Sharing Roadmaps

Welcome to the very first post on Alchemi Blog. In this blog I want to share practical knowledge from different mystic traditions with you. A lot of the techniques described here have helped me on my own path, and there are plenty more that I’d like to share even though I don’t necessarily use them. Knowing, that everyone has their own preferences and their own “style” if you will, it seems sensible to give you everything that could be of use to you. But before we dive into hands-on practices that help us reshape ourselves and our lives, let’s try and understand what we are actually working with.

Throughout the history of this planet (or at least our species) there have existed a vast amount of mystic traditions with their own practices, designed to help us become more proactively involved into this process we call “myself”. To me personally, two of these traditions are of particular interest, namely Hermetism and Yoga. That’s why in this blog you will encounter a lot of content related to these two, but not exclusively.

So, how do we deal with the fact, that different traditions propose different views on how things are? I mean, in the most extreme cases two spiritual systems seem to perfectly contradict each other in their description of the nature of the universe. When looking at the concepts in different spiritual traditions, we would do well to remember that they’re not absolute truths that we’re facing, but rather roadmaps. But roadmaps for what? Each one of us is on their path, and some of us have the privilege to recognize this. In those cases, the roadmaps can help a lot. But why are there vast differences in the roadmaps?

There is a comparison that Ram Dass quotes quite often, in which he remarks that our condition is similar to a mountain with a wide base. To get to the top, there are many paths, and these paths can differ a lot from one another. As we become aware of this, we are already somewhere in the mountain. So, being pragmatic, work with what we’ve got and continue from where we find ourselves! It’s really no wonder that different roadmaps work well for different people. That is to say: everyone resonates differently with different mystic traditions. And here is the beautiful thing about this: We don’t have to assume that our traditions can tell us exactly what the absolute truths are, but that instead, they point in the right direction. And where we’re going, we gradually start embodying Truth without having to conceptualize it. This doesn’t mean to not keep ourselves in check; it’s rather an encouragement to not get too hung up on the particular wording and conceptualizations of different traditions.

In my next blog posts I would like to give you an introduction into the wonderful roadmaps derived from Hermeticism and Yoga. I’ll show you how much these seemingly different traditions have in common and how much applicable wisdom we can find when we start looking beyond the culture-specific metaphors and analogies.