Physical Alchemy ‘6 Alembics’ Diagram
[ Cultivating Selective Ignorance ]*
Dave Wardman
The ‘6 Alembics’ diagram started as a personal exercise in corralling my mentation and focusing my mind on what was most essential to the growth of Physical Alchemy and ruthlessly culling what was inessential. Much has been said about the last few decades of the 20th century and the beginning of this 21st century having the hallmark of increased saturation of poor quality ‘information’ via the Internet and various social media offshoots (along with other developments). We are also faced with the double-edged sword of an increased availability of good and excellent quality information. Double edged sword?! Yes. It may sound mildly heretical but (depending upon what you goals are) it has been my observation that the increased availability of good-to-great quality, fascinatingly tangential information can be a hindrance to many things occurring.
Somewhere between the expert generalist and the specialist lies some of the most interesting possibilities for personal cultivation and the creation of new forms of art in this era. At a workshop I heard Ido (Portal) describe this idea as a ‘unique fingerprint’ (when talking about his belief that the age of the true polymath is largely over due to the current vastness of human endeavor). I like this idea. I would say that we have a decent knowledge what specialists in one or two areas (beakers) look like and what skills occur from pursuing specialization far beyond the point of diminishing returns. There is merit in this, for some. What I am interested in is the sweet-spot of hybrid training and research across diverse (but not too diverse) fields of endeavor that is wider than specialty but has definite ‘riverbanks’ to avoid the endless pursuit of fascinating but shallow study [Hypercoloured Mediocrity].
So the ‘6 Alembics’ exercise is about finding your most essential areas of study, practice and training and limiting distracting static from the antenna.
It is not about endlessly side-tracking through new and fascinating lines of inquiry. It is not about what is en vogue or ‘currently trending’. It is about using the flame of discernment upon the pursuits and explorations that have a transmutational effect upon. How does one do this (separate wheat from chaff.)? It is in this that lies the dilemma of this exercise, as many will say that ‘all’ or ‘most of’ the information and skills they acquire is useful/essential/part of a process of discovery – I want you to look at this deeper. What out of the things you have done has been the genesis of the most transformation?
Something akin to an internal sensation of “Hmmm..! Ah, yes! These are the ones!” will occur when you have the most auspicious configuration. Not much to go on, huh.. Well, what should occur when you have finally tinkered, discarded and refined the 6 into the most potent configuration is a intuitive sense of the familiarity and power of the diagram. You will get hints if you look at what you return to, or in the arts you had once loved (but have forgotten) or things discarded too hastily. If you are more attuned you will feel a certain something when you do these activities not the same as sugar-eater’s high of ‘newness’.
( The Original ‘6 Alembic’ Prototype with my choices ~3 years ago )
[*] Parameters for Setting up the Exercise
The most important criteria in the selection of the 6 is they must plot an auspicious cartography towards a 3 – 7 year time-frame into ‘the future’. This ‘auspicious’ is a more-than-usefulness. Plenty of things are useful, not many are highly auspicious for your continued unfolding.
Secondly, there should be some resistance from the mind at this exercise. Quite possibly your selections have been insufficiently ruthless and/or put too large a category of study into each beaker in a “just keeping my options open, man!” devilish ploy. Remember, this is an exercise in cultivating selective ignorance – a ‘sacrificial offering’ of a large amount of pursuit down channels of knowledge the mind is craving after is called for if the exercise is undertaken sincerely. The exercise should give more time-energy for practice and lead to more clarity.
The beakers can be things that had such a formative effect upon you in the past and now inform your current practice to such a degree that, though you may not training them as you once did, nevertheless they have earned their place as a one of the 6. If you pick the beakers correctly the exercise should be valid for a number of years, at which stage a certain beaker may be able to be combined and new added (but not too much).
Too Large a Field of Study in a Alembic
One of the more insightful and amusing occurrences I observed whilst watching the initial cohort I gave this exercise to was the way people tried all sorts of tricks and justifications to squeeze more knowledge into one beaker. (haha!) One cannot have categories like ‘Science’ ‘Music’ ‘Yoga’ ‘Daoism’ ‘Movement’ – these are far too vast and leave far too much free range to the mind. Craig (http://awarerelaxedconnected.com.au/) has 5 full Alembics on ‘Daoism’, so be ruthless! The game is so much more fun when you are ruthless. [ >:-D ]
Breaking ‘Music’ into 3 separate beakers (for example) ‘Voice’, ‘Guitar’, ‘Drumming’ is more along the lines of what I am talking about – but these take up 3 full alembics out of a total 6 for all categories of pursuit, hence the need to prioritize. And that is one of the key lessons of this exercise: what do you really want to do with you life -not the things you ‘should know’ or do, but the things that inculcate aliveness in you.
[*] The Lamentation of the Suffering of ‘Coagulated Sulfur’ in the Mental Centre
The reason this was so amusing for me was because it echoed my own lamentation – I saw my own desperateness and addiction to looking for ‘knowledge’, seeking more abstract more complete ‘theory of everything’ understanding, better knowledge of mind, body and existence and other intellectual joining of dots one can easily justify but that seldom aids one get passed a mediocre cultivation in my chosen studies. The first principle in terms of the “why?” of this exercise is the corralling of mental resources. It become clear to me, watching the bargaining and tricks my mind played in its conceptual greediness that most of this ‘seeking truth’ was un-alchemical (a waste of time-energy that produces none of the changes I am after). It is perhaps hard to entertain in this culture, the idea that what looks like ‘pursuit of knowledge’ is often, actually, suffering. If your goal is to become a scholar things will by necessity be different for you, but some general principles may still be worth trialing.
I do not want to be a scholar. I am a practitioner of a number of re-patterning, physical cultivation and alchemical methods. ‘Tis a strange mix, but it’s what I love.
This was a difficult exercise for me. It forced me to consider a number of things: my path in life, my resources, my priorities. I gave away many of the things I yearned to study in favour of the things that had actually, serendipitously, occurred in my life and had worked for me. The exercise helped me turn away from the smorgasbord of methods out there and see clearly the amazing teachings that had come to me, seemingly without my asking (and in Canberra, of all places!). Embodying, refining and living these methods is now my goal over increasing my tool-kit and knowledge of other things endlessly. The task was perhaps easier for me, because I know various ‘prototypes’ of where I need to go with what I do and it is overwhelmingly obvious that it is the practice of various disciplines that creates the gold – not reading about them, not reading about everything, not shallow and broad practice. <sigh>
[*] Balancing Beakers [Refining the ‘6 Alembics’ Diagram]
An extra little feature of the ‘6 Alembics’ Diagram game is that you can balance beakers across from each other, so as to neutralize inauspicious tendencies found within chosen areas of study. This should be taken as a personal mission of ‘well-roundedness’ more than a criticism of any of the beakers in question. If you are observing yourself and the things you have chosen to study correctly you will find that there is light and dark in most things in certain proportions. Balancing the beakers also leads to balance within the person.
In balancing across the diagram you are trying to weigh the traits of the two beakers as if on a scale – so as to have the positives of one beaker neutralize the negatives of the other beaker, and vice versa.
Bonus points if you can balance in 3 pairs!
Balancing the Alembic Across from Each Other ( an example from my diagram: [Martial arts/bodywork] )
This combination balances nicely provided you can take one ‘hat’ off and put the other ‘hat’ on (i.e not perform bodywork aggressively/violently/insensitively and not performing martial arts too softly, without sufficient aliveness in practice).
They balance nicely on a humble, physical level in that a lot of the tension-patterning and injuries inevitably generated by martial training can be ‘ironed out’ (so to speak) with bodywork of various types. More interesting are the world-orientations of both these fields (both of which have very useful characteristics). Some of the things the martial skill-set trained properly can do are: increases strength, agility, fear re-patterning, nervous system control, alertness and situational awareness, aliveness, confidence [hara], decision making, spontaneity but can come with aggression, emotional suppression, romancing the idea of using violence to solve all of Life’s problems, persistent slightly surly poker-face and associated mentation, super-charging False-I patterns, fear-cultivating (strangely enough – the mind constantly focusing upon negative violent fantasies it now has plenty of data to conjure up).
Bodywork done well should train: sensitivity, touch, proprioceptive abilities [KQ], atmospherics, empathy [EQ], dissolve character armour, it works on the cultural-body in an interesting way, frees up ‘total pulsation’ and various blockages but often can come with under-training of vigorous physicality, being overly ‘sensitive’, encephabation tendencies (both orthodox and heretical), mismatches between theoretical and embodied anatomical knowledge. Each of these areas have various philosophies and metaphysics involved with them that can be helpful to dive into and check out, so long as one remembers to practice. A whole book could likely be written on the nature of selecting the positive and complementary useful aspects of both of these beakers, but you get the picture.
Any number of balances can be set up – the main point is you look at all the aspects of what you study as broadly as possible. It doesn’t have to be ‘3 yin, 3 yang’, either. If 4 out of the 6 beakers are of one flavour and the other 2 balance, this is fine – it is simply a balance weighted towards a certain polarity that that person resonates with. 5-1 or 6-0 and we are talking about something outside the scope of this exercise (i.e a specialist). If some of your beakers are highly theoretical pursuits, consider having a martial art, movement art, contemplative practice, music or artistic discipline (or combination) to balance the loading on the mental centre and prevent imbalance. This is not new, examples of ‘scholar-warriors’, ‘artist-monks’ and other tinkerers are found throughout a number of historical periods.
The ‘7th Beaker’
The ‘7th beaker’ in the middle of the diagram is the coagulated usefulness (probably should be ‘coagulated auspiciousness’) that is distilled out of your sincere and discerning practice of each of you chosen 6 alembics. Each beaker will have auspicious and inauspicious elements to it. ‘Balancing beakers’ across from each other is seen as making the diagram more refined and a better map. So in this way the 7th beaker should bring forth something new and emergent. Someone may have 4 beakers in common with you, but in combination with the other two your unique possibility is hidden – waiting for you to keep the flame under all 6 of your beakers long enough to summon it forth into the world.
9 day limit (you already know!)
This exercise has a 9 day time limit for completion. This is more than enough time. This exercise is still in prototype form; I am considering giving a “one-night only” time limit in the future – because people already know what they love the most, they are just pretending and getting lost in endless rabbit holes.
So, have fun!
Remember – this is just a game.
[ Physical Alchemy 6 Alembics Diagram PDF ]
[DW]
*As far as I can recall, I got the phrase ‘cultivating selective ignorance’ from Tom Myers at one of his Anatomy Trains workshops.
Thanks to Drew Nguyen for the Graphics on the diagram, and Craig And Tyler for the web assistance exorcising ghosts in the shell.. !
