Sublime

Yet how many people continue to practice with the implicit goal of someday meeting Buddha? We may imagine we will meet him in the guise of an enlightened master—a qualitatively different order of being than ourselves—or that we will one day, after years and years of hard practice, finally become whatever it is we imagine we want to turn into.

The archetypal qualities of the Alchemist reveal her to be a mistress of transformation: she’s not afraid to burn things back to the bare bones to expose what lies beneath. She’s both a visionary and a catalyst for the irreversible changes she conjures into being; in effect, she reimagines, and so recreates, the world.

The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.

In one of the Jataka tales, mythical teaching stories based on the Buddha’s previous lifetimes,

THE SOUL AS TEMPLE OF MEMORY THE CELTIC STORIES SUGGEST THAT TIME AS the rhythm of soul has an eternal dimension where everything is gathered and minded. Here nothing is lost. This is a great consolation: the happenings in your life do not disappear. Nothing is ever lost or forgotten. Everything is stored within your soul in the temple of memory.

The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.

The takeaway is simple. Start relating to your life as if you have reincarnated over and over again. Throw out your old story about death and adopt a new one. Not because it’s true but because it is empowering. 2.