We all have an innate desire to grow and to become the very best expressions of ourselves. This is why we spend our lives learning, evolving, and striving to align with a way of life that both supports and fulfills us.
To achieve this requires that we transform from where we are now to where we want to be. Growth, progress, and even our very survival depend on us transforming our lives and our world for the better.
Today, the world is changing fast. Technology continues to advance at speeds that are increasingly difficult to keep up with. Things seem in a constant state of fluctuation. Jobs change, relationships end and new ones begin.
There may be times of financial difficulties or challenges at work. With greater connectivity, faster speed of change, and more daily pressures than ever before, we have become a society of people that are more stressed, depressed, sick, and dissatisfied in life. What happened to creating a life that supports and fulfills us?
Life in our modern world is in a state of change more often than not. But through change may come transformation. Many people quote the famous words of Gandhi “Be the change you want to see.”
This is very true, but there is more to it than that! To seize the opportunities that change presents us with requires that we first understand the process of transformation, how to harness the tides of change and direct their course.
So, how do we take advantage of the opportunities for transformation that are available to us now? What are the steps we can take that our lives and our world can depend on to get us to a better future?
Have you ever experienced drastic change in your life, only to later find yourself repeating the same old pattern, or meeting the same obstacles once again? This can be very frustrating and baffling to us, and it keeps us feeling as if we are running in a hamster wheel or repeating “Groundhog’s Day” over and over.
We thought we were through with that already, but what the the ancient traditions of Alchemy reveal is that we were maybe only half-way through the transformational process and then got stuck.
Only when we have advanced through all seven of these stages of Alchemy successfully, will our transformation be fully integrated and stabilized. When we do, that is when we will finally be able to truly move on from those old obstacles, without fear of having to repeat the same ones again.
So what are these 7 essential steps for spiritual growth that your life can depend on?
1) Breakdown & breakthrough
The first step to transformation happens when a major event or trauma occurs in your life. Losing a job, ending a deep relationship, having a big argument, experiencing financial hardship, getting into an accident or sudden illness, or a major failure at work are all examples of potential breakdown points.
These kinds of events shake the foundation of your life and thus becomes the catalyst for your transformation. Recognize that the challenges you face are a sign that something in you or your way of operating needs to change. Face the challenge head on and know that this is ultimately an opportunity for growth into a better expression of yourself.
2) Dissolve & purify
Change can be scary. Fear, anger, confusion and possibly even a mental or emotional paralysis may come up for you or others affected by the changes. Allow for some time to process the emotions that accompany any challenging event. See this stage as an opportunity to connect more deeply with your inner soul and that of others.
Changes can be traumatic, and both the body and the psyche need time to process and release this. By providing this time for inner work, you can began to purify and eliminate any impurities or imbalances, thus creating space for something new to begin to manifest.
3) Separate and identify
Once the emotions are released and begin to settle, you can then start to separate out what exactly was released. This is the time to identify the aspects of your life or modes of operating that you want to keep, versus those that you want to discard.
For example, in the case of an illness, this could mean maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regimen, while eliminating toxic thoughts, habits or people from your life. Now is also the time to really begin to bring your life vision into greater clarity and integrity.
4) Recombine & harmonize
After eliminating some of the imbalances or problem areas from the previous steps, it is now time to recombine the positive and beneficial aspects back together into a new pattern.
This stage is about bringing the best aspects of yourself and your life back together into balance and harmony. This nourishes us and helps us start feeling back to ourselves again, only now more elevated.
Here you also begin to formulate or clarify a new vision of what you would like your life to look like, or what would be the ideal outcome of this whole experience. This new refined vision becomes your guiding light for the rest of the transformational process.
The new vision or goal should motivate you at a deep level and inspire you to do the work that is necessary to attain it.
5) Mature your vision
Create a plan for bringing your vision into full fruition. Take action! Begin applying the steps of your plan and put your transformations to the test. As you do you will get feedback from the world that will reflect to you whether you are on course or need further purification.
If further clean-up is needed, which usually is, then continue to refine the vision and plan by taking it through more cycles of separation and recombination, until it is brought into a state of stability, integration, and produces the desired results.
At this stage, also realize that the things that still require purification may be more subtle than before. They will also likely lie hidden within more deeply rooted beliefs and assumptions about “the way things are” or “who I am”.
Further soul-searching and vision questing is needed here. A willingness to sacrifice false assumptions or attachments to certain outmoded identities and ways of being is also required.
6) Raise your vibration
Once the final impurities have been rooted out at deeper levels from the previous steps, it is now time to raise things up to Peak State and optimize their potential. This means that we must raise the energetic vibration and Consciousness level that is embodied within the new purified self.
As we do, we will also be able to produce results that will have maximum impact as we manifest our vision.
To begin to raise your vibration and shift into a higher state of consciousness you can use tools such as meditation, active imagination, visualization, focused breathing techniques, sensory stimulation, and listening to metamusic with brainwave entrainment frequencies, to name a few.
The goal here is to infuse higher states of Consciousness into ourselves, our manifestations, and our world. To do so, first we must access that higher state of Consciousness, then we must bring its wisdom and illumination down into practical applications and tangible form.
7) Crystallize
The final step is about crystallizing your transformed self into optimum potential. As things crystallize, your life and your work become things of greater beauty, integrity and wholeness.
Synchronicities, a sense of fulfillment, and a bubbling up of excitement are signs that you are on the right track to getting to this point. Crystallization is where Peak State is finally actualized and your Vision is successfully manifested in its ultimate form. Here you reap the rewards and congratulate yourself for a job well done.
Nature is constantly driving evolution onwards and upwards. We should never think we are so good that we can’t get better. So even while we “arrive” in one area of life, there are other areas that will be identified to transform next, and there will always be more mountains to climb. And so as one cycle ends, the next begins.
By recognizing these stages at any given time and applying appropriate methods to accelerate each stage, we continue to transform in new ways. Only now, being wiser and more experienced at how to accelerate our evolution, we can step into the drivers seat of change.
What to take away from this
Anytime we want to make a change, achieve a new goal, eliminate a bad habit, or develop a new skill or gift, we must go through these same seven stages to get to a place of mastery in that new area. Often people don’t realize there are seven stages to transformation, and so they tend to fall short of truly mastering and fully integrating a new change.
By understanding what all seven stages are, how to identify where we are at in the process, and what is needed to progress from one stage to the next, we can more powerfully accelerate our progress to mastery in any area of life.
In our today’s world we need to individually and collectively make a quantum leap of change. If you are someone who is dedicated to transformation, then I invite you to join our collective of conscious change-agents, and we’ll help you learn the secrets to harnessing your transformational process, so you can drive it forward to the next level, every time.
By Theresa Bullard, Ph.D., Spirit Science and Metaphysics