Alchemy of the Soul: learning to dance with your own Divinity

By Mary Bishop

The aim of this book is to show you the way to explore the spiritual realm. Mary explains how operating from a spiritual level rather than an ego fear-based one is a much more powerful way to live. This book can help you reconnect with your soul making you feel empowered and loved, bringing more happiness into your life. The pages are packed with information to help you on your pathway of self discovery and include the following: *learning who you really are *getting to know your soul *meeting your guide *understanding the life lessons presented to you and much more to help you to live a rewarding and fulfilling life. Mary invites you to share the journey of her life and the lessons she has learned along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Bishop
• Release date: Apr 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463874738

Mary Bishop

Mary Bishop is a professional Tarot reader, medium, clairvoyant, teacher and author.Associate of the London College of Psychic Studies.Mary's first book 'Alchemy of the Soul - learning to dance with your own Divinity,' is packed with information to help you on your pathway of self discovery and includes the following:* Learning who you really are* Getting to know your soul* Meeting your guide* Understanding the life lessons presented to you and much more, to help you live a rewarding and fulfilling life.Mary's 8 meditations from her book can also be found on her YouTube channel called Soul Growth Meditations.Mary's second book 'What Am I Doing Here? A journey through Gaia' can be read on two levels: one as a simple story and the other, as an allegorical journey of self awareness and spiritual understanding, using the Major Tarot cards. In the story the main character, Isra, can understand the lessons presented to her, in order for her to learn and grow spiritually, throughout her lifetime.Mary has worked professionally over the last 30 years teaching and giving Tarot/psychic/mediumship readings in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the Caribbean.Mary feels that by holding mediumship readings, she can give proof of survival from those who have passed on and seeing the joy in her clients faces is one of the greatest rewards she can have.Mary has also written basic and advanced Tarot courses and Intuitive courses, teaching them at home and colleges; given seminars, talks and has worked at major exhibitions in England and New Zealand with well known people in this field.Mary loves living by the sea in Hove with her husband, Nigel, watching sunsets, catching up with friends and enjoying a glass of Chablis.

Book preview

Alchemy of the Soul -

learning to dance with your own Divinity!

By Mary Bishop

Cover designed by author and Aden Scott.

Copyright © 2016 Mary Bishop. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing by the publishers.

ISBN - 153521435X

ISBN – 13: 978-1535214353

Alchemy of the Soul –

learning to dance with your own Divinity!

From Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem: Ulysses - where he calls upon his friends to join him on another quest. Alfred Tennyson 1809 - 1892

'Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.'

Dedications

To my husband, Nigel, who feels his role in life is to look after me and to my son, Aden, whose birth I consider to be the biggest achievement in my life.

Also dedicated to my family and friends here and my spiritual friends and helpers in the spiritual realm without whom I couldn't have written this book.

Acknowledgements

With many thanks to Nigel and Aden for their proof reading and constructive criticism of this book. A thank you to Robert Schwartz who kindly agreed to let me use a quote of his from his book Your Soul's Gift.

I would also like to thank the many different authors I have read for the many different ideas that relate to my book.

Contents

Part 1

Introduction : Why I wrote this book

Preface: The aim of this book

Prologue: We are all work in progress

Part 2: Alchemy Stages

Chapter 1. Stage 1. Calcination: breaking down of the ego

Chapter 2. Stage 2. Dissolution: dissolving of the mind barriers

Chapter 3. Stage 3. Separation: what to take forward

Chapter 4. Stage 4. Conjunction: bringing it all together

Chapter 5. Stage 5. Fermentation: inspiration

Chapter 6. Stage 6. Distillation: refining

Chapter 7. Stage 7. Coagulation: realising our spiritual potential

Part 3

Chapter 8. Meditations. Introduction

Awareness of your Soul

Meeting your Guide

Finding Your Destiny

Accessing your last pre-birth memory

Accessing information for what you need to know today

Cosmic Ordering

Forgiveness

Healing for yourself

Some questions answered

PART 1

Introduction

Why I wrote this book

Although I wrote this book in part for my own satisfaction, I would love to share with you my experiences to reconnect with my own soul and the evolution of my own spiritual philosophy. We can be empowered, feel loved and have more happiness in our lives through having our spiritual connections restored. I have heard some people say they are not sure that they even have a soul. Equally, others may not be aware of having a soul, or hardships and difficulties through life may have made them feel detached from their own spirituality.

I believe self awareness is the key and this is my story of moving into spiritual development, so I invite you to join me as I describe my journey of discovery.

In my story I talk of my experiences of mediumship, clairvoyance, guides, reincarnation, hypnotherapy regression sessions to past lives, meditation, and of talking to my soul.

However, if you find some of my suggestions preposterous, please feel free to ignore or disagree with me, or put the book down as you see fit.

To better help you understand where I am coming from, let me begin by telling you more about myself.

I believe life is a challenge but also to be enjoyed! From an astrological point of view, I was born under the sign of Pisces, with my Ascendant or Rising Sign of Leo. (To any astrologer reading, this is one which you will understand), my Leo personality gives me this point of view: believing that the glass is half full, not half empty and, of course, I would prefer it to be completely full!

The following comments form part of the basis of my beliefs.

Pascal, was a seventeenth century French philosopher, who said he thought there was at least a small probability that God exists and that a rational person should seek to believe in God, thereby having entry to Heaven. However, if a person doesn't believe in God's existence, then they could go to Hell. This is known as Pascal's Wager.

My interpretation of Pascal's Wager is: it brings me comfort to believe in the spiritual side of life, however, if I am wrong, then I have lost nothing.

Then I heard about the Cosmic Joke, so I looked into it. Apparently this describes us taking life too seriously here, although I know I do this at times, and it is a very easy thing to take life seriously with the bombardment of negative messages we receive every day.

However, if we believe in the spiritual aspect of our lives and then understand that this is just one form of reality and that what we are searching for we already have within us, then we understand the Cosmic Joke.

Part of the Cosmic Joke's meaning also suggests that laughter is the key to enlightenment, as it bypasses the ego and allows us the full realisation of our own Divinity, thereby awakening us to our true selves. No one else can do this for us, as we all have free will. So we are urged to start laughing at life and find the joke that it is. So often, we need to find something to uplift us in our daily struggles, so I think this is worth remembering.

Many times, I have found that some orthodox points of view on our spiritual lives are very restrictive.

When, on a few occasions, I have attended church services, I hear the words 'sinner, judgement, Lord, Master, King' and in the prayer book, 'beseeching God to listen to our prayers'. This I feel, very strongly, puts up barriers for us, giving away our power and cutting us off from the flow of unconditional love from our Source, God or the Universal flow of Love. I went to one Christmas Carol service, and all the vicar could say in his sermon was how sinful we are and that Jesus died for our sins, when I feel it would have been far better to be celebrating a spiritual leader joining the planet to help us find our spiritual pathways!

Jesus, too, was considered unorthodox in his teachings and I believe some of the dogma surrounding the church teachings would not have been his wish to teach.

I also find it difficult understanding that Jesus died on the Cross to save me. I can see the intellectual concept that maybe he was showing us symbolically that we can 'die' to our physical world and become more spiritual. The concept of Jesus dying, thus paying the penalty for our sins, though, doesn't really work for me. I believe we are the only ones responsible for ourselves and what we choose to do with our lives.

I am sorry if this offends anyone, but I cannot find comfort in these sorts of teachings. I think I was about 5 years old at Sunday School, being told that Jesus had nails hammered through his hands and feet to save me! Frightening and not helpful. I was obviously shocked by this, as I can remember where I was sitting in the room and who was telling me this!

In one of my sessions of inspirational channelling from my spirit guide, I was given this about the concept of sin: ‘We do not need to talk of sin, which is merely an absence of love. Evil is the result of an absence of love'. More of this channelled message in Chapter 6.

So my spiritual philosophy of accepting Universal love works for me but the whole point of this book is about your own spiritual self discovery if you choose to look into it. By sharing some of my experiences with you, I hope it might be constructive and you may find some resonance with them. Enjoy!

Preface

The aim of this book

The aim or scope of this book is to share my experiences and to open the way for you to further investigate the spiritual realm. I believe that operating from a spiritual level rather than an ego based one is a much more powerful way to live. Ego is often fear based whereas living in a spiritual way can be very empowering.

The Prologue of this book is a description of some of my spiritual experiences but I use the Alchemy process in the following chapters as a structure incorporating my experiences relevant to those processes.

One morning as I awoke from sleep, I felt I was given the title ‘Alchemy of the Soul’ for writing about how my spiritual growth has evolved. I hope that some of the things I have written about may be helpful to you if you wish to learn more about your own spirituality.

So this book Alchemy of the Soul – learning to dance with your own Divinity is about this process of becoming aware of and re-connecting with our souls; the spiritual level and the unconditional love which is always available to us leading to spiritual regeneration. I believe that if we are constantly connected to the Universe's loving energy then this can also help our physical bodies to be replenished.

This is a description of Alchemy in more detail: in its highest aspects, Alchemy deals with the spiritual regeneration of man and, of course, at the lower level of trying to turn base metals into gold.

The Alchemy process is also described as the creation of The ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ which is capable of turning base qualities into refined ones and act as an elixir of life conferring youth and immortality. This process is an essential ingredient for transformation so the ‘Philosopher's Stone’ symbolises perfection at its finest - enlightenment.

There are seven main stages for Alchemy, I understand, although I have heard of more. I have used very simple terms to explain the stages of Alchemy, for easy clarification, as I was beginning to confuse myself!

As I describe the following stages, I include some of my experiences whilst working through them and the voyage of discovery it brought to me. I think we can go through these stages many times over and at different times in our lives to learn individual lessons helping us continue to evolve at soul level.

I feel that if we do not know or understand ourselves, and are not connected with our souls, then we have little chance of coping with our external world.

However, if we can understand ourselves and can interpret our world better then we can learn and become wiser. This self knowledge can become wisdom if only we acknowledge and learn from it.

It appears that the first rule of occult learning then is: ‘Know yourself and there is nothing left to seek’.

We can then be co-creators of our world bringing much more into our lives if we are conscious of our ability to co-ordinate matters by being aware of and using our soul's wisdom to help us and accepting ourselves as powerful spiritual beings.

By this we can achieve Alchemy of the Soul.

* * *

My definition of the Soul

I believe that our multi – faceted souls are sparks from the loving Universal Energy Source and its wisdom and we all have access to this loving energy by having a soul in our physical bodies whilst travelling the earthly path.

Incidentally, I prefer to use the words Universal Energy rather than the word God, as some may see God as a judgemental deity.

So putting it another way, as our souls are an expression of the Universal Energy, carried within our bodies so we have access to the guiding light behind creation which then makes us co-creators of our world!

Therefore the more we focus on and learn about and use our soul’s energy, (the Alchemy process), the more it will become part of our consciousness and the more benefits can be derived from this awareness.

This process will take us to a refined state where we can enjoy deeper, more meaningful and loving lives because Love is this guiding force of the Universal Source. If we can see that the whole world is made up of this loving energy flow, then once we acknowledge it and purposely re-connect with our Source through our souls, then life can flow more easily.

The soul can be viewed then as the concentrated and purified energy of our Source. It is the energy that powers all life: