The Four Styles of Transformation Part 2: On Transmutation — Aletheia

Paradoxically, self-improvement tends to reinforce self-deficiency even as it attempt to address it. This is how incessant self-improvement and self-optimization can be a source of suffering. The alternative is self-unfoldment.

Self-improvement is usually initiated in response to self-deficiency...In contrast to self-improvement, self-unfoldment starts with self-sufficiency. That is, self-unfoldment takes the view that who and what you are is whole and complete from the beginning.

On the other hand, self-unfoldment, the unconcealment and unfoldment of wholeness into wholeness is regenerative. It is the very process of all living systems. This is a process that produces resourcefulness instead of only consuming resources. This is a process that generates more than it consumes.

Improvement and optimization are a capitalists dream. To sell your products, sell people on the deficiency of their lives and the deficiencies in themselves. Despite short-term gains, in the longer term self-improvement projects generally don’t deliver as promised. Plus, they consume vital resources. In short, self-improvement is not regenerative.

Many interpreters of alchemical texts say that the processes they describe are metaphors for psycho-spiritual transformation not physical transformation. This was Carl Jung’s view.