You believe, somewhere underneath everything else you believe, that things are supposed to be hard. That effort is the proof. That if it came easily, it would not really count.
That belief has a name. No Pain, No Gain. And even though you do not want to believe life is hard, somewhere underneath, you believe it anyway.
It comes in different forms: I must have made a mistake, it was too simple; that was easy, something will go wrong; there must be something missing, it can’t be that easy.
Difficultly proves you earned it.
I finished the Damanhur Alchemy School almost ten years ago. The whole practice is built on one idea: bring order to your inner laboratory, your Athanor, and every tool you use afterward works better, not harder. More accurate results. Less effort required to get a better result. In short, easy.
You want exactly that. A version of your life, your work, your own mind even, where things stop costing you so much just to move forward.
I never kept up the alchemy exercises. Many of the rituals require physical space where you carry out the rituals, and I never organized my life around it. After enough time, that kind of thing gets away from you, like countless others. You get used to relying on manual effort.
You have your own version of this. The tool or system that would have made everything easier, sitting unbuilt or unused, while you kept pushing through without it.
The reasons can vary: I am not disciplined enough. It is too hard. It won’t work anyway. Who has the time? Ultimately, anything that simplifies your life is untrustworthy.
Here is the No Pain, No Gain part, stated plainly: if hard is what you trust, easy will always look suspicious, even when easy is exactly what you asked for.
This year I finally asked it directly: as I grow, why is this not getting easier alongside me? That sent me back to my old studies to find answers to an unresolved cost I was tired of paying. Synchronically, Alchemy resurfaced.
Last week, I did the ritual to harmonize masculine and feminine energy for the first time in years. I did not prepare well. My timer shut off. It was uncomfortable the entire thirty minutes. Partway through though, something changed in how I was relating to the discomfort itself. It felt important to keep going. Stopping was not an option.
You know that discomfort, too, the point past which quitting would hurt more than continuing, even before you know what is on the other side. You feel more pull to keep going than to give up.
Something changed in the week that followed. Not a switch flipping, exactly. More patience than usual. A conversation showing me an unexpected shortcut. Considerably less effort than what I have been using to generate results.
What is something you already know would make your life easier, that you still have not done, because some part of you believes it should not be that simple?
Resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance.
Vegetal Entanglements,
P.S. Naming a pattern like this out loud to someone who isn’t in it with you tends to loosen it faster than just thinking about it alone does. Want to tell me about it over tea? Book a Tea & Plants chat →
