Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Have you ever found yourself saying to yourself or to a friend, “Why does this keep happening to me?” or, “Why does this always happen to me?”

Many of us find we tend to repeat experiences again and again.

These repetitive experiences may not always be in the identical form, but at some level it’s as if at times we are going around and around in a revolving door. No matter how hard we try to get somewhere, we end up at the same place.

Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Whenever we feel a push within ourselves or are feeling driven, we are experiencing not the flow of conscious awareness but an emotional charge that’s unresolved from our past, most often childhood.

We may experience a pushiness in our voice as we talk. Or we might feel a driven sense as we seek to accomplish tasks.

Instead of an easiness, a restfulness, a peacefulness, there’s a somewhat forced feel to what we are saying or doing.

Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Suppose a person finds themselves in an abusive relationship. Perhaps after years of abuse, they finally discover the courage and means to leave.

What tends to happen now is that the person feels as though the relationship caused them to lose themselves, reducing them to someone who couldn’t even make decisions for themselves.

Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Life regularly presents us with situations that trigger in us a reaction, though many people are perhaps unaware they are reacting to a situation rather than responding to it constructively.

Emotional reactions are damaging to ourselves and our relationships, whereas an appropriate response increases our quality of life.

Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Our awareness of our experience of life, and our actual experiences, can be worlds apart. When they are, life isn’t of the high quality it could be.

Few of us grow up with a high level of awareness, so that all the parts of our experience flow together as a grand symphony.

Alchemy of the Heart is a book about changing the quality of our experience by heightening our awareness, which allows us to integrate every aspect of our experience.

Insight from Michael Brown’s Alchemy of the Heart

Much about our human experience is “hidden from us in plain sight,” as Michael puts it.

Until we are shown the obvious, we just don’t see it.

From birth, we traverse what Michael calls the pathway of awareness: