This is the ninth of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

Heal yourself was one of the simple and powerful messages today. While this is a difficult belief to accept without proof of some kind, I have experienced my body’s ability to heal itself when asked with faith and expectation. Understanding that the stress we have been living with for decades has increased the potential for dis-ease is the first step. Accepting that our physical body can shed this stress and heal the diseases it has acquired is a huge step that challenges us to see a different reality. The same is true of another message today. Reaching out to others to participate in a active and supportive community is an experience that is daunting to most of us. It’s an opportunity that is fleeting and seemingly impossible. How often have we reached out or put ourselves at emotional risk and been denied? Is this time another opportunity to do this with different results? Yes, it is. There is a birthing taking place. We may not be aware of it because it does not involve just a close friend or family member. It is not taking place in a hospital or supported by a midwife service. So, it may happen without us knowing about it. But the result will affect all of us. A new type of energy is entering our world. An energy that is available to all of us. If a birth notice was to be written, it would speak of the birth of twins; a girl and boy carrying the most developed DNA of the feminine and masculine coming into the world with the intent of creating balance and harmony. All we have to do is be open to this possibility and, if appropriate for us at this time, embrace and use it. The only question for us to answer is: There is a new ride at the local amusement park and do we want to go there and try it?

This is the eighth of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

We are creators. We create our reality every moment of each day. Every thought and feeling we have and every action we take forms a piece of our reality. Our world is a tapestry woven by the threads of life created by all living beings. This Time of Transition will shower the Earth with powerful, new energies dissolving much of this fabric of our lives. At the same time this energy, like a creative fire, will be available to us to create a new world. It is a time for us to be mindful of what is dissolving, to separate what we want to be and want to have and let go of the rest. If we remain aware of what we most want, it will be.

This is the seventh of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

The nature of time is changing. Our experience is that time is going by faster. Everything in our lives seems to speeding up. If we are aware of this quickening and adjust to it by creating periods of quiet, centered time in each day, we will experience more control of our lives. To create these periods of centeredness, we need to quiet our thoughts and stop listening to the constant chatter that accompanies our every waking moment. By letting them go by without being attached to them, fertile ground for creating what we want will appear. If we work this soil a few times a day, we will be able to grow a new life.

This is the sixth of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

This Winter Solstice is a time of birthing. The energy that is present will release the gift we have brought with us for the world. Perhaps it has been stored away in a basement or closet of our mind, perhaps it has been gradually unfolding for a while covered by the daily press of our lives, perhaps we have no idea now what it is or where we put it long ago. Now, however, it is ready for us to reveal. This readiness and yearning will cause stress in our life if we are not yet fully ready. But this gift can no longer be concealed and stored away for some future time. We will enter the new year with a strong urge to be fully ourselves.

Conflict is necessary to clear away the obstacles that prevent us from being who we are and living our lives fully. If necessary, we must be ready to sustain the effort to make difficult changes. At times it will feel that the fight is lost but we have been here before. While we may have not yet won the current battle, we are not defeated and will continue to go on and discover the way for us to be successful.

This is the third of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

Intent is the embers of the new flame burning in the world at this time. Our intent has always influenced our world in every way. Perhaps it has been so subtle as to go unrecognized by us. Perhaps we have often denied it in the hope of not being responsible for what may happen. Yet, our intent is the vital energy that flows through our blood and our chakras. It is always present and always active. During this time of great transitions, our intent will manifest itself more fully. It is a time to learn how to recognize and be more aware of this urge within ourselves. Being part of intentional communities with friends, family and others is a safe place to practice being aware of our gifts, desires and wishes. The Tarot energy for today is the Nine of Cups signifying a time of wish fulfillment. Say what you intend and what you want so that it may come to fulfillment with the intent of others.

This is the second of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

Acceptance is the door to opportunity. Our world and all living things in it have their unique energies that are mixed with ours to continually create and recreate it. To claim our essence is to immerse ourself in this flow of energy and realize we have the power to say yes or no to any of the possibilities of change it offers us. Fear blocks the flow. Acceptance allows it to flow around and through us. We get to continually choose who we are. There will be some disruption as we pass through this gateway. It will be manifested in the world as the Earth shudders out of its slumber as it has been doing for some time. And it will also be manifested in us and others as we allow ourselves to become more aware and react to the quickening of time and the overwhelming possibilities to renew our journey and create the life we have wanted for so long. This disruption however is the realization of change brought by the surprise of a special gift from a friend, the amazing turn of fortune in sporting events, the squealing of children as the run outside and the offer of love we did not expect. It is time to embrace it and your essence.

This is the first of 10 messages leading up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Go here to read my introductory post.

Look for the possibilities and opportunities that are available for you now not in your behavior today or that of others but in the entire arc of your life from its beginning. Go beyond what you believe to be your mistakes and failings for they are temporary. See the path you have taken despite the disruptions and distractions of life for it still beckons to you now. Along this path will be the gifts and treasures of this time of great awakening. The thunderbolt of fire with its energy of change has already struck and the disruption in your life has taken place. What you had to lose is gone. What has held you back remains no longer. A steady flame burns now. It is a source of the energy for you to use to renew your life and continue on the path you chose long ago.

This is the introductory message of 10 to follow, one for each of the remaining days before the 2012 Winter Solstice. They are grounded in my alchemy work, meditations as well as readings of the Tarot and are intended to keep my spirit open to the powerful energies flowing through our world at this time. While they are intended for me, I want to share them as a way of giving them more life in the world outside my thoughts and feelings. Take away something useful from them if you find it; ignore them if you do not. Either way, I encourage you to find ways to remain open to the possibilities and opportunities emerging during this momentous time.

Fifty one days, as I write this, to December 21, 2012 and there is still surprisingly little attention being paid by most people to the highly anticipated and discussed end date of a Mayan calendar thought by many to predict the end of our time. Why is this?

The steady increase in debunking of this belief as a myth without basis by some quarters of the social media world and the staff of a few federal agencies like NASA and NOAA certainly plays a role. Could it also be that we are in the end game of a presidential election? The competing campaign staff would certainly like to think so, but attention to this cultural phenomena has just spiked in the last month or so. I believe the answer lies at a much deeper level of our consciousness.

Most of us would agree, I believe, that beginning a year or two ago, significant changes have taken place in the experiences of our daily lives. The passage of time seems to have speeded up, not just for special periods or events but permanently. Life is just coming at us faster. Possibilities in our lives – both positive and negative – have expanded at an unprecedented rate. Often it seems that we just have too many options. Energy levels available for us to draw on have increased but this may allow us to move faster during the day or keep us up at night. All of this seems evident not only in what we see or read in the news, “hear” from our social media contacts, but feel in our gut. Big changes are happening.

Here’s what my gut is telling me. The changes predicted for this time of our lives are taking place. But our date with the galactic center of our solar system on December 21, 2012 is not the beginning and end of our lives as we know it now. This Winter Solstice and alignment with the energies of the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy is part of a cycle – an enormous, cosmic cycle that we can understand by using our knowledge and experience of the Seven Phases of alchemy. As members of the Alchemy Guild, we all have an intense interest in alchemy and an understanding of these Phases. But, how often do we actually apply them to our daily experience? I’d like to explore that with you.

The Azoth shows us the Seven Phases:

Calcination

Dissolution

Separation

Conjunction

Fermentation

Distillation

Coagulation

As alchemists we use these Phases in our laboratories, in our thoughts and in the way we see the spiritual aspects of our existence. I believe we also live these Phases each day. In the alchemical laboratory, the Phases are actions we perform on the material we are working with to achieve The Stone. We can take these Phases out of the laboratory and apply them to ourselves to achieve the Stone of Transformation in our lives. If we do this, the Phases can be seen as continuous cycles that affect our spiritual, physical and mental experience. As we move through these cycles and achieve the coagulation or transformation of one part of our lives, new possibilities are born and we have the opportunity to begin a new cycle. Seen in this way, our daily experiences are the result of living in several significant cycles at once. As such, we can use them to create the transformation we want in our lives. To help me see this connection between my life and the Seven Phases, I’ve identified transformative steps and related questions associated with each of the Phases to prompt me to remain aware of the energy and power of these cycles in my life. The Alchemical Transformation chart shows these relationships.

Phases of Alchemy        Steps of Alchemical          Questions

                                              Transformation

_________________________________________________________________

Calcination                                    Ignite                            What am I afraid of?

Dissolution                                    Liberate                        What am I ready to release?

Separation                                    Choose                          What or who do I choose?

Conjunction                                   Unify                              What do I want now?

Fermentation                                 Embrace                        How do I open myself to the world?

Distillation                                     Elevate                           What is my essence?

Coagulation                                   Transform                     What can I imagine in the world?

How is this all related to the Winter Solstice of 2012? If I apply the seven Phases of Alchemy to the last two or three years, I see a series of global calcinations that are taking place in the form of long lasting wars, uncontrolled famine and vast changes in the financial landscape of the world’s economies. While this Phase is still taking place, signs of dissolution are evident in the vast political changes that are taking place in the Middle East and appearance of much needed, strong feminine energies emerging in the fields of business, entertainment and politics in the West and individual women taking strong stands for human rights in the East. The act of separation is what is taking place now. An examination of what is happening and choosing that which is most important is necessary now to move to the next Phase of the cycle – conjunction or the bringing together of the necessary elements and energies to create what we want as a global community. The fermentation and distillation of these first four cycles and the coagulation of this community await the choices we make now.

Here’s a story from my current experience that illustrates this.

My daily life is now and has been for more than a year accompanied by a Cloud of Choosing. My days are not lived under a grey sky but a brilliant blue one with white puffy cotton balls drifting through it. They are a constant reminder that I have a choice to make. I know what it is now. It is to write and publish. And I do write. I have binders, files and online documents filled with ideas, notes, scenes from several stories and links to important research articles. I’ve even created an expanded outline of a book on transformation. My issue is that I also have an outline and several chapters written about a fiction related to alchemy. And, recently I confess to creating the beginning of another fiction on how the interaction made possible by social media is terraforming our consciousness. So, you see, I still have a problem with choosing. There are so many possibilities. This is the nature of our times. My partner and wife, Nancy, continually asks me a question that helps me get further down the road to actualizing my choosing: “What do you want, Duane, and what do you really want?” I haven’t answered the question yet. If I had, my life would be more influenced by the next Phase of Alchemy – Conjunction – or uniting the essences of my life that were discovered by the earlier Phases of Calcination and Dissolution in a unique way that is the alchemical signature of Duane. Even downsizing my decision of what I want in my life to which of my writings to complete doesn’t make this type of decision any easier. I still have to let go of the other possible books that are also parts of me. Did someone just say Dissolution? I thought I completed that Phase already. Oh well, that’s another story. Now, I choose to write a book for publication and recognize that I have work to do to finish one of several that I’ve started.

 I realize I’m not “singing to the choir” but singing with it. We are in this together, each with a personal experience and view of the great cycles of the Work. So, I believe sharing our views will help us all focus the energies in these cycles and use it to make the differences we want to create in our lives. I’m interested in what you think about the ideas and concepts I’ve presented in this brief article and ask for your feedback. You can do this by sending me an email with your comments at djsaari@ouroboroscycle.com or posting a comment here on my blog. I’m also very interested in your experience of the cycles of alchemy during this period of time. I invite you to send me a description of what you feel comfortable sharing. My email or my blog are options to do this and if you prefer to just talk you can call me at; 518–506-6286. If there is a large response to this article, I will create and moderate an Alchemy Guild forum so we can continue to talk about this important issue.

The remainder of this year will be filled with increasing energy and possibilities. Yes, we will continually be surprised, distracted and overwhelmed by what we experience. And, we will also see more clearly the possibility to create the life we want. Asking ourselves the questions that can make a difference in our lives and talking about our answers to them with others is so very important now.

It is a time to choose.