If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Saponification
Lately I’ve been thinking about what I learned that was of spiritual value from my adventures in soap-making and I wondered at how the world around us is filled with so many examples of how spirit moves…it seems that everywhere I look there is spiritual impact to be seen.
My first real business was a handmade soap company I created called Elysian Dream. This company was born of a personal need to soothe my sensitive skin and a growing awareness about the connections between what we put on and in our bodies and how a simple choice like using soap, can positively impact the world around us.
I didn’t know how to make soaps and lotions but armed with books written by a handful of natural cosmetic artisans, I experimented with endless recipe variations until I found blends that spoke to my soul.
There was something magical about watching the ingredients come together into the thick, wonderfully creamy concoction called the emulsion phase. It thickened to a texture more velvet and inviting than the smoothest pudding, and after the essential oils were added it looked and smelled so wonderful that my husband would claim he wanted to eat it!!!
Emulsion was my absolute favorite part of the process. It fascinated me every time I saw the water and oil phases come together in that beautiful creamy mixture. I was alive with the joy of watching it literally transform from something with two very distinct boundaries to a gorgeous homogeneous mass, right before my eyes. I never really understood what it was about it that provoked such internal satisfaction though, until much later.
All of Your Parts Have Value…Even if They Don’t Seem to Mix
The lesson hidden in soap-making is subtle and profound. The process consists of two elements (water and oil) which typically don’t mix, in fact they actually repel each other. When water is ‘treated’ with potassium or sodium hydroxide, it changes the composition of the water.
This treated water, when mixed with oil forms a bond that transforms what they were previously into a new physical form. Watching this transformation was what hooked me on making natural cosmetics…only later would I realize that I had stumbled across a huge metaphor for life.
Spiritual Saponification
Like the numerous different oils and water variations that can be used in a soap recipe, we can have any number of parts operating within us at one time. In fact, most of us naturally view ourselves in parts. This can be really obvious in language when you hear people talk about the hands, i.e. (on the one hand cheesecake sounds delicious right now but on the other I’m watching my weight.) Or the less obvious but examples, I’d like to make my husband happy but I need to be true to myself.
The single ingredient that can pull all of these parts within us together to form something new, is spirit…once spirit infuses our thoughts a change occurs which pulls all of the mind and body into a new substance (a whole person operating from the center of their being).
I have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. ~ Joseph Campbell
At this point there are no longer separate pieces (in which consciousness is divided) but one cohesive whole…and this whole washes away all that is unneeded and sets you on the track that Joseph Campbell refers to in the above quote.
Divided consciousness makes you unable to see the road the universe has laid out for you…when one pointed consciousness prevails it appears…and destiny rises up to greet you, where before there was nothing. A spirit infused mind is in harmony with life and moves with the ease that comes from being conscious of yourself and your nature within the universal system.
Most of us use but a fraction of what we are…of what is available to us.
I see spiritual saponification happen when I work with clients and it’s life changing. So here’s a reminder to love all of your parts…because it takes more than half of you to be whole 
.
