Salty Tears, Emotional Waves.
Cleanse, Water, Release, Dissolution
Week 3 : Flow into Fire Alchemy Challenge
photo by Melissa Robin
Water sweeps in to cleanse and transmute the raging fires of calcination into hissing cool charcoal ash. This is the second stage of alchemy, where we find ourselves releasing the floodgates of our emotions.
In struggle we often become tired. Here, we have the opportunity to intentionally release control of perceived structure and allow the softer emotions of the yin/femme to wash over us.
This is an intense phase as well, yet one many avoid because it is the essence of FEELING all the things in (over?)whelming waves. When these feelings are felt fully + acknowledged it allows them to move through. When we don't feel, we get stuck… trapped… inducing repeated calcination/struggle phases.
Release the struggle and Let It Go, inviting the huge waves of emotions to cleanse and wash away the ashes of our old paradigm systems and ways of being.
Dissolution reminds us to surrender to the unstoppable power of the water in our eyes and the huge emotions in our souls. Feeling is healing.
images by Melissa Robin Photo
Dissolution can look or feel like:
-Crying it out solo, letting the dams down
-being overwhelmed by feeling
-not understanding the emotions (you don't need to, just feel them)
-watery depression or lethargy
-heaviness as if at the bottom of a wave
-uncontrolled tears at unexpected moments
-non-linear and 'irrational' thinking (this is good, and okay)
-feeling soft + tender and desiring comfort
-not knowing what you desire or unable to tap into your intuition OR logic.
-intense emotions like : overwhelm, sadness, tears, loss, disconnect, nostalgia, depression, stagnancy.
Dissolution - Where Calcination starts off with a bang and an ego death, Dissolution knocks on our hearts and asks us to release buried emotions and behaviors which may be concealing or distorting our true nature. Cracking open and dissolving the muck to get to the heart of the matter, so to speak. ‘Dissolution is working with the Water element by opening our personal floodgates and generating new energy from the waters held back. It results in a wonderfully flowing presence that is free of inhibitions, prejudgments, and restrictive mental structures. That which is within us is now close to the surface and freely expressed.’ - The Emerald Tablet, Chapter 10, Step Two: Dissolution.
Ask yourself and flow:
How can you release deeper, more easefully, to the flow of emotion in your dance?
In your life?
Can you admit to others how and when you release emotions? [like crying or screaming in your car]
Flow like cleansing water and let the tears flow.
My musings;
I am grateful to cry, sob, and scream.
And to be held, even and especially when it's hard to release into support.
Dissolving old ways of being with intention cleanses the heart and mind body, so I can deeply repattern to BE in new ways, freshly felt.
I bike, hike, drive, to bodies of water to be near them at these times, and seek out sailing.
The lakes and oceans call me to live upon them.
In my hometown, after visiting my Nana's fresh grave & not having clarity on the next weeks travel plans, I released into uncontrolled tears of fear and anxiousness about the changes I'm bringing upon my life.
My heart longs to be physically near my beloved despite tricky physical distance and summer unavailability.
I deeply miss humans lost to me.
The drastic slow yet fast shifts I'm making are a struggle, a process of bouncing between struggle and release into sweet small places of flow state. I feel fear, and the ashes wash away with my tears.
I feel my lack of control, truly, in all things as i cannot see my future clearly. I/we exist in the chaos and we try to control, channeling it into seemingly ordered time space continuum.
photos by Chris Nightengale
To release uncontrolled tears and speak aloud the fears I have for the future and my plans is healing, just by allowing myself to feel intensely for 48 hours on and off. I am infinitely grateful to be held by my mother at the age of 36 and feel unconditionally loved and heard… a huge privilege I do not overlook. Ever.
And then, to drive eastward to Long Island to follow my heart, to find myself ugly cry sobbing through the Pennsylvania mountains, for hours.
Worried to share my feelings for fear of being shamed or dismissed.
To first fight, find spaciousness, and connect to resolution.
Frustrated at my nervous impatience as I scream and rage to metal through extended NYC traffic.
To arrive and still cry for *all the things*, yet be held by my beloved so tenderly it allowed the walls I unintentionally started to build around my heart to release. I realize here that my only barrier to love is that which I put up.
Love heals.
I Dissolve into it.
And I learn to trust in these moments.
And I try to repattern my actions, from my emotions, to be my highest self.
I mourn and weep for:
•Lost past lover partners
•Missing old estranged friends
•Ancestors & grandparents passed on to other planes of existence
•Pregnancies miscarried, by choice and knowing
•The changes in Ignite Fire Keepers
•The scary unknown of my future and where I will live and be
•Leaping into a new relationship
•Fear at remembering hateful words from those I love, condemning and hexing me to always be my worst past self. And the shame at my own hurtful words in return.
•The unknown of transforming my art, yet again
•All the injustices in the world. And my part In them.
•The sadness and disparity of others unknown, yet felt.
photos by Alize Jireh Yaccino
So, I cry.
And when I think I’m done, I cry more.
Weep dear Gaea, dear Everyone. The only way to is through, and there are no shortcuts.
Feel it all to heal it. without even trying.
I remind you as others remind me,
I/You/we are not alone.
I/we are loved and held, and always have a place and a shoulder to dissolve our feelings if we ask- even and especially if this is mother nature herself.
