The nature of mind, consciousness or duality, is alchemical. Transformation is inherent to its nature.

Yet, there is no object that acts upon a subject to prompt this apparent metamorphosis, for it is already what is apparently happening.

Awareness is the substrate in which consciousness (or mind) appears to transform.

While the transformation initially appears as a shift from light to dark, consciousness to awareness, negative to positive, bondage to liberation, both aspects are in fact non-dual, meaning that they are two parts of one whole.

Therefore, alchemy, is not the opposite expression of a seemingly dual appearance, rather it is the collapse of both expressions.

The collapse into non-dual consciousness is the collapse of the seeming end to a dual nature: the collapse of a positive or negative polarity. It is a return to the direct appearance that has no name, no label, and no known origin. However, the apparent collapse, or return, is also an illusion, as there is no thing that has ever left its resting place – it only appeared seemingly so within the confines of mind, duality or consciousness.

The idea that there is someone on a spiritual path, moving towards liberation in time is a dream. It’s a null set. An impossibility, for who is it that would be completing this transformation?

Let’s take the caterpillar that nestled into the cocoon, and later became a butterfly. There is simply what is appearing in the exact moment that it appears. Therefore the caterpillar, cocoon or butterfly never happened, except in the moment of its happening. It is subsequent to the happening that a description of the happening can ever take place. In other words, the concept of time is secondary to the actual and initial happening itself.

In order for a transformation or metamorphosis to have occurred there would have to have been a known origin of the appearance and a known ending, and that could only exist within the confines of time, mind or consciousness.

In other words, birth and death could only exist in mind. So, again, the nature of time, or consciousness is dual, and therefore alchemical, and transformation is inherent to its nature.

However, this apparent transformation cannot appear without the substrate in which it appears which is awareness.

Without an object there can be no subject, they arise simultaneously, together, or not at all.

*In the context here, and because of language’s risk of misinterpretation, mind, focus, attention, consciousness or duality, all refer to the same thing.