The Art of Transmutation and Many Micro-Emotional Surgeries
Emotional transmutation is a process—it’s not something that happens overnight, and yet at the same time it’s happening every moment. Psychologist Gloria Wilcox created the Feelings Wheel in 1982, which was later expanded by several other psychologists. It’s a tool to be able to identify the emotion we are feeling and what core emotion underlies it. It also allows us to talk about our feelings—to ourselves and to others—to understand ourselves better and create understanding for another.
Transmutation according to the Oxford dictionary definition is:
the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form
When we can first identify what we are feeling, it helps us create awareness for that feeling, and then interact with it. By doing so, it also creates a wedge between you and the overwhelming nature of the feeling—the fusion with the feeling. Instead of being drowned in it, there is a witness within us that can be there too. It's like cracking a window that allows us to open up further and let in more rarefied air.
Emotions are essentially energetic states of being. When we can interact with them, treat them with kindness, compassion and curiosity—as painful or confusing as they may be—we give ourselves the opportunity to transmute it in the moment. I liken it to many mini emotional surgeries where when an emotion comes up and threatens to overwhelm me, it allows me to witness it, maybe wrestle with it, feel into it in all its uncomfortableness, and then...find the broader perspective, peace, and root back into my being.
This has been a year of transmutation for me, and it has consisted of emotional highs and lows, luckily with more joy and peace than pain, unlike the prior decade. As I move down the river of self-discovery, I’m constantly pausing in my boat to do emergency heart surgery on myself. It might take five minutes or five hours, and then I’m back steering the ship. Last decade, I drowned in my emotions—bedraggled, I survived.
Earlier this year I had the thought to write a book on alchemy which struck me as strange, but then I realized I had been emotionally alchemizing for the last several years, slowly, in the dark. Sometimes life hits you with so many emotional tolls, and you carry so much based on our own personal make-up, that we do enter a dark night of the soul only to emerge on the other side, turning our lead into gold.
Gold is always here for us, but it's a process if we are brave enough to face ourselves deeply and radically. It demands we be completely honest to ourselves about our emotions, stop denying them room to breath. We must reach out for help—to a therapist, a friend, a family member, but also to our higher selves. We can also journal, paint, spend time in nature, sketch…just take time to be.
The art of transmutation involves placing the lead into the fire, letting it burn, being patient, allowing the slow transformation to occur under constant change. It’s a mediation and a trial by fire all at once. It’s self-understanding–the philosopher’s stone.
We bring light to ourselves and the world through radical self-awareness and the courage to actively metomorphosize the full range of our emotional body.
Soul-Prompt: How can I process the myriad of emotions I feel in one day? In one moment? How can I be honest with myself about what I’m feeling and identify it so I can ultimately transmute it?
