Inner Alchemy: The Journey to Self-Mastery - Julian Johnson: transcript

Good afternoon or good morning, depending on if you are on the West coast. It's my pleasure to talk to you a bit about this theme regarding inner transformation, and I'm now going to share my screen to use a slide presentation while we do this. So the title of the presentation is "Inner Alchemy: The Journey to Self-Mastery." And so today we're going to explore a concept known as inner alchemy, the transformation of our consciousness through deliberate self-mastery. Historically, alchemy was associated with turning base metals into gold, but the deeper tradition always pointed towards something more profound: transforming the ordinary human personality into a fuller expression of our highest nature.

So this presentation is about that inner transformation. We're going to explore how our thoughts, words, and actions shape our experience, how karmic principles operate in everyday life, and how we can move forward from an ego-centered perspective to a consciousness rooted in oneness. And this is really not simply philosophy. It really is a practical framework for daily living, and the laboratory is not a monastery or a mountaintop, but it is our everyday life, our relationships, our reactions, and our choices. In the end, I hope you'll see self-mastery not as perfection, but as a lifelong process of alignment with the deeper, underlying reality that governs all.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about this and call it "the crucible of daily life." We all experience the daily challenges of life; no living creature escapes those. And while many may think that meditation, prayer, or study are the principal means to spiritual growth—and while all three of those things are very important—our daily life is really where the work plays out.

The duality of material life is a function of the material plane, and we will get the sun and the rain and all the other kinds of things that take place in material life. Our inner work can provide for us sort of an umbrella. By cultivating inner harmony, we really will create what appears to be sort of a miraculous external harmony in our lives and in the way things operate.

And I would call and refer to it as miraculous somewhat, only because pretty much all of our education, conditioning, and just life experience—the untutored, unguided life experience that largely traditional upbringing and education affords us—makes life seem to be relatively perilous and kind of strewn with pitfalls and difficulties. What we can learn through this process of inner alchemy, this inner work, is that we really are able to live in this material world.

To use one analogy, it is like walking through the rain but having an umbrella. The rain will come; the rain is necessary and is part of the larger experience, and it reflects the needs of human consciousness and other evolving consciousness on the planet. But despite the difficulties that can come with that at times, by cultivating this inner harmony and inner alignment, one will come to find—and I'm quite certain that many of those on this call have found this in their own experience at this stage—that one goes through life with an umbrella. It doesn't remove us from the challenges that we must individually face, because that is the purpose of this growth and evolution. But a lot of the extraneous external things that take place and turn

into difficulties, challenges, and troubles for people—very often you find life providing a smooth pathway through those things, without giving us sort of a ticket to stop evolving and growing. So, the big idea there is that life is the arena where things take place. It's not simply in a monastery or in an ashram, necessarily, but it really is in everyday life. So that means that every day, every moment, we are kind of doing the work or not doing the work, and that's the workshop that we're in.

Ultimately, the Great Work, as it's been traditionally described, is where we cultivate an inner state that basically determines how we respond to the things that happen externally. By cultivating this inner state, we really do provide ourselves with somewhat of a shield to make our way through life, ultimately leading us to the expression of this inner, infinite intelligence that is the source of our being, reflecting its nature more and more fully through our material existence.

And so we can look at this as the architecture, so to speak, of karma. So here's what I think it's really important for us to appreciate: every thought, word, and action radiates out from us. I think we tend to think about our actions and sometimes our words, but our thoughts are equally powerful. And since the cosmic consciousness is universal—and I think we get to see that through some of the things that take place in our lives, such as some of the beautiful, serendipitous things that take place—we see there's this indescribable intelligence that accounts for the small things in our lives as well. So we're connected to this whole; all of

our thoughts, actions, and words kind of radiate out, and none of it escapes the cosmic response. Largely due to my own upbringing, I have a lot of Christian scriptural references. It was said, "Not a hair from one's head or a sparrow falls from a tree without it being taken note of." So every expression that we make of ourselves happens and generates a response that can be pleasing or not so pleasing, depending on the nature of it. So everything sends a ripple through this fabric of existence, and there's a beauty to that when one thinks about it. It returns to its source in kind.

Someone told me many years ago, "If you plant corn, you're not going to get peas." Whatever we send out is what we get back. Mastery requires this realization of oneness and love in our thoughts, words, and actions, and that really is the ultimate goal. Karma is not so much a cosmic judge, but a cosmic mirror. So what we put out is what we get back. The deeper realization is that we are interconnected, and what we send to the world returns to us through this web of existence.

The more in harmony we are, the more we will find ourselves in harmony with the entirety. Understanding this naturally encourages us to be very mindful of our inner and outer lives. So let's look at these three sources of karma, and it seems important to appreciate and treat all of them equally. So we know we have our actions. From my observation, at least, they're the easiest ones to clean up, to manage, and to correct. Okay, stop doing this, don't do that, etc. And so they are the most accessible in many ways; we just kind of begin to curtail our actions and behaviors. The next level, of course, is our words—a bit more difficult to control because sometimes they come out without a lot of premeditation as a reaction, so to speak.

But they also can be caught and corrected even mid-sentence. It's really a practice. If you see yourself saying things that are out of harmony with the notion of the oneness of this creation, and your conscience says to you, "Oh, that's not good," stop mid-sentence. Just stop right there. No one will notice why you stopped, or they may notice, but likely not. But that training can allow us to begin to really harness the words that we speak, even if they come out of old habits.

So actions are kind of easy, words are a bit more challenging but can be fixed, and the last item here is our thoughts. From personal observation and experience, this is the most difficult aspect to transform because our thoughts basically come out of deep, habitual, and deeply conditioned responses based on our experience as physical creatures.

They create karma, though; that's the important thing to keep in mind. Everything creates karma—some karma you're going to like, and some you're not going to like so much. But they create karma, so it behooves us, and it's in our best interest if we don't like unpleasant things taking place in our lives unduly, to look at how to deal with our thoughts. Granted, thoughts arise. When they arise, there are two things that I would say one can wisely do with them. First, when they arise, if they are not generous and kind—not how you would want others to think of you, or a thought that you would want to direct toward someone you cherished and loved

most—the major thing is to not entertain them. Because when we allow that thought to take hold in us and we begin to feel it, sense it, and kind of live in it—perhaps even enjoy it—we put energy behind that thought, and that will come back to us measured with that energy. So if you see that a thought has arisen as a reaction, and it's not charitable or it's judgmental, stop it right there. Don't allow yourself to sink into it more deeply, to add to it, and to think about why it's so correct. Stop it right there. The second thing that is wise for us to do is to reframe it. Reframe your understanding of that experience in such a way that it brings forth feelings of tolerance, love, and compassion, and then

live in that thought. Live in, evoke, and emote that thought, and send that out into the cosmic. There's a quote attributed to a lot of different sources, so I can't pinpoint the origin of it, but it goes to the effect of: "Be kind to everyone you meet, for each is waging a great battle." That battle being life and getting through life, particularly because we're saddled with ignorance pretty much through our education, upbringing, and all the things that the mundane world presents to us. Life is challenging, so be kind to everyone you meet, for each is waging a great battle. That reframes it.

I am reminded of a book that was authored by a former American Ballet Theater dancer. The American Ballet Theater was kind of the pinnacle of ballet in the United States, and she was a renowned soloist. The title of her book was I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can. In a sense, it means "have mercy on me." All of us human beings are waging that same battle in one facet or another. So bring that back to mind, or whatever device or tool that you find handy that works for you, and respond toward that same individual, context, or whatever it is, with thoughts of compassion, love, and solace. Live in those, and you'll begin to transform yourself as well.

It's so important, this part about thoughts. I think we are not trained to recognize that our thoughts are so powerful. You've got the saying from Proverbs, "As a man or woman thinketh, so are they." There is also the idea that whatever kind of thought you hold in your heart, you've already performed the act in effect. So if you take nothing else away from this, recognize the salience, the power, and the importance of bringing about that transmutation that ultimately transmutes our thoughts as well, because then we will see life in harmony.

As you go along this path—and my guess is, for many of you on this call, you know this experience at this stage—we see the karmic response very rapidly. So this is not kind of an idle point; it really is factual. Thus, the importance of our actions, our words, and our thoughts cannot be overstated. Don't give up on that. This is not an overnight job. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of different estimates, but the more conservative estimates say that human beings have about 5,000 to 6,000 thoughts a day. That's a lot of thoughts to reign in, even if a certain percentage of them are just "what do I want to have for lunch" kind of thoughts. Anyway, that's just the point I'd like to emphasize.

So we can look at a framework for daily calibration, so to speak, and this is just a beautiful thing. Early in Rosicrucian studies, we are introduced to Ma'at. Pardon my pronunciation of Ma'at; for most of my life I have said "Maat," but I'm not promising that what I say is correct either, so please do your own research. But anyway, concessions to Ma'at, who is a goddess related to truth, integrity, and honesty. There is a litany of what they call negative confessions or affirmations, and if you're not familiar with it, you can Google online and find versions of it. It really gives us a checklist, in a sense, to look at our day: Did I do this? Did I misread the scale for the buyer? It is a list of things,

and personally, I've never found that I made it to the bottom of the list without going, "Oh, I messed up a few times." So, that notion of reviewing our deeds is a beautiful tool. Another beautiful tool is the Rosy Cross Evening Peace ritual. It was authored by our former Imperator, Ralph M. Lewis, and it brings it down to such nuance that very often we don't recognize the nature of some of our thoughts and actions, and how they really are a violation of this oneness. So both of those are very good things. Another thing comes out of the Christian tradition, though the words are similar across most major religious and spiritual traditions: the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,"

etc. We need this work to help work on ourselves and begin to recondition ourselves. Keep in mind the necessity of constant refinement. This is a tough truth, perhaps, but it is true. Because as long as we are on the planet, we're still going to be going through this process. Again, coming out of what I'm most familiar with in the Christian tradition, Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches." But then there's a point where it says that for the vine bringing forth much fruit, the Lord purges it so that it brings forth more fruit.

I will be quite honest with you: as a young person hearing that in church, it would throw me back in my pew, so to speak. Like, "Whoa, gee whiz, that is pretty tough." But we must continue to evolve. We must continue to evolve, and we're not there yet; otherwise, we wouldn't be on this call, and we wouldn't be on the planet. So we have to continue to evolve, and that means sometimes putting aside things. As it says in Corinthians, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Well, that applies to us in many nuanced ways. As we evolve, things that you may not have seen an immediate adverse karmic reaction to before, now you will find one, because you must let that

go. It's the same thing you find in Buddhism about attachment: one has to let these things go. Sometimes they feel very seminal to us because of our upbringing and experiences, but they have to be let go very often. So, while you have an umbrella that keeps a lot of the larger external things from afflicting you, you will still be working under that umbrella, because if you're not working, the umbrella moves a bit. You'll be working there because of this constant refinement of our thoughts, words, and actions. A lot of times it won't always be evident what they are, but we'll talk about that in a little bit as well.

So, I'm kind of looking at where some of this tension or conflict comes from in ourselves. One way that has been pointed out is the conflict between these two aspects of self: the ego identity and the Higher Self. Keep in mind that the ego identity is dominated by the physical body. One of the main functions of the ego is to protect the welfare of the physical self. That is likely its first and foremost job because, remember, you really can't stay out here and do this work unless you stay in a physical body. So, you need to be out here in a body, and the ego is looking at how to protect the interests of this body, how to ensure its avoidance of discomfort, and how its needs are going to be met.

The ego only sees itself as finite and mortal because it identifies with the body; that's all it kind of knows. So it makes a lot of decisions based on that, which are very short-sighted or near-sighted. Its governing principle is based on survival instincts, personal history, and perceived limitation. Survival instincts can range from self-protection to eating and reproducing, and our personal histories will affect how we approach those things. Its perceived limitation makes the ego kind of limited, because the ego is the "I am Tom," "I am Julie," "I am Mary" self. It is the most limited expression. It's trying to do its job, but it's not very smart in a larger sense. It doesn't know more than its myopic view, functioning with blinders on, so to speak.

Then there is the Higher Self that is also resonated in us, which gives rise to our objective consciousness as well as our subconscious. That's our connection to the expression and realization of the cosmic consciousness, even though our realization of it is very finite and limited. But we're realizing it; that's how we can be here and experience and see the beauty of a sunset—because of our participation in this cosmic consciousness. Underlying it is this idea of oneness, because that's where it comes from. It's not finite and limited by the body and the ego identity. It's not personal; it's not about Tom's experience or Jane's experience. It operates fundamentally from the idea of limitlessness and immortality, and its governing principle is direct alignment with infinite intelligence and universal oneness. That's the unifying aspect of it.

If you imagine this transformation and inner alchemy, what we're looking to do is transform the ego identity to have it more fully express the Higher Self based on these principles—to transform and transmute it to present this higher aspect of ourselves, which manifests in many ways, such as through our love and concern for others. That's that higher thing; it's going beyond. As we know, modern scientists spend a lot of time trying to explain why people do things that are altruistic, because it makes no sense from a simply biological evolutionary perspective in many instances. But we know it's because there's this higher part of our being that recognizes our connection to it all—the oneness. Just like an infant eventually realizes that its toe is part of its body, and after

that it doesn't bite on it, we look out for the whole because we realize that oneness. That's the governing principle of where we're trying to get. The spiritual path is not about destroying the ego, because the ego serves very practical functions. Rather, it is about placing the ego in service to the higher awareness. Think of the beauty of that, where it can express this higher awareness in the world. I want to talk a little bit about free will because that seems to be a topic related obviously to karma and what we've been talking about. Sometimes people think about free will as the ability to have unlimited choices—like, "Why can't I fly?" Well, no, you can't; it's not one of your options. In scientific and philosophical terms, they talk about degrees of freedom. We

don't have unlimited degrees of freedom as human beings; we can't live without food, for instance. But we do have choices that we can make within our own little sphere of freedom. The idea here is not to respond based on the ego identity, which basically functions out of fear and limitation and leads, unfortunately, into endless cycles of false choices due to ignorance of its higher nature and cosmic law. Instead, we want to choose based on our alignment with our spiritual evolution—basically acting in harmony with this infinite intelligence and our own path of growth. Those are the choices, and we get that choice likely fifty times a day, both little and big. How am I going to react to this person who says something to me that I think is a little rude? Am I going to react rudely in response, or am I going to realize that they are acting out of whatever ignorance they have of this situation,

and treat them the way I would react to someone I greatly cared about, acting out of the higher aspect of self? We are given that choice, and it's put very nicely by Imperator Ralph M. Lewis where he refers to choosing that which is conducive to our own evolution and our own good.

We're going to kind of look at how we tune this inner receiver. How do we begin to hear the cosmic speaking to us through all of the noise that is in our lives? We have to hear this voice amidst all of our thoughts, desires, and emotions, but it is there. The more we search for it, the more we begin to catch that frequency, and we get to hear it more clearly as we go along. By listening to that part and squelching out the noise of the physical plane to get this cosmic guidance and acting on it, it brings us into greater attunement with the Higher Self and our soul conscience. Then we see the beauty manifest in our lives.

I want to touch on a trap here as we're moving along: the trap of specialness. Someone said to me years ago, "We all think that all people are created equal, none more so than ourselves." That's the trap. When we see ourselves as special somehow or another, we elevate ourselves with the goal, basically, of increasing our chances of survival. People want to be important and special because they believe that's how they will get their needs met. That's the physical self speaking; it doesn't realize that there's an unlimited set of resources available to us in the cosmic. As soon as we make ourselves special, we're devaluing others by comparison. We are devaluing another manifestation of God when we make ourselves special. So we have to work through that impulse. It's a foundational thing, perhaps,

in all of us, but it undermines where we're going. That separation is a violation of this core principle of the oneness of humanity and of all creation; it cuts across it. A personal affirmation that has been useful for me—and my recommendation would be to make up your own—goes like this: "There is no I; there's only You," meaning the Divine, the God consciousness behind us that allows us to live, move, and have our being. The "I" is a lie; it's a made-up idea, like a wave thinking it is independent of the ocean. That's us thinking, "Oh, I'm the wave." No, the reality is we're just the ocean; there's only the ocean. There is no I; there's only You. The "I" is a lie; You are the true. That is a tool that is useful to me, and I recommend that you find tools for yourself that help you remember

that we own none of it. We don't own our thinking, our thoughts, our breath, or our existence and life; it all is from the ocean, so to speak, not the waves. Just to keep in mind the last big point here, let's talk about impersonality. This is a challenge, and impersonality is often misunderstood. People very often think it means being cold, detached, or uncaring, but that's not what it means. It means seeing clearly without distortion, without using our personal history. In this beautiful illustration given by artificial intelligence, you've got all these little colors on the side that are mismatched and jumbled up. That's kind of like all of our personal history, our wounds, and the things that have happened to us that make us react. When we get to impersonality, we're able to respond to reality with clarity, without our own baggage, and as a result, we receive others honestly and objectively.

In order to treat people and other living creatures fairly, we have to work to get to impersonality, even in the simplest things. Think about it: when you meet someone and react to them based on some outer characteristic, outer appearance, or what group they belong to or who they root for—like, "I like the Knicks, you like the Spurs, therefore I don't like you"—that is a negative initial reaction. You're sending a vibration out into the cosmic. It's a jarring vibration of energy and a harmful thing, so we've got to get to impersonality to actually achieve fairness. To treat all living things fairly—you know, we have some bugs we like and some we don't like—they're all God expressing the same divine,

cosmic intelligence. All those things we need to reflect on. Taking us back to the underlying idea: there's a oneness to creation. If you keep that in mind, it tells us a lot about whether an action advances our attunement with the idea of oneness or doesn't. I'll share two quotes here. One is from a musician named John McLaughlin, who shared something very brilliant: "When you realize the divinity that's within you, you will recognize the divinity that is in others and not look at them the same way." That's beautiful. I also believe Jesus spoke directly from the realization of cosmic consciousness when he said, "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me." This notion of oneness is the ultimate challenge: to recognize absolutely that everyone and everything is God in manifestation, and to respond to it with the same care and concern that we hold for what we love most, including ourselves.

When you get down to this idea of the mastery of life, we're looking for this oneness. It reframes us to cultivate impersonality and use our free will to keep choosing to act in harmony with this intelligence as we go along. Our concluding thought is this: mastering life requires bringing our thoughts, words, and actions into alignment with the underlying actuality of the oneness of the cosmic.