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Envy, Were You Ever Part of the Alchemist Dream?

Today I found out that my sister inherited an heirloom I have dreamed about. Now I witness thoughts and feelings that cry out in me like insects and birds in a twilight forest. These agonies of envy reveal clues about how my persona was put together?and just a smidgeon of bad taste.

I was not old enough to talk when I first saw the magical gold ring in the shape of a snake devouring his own tail. My family had put me in Aunt Judy?s bedroom for a nap, but as usual I was not tired. When the door shut, I stood up in my crib. At once, the finely-wrought ring on my aunt?s bedside stand slammed my consciousness. The bars of my crib became invisible to me. The ring itself magnified in my perception, filling my vision as though it were the whole world. The ring snake seemed to smile knowingly at me and I remember the feeling of my whole body singing. I was transported by the ring to a time when I had no solid body and every experience was within my grasp simply by willing it. Electricity and magnetism thrilled my senses. I didn?t have these words, of course, but the physical feelings burned into cellular memory. All of this happened in seconds, the fire opal eyes gleaming at me in recognition. This last detail is definitely a product of my mind; the ring has no stones. Please don?t call me Gollum!

When I was eight years old, Aunt Judy told me this ring had been in our family for twenty-three generations. She said the ring was made by an ancestor named Schmuel Baruch, who was an alchemist. I had no idea what an alchemist was but my heart trembled each time she said this. I begged Aunt Judy to tell me more about him but she always just replied that it was time to wash my face and hands for lunch, or dinner, or bed. It is only as an adult that I realize: that was all she knew.

It is only because I am confident that my sister will never read this that I will tell you this?and, please, don?t tell Ingrid when she comes back to the United States for a visit: Aunt Judy told me a few years ago that she would leave the ring to me.

But she didn?t.

Now that Ingrid has inherited it, I see how attached I became to the idea of this ring. Envy, were you ever part of the alchemist dream? I notice the thoughts that are flickering through my mind cluster into categories. First there are those that try to find causes, as if somehow I could go back and fix what went wrong. "Did Aunt Judy find out about my ring snake tattoo?" "Was Judy senile when she wrote the will?" "Did someone tell Judy lies about me?" Worst, and I know it to be false, yet there my mind goes: "Did Ingrid get to Judy and convince her to give her the ring instead of me?"

I observe a second cluster of thoughts that tells me I in fact possess the ring, when clearly I don?t. "It?s mine." "She doesn?t know what to do with it." "I have every right to it." "Aunt Judy told me it was mine." "What if I beg Ingrid for it?" "Wouldn?t a good sister share with me?"

A final cluster of thoughts identifies "me" with the ring: "What am I going to do now?" "I can?t live on without the ring." "It can?t be." "It?s all wrong now."

These thoughts engender unwilled emotions. My heart is gripped with a dull ache. I notice I have to keep relaxing my shoulders. A similar ache sits in my solar plexus. There is a restlessness as if I want to crumple the whole world like a piece of paper on which a bad story is written, but muted by a clear apprehension that this is impossible and also by an unwillingness to tamper with the dream. Instead I recognize that these 3-dimensional images are part of the programming of my personal holodeck. I simply watch and observe a distorted relationship with power. Then I remember the riddle given by a very wise master: "Who is the Great Magician who made the grass green, the sky blue, and who wrote this-here soap opera?"

Schmuel, take pity on your poor cousin!

 Eric N. Peterson is a Toltec priest and member of The Tequihua Foundation, a Riverside, Southern CA nonprofit whose mission is to continue the ancient consciousness-transforming arts of the Toltecs. The Aka Dua is an energy prepared by a particular Toltec line. The Aka Dua assists in the alchemical process of transformation by which an ordinary human becomes the shaman.

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