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(((alchemy of chaos)))

Chaos as a Dance

I am going to briefly revisit chaos in order to bridge to Alchemy. Chaos is about becoming comfortable to be with ALL that is, to not reject anything based on our inability to understand it, or based on perceived pain or departure from previous versions of selves from diving into uncharted waters. Creating a new perspective of chaos is to stand in the void with the unknowingness, and choose to keep your eyes open and see new possibilities. We are all separately and together coming to our own conclusions and redefinitions of what chaos truly is. It is everything from a dance, to the birthplace of possibility, to the monster’s mouth, to the next step into the unknown, to the natural order of our multiverse. I wrote a piece in my journal several weeks ago, exploring this concept of chaos as a dance, and this is the last line of that entry: ‘And at the end, the only thing left, the only thing we ever end up choosing, is to dance. At the height of wisdom and knowing and experience...at the height of it all, we remember that it was always about dancing.’

So. If opening to chaos, and coming home to the chaos in ourselves and in the world is a dance, then what is alchemy?

Alchemy

Alchemy is the ancient science of transformation. Alchemy sees nature as unity, as interconnected, as being in a constant state of inter-relatedness, of which we humans are a continually unfolding part. My personal belief on alchemy is that it invites us to realize that everything is an infinity mirror to everything else. That anything that happens is an instance of correspondence (the most significant principle of alchemy) between self and other, inner and outer, community and world, humanity and earth, nature and truth.

There is a line in The Alchemist that I love. It goes: "It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. The alchemists spend years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves." The reason this struck me was because of the part about the alchemists spending so much time close to the fire, which I took to be a metaphor for the difficult, heated, amplified, or impossible things, the people that hurt and burn us, the parts of life that seemingly tear us apart, understanding what ignites us in generative and destructive ways. It is in staying in that flame, and returning to it, that it transforms.

The crux of the alchemical tradition is founded on the observation of transformational cycles. And although the most present definition of alchemy brings to mind the old "lead to gold" addage, the narrative that stands out to me within that is that transforming the lead to gold requires a journey of self that transforms the self in order to achieve the gold. Alchemy is a study of the transformations occurring within ourselves, and then observing how that internal, individual transformation mirrors out into the world around us. At its essence, alchemy heals the split between the spiritual and physical experiences, between the earth and the cosmos. And, one of my favorite subtle and new ways to see alchemy that feels important is that alchemy posits that everything can be distilled, refined, and recombined. Now any time I see a word starting with the prefix (re-) I automatically consider it through the alchemical lens!

Alchemy is also the acknowledgement that as someone seeks to become better and transform themselves, everything around them is also transformed as a result. This is the universal benefit of anyone choosing the alchemists path - the path of transformation. 

4 Aspects of Alchemy

1. We start with what is. The main strategy here is to be present, to exist in present time. It is necessary to pull your energy out of the past, and stop fixating on whatever has become irrelevant over time. And, pull your energy out of the future, because the future is built from the present. We must be here, starting with what is here, acknowledging what is. Facing and embracing reality in order to shift it (vs being in denial of it).

2. Everything is an ingredient. What are your ingredients? Your ingredients are the key to your conundrum. The alchemist’s invitation is to be so present that you are surprised by what ingredients you do in fact have.

3. The material is the teacher. What are your materials? Your materials tell the truth. This can be a literal material (lead to gold), situational material, relational material, or the "material" that makes up life itself.

4. Your tools reflect your mindset. What are your tools? How and why are you building your tool belt? What are your practices that make up the architecture of your life? The seemingly mundane matters very much as you begin to walk the alchemical path.

Claiming Leadership Amidst Revolution

We are in the midst of a global revolution on many fronts. Systems and structures that have been in place for centuries are being questioned and reimagined like never before. Usually when we talk of “leadership” we automatically think outward leadership. And while this is most definitely true, particularly in times such as these, there is a deeper angle that we can work towards revealing as we shape our external leadership. I believe that what this program is really here to teach us all, to show us all, is that this massive renegotiation is happening not only in the outside world...it is just as essentially going down in our inner world. We are simply being shown the reflection of ourselves in the world around us. Meaning, the world around us is reflecting what’s happening inside of us. In another frame, this is an example of Correspondence: one of the rules of alchemy. There is a revolution happening. But it is happening inwardly first, and most importantly. It is only after we chart the path of what this is, what it means, what opportunities there are for us here...that we can apply that to the world around us. We must find our center in a new way. We must understand what it feels like to arrive back to ourselves, to claim leadership within ourselves. We must be able to see chaos as our true resting state, to be able to be with it. And it is in being with it that we can start to discern the ingredients.

Who are you choosing to be right now? What if you knew nothing else about who you have been, and decisions you have made, and stories you have created, and results you have achieved...what if you knew that right now, none of it matters? What if you knew right now, that you could decide to be new, if that is what will most serve you and your circles of influence? What would you have available to you as ingredients to see, to receive, to understand, to alchemize? This is a key to unlocking a massive door. The relational and the organizational don’t matter if we aren’t clear on what’s happening at home base. If we can’t understand and activate around our own inner dialogue, our messages and our leadership and our ways of being in the world will be muddied and confusing and we will not have the impact we could have. Our container of delivery of any new paradigm must be clean and clear. And the way we make it clean and clear, is to allow yourself access to yourself in a new way, and to own that just because something was true about you before, doesn’t mean it has to be true forever and ever amen. To have one idea about who you are and need that to be true always is severely limiting to the vastness of the human experience. The leaders of the revolution will need to be nimble in their ability to understand themselves in the context of the world around them, and be audacious enough to evolve real time before the eyes of their audiences. Can you feel that version of you? Can you sense it swirling within you? I can. It’s what brought you to this particular program. It’s what pulled you to this strange, winding, blindfolded path of chaos and alchemy and who knows what else. You already know this. I’m just helping you remember. We are helping each other remember.

The Path of Transformation

Transform means “beyond form.” You cannot seek to transform what is outside of you without also being transformed within that effort, and as you are transformed within that expedition, there is a moment of understanding that it was never about transforming that which was outside of yourself. That “goal” had to exist as dissonance, and as a motivation so that you would go through the motions to seek to transform this thing, so that you would then be transformed. And then when you access that transformation you realize that the lure or the target was never the point, but it was essential to the process. As we transform we transform all that is around us, because everything is connected and we can't not be in relationship with it all. Evolving the self is the same as evolving the other. The drive to change something outside of ourselves, approached correctly, has to result in the changing of ourselves. If we seek to achieve this, we must also be available to be transformed within it. And in order to accomplish what we seek that is such an aspiration that might not exist yet, we don't have the capacity to achieve it UNLESS we become new. Unless we transform ourselves. The act of transformation is inherently transformative. 

Part of my key realization is the recognition of inherent connectedness but in that inherent connectedness there is a deeper recognition of the desire for dissonance, and the gift of tension. Tension adds dimensions to my experience. Otherwise I would play the same note. No one goes to the sympony to hear the same note the whole time. We want to explore the thing on the edge of the beyond, at the edge of our understanding. The dissonance felt, coupled with the desire to mitigate that dissonance (within self, or outside of self) puts us firmly on the path of transformation, filled with journeys, discoveries, and changing from one form into another form. The dissonance is the doorway. Wrestling and grappling with something is what transforms us - who we have to become to transform something else is the key. As we transform, we will transform. And in the path of transformation, to recognize that the magic is found along the path, and not in the end result. The outcome serves us to pull us along the path until we can recognize the path itself and how it was never about "having" or "being" what is at the "end" of the path...because the path doesn't end. We ARE living, perpetual transformation beings. We seek out there what we are seeking in here, and like a mirror, the progress made inside will reflect outside, and the progress made outside will reflect inside. 

One of the most well-known alchemical reference points is turning lead into gold - how is it that the word lead could also be pronounced LEAD? Like, leadership? The lead leads us to the gold. The metaphorical toxic lead leads us to the the path towards the gold. The heaviness is the miracle. And like Ryan noted in Chaos week with his lead to gold drawing, both lead and gold are heavy…but we attribute their value differently based on what story we have collectively agreed upon. What story do you have about inherent or outward value?

Transformation is not ultimate, it is infinite. It is an ever-present engagement of the process of what it requires to transform (self, world, etc.) which is the entire point. Seeking a destination within transformation can cause you to miss the point. But, we must in some way and on some level desire a future reality that we feel disconnected from in order to continue the path of transformation because that is our motivation, our why. In my opinion , it is in this process that we can recognize the deeper gift that it was never about the outcome that we had originally intended, but we needed that dissonance between our present time experience and what we thought it should be...this is a necessary ingredient of alchemy that calls us into the conversation, that calls us into the dive, that draws our arrow.

Endarkenment vs Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment is the age of the mind and spirit, and the Age of Endarkenment is the age of the soul. The spirit thrives while expanding towards the light, the soul thrives while expanding within the darkness.

Robert Macfarlane reminds us that since before we were homosapiens, humans have been seeking out spaces of darkness in which to find and make meaning. There is something seemingly paradoxical in that, that darkness might be a medium of vision and that the descent may be a movement towards revelation. The soul understands how to use darkness to assimilate loss and cultivate immense vision. The soul knows that darkness and shadow are not “bad” or “negative” - they are beautiful and necessary parts of our wholeness, individually and collectively. We can look up, out, and towards the light in the sky and see trillions of miles into the universe. But when we look down towards the dense darkness of the earth, we can’t see beyond our toes. There is a reason that looking inward doesn’t come as naturally to us. We are aspirational beings. But if we don’t aspire to truly and deeply know ourselves, we are missing the point.

To face reality means to have the ability to see ALL that is, not just the bright and shiny stuff. And it is in the ability to face reality that your capacity to lead - particularly in these times - will expand and find a new center of gravity: the center of gravity that only your soul, and soulful ways of being, can create. One cannot experience the depth of their humanity or the exquisite gifts of the soul until they are willing to enter the darkness where the soul abides and thrives, and where wisdom is unearthed. An old definition of wisdom is “dark knowledge.” Darkness begets wisdom, and wisdom begets vision. The original meaning of the word alchemy is based in the Arabic, and it meant “black” in reference to Egypt which was known as the “Black Land.” And, to bridge back to the Jungian philosophy, it is in our ability to see, experience, name, and hold opposites (like the opposites offered by soul and spirit) that indicates our maturity. And out of this tension, if these opposites are held long enough, comes tremendous creativity. Truly paradoxical, isn’t it?

One more piece of this that I find enriching is further understanding the differentiation between spirit and soul. The following lines are borrowed from Carolyn Baker.
Spirit venerates youth, speed, and innovation.
Soul venerates ancient origins, moves us towards slowness, elder consciousness, and understands that nothing is ever new, but rather a remaking of the old.
Spirit values linear movement - simplification, getting from point A to point B, the end product.
Soul moves in spirals and weaves webs. It values the process rather than the destination.
Spirit is dualistic and favors only one idea.
Soul is diverse and holds many ideas at the same time.

I want to say here that neither spirit or soul is better than the other - the point is that in their opposition, they activate us, challenge us, and stretch us. They are forever mutually mirroring their various versions of truth, and as we peer into these constant mirrors, we are able to understand, to see, and to grow within ourselves.

Aether

Gone are the days where we believe that because we are leaders that we must pretend like we are painted without a shadow, in Pablo’s words. It is in the seeing and knowing of our shadows that we become so much more fulfilled, and able to do our most magnificent work on planet earth. Owning and standing in the shadow and the chaos of who we are, and seeing it as a resource for us to draw upon, is what creates that irresistible magnetism, influence, and impact (in my experience at least).

I have only recently learned that there is a fifth, seldom talked about element that is a central element of nature. It’s called Aether (or Ether). It is described as the power of life, the life force, an acknowledgement of the central component that fuels everything else. Aether is what makes up the cosmos, and is what we attribute the large percentage of dark matter to. Dark matter is - among other things - the unexplained fabric of the universe that creates a mysterious gravitational pull that holds the galaxies together in clusters. So aether = dark matter = life force = gravity. I love this so much in the context of what we are talking about. It is yet another confirmation from nature that so much of our power and life force lives within our darkness, and our darkness is a key to our own gravitational pull, as described above. To drive this point further, if the darkness is what holds everything together, just as chaos is this verb, this supple aliveness of connective tissue between our selves/world/universe (on the quantum level), on the supermeta macro level, darkness is the key and so is chaos. So again, here we are with two things: chaos and darkness, that we as humans are so quick to push away, to avoid, to glaze over, to ignore, but that are actually the keys to living fully, deeply, and attuned to our central life force.

Baking Bread

Alchemy wants us to understand that it’s not just about the ingredients. It is about what the ingredients together become. How becoming aware of what we have in our hands, and then doing the work to sense into how to swirl them up, is half of it. The other half is the acknowledgement that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The way that yeast plus warm water suddenly have the ability to invite the ingredient of air to the party is such an incredible - and simple - demonstration of what we are learning right now.

At this point I think the true meaning of alchemy for us is becoming aware of, and utilizing ALL of our ingredients. Especially the ones we have rejected, denied, or buried. Those ingredients are equivalent to the yeast that combines with the warm water, to infuse air and space and expansion into our being and into our possibilities. It is in the reclamation of these that we can use them as fuel to create new worlds. Those ingredients to me are equivalent to the yeast. The pieces of ourselves and of our world that are obvious are like the water and flour and salt. The real stuff that will change things is the yeast. Coming into the reality of who we are and who we choose to be within being with the chaos of “all of it” - that is the birthplace of our vision. 

Creator vs Consumer

It has been helpful for me to contemplate how to be a creator rather than a consumer of the world around me. Creating is regenerative, consuming is degenerative. I can only create outside of myself and maintain that creation when I do the inner work of aligning and reordering my inner landscape. And I do notice that the more that I till up the soil of my soul, the more effortlessly I am able to create.

Everything you create in the outer world, you’re creating in the same soil that translates from your inner world. So if you have inner soil that is clay with junk in it that hasn’t been processed or nourished in years - what you grow in it has less of a chance of lasting. Even if you pile a bunch of fertilizer on that soil in the form of money and resources, you can create something flashy but it’s probably not going to have the effect you want until you have also done the work of aligning yourself with the pattern that you are presenting to the world. This is because that pattern will have the same built in power and limitations that you have. Whether you are aware of those or not, that pattern, outwardly expressed, will have the same shadow that you have, it will have the same constructs of light and courage and grace that you have. This is why it is important to periodically churn up your soil, till it, look at it, understand it, rearrange it, nourish it…just like actual soil requires. This is another way to consider your “ingredients.”

I am craving going back into the session to find that moment that Loren was discussing this…I’ll find it and plug it in here.

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(((moonshots)))

Intro

In innovation we can’t see where the road is going to lead us. That makes this a high-ambiguity, high-change environment, one where you will be pushed emotionally in a way you may never have experienced. 

The Alchemy of innovation is trying to transform belief and often darkness of not knowing into impact and meaning, while we go through many Alchemies of Chaos. How do you do that out there and within ourselves?

How to keep enjoying the infinite game of innovation? What type of structures do we need for that to happen? If any… 

Chaos and Power Laws 

Innovation follows a complex system of interactions. As many other natural phenomena (e.g. financial crises, earthquakes, epidemics, or fires), innovation emerges from the connections and relationships between all of us, and the world, and typically follows a power-law distribution (or long-tail distribution).

A complex system is often defined as composed of a large number of interconnected parts that, as a whole, exhibit one or more properties that are not obvious from the properties of the individual parts and often exhibit some chaotic behavior.  Chaos has some nice emergence properties. Nature, as well as life are full of such emergent chaos. Similar bird flockin, fish schooling, and sand dunes have such complex and chaotic behaviors.

What this means is that if you plot the impact distribution of innovation on a log-log scale, it will follow a straight line. 

For instance, the distribution of occurrences of earthquakes vs. intensity follows this kind of power-law distribution scale. If you see the number of earthquakes that happen every year and the earthquake magnitude on a log-log scale you will see that in one year there are many 2.5 size earthquakes, which we don’t even feel. There’s about a million of those, in fact.

Once in a while, however, there is an 8.0 earthquake. about one per year, which takes down freeways and bridges and causes major disruption and chaos. You don’t know where or when such an earthquake will occur, you just know it will occur roughly once per year. Innovation and chaos is the same way.

If you plot the number of Innovations and their impact, you will find many innovations (more of the incremental type) that happen all the time. But from time to time, there are a handful of innovations that transform everything, that create disruption, such as the ones that create a black-swan phenomenon. This is Moonshot radical innovation.

The magical thing of such complex systems, is that they have infinite variance, meaning that the past does not predict the future, at all!! there is goes all the AI trying to predict the future through the window!!! and that is the beginning of chaos. It also means that everything is connected in non-linear ways, and what is chaos in one place could be harmony in another place. For instance, a butterfly harmoniously flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world because of the nature of such interconnected complex systems. 

In innovation, you don’t know when such chaos or disruptive innovation opportunity  is going to happen, they only thing you know is that it will happen. So it is difficult to anticipate or predict innovations. 

Alchemy of Innovation

So then what is the key to the Alchemy of innovations?

What if there is a totally new way to Innovate in this century?

What if it ends up being that innovation is about a set of principles and rituals that need be cultivated, including inner ones as well? 

Even though there are probably as many innovation paths as innovations, over the years we’ve learned some of the mindsets and behaviors that help us get to innovations faster and weather the inevitable tough spots: the Alchemy of innovation.

In such journey we lean on values, principles, culture, and rituals, more than more than hard and fast rules or processes. 

Innovation is a delicate thing. It needs just the right mix of serendipitous discovery and container structure. There’s no step-by-step manual for striking this balance, but there are some mindsets and habits that will help Alchemize it and improve the odds.

The Alchemy of innovation happens by cultivating a set of rituals and practices that can resist the pull towards the comfortable and conventional, and make radical, purpose-driven creativity the path of least resistance.

And most importantly, we know that no one gets to the moon alone; we go together.

Together we work through complex challenges every day, navigating ambiguity, wrestling with uncertainty and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

In fact, in innovation, we’ve learned that breakthrough innovation happens when passionate teams of people have the audacity to collectively challenge each other’s perspectives and aim for the seemingly impossible, all while caring deeply about one another and the people we seek to help.

In Innovation and Moonshots, the breakthrough isn’t typically a technology. It’s about engineering a culture and designing rituals that can overcome the powerful forces that cause humans to retreat to the comfortable and conventional. These forces stifle any efforts to innovate and problem-solve in more than an incremental way. 

Alchemy of innovation nurtures a set of practices and principles, that help many individuals and organizations reset so audacious, purpose-driven, team-oriented collaboration can become the path of least emotional resistance — and therefore the path to solving the many challenges facing the 21st century.

Practices and Principles

1. Stop thinking you can predict the future. This is one of the biggest myths; no one is much better than random at knowing what businesses and products will succeed in the long run. But you can be less wrong. Instead lead with curiosity, not conviction, and try audacious things and figure out as quickly as you can when you’re wrong. 

2. Shift perspective: find the counterintuitive approach. Look for holy s**t moments — they can get you further than clear objectives. Humans dislike uncertainty, and viscerally feel the downsides of failure far more easily than we can imagine the rewards of transformative success. Also carve out containers and space for creative and weird souls: The constant “what ifs” and “why does it have to be this ways” are super necessary.

3. Dispassionately Asses: Balance optimism with Intellectual rigor. Dream like a child, test like a grownup. We choose to see the world differently and keep our child-like sense of wonder and boundless opportunity. At the same time, we hold on to our skepticism as we run tests and learn to look dispassionately at the results, so we’re ready to change course or walk away when that is the right thing to do.

Holding Tensions and Paradoxes

Holding opposites is what helps you embrace the new perspective that chaos brings.

Potential paradoxes and opposites might be: guilt of having seen chaos that is destructive vs curiosity, anxiety vs humor, resilience vs embracing, privilege vs necessity, shadows vs light, change of perspective vs perseverance, fiction vs fantasy, planning vs under planning, struggle vs ease. 

It is by holding those opposites that chaos reveals new and becomes/provides, sticking to the journey with all that it is, until it changes again…

Possible tensions we might experience/explore:

1. Dynamic stability: Frequent change is normal, so innovation is like riding a bicycle; just keep pedaling forward and keep your flow and you’ll be fine. The challenges we tackle in innovation change regularly. At any time, innovations are likely to vary dramatically and could encounter a challenge no one’s ever seen before. Learn to go back to the drawing board. This can make for an unsettling ride, but we’ve learned to stay flexible and adaptable and lean on each other

2. Patience Impatience: Innovation and coming up with mooonshot ideas, doesn’t happen in a day or in one week or one year… It’s something that takes time and is constantly changing… True innovation happens over time, but you have to start somewhere! 

3. Responsibly vs irresponsible: We want audacity and initiative...but we can’t light everything on fire. We want to encourage learning...but we also need to just get on with things. 

4. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution: Fall in love with everything that relates to your opportunity, the struggles, the needs of the others, society and the world, the lights and the darks, all it is. Not with any particular solution or idea.