The Alchemy of Change

Alchemical Sweet Spot, Tension, Your "Why", & Purpose

Happy July, everybody. Shit’s crazy.

I can’t believe we are already into month 7 of 2025. I’ll be 25 this year, which feels so old. Life continues to move along, which is another reminder that amidst all of the striving, longing, and creating, life is made of many present moments—so might as well soak this one up.

Today I am going to do something a bit different than normal. I have a bigger article in the works that won’t be done for a while, so I figured instead of keeping you waiting, let’s create something in the meantime.

Without further ado, welcome to Blake’s Menu of Insight & Contemplation

The Alchemical Sweet Spot

Evolution is sparked through stress and tension, which forces life to change and grow.

When your food source runs out, there will be an initial moment of tension and stress, but then you will be forced into finding a new food source, which will come with a whole array of growth processes.

It is a fly-or-die moment.

Change doesn’t happen through comfort and normality, but through stress and tension, which is something many of us have heard but few have truly integrated.

Life naturally brings us to our edges, where stress and tension are found in order to support the blooming process, and it knows the exact places to go.

Although this is naturally occurring, we humans have a role to play in the dance, and I believe it is to fully meet life where it takes us and to create a container around the process.

Life instructs and calls; humans listen and respond.

Life is best friends with your potential, and they happen to work in the same department.

Our potential lays breadcrumbs and whispers, “Do this, there are seeds of transformation within it.”

Once the call is clear and we know in our heart of hearts what we must do, it is up to us to lean in, commit, and place ourselves upon the alchemical forge of our becoming.

This is where it gets funky.

Like the forge of an alchemist, there is a sweet spot for the amount of heat desired for the alchemical process.

If there is too much heat, then the vessel might crack or the elements will destabilize (overwhelm / burnout), while if there's not enough heat (no tension/pressure), then nothing will be able to transform. If it’s the wrong kind of heat (shame), we won’t get the gold (change) we desire.

We are developing the felt sense for the alchemical sweet spot.

The alchemical sweet spot is the felt sense of being in the ring with your potential and going punch for punch. God wants to wrestle with us, but so does our potential.

The question we should all be asking is: How do we meet life and our potential in a way that fosters the kind of tension and pressure that promotes optimal flourishing and transformation?

In short, I am testing the hypothesis of gathering in community for 45 days and committing to things that scare you but you know are somehow breadcrumbs of your potential.

Initially, one of my commitments was posting three times a week on Instagram, but at some point, I realized merely saying “three times a week” was too vague and left too much space for resistance and excuses. I had the felt sense that there was more space to lean in and meet my potential, which was also accompanied by fear of leaning into that space.

I realized what I needed to do was refine the commitment to posting once on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which provided more clarity and structure. Somehow I knew this is what my potential was asking of me, and it scared the shit out of me.

Because as Monday rolls around, I know I have to post today, and there's no way around it.

I am in the pressure cooker, and I can so viscerally feel it.

It’s full of tension and pressure, but at the same time is full of potential for life to grow and goodness to come.

It feels like sacs of potential, which initially appear as tension and fear, but as they are alchemized upon the forge, I begin to see just how much life was living within the seed.

The Dance of the Micro & Macro

When we talk about change and the alchemical sweet spot, one of the most important elements is our “why.”

You want to grow a social media following? Why?

You want to start getting up early and spending time honing your craft? Why?

What is your north star that helps organize everything into place?

One of the key codes to the journey of change and becoming is generating the felt sense that each stone you place in the day-to-day—such as getting up on time or sitting down for your morning practice—is a stone being laid upon the cathedral of your life. It is a step taken toward your north star.

And while you learn to fall in love with the present-moment process and stay present with what is, you know where you’re headed—or rather, what that place feels like.

Without a strong why, one becomes a leaf blowing in the wind and will eventually run out of willpower to do the thing.

With a strong why, you know exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing and will be tapping into the infinite reserve of what is pulling you forward.

Throughout history, different cultures and traditions have known the importance of having a why that anchors all that they do.

For the Lakota people of North America, they say Aho Mitakuye Oyasin—we are all related. This anchors practice and ritual in that we are doing this for all of our relations.

Certain Buddhist lineages say “for the benefit of all beings.”

Like a stream of life-giving energy, it is as though there is a universal “why” that different people far and wide have been drinking from since the beginning of time.

So maybe finding your why is more about recognizing and receiving THE why that is always available and trying to play you like a guitar.

Tension Fields

Whenever we are faced with binary choices, tension is created.

Whenever we are holding unanswered questions, tension is created.

Whenever we don’t know what to do, but we know we need to do something, tension is created.

Whenever we know this isn’t it, but we don’t know what is, tension is created.

Tension lives in the forest of the unknown, and its arch-nemesis is the village of certainty.

When people encounter any flavor of the forest, our response is to sprint back to the village.

But,

If we are willing to weather the storm of our initial desire for certainty and can stand in the face of tension, one realizes that what we thought was a scary beast turns out to be a wizard of possibility, holding the seeds of what might be.

Tension is the doorway into unseen realities and the birthplace of hidden harmonies.

Through the doorway of tension, a third door emerges that we never saw before or deemed possible.

Tension is the protagonist in the story of creation, not the evil villain.

If humans were able to truly understand that the unknown—and the tension found within it—were essential allies, and if we learned to dance with that tension instead of trying to escape it, the world would be a different place.

May we hold more questions than answers and resist the temptation for black & white, for it is there that the doorway into the grey area appears.

Tension is your friend.

Let it in.

P.S. I am holding a question mark around this, but my intuition is that when we select for certainty, we only access our conscious mind, while when we allow space for a question mark and hold tension, we ship the question into our unconscious mind, where it gets to be chewed on by an ancient intelligence.

It’s like trying to solve a problem alone versus collaborating with the intelligence of all humans and the Earth together. The choice is obvious.

Agents of Life

I like to think that life has a secret headquarters somewhere in the cosmos, with a mission control room full of sacred tasks waiting to be assigned and completed.

Each of us humans are like the secret agents of life, receiving missions and carrying them out (sometimes) for life itself.

What does life want? To create more life in more beautiful, interesting ways. Life wants to surprise itself and try on new costumes never seen before.

As we grow, develop new skills, and continually place ourselves upon the alchemical forge of our becoming, we are increasing our capacity to hold life’s missions. Some people have more space than others, and life responds to this.

Life isn’t biased or judgmental. However, life does recognize who has more space than others, and who will actually do something about the missions it assigns.

Life gives us what we can handle and have space for, and as our capacity increases, so too does the size of the mission and the initiation that comes with it.

For many people, their current mission is to cultivate the space to hold a mission at all.

How are you going to do anything if you can’t get off your phone or go to the gym?

So instead of waiting for some grand purpose to arrive or for life to tell you exactly what to do, become fit for purpose, so that when life calls, you can answer.

And here is the part that, if I articulate it right and it lands, might be the missing piece for you:

As you go about becoming fit for purpose, and tending to your garden so that seeds will be able to grow, orient to it as if receiving grander missions is inevitable. Weed your garden and tend the soil as if the seeds from life are already on the way and you are merely preparing the space.

This is how we begin connecting with the force that pulls us forward, and the why that anchors it all.

So many people are stuck waiting for a girlfriend to finally be happy, or are waiting for a grand purpose to clean up their life. “Once I have __, then I will do __.”

I am proposing that you should do __ because __ is inevitable, and once it arrives, you will be ready.

The trick is that it is in the preparing that you summon the thing itself.

So, what are you preparing for?

As always, if you enjoyed this, please do share it with a friend or two! Your support is much appreciated.