The Alchemists' Cave

The Alchemist never leaves home. Always nesting. People come and go. But the Alchemist stays home, in their cave. Never to come out until dreams come knocking…

Imagine you can get past the tip of your nose and see that all around you is the same light. Imagine you are blessed with this miraculous ability to manage your temperature up and down at will, with the weight and space of how you teach yourself to breathe. Try inviting your breath to join you on your Odyssey. Learn the motion of your breath’s momentum.

It’s inbetween what you can touch and see, that an ice cave forms with how you smell, taste, and hear, shaping every moment of who you are and why you come to be.

You see, the touch of your breath relies on rhythm and repetition.

Rhythm keeps your breath aware of when you’re out of sync.

It’s your motion, rhythm, and repetition that shape your being to form the contents of your Odessey within.

You can tell a story of opposites searching for their other half, or you can experience it every moment you breathe.

Your ice cave begins to form when you start seeing yourself within the dots and lines. Until 1 moment of inhibition comes to pause, leaving room for you to pay closer attention to 1 particular yellow dot chasing a loop. This yellow loop finds an orange loop. Who loops back around and spins into a red loop. The red loop eventually finds the green loop, and so on… the green loop meets a blue loop, an indigo loop (a deep, dark blue with a bit of purple), and the last loop, violet (a reddish purple).

(What’s your favorite color?)

Let’s say when you breathe in, the heat of your core activates with dreams of color searching for light. Let’s say if you held your breath in for too long, melting hot magma instantly incinerates anything before it could even come close to your lips or graze a nose hair’s length away from your fingertips.

But let's also say that when you breathe out, for some odd reason, the opposite happens, and your breath freezes any available elements into ice. Not just from out of your nose and mouth. But from your ears, the pores of your skin, your hands, and feet.

After burning and freezing, the repetition and rhythm start to take shape and form a pattern of maintaining structure.

Every breath you take in is never the same breath when it leaves your body.

As you simply observe the “holds”, “pauses” - the “in-betweens” or the repetitive rhythm of your breath, your ice cave begins to form from these patterns. From the edges of your spine, the cave creates an icy bone structure that is clear but impenetrable. Once the ice leaves your body, it does not leave your soul, and remains intact, in sync, and connected.

Most ice caves have at least 1 Alchemist who forms the cave and 1 Captain who oversees it. Like any other organic structure in this world, your ice cave offers protection, but it is not invulnerable. The Alchemist's awareness does not always extend to their entire ice cave, because the ocean is unpredictable. The Captain can not be everywhere all at once. And your ice cave, while controlled by temperature, is still vulnerable to the world’s physical elements.

Your Alchemist is unique and notices things that nobody else can, unless you retold them in the exact way that the you experienced them within your ice cave, because your ice cave does not only tell stories of words, but also a stories of breath, color and dreams that surpass what many words may try to express, but never fully capture.

You can’t be observant at all times. You are not meant to always be on land or in caves or the ocean. You are meant to be exactly where you need to be.

Now, it’s very often that when those who leave their ice caves reach land, they create structures that mimic their ice cave. They are given the option to share or withhold from others what they learned within the breath and awareness of their ice caves. Some choose to mimic their understanding and meaning of their ice cave internally. Others choose to multiply and share their structures with others.

The Captain is not always perfect or successful, but they are always at sea when they need to be.

When the storms bring wind. Your captain will steer you in the direction that shifts your ice cave away from too high or too low tides. Observe when your ice cave gets too close to the shoreline or melts, as you might witness the captain pushing you back into the ocean or onto safer tides.

You’re in your ice cave now. It’s cold but not freezing.

A penguin walks up to you, “Slide.” The Penguin slides… on… away… playfully, as they slip down the slick surface of where you can not see.

Even though you created this cave, there are still many places, edges, colors, and angles that you can not observe.

But right now in your cave, you continue to observe, as the ice walls surrounding you freeze and melt with the repetition and rhythm collective pace of how your breath interacts with color’s search for light.

It’s the Captain who knocks on your cave. So you let them in.

“Hello, I am the Captain,” The Captain said.

“I am… in my ice cave,” The Alchemist said.

“I can see that,” the Captain tells you. “I have to get back to sea soon. Every second I spend out of water might not only result in the loss of this very moment, but every moment that has ever been and every moment that will ever be after that.

The Alchemist asks the captain why they would risk everything to be in someone else’s cave.

“I need to know how you survive?”

“Well, I control the temperature of my body with the will, weight, and pace of my breath.”

“Really? Who taught you this? And what are you controlling?”

“Staying right here.”

“I sense nothing in here.”

“You might.”

“Right, well…” The Captain paused and was taken aback by the colors and moving lights dancing around the Alchemist's ice cave.

This was when the Captain started to see themselves within the dots and lines. Attention to 1 particular yellow dot sparked the chase to find the yellow loop, which finds the orange loop. Then loops back around and spins into the red loop. This red loop eventually finds the green loop, and so on… the green loop meets the blue loop, the indigo loop (a deep, dark blue with a bit of purple), and the last loop, violet (a reddish purple).

“You’re always welcome on land when you’re ready,” The Captain told the Alchemist, “I have never seen such light like this. Your iceberg...

“It’s an ice cave.” The Alchemist corrected.

“You must be an Alchemist! The colors and structure of this cave could only come from an Alchemist! I’ve heard about people like you. The structure of your breath is alive, moving, and fluid. I came to see if everything was alright, but now I must tell everyone on land about what I have observed. I have never seen someone who can endure the seasons alone. The people on land struggle to survive together as it is. They will want you to share what you have observed here. We could all learn from each other. How else do you think I learned how to steer my ship? I learned from a Ship Captain. Here, take the wheel of my ship. I don’t need it anymore. I… I see how my breath and awareness are like the ocean. I will go where the waves take me, and I trust in this because of you. Thank you.” The Captain reached out with the wheel, but the Alchemist refused. The captain tipped his hat, set the wheel down on the cave floor, and left the Alchemist’s ice cave.

“We’ll see,” The Alchemist told the Captain, and was left alone.

The Alchemist tried to sleep, but began to grow restless. The experience of sharing their cave with someone and letting them leave kept replaying on a continuous loop. The experience of knowing the Captain was always watching them at sea was both reassuring and vulnerable in mysterious ways.

The Alchemist began to wonder…

“What might I experience beyond this cave?

How would others accept or refuse them on land?

The Alchemist thought about the Captain’s greeting to them and how it was different from their “I am…” The Captain said. “I am the Captain.”

“I am… in my ice cave,” the Alchemist remembered telling the Captain.

“Does that mean I am… the Alchemist?” The Alchemist wondered.

Has the Captain always been the Captain?

This sent the Alchemist in a loop. Their cave began to heat up and melt at uneven paces. The Alchemist experienced cold, where their body and muscles could barely move. Then heat rippled all over their body, sweat knotting on their forehead. Their skin grew boiling to the touch, and for the 1st time, they could not fully control the weight, pressure, or the temperature of their ice cave.

“Will I always remain alone in my cave, as the Alchemist?” The Alchemist thought.

They kept repeating the same phrase, “I am…” “I am…” “I am…” until it was written and scratched all over the walls of their ice cave.

These “I am’s.” They kept repeating wordless weight and motion onto every breath of the Alchemist. The waves crashed against the rhythm, repetition, and pace of their breath, creating gaps of mis-sync and broken pieces that Alchemist could not seem to put back together.

The words written on the ice cave walls felt as if they had grown eyes and were watching the Alchemist.

When the Alchemist was finished writing and had nothing left to say. These are the phrases that didn’t melt:

“I Am Ordinary in This World.”

“I Am Calling to Adventure.”

“I Am Willing and Able to Refuse the Call.”

“I Am Meeting Mentors.”

“I Am Crossing the 1st Threshold.”

“I am Maintaining my Breath Amongst Tests, Allies & Enemies.”

“I Am Approaching the Innermost Cave.”

“I Am Facing My Ordeals.”

“I Am Rewarding.”

“I Am Breathing and Letting the Road Back Be.”

“I Am a Master of Worlds.”

“I Am Free to Journey.”

It was after 3 days and 3 nights that the Alchemist woke up floating in the middle of the ocean with their ice cave completely melted. The words they had written time and time again had been forgotten, but the effort, will, and action it took to write them felt weighed down within the pace of their breath. Sometimes the weight was present when they inhaled, other times it was during the hold, exhale, and pauses of inhibition that came to the surface of their awareness. It was as if this weight was constant and could never leave them, even if they tried to escape or resist it.

As long as they were breathing, they could never unknow the innate will of their truth.

The Alchemist saw land when looking right, on their left at equal distance, they noticed another ice cave floating above the ocean waves, and between both paths in the middle was the Captain’s Wheel.