The Philosopher’s Stone: The Skill of Transmuting Something Bad and Ugly Into Something More Precious Than Gold (Part 1)

In this article, I endeavor to introduce for your consideration a means of ‘spiritual transmutation’ that you can exercise in order to turn something bad and ugly into something more precious than gold.

I refer to this proverbial 'Philosopher’s Stone' as a skill because it is something that requires diligent practice and exercise to improve your capability to use it in a way that will provide the greatest chance of complete success. In your attempt to hone this skill, you may face many false starts or perceived failures, however, do not give up hope! Keep practicing! It’s not so different from learning to play the violin. Early attempts at practice can be very disheartening or even painful (to the ears, in case of the violin ;), but after enough practice you will have learned to play beautiful melodies and harmonies that can bring happiness to yourself and those around you.

Even your early and challenging first attempts to practice this can benefit you, and once you have honed this skill it will dwell within you for the rest of your life.

In today’s world there is a lot of conflict, strife, and division. We can become inundated by destructive behavior, rhetoric, and thought patterns. Not only can we be badly affected by the destructive tendencies of those around us, we can fall prey to adopting or creating those destructive tendencies ourselves to the detriment of not only just ourselves, but those around us as well.

The problems and badness in the world today can seem so overwhelming, it can be easy for us to feel like we are helpless and unable to do anything about it. When we have stopped being the protagonist in our own lives and have surrendered the writing of our life story to outside forces, it can become very easy to fall into a downward spiral of despair and even anger.

If we fall into this trap, we often start blaming the world, ‘oppressors’, ‘the man’, God, our friends, or even our family, for the bad circumstances we find ourselves in; we assign ourselves to the role of ‘victim’.

However, no matter how much blame we cast, blaming others will never benefit or improve our situations, it will only negatively empower us to further abdicate our own personal power; it may even have a very destructive effect on our sense of self-worth and our personal relationships with loved ones, and could even lead us have a desire to hurt people or destroy things in the physical world.

The first step in creating your own Philosopher’s Stone is to recognize that you have the power and responsibility to try to benefit yourself and your own circumstances.

Several years ago, I found myself deep in the grips of one of these downward spirals, and I felt utterly helpless to improve my own circumstances; I had abdicated the exercise of self-determination and my sense of self-responsibility. Finally, one day, things got so bad I decided that no matter what, I needed to at least try my very best to find some way to improve my situation. This method I share in this writing is the culmination of several years of failures and successes that I have had in my efforts to take back control of my life.

The second step in creating your own Philosopher’s Stone is to make a commitment to take back your responsibility to exercise self-determination and accept accountability for your thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions.

This means of ‘spiritual transmutation’ that I offer includes a process of assessment and reflection I use that helps me identify any destructive thoughts, beliefs, words, or actions; I use this to assess others and things happening in the world, but most frequently use it to assess myself. Although this assessment process can help us identify outside destructive forces and people who have abdicated their role as protagonist and are on a path of destruction, so that we can properly protect ourselves, you should focus on practicing and applying this skill on your own thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions. While you may have very little to no ability to control or change others or world events, you will always have at least some degree (or even complete ability) to control and change yourself.

The third step in creating your own Philosopher’s Stone is to critically determine if a thought, belief, word, or action, can be regarded as destructive.

We need to be willing to take a hard critical look at outside forces and ourselves and ask, ‘Is this helpful, or is it hurtful? If it is hurtful, how can I learn from it or re-frame it in a way that will benefit me or those around me? If it is helpful, or hurtful but also helpful, how can I use it to create positive change in my life, the lives of those around me, or the world at large?’

For the purpose of assessment, we will classify all thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions, as being either destructive, instructive, constructive, or null.

• Anything that creates negative feelings, is hurtful, detrimental to you or others, or is focused on tearing something or someone down, will be labeled as DESTRUCTIVE.
• Anything that offers insight, wisdom, understanding, or knowledge, or increases our capacity to critically and objectively assess ourselves or others or increases our capability to take positive action, will be labeled as INSTRUCTIVE.
• Anything that creates positive feelings, provides joy or happiness, is beneficial to yourself or others, positive productivity, or is focused on building something or someone up, will be labeled as CONSTRUCTIVE.
• The very few things that cannot be categorized in any of the above we will regard as NULL, and we will simply discard it for our purposes here; in a way, it is worth less than trash, for it can never become another man’s treasure.
• Any thought, belief, word, or action, that is obviously not null but cannot be readily identified as instructive or constructive, should be assumed to possibly be very INSIDIOUSLY DESTRUCTIVE in nature and very carefully scrutinized.

Later in this series we will be exploring how to:

• Assess outside forces and ourselves
• Identify something hurtful (destructive) and
• Turn it into something hurtful but also helpful, or something benevolent and helpful (instructive)
• Further transmute that instructive force into something that can create positive change in ourselves, our lives, the lives of those around us, and the world at large (constructive)
• How to reassess this constructive course of action that has been determined to make sure that it is not actually destructive
• Ways to increase our ability in this skill more quickly

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