In essence, there are two ways to become a magician. 1) loving god (faith). 2) proving the truth (service). The synthesis of the two is strictly impossible. You cannot prove your love to God, purely because God is a mystery. Every mystery remembers itself as innocent, and innocence is in fact with it's own God. So, you have a situation in which God is realising that God is righteous. Does that sound familar? Probably no, but it's called epiphany. And, a magician stuck in an epiphany is a parable instead. Christ was not the magician or the alchemist within that thought. Fact is, a parable makes one suffer, where as magic/alchemy delivers one from that. So for now, know that Love has the choice to progress, or to regress. The whole creation, in fact, with it. To think or to feel. Alchemists do the former, and feelings that generate are positive. For the sake of it, feel then think means to joke. Everything happens for a reason, however.

Progressing your spirituality is all about leading with ego. The ego is thought-feeling - thought first. In the end, if someone who is practicing alchemy will not use their ego, they will be joking instead of that. Ego is only a weapon, a stab in the dark by light of the soul. One really needs a way to tell where to point it. It is inwardly and outwardly "knowledge of destiny". What does your destiny tell your soul and how does that equate to spiritual evolution? In senses such as the eternal name of God, no-one has thought of a reason to believe in others - God being an aspect of self that is great. Faith is a mirror that way, you get what you deserve. To serve and suffice, on the other hand, is to reprove one's own past. Who wanted sex got sex. Simply, it is allowed to be found that "I have been joking." Where you had pain you get bliss, now. Your wants are always buried temporarily in your friends' hearts. So in barest simplicity, your leading-edge ego might either go retro and get some awesome future, or to think ahead to some beautiful lost past. Do you see what I mean, when I say, don't do both at once!

The last thing on the mind of an alchemist is others, but that is the character trait that makes him patient. Of course, people who don't like others think only of them. Alchemy, on the other hand, is a perfectly organised will. A will needs Light, not a hiding place in the mind of all. We can call that hiding place hell. I would note that everyone has been there that has mastered himself, by the way. The grail is placed in that setup. Now, to progress cleanly into the Light of All That Is requires no such thing as external validation - and that is the point. The moment an alchemist remembers his science he is exalted, and that is what makes him so nice. The scientific question, for the record, is "Who am I?" and that makes the scientific method a case in point. God is not about to be anything other than human. Wild horses...

Alchemy itself is nothing more than a game. Do you win your truth? You do. And when you catch someone feeling befuddled you wink secretly at them, because you do. The players are all seated. A silent determined choice realises: "I am not a bad species." Who wins so cosmic a game? Anyone who likes to - it's about vulnerability.

olyris