dabbled in more than a little gardening through the years and I know that I can get the best darned seeds in the world but if I plant them into old, tired, mineral hungry soil I am going to have problems. Likewise, if we don’t learn from the past and put certain old patterns to rest, we run the risk of regenerating the same genetically modified experience and then what…?

We run the risk that our cucumbers will be as small as pickles and our melons will taste like tomatoes. Your past is the black gold needed to nourish your future. Compost away!

Are you stressed?

It seems like stress has become a way of life for so many of us, simply a “given” in much the same way as paying for bags on an airplane or basic cable television. Has it always been this way? Have we always been anxious, throughout the ages?

I like to fantasize about what daily life was like at different periods of history in different parts of the world. We have a tendency in our moment in the human record to project our own experiences back into the past onto our predecessors. For example, there are few reconstructed images I have seen of “prehistoric, ” a fascinating concept in and of itself, man where the hairy, unshaven fella wasn’t chasing or being chased by a Woolly Mammoth or menacing dinosaur ( yes I have heard they didn’t exist at the same time ).

Talk about stressful! Have you seen Jurassic Park? I know it was all just on one little island but if those velociraptors lived on my block I guarantee I would carry pepper spray.

I think back to the days of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Zealots and Sanhedrin, Romans and Right-wingers. Roaming prophets spoke about the end of days and it must have been hard to change the channel because they were right there, screaming and shouting while you slaughtered your goat. Wait, what if my soul really doesn’t go anywhere when I die? It seems like it might have been pretty relaxing, just living out in the desert with one’s family and a little extra wine with dinner until I consider the various marauders, armies and general kooks looking for something or another.

No public assistance programs for tough times or local security forces for the kooks. I imagine the “good old days” had a possibility of becoming terribly frightening very quickly. Not exactly stress-free.

I think about the ways technology and industrialization have made certain challenges much easier and peaceful the past few hundred years. I suppose common folks just made peace with bowel elimination in cities and villages a thousand years ago…until another plague was unleashed. I have a romantic notion of the early American pioneers, setting out from the muddy streets of New York with the intention to work the land and live life under the stars. Create one’s own destiny… what a wonderful banner to soar above our log cabin in the woods. Until the real native stewards of the neighborhood got fed up with the concept of “manifest destiny….”and murdered us. How’s that for anxiety and stress?

I wonder if there has truly ever been a time in our history when there was not a relationship to anxiety or stress. So, perhaps the lugubrious suggestions we like to make about how life is more challenging today than it was for our grandparents isn’t so accurate? I hear quite often that all this technology has added so much stress to our lives that perhaps it isn’t worth it!?! Really? No one is forcing us to spend an hour a day on Facebook or keep up with the spam folder but it sure is nice to be able to Google a topical solution for psoriasis, YouTube a video on how to perform CPR or use my smart phone to call AAA when my car is stuck in a ravine.

There is no doubt in my mind that life today has its unique share of stressors and strains. At the same time, I firmly believe that each generation is faced with a relative drop-down menu of anxiety manifestors befitting the day, era and location. At least we can post an updated status to our friends when we are feeling overwhelmed.

I believe that history has a funny (not always ha-ha) way of repeating itself, both personally and globally. It makes me feel better when I catch myself seemingly repeating the same behaviors over and over again to think that it isn’t just me slipping into those old patterns. You do it too, right?

History repeats itself because we often (usually subconsciously) seek out excuses in order to justify acting a particular way:
*Well, because I only quit smoking for a year last time, the likelihood is that I won’t really make it that far this time.
*I always eat too much over the holidays so I assume I’ll do the same this year.
*I’m typically weak when it comes to that ex-him or her, so the likelihood is that I’ll sleep with them again if they come knocking.

Let’s take this simple concept that most of us would agree upon a step further. C.G. Jung suggested that there is a direct correlation between my personal process and the process of humanity as a whole. Somehow the decision tree whereby I calculate the choice not to sleep with that person because I can choose a better path now as opposed to before is indeed a universal progression not limited to my own little drama. Isn’t it yours as well…?

“An archetypal image transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of humankind” (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, 15/129). A common symbol, idea, experience, even a common dream, has the ability to connect my inner and outer world with your inner and outer world, linking my personal journey to the path of humanity as a whole. There is a certain magic to this concept that makes the world an even more fascinating, more alchemical place to live.

Alchemy is the ancient study (some adepts would suggest practice) whereby putrifaction leads to the transmutation of matter, most notably of metals into gold. The notion that we can seemingly convert static objects and states like stone or metal into a state of change and transformation was a process that intrigued many people before we were given the brain-numbing answer to free time and boredom, reality television. People living only a hundred years ago used to pursue the alchemical mysteries like folks today chase dreams of creating an internet start-up company or a new app for a smart phone.

It was commonly believed that for a person to attain the knowledge whereby an alchemical conversion was possible, a deep process of self-realization and personal development was essential. In this technologically advanced age, video games, Facebook, Twitter and TV in general, not just the reality kind, are things one would arguably need to suspend during the intensive, introspective, transformational process. Creating gold out of old Matchbox cars and cell phones takes focus. Some would say it requires a degree of enlightenment.

The Latin definition of Alchemy, Solve et Coagula can be translated as separate and come together, dissolve and coagulate. Those are VERY intriguing words for a psychotherapist, and I imagine for many others as well.

Jung suggested that the alchemy of the Self is a process whereby the individual exfoliates, even burns, layers of the self away to reveal the truest, most enlightened, version of our being. Alchemists of the Middle Ages believed that the person who could turn common metals into gold would need to have discovered a panacea, a veritable elixir of life, because it would necessarily be the universal solvent that when mixed with whatever form of matter, creates a metaphysical play dough that can be shaped into whatever the Alchemist chooses.

Following this so far? It’s the key to eternal life (and a reduced need for psychotherapy) so stay with me.

In order to transform the self I have thus far manifested in my relationships, my thoughts and in my life story, I need to uncover a personal elixir, a universal substance (or idea) that allows me to dissolve the places I am stuck and then draw together my broken pieces into a new, more empowered and enlightened form. That’s what I do when I do the work on myself to change old patterns that create harm or hurt for myself and others: I dissolve the old and form new ways of relating. It is also the process I personally strive to facilitate for clients each day in their therapeutic discovery and psycho-analysis.

Which brings me back to Time. I have a tendency (as do many good humans) to view my life historically, through the relationships I have created, maintained and dissolved. I conduct this self-analysis by understanding those connections through the context of time and space as well as my judgment of how I conducted myself in those situations. Hopefully, I view my past in terms of events and behaviors I want to learn from and improve.

For example, “I was a real jerk to that person in college, but I was just a kid trying to figure things out…”

“I ended up having that affair back then because I was longing for love and partnership but I wasn’t fully capable of committing so I chose someone who wasn’t truly available… “

“I chose to marry my husband or wife because I had done enough work on myself, dissolved and coagulated, and felt capable of creating a new version of who I am throughout time and space that, like gold (and Frosted Lucky Charms), I perceived to be magically delicious.”

There is a recursive regression that occurs in and for my self out of my own alchemical process whereby I transform myself in this moment as a result of a series of similarly transformational but static moments in my past. Like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” recursion suggests that I am able to define my present state of conscious awareness by relying on a series of moments from the past when I believed I was indeed fully conscious. And yet, like two mirrors facing each other, I am able to see the mirror exactly in front only combined with a series of reflections of the same mirror somehow projected within the image.

Is it possible to perceive the changes I am making right now in the way I do “me” outside of or separate from the moments in my past when I was also conscious of change happening?

Is this possible without a universal solvent? Is there a panacea that allows me to solve et coagula?
There must be some common denominator throughout time and space that allows me to view myself as a self-aware person within a process of transformation. Relying upon this element, I build each moment of transformation upon itself, erecting a metaphysical slinky that when stretched and pulled forward enough, eventually snaps all of my past experiences and internal movements of consciousness forward in an instant. It soars through time and space and slams into the present moment at a grand, alchemical intersection of evolution, transformation, and perhaps even enlightenment. It changes us forever.

As we begin another year in the life, I’d like to invite you to take some time in the coming weeks to consider what constant has existed throughout your life that has helped you dissolve and coagulate. Perhaps it is not something you have ever contemplated and yet it might be something worth identifying, appreciating and nurturing as you move forward on your personal path to self-realization. What idea or belief, physical place, activity, relationship, etc. has truly served as a catalyst for growth and transformation in your life? Are you aware of your universal solvent? Perhaps it is time to become aware and pull the slinky of change forward…

Happy New Year!!!