Energetic alchemy is the sacred art of transmuting what harms into what heals. It turns inner and outer calamity into harmony, offering a remedy for emotional and energetic imbalance. Imagine becoming a filter—one that doesn’t absorb negativity but transforms it into light. When you learn to focus your energy with intention, you don’t just protect your peace—you elevate the energy of everything around you. That’s energetic alchemy at its finest.
Energy Filtering for Empaths
Okay, my energy absorbing empaths, anchor into your body and set those energetic boundaries. Develop the skill of discerning what’s yours versus what you pick up from people, situations, or the collective vibe around you. Let’s face it, your ability to feel what others experience is a gift, but you need to care for yourself well. To prime yourself for energetic alchemy, become an expert at clearing and grounding your energy first. See tips in this recent blog: Keep it Clean! 7 Tools for Spiritual Hygiene.
Spiritual protection begins with belief. If you believe in your vulnerability and your need to safeguard yourself from harm, it drives that experience. In the recently published best-selling self-care book, The Wellness Universe Guide to Complete Self-Care: 25 Tools for Transformation by Anna Pereira, I wrote about my experiences with recurring nightmares in Chapter 10 Face Your Demons, Reclaiming Sacred Power. The energy of my earliest beliefs about not being safe wove a vibrational thread into the tapestry of my life. It was the energetic foundation that drew in experiences matching that code. The more I fought against what I didn’t want, the more I pulled it toward me.
Energetic Alchemy transmutes what stems from discordant beliefs. It has the potential to alleviate physical, mental, and spiritual imbalances. Mastery here shows us that we needn’t be sponges absorbing what is unsound outside of us. When we believe ourselves to be an energetic converter, we can become the transmutative mechanism – the bringer of vibrational upgrades. The childish part of myself says it’s version infinity times! You can’t beat that. It’s a tool that, when adopted as a way of life, not only transforms your experiences but also elevates those of everyone else.
The Process of Energetic Alchemy – Breathe Through Negativity
I’m going to simplify this to its most basic form—the Romper Room version for a novice or one willing to entertain a beginner’s mind. Over the last decade, I’ve made a shift towards simplicity in all things, embracing the philosophy that ‘less is more.’ The numeric guidance 123 tells me to simplify rituals, practices, and beingness. Could energetic alchemy be as easy as letting go of resistance and allowing all things to be as they are? Well, yes! In moments of embodiment, decide to breathe through whatever is undesired that wiggles itself into your consciousness through your senses.
Recognize that with practice, your capacity to remain grounded and connected to higher realms increases. Eventually, you’ll improve your ability to do this, even in the face of negativity, adversity, and struggle, both within and outside of you. A few tips to start:
- Anchor to the earth beneath your feet. Dig your toes into whatever surface you walk across. Although the natural environment is ideal, the goal is to feel a connection to wherever you are.
- Focus your attention on the sensations of inhaling and exhaling. If a thought, emotion, or sensation rises, breathe out its energy from your belly. Breathe it all the way out.
- Briefly pause, close your eyes, and take the awareness of this space up, raising your consciousness higher with slower, deeper breaths. Lift it and pull into yourself the never-ending stream of pure light energy.
This elevated stream transmutes what is less than light. The experience is more captivating than the old fear-based way of reacting, self-protecting, and then amplifying what’s undesired. While this is true, existing wiring will lure you back like an old addiction. This spinning cycle is a trap! It only pretends to be processing, with the promise to bring you somewhere new, until you realize it’s just a frozen computer screen. One could linger there perpetually, although an alternative now exists.
I’ve played with process since my earliest college experiences with behavioral medicine, trying to correct what so many people now identify as generalized anxiety. It didn’t address the root of my discord, and when I wasn’t using the tools, I just reverted to the same circular thinking patterns that kept what I didn’t desire alive. Emotional transmutation came later, when boxing offered a channel to move what I wasn’t acknowledging. You can’t trick yourself into a new, elevated frequency. Breathing through what rises helps the release.
Energy transformation techniques work most effectively when the person using them understands that their beliefs, definitions, and interpretations create their sensations and experiences. Without this awareness, what is expelled regenerates through the same patterns.
Intellectual Understanding Versus Moment by Moment Application
As easy as this is, 123, not so fast. On the mountaintop, we can all be like, “Yeah, I got this high-vibing, breathe out the bad thing down pat!” Of course, being able to visit this space at all is a gift. Moms who haven’t peed without supervision in five years, I know you need to designate the time. Your commitment to this process is of utmost importance for progress, and your unique baseline and existing wiring are factors. However, any amount of time embodied is a win!
Famous last words of Sir Robin as he approaches the Bridge of Death
Barriers to Energetic Alchemy
Energetic alchemy requires presence, humility, and trust. But even the most intentional among us can fall into patterns that block this sacred process. Some common barriers include:
- Thinking we know better than our higher self. The mind wants control. It wants certainty and a plan. However, transformation rarely looks the way we want or expect it to. When we override inner wisdom with ego-driven decisions, we churn the very energies we wish to transmute. Set the frequency of your intentions through your thoughts and emotions, but don’t curse the delivery, or you will thwart the unfolding.
- Attending to trouble rather than redefining it. Trouble isn’t always what it seems. If we expand our thinking, it becomes an opportunity to reframe it and transmute it into what we prefer it to be. Your choice is to become an alchemist instead of a victim.
- Viewing people and situations through a troubled lens. When we look for pain, we find it. When we expect chaos, we call it in. Perception is powerful. By choosing to see with compassion and clarity, we create space for a shift. The lens we wear directs the energy we carry. Would you like to know what your predominant lens and subsequent underlying vibration are? Look at your present reality. Anything undesirable is not punishment; it’s misalignment. Energetic alchemy requires us to notice when our interpretations are out of alignment with what we desire.
Energetic Alchemy Begins As You Trust Your Higher Self
Trusting your higher self is like swimming with the current of a river. There’s no resistance, just an effortless draw toward its beckoning. You don’t have to combat the flow- you’re not a salmon fighting its way upstream to spawn and die. Yet somehow we trick ourselves into believing that if we swim against the current, we’re accomplishing something important. While this might be true for the salmon, for us, struggle tends to lead to more of it, keeping us in the same space.
Exhausted and frustrated, focused on imposing your will, there’s little awareness of the higher part of you that’s turned gentle nudges into shouts. Remember the scene in the movie Trains, Planes and Automobiles when the characters played by John Candy and Steve Martin are driving on the wrong side of the highway? In this scene, an alarmed couple witnessing their error and afraid of the impending destruction yell, “You’re going the wrong way!” What makes this scene so funny is that they ignore the warning, thinking they know best. Stop doing this!
Following your higher self brings ease and relaxes your nervous system. It frees your mind and allows for greater energy flow. It instills trust and a sense of peace, allowing you to focus more on being than on fixing or trying to get others to believe as you do. In this space, we can love without agreement and turn our attention toward what uplifts instead of what brings turmoil.
Trust is like planting a seed, lovingly tending to the soil, knowing creation emerges on its own timeline. So many of you are trying to control the currents of life. Attempting to force outcomes is like digging up your seeds every day to check for growth. Instead of helping, you disrupt the transformation process.
Without the resistance conjured by these common barriers, we align with a more desired reality. Beaten egg whites grow in size, froth, and then stiffen. Keep spinning the undesired thoughts of what you despise, and those thoughts expand, magnetizing more of the same until they harden within your consciousness. This limited focus narrows your attractive potential. The irony here is that your attempts to avoid an unwanted reality reduce your experiences to that.
The Challenge to Maintain Higher ‘Beingness” When Immersed in Difficulty
Recently, a challenge to my beingness entered my life, or, to be more accurate, it scurried in. While caring for my mother, preparing meals, and cleaning, I began noticing bugs. A few turned into several until I realized these rapidly multiplying buggers are cockroaches. These vile insects made an already difficult situation, with my life balance hanging by a thread, immensely more taxing. I did all I could to manage. Breathed through the stress of each visit, only to wake up the next day exhausted, knowing it remained unresolved. What made the difference was changing my interpretation of what was happening.
I didn’t know how to get help with my mother’s care, but I knew I could no longer handle it alone. My mother has now spent almost two weeks with my sister, a first, owed to this infestation. The overdue and much-needed break from caregiving had arrived out of sheer necessity. Can a cockroach infestation lead to positive outcomes? I’ve decided it can. When I give thanks and trust that whatever difficulty this adds, it will ultimately bring benefit, I remain elevated.
Energetic Alchemy in Service to Others
The bottom line is that other people’s energy and whatever is happening outside of you only affects you when you match discord with discord. You needn’t take anything on as yours if it doesn’t support you. Anchor into your body, emanate outward, but don’t absorb! Master this to maintain a solid helping energy field.
Helping Roles and Professions
What qualities enable you to perform energetic alchemy effectively? Foremost is embodiment. You can’t be intentional with energy if you’re not aware of yourself and your surroundings. Maintaining one’s presence can be particularly challenging for some, and many professionals in the helping field find it difficult. Hairdressers, therapists, energy healers, and bodyworkers are susceptible to absorbing or matching energy from the check-out. When seeking these kinds of supports, you want someone capable of maintaining groundedness, particularly if they have hands on you. Spiritual teachers are most effective when they can stay in humility and openness. We have the opportunity to learn from everyone we meet. Hierarchical structures don’t support this process.
Are priests and pastors performing energetic alchemy when they hear confessions and offer support? Many are. The confession serves as a means for a person to receive God’s forgiveness and grace. This unburdening is an opportunity for conscious release of some of what energetically blocks the confessor. The priest is the go-between of heaven and earth, who, through the power of belief within this confessing dynamic, brings light to the shared affliction.
We all have access to the divine piece of us that is source energy. You don’t need to be in a particular profession to access it. The greatest gift of energetic alchemy is the opportunity to take something dense, dark, or harmful and give it back as light. You can do this every day in your own way and become more illuminated because of it.
Energetic Alchemy – The Love Ball
When I completed my Reiki Master Training many years ago, I did an exercise with my then-eight-year-old daughter to create an energetic love ball. With our hands, we poured our love and good intentions into it. Once the invisible ball was overflowing with loving vibrations, I asked her what she wanted to do with it. She enthusiastically said, “Throw it at Mary!” Our beloved guinea pig was the recipient of our love ball.
I found myself wondering what would happen if I loved in the way I had once feared. What if I transformed every thought of what disgusted me into something I preferred to see? Each of us can alchemize our experiences by creating a healed, more beautiful vision of reality, energizing it, and sending it out into the world. If we could create a “love ball” to throw at Mary, we could construct a wave of goodness that washes everything clean.
A few simple ways that make this possible are:
- Become more interested in higher truths than what you find divisive
- Connect with nature to stay grounded
- Listen to your higher self
- Change your definitions until they resonate with the greater good
- Practice flipping every undesired situation, worry or thought into what you’d rather it be. At the very least you’ll remind yourself of the direction your energy is better placed
Become a Transmuting Filter
At times, a disturbing thought or sensation seizes your awareness, jarring your attention and compelling a need for explanation. What comes to you may be influenced by collective thoughts and outside energies, so if they are not supportive, dismiss them. This energetic intrusion doesn’t require your engagement. Emit your light, breathe out an amended version of what you take in through your senses—delight in the upgrades.
Recognize the opportunity for connection. Not everyone can meet you there, and that’s okay. It’s enough to see, to be the observer, and to live as the example of what you most wish to see. If what we put out is what we get back, peace=peace, beauty=beauty, and love=love. Haven’t we had enough of its opposite?
The Violet Flame is a spiritual transformational tool for energetic alchemy that will accelerate your ability to experience greater mastery. For further information visit my services page Violet Flame for Healing.
The Masters of Energetic Alchemy
Who are the masters of energetic alchemy? These magicians are often ordinary people leading simple lives, yet they embody a loving spirit. A friend of mine once shared that her favorite job was scooping ice cream one summer during her youth. She explained how uplifted she felt as she brought momentary joy to weary parents, excited children, and a diverse range of people looking for a break from life’s demands. Few things naturally lift undisclosed burdens, bringing light and joy like ice cream and a person with a pure heart. She offered both.
I don’t see if it is a man or a woman. I don’t see anyone different from my own self. A continuous stream of love flows from me to all of creation. This is my inborn nature.
Mata Amritanandamayi, aka Amma, is Known as the Hugging Saint
There are some who, by the nature of their being, naturally excel at alchemy. I never believed I could live that freely, but their examples have inspired me.
My Role as a Greeter at Boston’s Logan Airport
I am no Amma. However, I did have an unexpected experience at Logan Airport that left me shockingly energized instead of depleted. While waiting for a friend to exit Japan Airlines, I positioned myself immediately to the side of the exit doors, behind a half-wall. I wanted to ensure I could catch her before she got lost in the crowd of travelers arriving from multiple flights.
People pour out of the doors, and immediately our eyes meet before anyone else’s. One person after another, I connect with emerging passengers. My smile gets a smile in return, and it’s easy to detect weariness, confusion, or relief. I never imagined we’d need to wait over two hours after my friend’s plane landed to see her. Forty-five minutes into my unexpected role, I accept my assignment as the unofficial arrival gate greeter. Some people have their greeters, such as family, friends, or Uber drivers, but it’s still me they first see. There are so many beautiful people, each uniquely different from the next.
A man with white hair, a rotund belly, and piercing blue eyes stumbles forward with an abashed half grin. Then, a young woman with meticulously crafted black, waist-length braids and chocolate skin beams a bright, pearly-white smile. A middle-aged man locks eyes with me, disoriented by his surroundings, appearing as if he has just emerged from a time capsule, unaware of the year. His presentation is a testament to what it means to travel long hours through multiple time zones, leaving at night and arriving at night, but on the other side of the world. I have no directions, only a look of acknowledgment and an expression of goodwill.
A woman speaking Spanish has her phone pointed in my direction, prepared to snapshot the moment her person arrives and greets her children. She waited a very long time, like all of us, and after what must have felt like an eternity, captured the moment her kids squealed and ran into the arms of an older woman, whom I suspect was her mother. My feet start to throb, so I sit. Next to me are two young Japanese men, their classic Mickey Mouse prints visible over the spandex-like material covering their luggage. I don’t speak Japanese, so instead, point at the luggage, then give a thumbs up and a smile. They return the gesture in kind.
I know that my time spent as a greeter has helped alleviate some of the stress or whatever people are carrying besides their luggage, and I feel joyful. One of the last exchanges before finally connecting with the woman I was there to pick up was most elevating. A flight attendant, maybe 15 years my junior, sauntered by in the snazziest electric blue flight suit. Her hair appeared to have been lightened and was tied back in a tight bun. Our eyes met, and I smiled in genuine admiration, to which she tilted her head back with a sweet sense of pride.
Practicing energetic alchemy doesn’t need to be complicated; it’s Amma’s nature, maybe it’s ours too. We are all human filters. You just need to decide what kind of filtering you’re going to do. When you believe more in the power of outside influences than your source power, you’ll easily get drained. Instead, believe in your higher connection, and you’ll continually renew. No matter what filters through, you’ll elevate!
Please see my Coaching Services or Metaphysical Services (Spiritual Tools 101) pages to learn about services that will help you practice energetic alchemy. We all have the potential to become a transmuting filter instead of a sponge sopping up harmful energies. You alone have the power to make the shift.
