Guided Transmutation

introduction

Welcome to this experiment in theater as a tool for transformation.

A transformation that I hope can bring some healing into the world.

Please read this introduction before listening. Find a quiet, comfortable space, preferably out in nature.

A guided transmutation is an invented form in the lineage of guided meditation, sound healing, somatic abolition, and other mindfulness traditions that cultivate internal awareness. Spiritual practices with roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. Though this piece of theater has strayed very far from these traditions, it still feels right to invoke gratitude for these traditions before we begin. So I invite you to take a few deep breaths. Breathing in gratitude for the forms of awareness practice that have come before. Breathing out – releasing that gratitude so it may be received.

Like in a guided meditation, the audio will address you in the second person. You are the protagonist of this play. Maybe you'll relate to it. Maybe you won't. You can choose how much you claim your role in the story. You can choose how open your body is to feel the emotions that you will be guided through. The more open you are, the more sensation you may become aware of in your body. I choose to believe in the healing power of growing my awareness of these bodily signals, noticing what helps them shift from stuckness, and asking what recognition they are yearning for. You have the power to pause at any time if you need time to process what you're hearing or if your body needs time to move through a sensation.

The recording is 30 minutes. Please take care of your needs. Breathe – feel your breath – keep breathing. Pause as you need to. This content can be activating, so please drink some water or grounding herbal tea once you finish.

With love, gratitude, and pleasure in the struggle,

~ eppchez yo-sí yes

Listen

Audio file pending.

If you need the written text to make this experience accessible, please scroll to read the transcript.

After you listen

Prompts for reflection

Use these prompts as a jumping-off point for journaling or conversation with others who have experienced the guided transmutation.

• What makes you feel like the Divine seed of creation?
• What images are still reverberating with you?
• What are your flowers?
• What are your seeds?
• What shade structures and trellises will support your next blooming?
• How does the destruction of fire show up in your life? How has fire supported your healing?
• What nutrients do you have to share? What gets you excited to share those nutrients?
• Was there anything you learned from the sensations in your body?
• What metaphor spoke right to you?

Transcript

GUIDE
You are the divine seed of creation, 
Planted deep in fertile darkness.
The miracle of life coiled tightly inside you.
Feel the spring-loaded potential of that miracle. 
Coiled 
The soil brings you abundant gifts.
All the nutrients you need - all the space and rest 
You need to begin unfurling. Receive these gifts.
Let the mysterious fertile darkness 
fill you with abundance freely given.
Feel yourself beginning to unfurl.
Feel the coiled miracle of your divine energy
stretching out into every space of your body.
Breathe. Unfurl. With this next breath, you emerge 
out of the soil.


AIR
It’s too harsh and too dry 
and too much and too bright.


GUIDE
The sun beats down; every part of you squints.
There is no shade around. There is never
 enough rain to quench your thirst. And yet 
your miracle grows.
You make leaves, and the caterpillars eat them.
You store up all your excess energy for weeks 
and unfurl a glorious bloom of delicate flowers all your own.


SOIL
Rejoice for your flowers;
you’ve made something sweet


GUIDE
But even before they fully open, 
your petals begin to singe in the baking heat.
The dry air whispers about you.


AIR
You are too weak for this world. 
You’ll never survive. 


GUIDE
You pray for rain. You sink your roots deeper 
and deeper into the soil. She is still here for you.
it feels like she will always be here for you. 
She whispers to you.


SOIL
You carry your seeds through better and worse.
You carry the miracles of death and of birth.


GUIDE
When your prayers for rain are finally answered,
it is with a flood. 
Chuckling waters whoop and holler around you, 
tearing at your leaves and pulling at your roots.
You cling desperately to the safety of the soil,
 but the current is too strong.
The flood waters sweep you away.
The soil that gave you everything 
is gone. You want to cry out for her, 
but you are drowning.
The waves turn you around, pulling you under. 
Whirlpools  twist your roots - twist them up into legs 
You do not want legs; you want your roots.
They toss you on an unfamiliar shore.
You try desperately to sink your roots 
down into this new soil, 
but your legs have become solid limbs. 
You concentrate and try to send
 new growth probing underground.
But the ground here has a bad taste.
You notice the other plants. They look sick to you.
Maybe the soil here is poisoned 
Perhaps these feet can get you somewhere
 where the soil is safe and nourishing.
You begin to walk. Night falls 
with winter close behind, singing


NIGHT & WINTER
We can give you darkness. We can give you rest. 
Like your soil gave you, we have plenty of it.


GUIDE
Feel how badly you want this darkness 
to be like the underground darkness you knew as a seed. 
Feel how badly you want this darkness to be enough.
You need the night to be enough to nourish you.
You see the stars. They are so far away 
and look so peaceful. The stars look back at you, 
perhaps thinking how peaceful you look. 
All you know about each other is the distance between you.
At first, winter did feel refreshing, but now 
you are very cold, and they cannot give you 
any of the nutrients of your home soil.
You feel ice forming in your cell walls 
You have to keep moving.
Winter and night scream all around you 


NIGHT & WINTER
Where are you going!? 
I gave you everything. 
Why are you so ungrateful?


GUIDE
Why are you so ungrateful?...
Why does everything hurt you.  
Why are you always expected to be something
 you are not:
Hardier, unrooted, grateful, easy to please. 
Why is no one listening to you? 
Why does it feel like no one can see you at all?
Way off across another dusty meadow
of sickly grasses, 
someone is dancing.  He’s jumping and 
waving and glowing bright. You approach him 
with curiosity. You want to be free and fed like him. 
The grasses whisper 


GRASSES
Don’t play with fire.


GUIDE
They are not only sick, they are also afraid now. 
But you have to approach. Fire,
 is the only thriving thing you’ve met
 since you were ripped from your soil.
You approach. Fire flits seductively.


FIRE
Transform your grief into the heat.
I can eat your grief away 
consume all your bad days. 
Put all death to good use,
I’ll combust them just for you. 


GUIDE
An unhappy patch of grass turns toward the flame, throwing up its blades in submission.


GRASS
I succumb. I've been sick for so long. 
You feel like medicine. You feel like terrorism.
 I wasn’t grown in the healthiest soil,
 but I don’t need your pity.


GUIDE
Combustion.
You watch bright worms of flame flash through the grass. 
Leaving a patch of death.
It reminds you of your flowers
from all that time ago.
You bargain with yourself 
Some of the grasses seemed grateful. 
You call out to fire, 
What happens to the miracle inside that blade of grass? 


FIRE
Don’t you feel it in the air 
in my dance and in my flare? I know I do, 
and I feel little bits of them too.
Now we're all part of fire’s Dream!


GUIDE
What is fire’s Dream?
You ask


FIRE
To Send myself so high 
I get back to the Sun in the sky.


GUIDE
This doesn't feel like when the flood
 tangled up your roots. Or when the ground
 tasted bitter. This feels 
like a risk you have to take.  
Can you let this body go?
 Discard what your miracle and your mother
 made together. Let it be erased. 
This hasn’t even felt like your body
 since before the flood; you want roots again.
 You want to be nourished again. 
Fire looks nourished. 
To get back to the sun? Is that a dream
 you can share with fire? Will all that fuel
 make you feel cared for again?
You give your body as fuel -
give your miracle to the fire
 and let your strange enchanted body fall away.
 You don’t look back. You hate
 what the flood and the bitter soil did to you.
You will never be that pathetic again.
All together now, in a chorus of flame, you sing your song of confidant, righteous destruction.


FIRE
All light does is eat dead things. 
Help this matter rearrange.
Leave behind a fresh new slate 
for mother earth to vegetate.
Life just too heavy? We can take away the pain.
We’ll make all your tears evaporate.


GUIDE
You make it sound generous, but you are brutal 
you can’t be contained.
You don’t care for consent - you won’t hesitate.
You thought you would never feel hungry again
But the sun is very far away.
The meadow had been abundant with dry grasses, but as you grow, you need more to grow. 
And soon the meadow is all charred stubble. 
Clouds pass over like mother earth’s hand feeling a new buzz cut.
The sun is lost behind the smoke and clouds
You’re ripping through the forest now, 
desperate to get out of orbit.
Billions of miracles consumed with you now. 
lives forced and coerced into a futile mission to the sun.
The ashes, drifting down behind you 
get organized enough to speak up


ASHES
We’ve flown up there
 as high as we could go 
And the sun was no bigger,
 barely closer than before.


GUIDE
You keep on roaring
 you know the sun will be yours.
You feel so good and strong 
how could something that feels so good
 be wrong? Ashes coming to rest on the ground
 try to warn you.


ASHES
Everyone’s afraid of you,
 and they should be afraid. 
To keep themselves safe.


GUIDE
You double down 


FIRE
If we don’t reach the sun king, we will die. 
Consume everything you find!
This is a demand! Don’t ask questions.


GUIDE
You turn up the heat
 and start coaching new flames.  
At the edge of the fire, a new flame is confused.


FLAME
But these flowers don’t want to burn.


GUIDE
You surge your miracle through the new flame
The flowers protest, but you
 don’t hear flowers anymore.
When was the last time you even saw a flower? Have you ever noticed them
 before you burnt them up? 
Just as your apprenticed flame reaches their petals, 
you see them. Beautiful flowers
 vibrating fear and shame.
 They look just like your own flowers
 from so long ago.
In a flicker, the sun seems unimportant.
Your apprentice is now mastering his technique. 
The new flame goes to work
 on a nest of baby birds.
Did they want to become the fire? 
It’s all too fast - the pace of these changes -
no time to negotiate, no give, just take.
Feel the weight of a decision point. 
Feel the fork of your life story
Most flames would just keep burning.
The Sun King’s indoctrination is pretty thorough.}
But for the sake of this journey, let’s say 
That you - you keep questioning.
Needing to vision a way out.
You try to burn more slowly,
 but you can’t not consume.
You return to the flowers, now ash.
Listen to these miracles
 dancing on their own husks 


GUSTS
We refuse to be a part of this madness.


GUIDE
They are not flames; they’ve become
 gusts of hot air.
 They pick up the ashes of their petals 
and ride them up toward the sun.
You notice that in the burnt-out hull of these pods, there are seeds. glistening black miracles.
You remember how you had pods like that too.
 Did you leave behind seeds
 when your body was burnt up?
If you rise - if you rise to the top of the flame,
you’ll feel better. If you can get away
 from the brutality of this consumption, 
maybe you’ll have the space to find a way out.
You let go and follow the air current up 
you feel full again, effortlessly carried
higher and higher 
Just light, just heat, none of the dirty work. 
Gusts pushing material husks float up past you.
A song floats up with the gusts and ashes.


GUSTS & ASHES
You can let the dream die;
the sacrifice is too high. 
We watched you playing in the sky
it’s nothing earth couldn’t provide.
You can come with us.
 your miracle could be a gust.
We hope to ask a rain cloud
 to put this fire down.


GUIDE
You wish them luck.
 That’s an adventure for another cycle. 
You release your miracle from the fire
 and shoot out of the flames
 to drift back down to the earth
In this state, you need nothing; you are
 nothing but your miracle.
You feel the first drops of rain streak through you.
Celebrate the miracles that made it rain.
You trust that rain will help the fire die.
You hear the fire fighting back with 


FIRE
This is our dominion claimed for the sun 
If we can’t have dominion
 we don’t want it for anyone!


GUIDE
Let the relief of relinquishing control
 wash over you. Let the rain soak
 your miracle back into the ground
each drop that lands on you
 sinks you deeper and deeper.
Deeper into the soil.
Imagine your seeds out there
 somewhere in all this ash, nourished by the rain.
Become nutrient. Feel yourself
 becoming nutrients. 
That was your miracle all along.
Imagine all the beauty that fire will never know
and nurture it.
© ALMA'S ENGINE, 2