The Practice
The work requires practice, not only knowledge. A principle and a practice for each day, a timer for sitting, and questions to write with at each stage.
Today
Sitting Timer
Choose a length, press start, and put the screen down. A soft tone marks the end.
Writing Prompts
Pick the stage you are in. Write by hand if you can. Nothing you do here is saved or sent.
Not sure of your stage? Find where you are.
The Practices
For a guided sequence, The Path sets one practice per lesson, in the order of the series.
Each practice comes from the tradition or from an episode of the series. Most are restraints rather than actions, because that is what the alchemical instructions mostly are.
5′The Morning PrincipleFive minutes, each morning
Read the principle of the day once, slowly. Do not try to apply it. During the day, notice one place where it is visibly at work, and one place where it seems not to apply.
The second observation matters as much as the first. A principle that explains everything has stopped being useful. Read the seven principles →
1dThe Sealed VesselOne day
For one day, do not explain what you are going through to anyone. Not the crisis, not the insight, not the plan. Answer questions honestly and briefly, and stop there.
Each time the urge to explain arrives, notice it and what it wants: reassurance, agreement, relief. That urge is the pressure the alchemists kept inside the vas hermeticum, because it is what drives the process. Why the work is not explained →
15′Written Shadow WorkFifteen minutes, in writing
Choose one reaction from today that was larger than the event that caused it. Write what happened in plain terms. Then write what quality in the other person your reaction answered to: their arrogance, their neediness, their ease.
Finally, ask where that quality lives in you, perhaps in a form you would describe more kindly. Jung called this mechanism projection: what we do not recognise in ourselves, we meet in others. Use the prompts if you need a starting point.
10′Silent SittingTen to twenty minutes, with the timer
Sit upright, set the timer, and have no goal. Do not try to empty the mind. When a thought or memory comes, notice it and let it pass without following it. When you realise you have been following it, return without comment.
If sitting in silence reliably brings up panic or traumatic memories, stop: open your eyes, feel your feet on the floor, and look around the room. That is information, not failure, and it is worth talking through with a professional before going further.
5′The Dated InsightFive minutes, then six months
Write down the insight that feels most certain right now. Date it. Do not act on it, do not build on it, and do not teach it. Read it again in six months.
The alchemists used nothing until it was fixed. A real understanding will still be there, quieter and no longer urgent. A premature one will have dissolved, and you will have been saved the trouble of acting on it. Why early insight deceives →
10′The Evening ReviewTen minutes, before sleep
Before sleep, go back through the day in order, from waking to now. For each part ask three questions: what did I do, what did I leave undone, and where did I react rather than act? Do not judge the answers. Just see them.
The practice is very old. The Golden Verses attributed to Pythagoras instruct the student not to let sleep close their eyes until they have examined all the actions of the day.
7dThe Rest TestOne week
If you do not know whether you are in a stage of the work or simply exhausted, take a genuine week of rest: sleep, no obligations, no email. Then observe.
If a real rest changes it substantially, you were depleted, and depletion has a known solution. If it changes nothing, that is one of the signs of the nigredo. It is the most reliable test the tradition offers, and the cheapest.
These practices are educational and contemplative. They are not therapy or medical advice. If you are struggling, please contact a licensed practitioner or a crisis line in your country (findahelpline.com).