Alchemizing Evil
Alchemizing Evil
Alchemy: the medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed transformation of matter. It was concerned particularly with attempts to convert base metals into gold or to find a universal elixir.
–(Oxford Languages)
What do you think of when you hear the word “evil?” I have a series of images: demons (they’re scary-looking, wraiths like the Dementors in Harry Potter); the devil (where did that come from??
My Episcopalian roots didn’t marinate me in that theology); then a sense of awful people walking the earth who I have to be on the lookout for.
Searching for the “evil-doers” with an eye on eradicating them seems to wax and wane in popularity; certainly, it’s back in fashion again. Witnessing the reemergence of concentration camps* on our own American shores has re-evoked questions long on my mind: what is behind the human willingness to be cruel? And am I capable of such brutality, given the right circumstances?
My 35 years as a psychologist, spending 50,000+ hours with a range of people, has brought me face-to-face with this reality: (to paraphrase Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry and Pogo):
We’ve met evil, and the evil is us.
In other words, every single one of us is capable of any of the worst–and the best–behavior.
As always with the work I teach, the bad news about taking full responsibility for the range of our human proclivities is that we don’t get to blame, point the finger at those other, bad people. Sigh.
But the good news? As we face into and take responsibility for our whole human selves, there’s something we can do to change the world; we can change ourselves. We can alchemize the very source of evil, which is simply our willingness to become unaware when we’re at the throes of our own reactivity, and behave from those most dense and contracted states.
I developed “The Inner Map” in part to address my own horror at humanity’s seemingly unending thirst for atrocity. I adapted David Hawkin’s brilliant “Map of Consciousness®” into a simplified, physiology-based blueprint that explains how our level of consciousness determines both how we view the world, and how it draws in responses that will amplify our state. Applying these concepts with clients helped me refine and evaluate the Inner Map’s intricacies. I’ve had a front-row seat to two pivotal notions: 1. We create our lives through our states of consciousness, and 2. These states are malleable, if we’re willing to face into what we’re feeling, then shift our physiology. In other words:
There is no there out there.
Our lives, our beliefs, our moment-to-moment experience of life pivots around what’s happening in our body.
When we change our state we change our life.
I know how difficult it is to take the very simple step of changing our state. When there’s a threat, it’s our instinct to look outside of us to track it down and make it stop, leading to the blame and projection that are the root of every conflict. But I also have witnessed and experienced how, by waiting for that next beat after that first instinct to return to our own body’s experience, we’re in the driver’s seat of our life. Then we can take the steps to shift to a more expanded level of consciousness, so move out of conflict and back into connection and possibility. We easily find ourselves and find each other.
I used to believe that our country was moving into ever-increasing expansion. The steady progress towards civil rights, gay rights, women’s and differently-abled rights was heartening–we seemed to be heading in a direction towards human dignity and understanding that we’re all the same. Maybe, just maybe we were overcoming the rot left by slavery, genocide, and Jim Crow. But you know how our world is looking now, like we’ve snapped back like a rubber band, to contraction and density, to fear and suspicion, contempt and hatred. To bureaucratizing cruelty.
What to do? Beyond the marches and memes and collapses into helpless heaps, how are we supposed to meet this moment? From all of the “never again!” pronouncements, what do we do as we watch the encroachment of this obvious evil?
We alchemize it.
Alchemy, famous for the quest to turn lead into gold. Or, in more relevant terms, the process of transmuting the density of our reactive states (only poison when they stay stuck in our bodies or propel us to behave in unconscious ways) into expanded ones. What a miracle, that focusing our attention and breath on the inner world of our body’s sensations has the powerful and direct effect on improving our lives that we’re desperately seeking.
What I am suggesting is that our real power to change what is happening in the collective is actually quite simple: learn to shift our own internal world.
Our human bodies are built the same. Every one of us can move around the Inner Map. We can find our power again, and understand it is up to each one of us to take responsibility for our own instinctive tendencies to do what we’re railing against: blaming, externalizing, villainizing; losing sight of others’ humanity in our willingness to judge entire groups of people as “less than.”
This is not a path to externally correcting the ills of the world. However, it is powerful. It’s saying, yes, I am part of keeping this stuck morass going. I can do something about it;
We humans have a daunting challenge to overcome. When we’re unaware of how our inner states are creating our reality, we end up at the effect of our physiology. We aren’t tracking how we’re in an endless loop of reacting to a world of our own making. Reactive Brain deceives us so much that we believe in the pull to escalation. Once Reactive Brain sounds the threat alarm and those stress hormones spurt into our bloodstream, it turns that none of us is equipped to view others objectively. Suddenly it makes sense to say the worst thing, lash out in violence, herd people together and humiliate them. We’re now in the hell realm, where we become prisoners of an ever-amplifying chamber of unconscious reactions to threat.
The path out of this darkness is simple, but not easy: using our awareness to tune into how we, ourselves, are creating the hell that we see and the evil that stalks us.
Want to be part of transmuting the evil corroding our world? What I’m suggesting won’t improve your ability to identify sociopaths, toxic narcissists, or tyrants,.or help you get better at warding off demons. You will, however, be one of many who aren’t imprisoned by their Reactive Brain’s projections, and so can use their attention to directly change energy from dense and contracted to expanded, heart-felt, and full of light. Your willingness and attention will literally transmute toxic energy to what is life-giving: love, connection, peace. Your body will feel better, and your spirit will be aligned. You’ll step into the truth that, indeed, we are all capable of evil. And–we are all divine.
STEPS TO ALCHEMIZING EVIL:
Commit to returning to awareness of your body. Your mind changes on a dime, and your thoughts are not to be believed. Your body sensations are completely reliable (though the big triggers mean you’re accessing past, unprocessed emotion).
Commit to letting go of blame–of anyone, anywhere. Blame is Reactive Brain’s insistence that it is seeing the world accurately–and, with the exception of an immediate threat, that is never true. (Go here to find out more about living in a World Beyond Blame.)
Commit to living Above the Line, in Creative Brain. Creative Brain is where our essence lives. It’s our wise self who always finds the most expanded path. No matter how many times it takes to climb out of Reactive Brain, have the discipline to do the work to shift your physiology back to your true expanded self.
Choose your actions from Above the Line. Don’t try to solve issues from your reactivity.
Connect with your allies, those who are also committed to living in a Friendly Universe, who know that cruelty is a vestige of a very primitive time of survival. Remind each other of who you really are: loving, kind, compassionate, truth-telling. Stand in the true power of your creative, essential self as you link with others doing the same.
Perhaps I can’t personally change what is happening politically, but I can stay awake, face into, and take responsibility for moving out of my own unconscious patterns. I can wait for my stress chemicals to metabolize so I can choose my own next action from Creative Brain.
Repeatedly applying these processes will alchemize the human instinct to blame–the real demon–into the gold of realignment to one’s truth and discovery of the next creative action. As we do this collectively, we have an unprecedented opportunity to shift this time from one of recycling through our worst human tendencies, to creating a new world of heart, vulnerability, and heaven on earth.