Alchemy + Body Building
Basically what I've spent the last 100 days doing...
For the past six months, I’ve been focused on creating spiritual experiences through weight lifting.
I’ve used whatever is created during these workout sessions as fuel for turning my life into a non-stop growth machine…
Thus far, it’s worked pretty well.
The gym has served as this hyper-aggressive form of meditation that allows me to tap into an extremely introspective state.
For some reason, when I’m on the verge of throwing up…
(See what I did there?)
When every single part of me internally is screaming that it wants to stop and go home…
When my muscles barely have any juice left in them to squeeze out any reps on an exercise…
It’s at that moment I acknowledge reacting to the pain is optional.
I can kind of just observe my mind freaking out about the workout while still pushing through the reps no matter how painful it is.
When you practice creating this experience for yourself over and over again…
You eventually get pretty good at it.
And sooner or later, there’s just this click that happens where you feel it.
It’s this state where your mind and your body are completely aligned…
It’s where the soul opens up and says “here are the answers you’ve been looking for.”
I think so often in our life, when we’re not happy and when we feel disgruntled…
It’s because we spiritually feel like we’re not growing…
We’re not aligned with our purpose…
We just seem to drift along…
And oftentimes this block in our soul…
Is directly caused by our mind and our body being completely misaligned.
And one of the best ways to intentionally create alignment…
Is to use your mind to create a plan…
(Read: Workout Plan)
And then let your body execute on it regardless of where our emotions go…
(Read: Enjoy every second of the pain and realize that suffering is optional)
We create this habit for ourselves, and as a nice side effect, we get fucking jacked…
But mainly, we grow so much as a person in the process.
Here’s a concept to interject…
Alchemy was known as the practice of trying to convert base metals into gold or to find a universal elixir.
And it was described as a magical process of transformation, creation, or combination…
But the metals never changed.
The only change that ever took place was within the alchemist himself.
He transformed himself in the process of practicing alchemy.
But the only place this process of transformation took place was within the chemist.
I think the same thing applies to weight lifting…
Because sure, things do change in the gym…
Your weights go up, your strength goes up, your physique changes…
But all of this is because you decided to change.
This simple strategy is one of the age-old strategies for intentionally creating alignment…
And cracking open that source energy for the answers you’re looking for in your own personal journey.
Simple, but not easy.