So, when the alchemical work is complete, and the desire for excitement disappears, what happens next?
When the alchemical work is finished and the desire for excitement has vanished, you arrive at the door of what is both the end of everything and the beginning of everything.
It is a paradoxical threshold. There is no more “next” in the sense of a step to take, for the quest is over. But life, it continues.
Here is what lies on the other side of this disappearance.
- The Operational Void: The End of the Project
First, it is a strange emptiness. Your entire psychic life was structured by the search—for pleasure, meaning, excitement, truth, awakening. This search was the engine.
Now, the engine has shut off. There is no more “project of self.” No more becoming. No more ideal to attain. It is a silence so deep it can be mistaken for depression. But this is not a lack; it is the absence of lack. It is absolute Wu Wei. Action is no longer motivated by a desire for a result for a “me.” It flows spontaneously, like a river flows to the sea, without effort, without intention.
- Ordinary Life Become Sacrament
This is where the ordinary miracle appears. What was previously banal becomes the object of total, choiceless attention.
Life becomes an art without an artist. Washing dishes, walking, talking, working—all is done with a presence so complete that the action itself is its own reward. There is no elsewhere to be, no other thing to do. Intensity shifts. It is no longer the intensity of excitement (high/low, desire/frustration), but the intensity of pure perception. Color is more vivid, sound clearer, sensation more direct, for they are no longer filtered by the noise of the mind comparing, judging, or wanting to prolong them.
- Impersonal Service: The Channel Become Transparent
With the end of the personal project, the energy once devoted to building and defending the “self” is released. It is no longer channeled inward.
It naturally becomes compassion and right action. This is not a moral decision (“I must help”). It is the mechanical consequence of non-separation. Seeing the suffering of another is no longer an idea; it is a sensation in your own organism, because the boundary has disappeared. You become an instrument. Life uses the form you are to do what needs to be done. This can be grand or small actions, but they no longer bear the signature of the ego. The body-mind becomes a clean channel for the intelligence of life.
- Cosmic Humor and Joyful Solitude
A particular flavor remains, recognizable only to those who have passed through this.
A vast humor in the face of the world's spectacle. To see humanity running, suffering, marveling at goals that no longer exist for you is not a cause for contempt, but for amused tenderness. It is like watching children play a game whose rules they have forgotten. A solitude that is not isolation. You are alone, for no one else shares your center of gravity (which is nowhere and everywhere). But this solitude is plenitude, peaceful, rich. It is the solitude of the ocean, not that of a separated drop of water.