To make anything useful you need a chemical reaction. Whether it’s soap, rocket boosters, or a relationship. The opposites have to come together to create something new and valuable. This was the main idea behind alchemy, turning lead to gold through a complicated series of reactions. Although alchemy is looked upon to be the precursor for chemistry, Jung looked at it and saw it as the psyche’s process of coming into greater consciousness. It describes the perplexing mechanics of the psyche and the inner transformations that take place as more of our interior self takes shape in the outer world. We go through our own alchemical processes as we become more aware of who we really are on the inside.

This is what the best of relationships help us do. They let the truth of who we are emerge fully, and wake us up to who we really are down deep inside. We begin to uncover what has been long buried in the places we have been afraid to look. When we do this we naturally transform into our essence and authenticity. These lines do little to capture the intensity and seismic shifts these relationships can produce. There is no way to articulate the depths of understanding and metamorphosis that take place when we come into contact with another person who inspires such a chemical reaction. This kind of relationship can be experienced in many different ways, although I will confess the love relationship packs an intense kind of heat that fuels tremendous transformation rarely found anywhere else. The only boundaries or limits that are experienced come from our fear of incinerating in its heat. In order to withstand the flame we need to prepare.

The reason we don’t often get a glimpse of this kind of relationship is because we need to do a lot of interior work first in order to appreciate these subtle gifts when they do arise. Not only do we have to be ready to walk into the fire but we have to welcome it. We prepare like an athlete to withstand the absolute joy, honesty, and fear a relationship like this can bring. We do this by cultivating the strength to fully face the internal chemical reaction that has the potential to pull us apart. Then we make that energy our own. This fearless energy has a magic and a lightness about it that changes the structure of our thinking and so our lives.

This is relationship alchemy and it has the power to transform our lives on every level.

So stir the internal alchemical pot and see what ignites.

kb