Transmutation: The Quest of the Alchemists

Checking out Facebook this morning, there was a post by old school BMX freestyler Maurice "Drob" Meyer.  He wrote a bit about how he's begun writing about moving to the hood as a kid, and all the crazy shit that happened there.  He mentioned that he has written quite a few pages, and hasn't even made it to the stuff that most of us know him best for.

His post comes a couple days after a guy in a car drove into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virgina, then backed up hitting more.  An act of hatred by any definition of the word, and an act of terrorism in the eyes of many.  Except this guy was an American, and likely had Nazi leanings.  He killed one person and injured 19 or so.

Looking for something positive, like Drob's writing about crazy experiences, I found the skate clip above of Richie Jackson, a skater I'd never heard of.  I watched this video twice, and it put a smile on my face.

Many years ago, in my search for what life is all about, and why we all have to deal with so much pain and suffering, I dug into the stories of the Medieval alchemists.  With crazy little laboratories, they mixed metals, and powders, and chemicals as part of a quest.  Their quest was to find the Philosopher's Stone, the magic substance that could turn base metals like lead into gold.  I know most of you, think of the Philosopher's Stone as what was in vault 713 at Gringott's.  But for hundreds of years, men working in secret sought the real thing. 

The process of turning lead in gold is called "transmutation."  While the real life alchemists added to our knowledge of chemistry and mathematics, the true transmutation is something else.  It's the act of turning our negative energy into something positive in everyday life.  The driver of that car in Charlottesville was most likely enraged, and gave in to that negative energy, causing a horrific tragedy. 

But Maurice Meyer writing the lessons from the dark times of his childhood is an act of transmutation, finding the positive in the negative things that happened back then.  Richie Jackson, and every skater or biker out there, channeling his negative thoughts into this clip of totally original tricks is another act of transmutation.  He turned the physical pain of crashing and the fear of getting hurt, along with whatever other negative energy he had, into an amazing, and downright funny and amazing video clip. 

In every moment, you have the choice between acting out of negative energy, or transmuting the negative into something fun, creative, and beneficial.  It's up to you.