We will explore alchemy as a useful symbolic tool for psychological transformation. Remember that anyone interested and involved in their own psychological development is, in fact, an alchemist! And therefore, alchemy offers you powerful tools to access your inner laboratory.
One of the main ideas that he proposes is that no transformation can be considered complete if it does not occur at all levels of reality: the physical, mental and spiritual levels. For this reason, alchemy is an amalgam of science, psychology and spirituality.
In the mental (or psychological) sphere, alchemical techniques attempt to perfect character and personality to achieve personal transformation. Alchemy uses cryptic and dreamlike language because it wants to strike up a conversation with our more intuitive, less rational mind. It is part of the genius of the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung to discover in the arcane practices of alchemy so many parallels with psychological processes, especially with what he called "individuation", that is, the ability of each person to access their unconscious , understand it, work it and integrate it in a healthy way into your daily life.
Psychological alchemy faces the basic problem that over the years we tend to be more rigid, to feel less alive, less curious, less prone to exploration. In general, although we all know admirable exceptions
—People who over the years do not lose their curiosity and mental agility—, the truth is that you probably also know many close examples of people who over the years have become more rigid. Why does that happen?
Neuroscience explains it with this simple example: in a radio, cables and connections are not usually changed throughout their useful life. However, the human brain is a network that constantly modifies itself. This extraordinary feature of the brain is what we call brain plasticity. So we are programmed to change, but we don't always do it! And here is the challenge: We have to learn how we can enhance this natural ability, to avoid adopting rigid and routine behaviors, clinging to judgments and prejudices, and outdated beliefs that limit our experience and our enjoyment of the world.
The alchemists described this tendency to become rigid in a very specific way: they called it "turning into salt." Because as life passes we accumulate judgments and beliefs that structure, and often limit, our life experience, in the same way that salt is the crystallization of energy in rigid structures.