The Alchemy of Satisfaction, Goethean Studies Retreat, August 5, 20... http://www.goetheanstudies.org/cscontent/lectures/5aug2000-full.

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Consciousness Studies RETREAT

Craving and Satisfaction

August 5, 2000

So what I'd like us to look at now is the question of satisfaction as it relates to healing. Or put another way
what's the difference between being satisfied and being happy? If it's true that we have a biological basis for
hunger, and if it's also true that we have a psychological pattern which permits craving, human beings have a
deep polarity between the biological necessity of hunger and the psychological manifestation of cravings. The
psyche craves through the astral body, and the principle of the will in the astral body is desire. In the astral
body the human is free from the biological imperative of the physical. The astral is the source of the free forces
in the human. It's the forces in the astral body which separate the soul out from the rest of creation. The astral
forces are the source of desire. In its root desire is the will to win or get something or have it all to ourselves or
hold it forever. The astral is what we could call the personal will to do or to have some thing rather than just to
be, which is more what hunger is about.

Hunger, as a biological necessity is about just being. We exist so we are hungry. Craving comes out of hunger
but is something that goes beyond simply being into the realm of desire. Desire is the feeling that I'm not
getting what I need. So if we're not getting what we need, then what's built into the soul is this craving to be
satisfied. However, at its root desire has a connection to hunger, and we can work on it that way. We can
move desire back into the lawfulness of hunger and away from a craving by paying attention to what the
hunger is about. If we pay attention to what hunger is about, the craving has a chance to be satisfied. If we
satisfy craving we will still have the hunger, but the craving does not drive us into deeper dilemmas of
dissatisfaction. So from one point of view the difficulty in the soul, is the desire in the will in the astral body.
In the astral body, will manifests as I'm not getting what I need, we could say. Or I got what I need but now I
want more of it, whatever the variation. And the manifestation of that in the soul is I will get it. And if I can't
get it, I will substitute something so that I get the feeling like I'm getting it, because I must have the
satisfaction. So if we're not satisfied, everyone else around us probably will also not be satisfied, and we will
live in a world of dissatisfaction. We'll live in a universe of dissatisfaction, because the only thing we will have
in common with other beings is dissatisfaction. When this happens what we're doing is we're seeing the astral
bodies of everyone else with a low level of clairvoyance. This is singles bars, you know? The topic there is
what is your dissatisfaction? Name your brand of dissatisfaction. I'll try and match my dissatisfaction to your
dissatisfaction, and you'll be my baby tonight! And there we go. But then in the morning dissatisfaction again.
And then judgment, and then "I could never commit to you because I've been hurt so much-- thank you, and
bye."

It's a peculiar thing in the will, that desire, because it has a biological root that's objectively lawful and given to
humans by wise hierarchies. But because of Lucifer and Ahriman, there's been this problem of the illusion of
physical matter that's come in, and then as a result of interaction with big chunks of physically enduring things
which resist us at every turn, the will force in the soul has been conditioned to just go out and overcome
physical things. Within the soul the impulse to do this overcoming goes beyond biological imperatives and
becomes tinged with personal desire. The will in the realm of life is just urge which has to do with being
hungry. My urge is to eat when I'm hungry. I'm sleepy. My urge is to go to sleep. I'm thirsty. My urge is to go
get a drink. And that's fine. But then that urge gets connected to desire, then the will shifts away from simple
hunger pangs to craving. And then in the craving, the hunger is not the issue anymore; because the hunger can
be satisfied, but the desire is much more difficult to satisfy. This is, then, over eating or over drinking or
running around with a million people or whatever. The basic biological fact becomes a monkey on the back of
the soul, because the will that's connected to the basic biology has been twisted in the astral body to craving.
Essentially we are engaged in the same acts of, for instance, eating. But instead of having the soul experience, I
eat and then I'm satisfied; it's I eat and I'm still not satisfied. And there's a great esoteric mystery in that. How
has this turn of events come to be? So in order to see a picture of it, we need to look at how we can cultivate in
ourselves a sense of satisfaction even though I don't have all the things that I am craving? That's one side. And
the other side is, how can I substitute things for my craving that will eventually not produce the craving, but
move my organism more towards the hunger with its potential for satisfaction? How can I find something
which will give me satisfaction in the soul but will not create the echo of the craving that goes beyond the
hunger -- won't push the desire button, but just go to urge and deal with that. There are great will mysteries

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hidden in this work.

In Ayurvedic medicine they have three constitutions: the vata, the pitta, and the kapha. And in Western
alchemy we have a similar arrangement. The salt constitution, which is kapha, and the sulfur constitution,
which is pitta, and the mercury constitution, which is vata. The salt, the sulfur and the mercury provide for the
soul a kind of informational reservoir or database of information that is programmed in a certain language.
And when what we could call the mercury soul has an experience it goes to that mercury database and says
how does this fit in with the world view coming from your body? How does this fit in with your temperament
or your bodily constitution? How does this fit in with the language that your constitution is looking for when
your soul tries to recreate situations from your memory ?

Uh, I'm sorry -- a little dialogue box will come up -- you can't get there from here because you didn't give the
right commands to get that information, because your soul can't handle that level of insight that your body is
trying to give to you. Everyone has the physical, life, feeling and self awareness bodies in common. But with
those basic bodies a particular person will focus particular and individualized energies of temperament and
constitution. The constitutional patterns take the melancholia, or the cholera of the temperament and form them
into compounds of patterns. These compound temperaments provide the processes which alternate between the
elemental qualities. These three, process oriented, temperamental compounds are called mercury, sulfur, and
salt. These processes make use of the elemental information of temperament which are the basis for the
personality, but they are not the information itself. They just make use of the elemental forces to support the
interaction between the physical body and the life forces and the conscious awareness. So in your constitution
you take what somebody else would have for carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen, liver-lung-kidney- heart and
you combine them in personality processes which are much more individual than the elemental forces and
patterns in the life organs. So the same carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen in you is giving rise to a whole
other universe than it is in someone else.

The hydrogen in you -- because you're a fire constitution, you're a sulfur say, is wreaking havoc. The
hydrogen in your diet is tearing you apart, especially in the summer. If someone else had the same diet but was
a salt constitution there would be no problem with what was in the diet. But for you the diet is killing you. But
you don't know that, because you grew up, say, with somebody who had a different constitution, your Mom
for instance, and she made food that satisfied her, and she was a salt, and you ate the food which agreed with
her. It formed patterns of desire in you and now that you are out in the world you continue to eat to satisfy her
constitution. Later in you life, maybe you marry someone who's a salt and they make things that really fit them.
You come down to a meal and you eat, and they are getting satisfied and you're getting slowly toxic. No ill
will. Just karma and possibility. And so when we looked at the four elements and the organs linked to them in
the temperament that was a fundamental arrangement. We can now use that arrangement as the basis for
looking at the next level of the possibilities of dynamic between the elemental qualities of temperament.

So the sulfur, the salt, and the mercury are dynamic processes moving between carbon(earth, melancholia),
hydrogen (fire, cholera), oxygen(water, phlegma) and nitrogen (air, sanguine). The sulfur constitution has a
tendency to love very inflammatory things. These people love the sulfur. They love burning, sticky situations
that have the possibility of turning into volcano-like lava flows. This constitution just loves that. This person
loves things to be cooking and bubbling and they will seek conflict out of a sense of moral imperative. The
sulfur feels that is a manifest destiny for them to tell everyone what are the facts and then go and do something
about it. This person loves being the one that goes in and stirs the pot. They will go out of their way to involve
you in sticky things so they can watch you squirm around in the lava. Because they have the feeling in them
like, I'm on the planet to get everybody up to speed. The Lord made me to tell you how you can get up to
speed. That's the sulfur.

Rudolf Steiner describes sulfur as the quickening agent which leads everything to the periphery. And so the
sulfur in us wants to control and push and dominate and get things to critical mass and get things to fester.
Once things are oozing and fermenting they step back and go RI wonder when they are going to realize that I
have the correct answers to all of this? That's the sulfur in us, yeah? And that's okay if it's in balance. But if the
sulfur in us gets fed a lot of steak and eggs in the morning or worse in the evening steak and eggs, on a sultry
summer evening , what could be better? Oh Yeah! steak and eggs with lots of mayonnaise. We could say
mayonnaise with steak and eggs in it and that would be closer to the truth for a sulfur. Mayonnaise is eggs and
oil, sulfur. Steak and fat is more sulfur. Gotta have it. What's steak without gobs of mayonnaise, right?

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So it's something like that. So the sulfur craves things which are really dense and rich with fire, like meat and
oil. (think pepperoni pizza with extra cheese). Then just to get a balanced diet (heart doctor says to get a
balanced diet) they will go for anything with heavy sugar (think glazed Krispy Kreme donuts) on it and stuff
that and a big Dr. Pepper on top of it all for dessert. If another person put that food in themselves, it would just
sit there and go churn, churn, churn like that, for days and they would turn slightly green. But for the sulfur it
goes in and it goes hiss, burp, boom and they start talking non stop for days about how you could do
something better if you did it their way. [laughter] So that's sulfur. Food that has a yearning to go to the
periphery (warmth) is taken in abundance and then it drives the soul life to the periphery (think-You do this).
And when the soul is moving this way it's like you do this, you do that, you do this, you do that. And if life is
all boiling and festering around them, if everyone is running around to please them then life is great. The sulfur
has the feeling like Ahhh, I did my job. Now on to the next thing. That's sulfur.

And so what the sulfur is attracted to is a big chunk of greasy meat. There is a lot of fire energy in carnitas. If
the sulfur type is a little more evolved, it'll be egg salad, but it will have to have lots of mayonnaise -- and
really pungent herbs and hot stuff. Cayenne, yeah! Cayenne mayonnaise sandwiches. Yes! Salsa with a little
mayonnaise. Favorite. This is so that they can keep the level of satisfaction up in the hot and festering sulfur
range. And that's fine for the short run when the world needs saving. But if that's the habitual food and that's
the habitual mood of soul, then acidosis sets in eventually. Then the festering starts to be self corrosive,
because the system gets overloaded with too much sulfur, and the blood is literally boiling. The feet swell and
begin to fester, the skin gets mangy and eruptions begin to occur. So what we need there is a long cool down.
So what would really help is maybe a mango lassi made with yogurt and mango instead of the Dr. Pepper and
Krispy Kreme. The lassi would cool out the sulfurous blood. So when you go to the Indian restaurants and
you get the chicken with the pepper that goes hiss, burp, boom, then you have the mango lassi there to give
some balance. That's why it's there on the menu, to just cool down the sulfur. So the sulfur constitution gets
great benefit by eating salad late. Just give your system a rest there at night. Let the liver process the fats in the
company of the enzymes from the fresh salad. Let things cool down. Go into evening softly. Soft music and
evening ragas. Forego the evening rages. To balance sulfur go on moonlit walks by the water. Things like that
can soften the heat with a cool atmosphere. Pictures of waterfalls above your bed. Just whatever you can do.
Angel wings that are glowing blue instead of MICHAEL WITH HIS FIERY SWORD KILLING THE
DRAGON OVER YOUR BED! Go for the moon goddess. I think that you get the picture.

So what would be very good in a salt constitution is to have some of that energy, to have some of the fire of
the sulfur. So it would be really good to get the person who wants to just eat sweet, glutinous custards and
pastries all the time to bite into a hunk of steak. The ideal pastries for the salt constitution are the ones that have
to have sweet gushy stuff on the inside. Not a biscotti. No. A salt satisfying pastry is one of those things when
we bite it on one end stuff oozes out on the other end. That custardy squishy stuff satisfies the dry and chalky
mood of the salt constitution.

A salt nature finds satisfaction when you can take your finger on the plate and swirl some sweet gooey thing
around it, kind of like poi. Egg custard is British poi. So the salt constitution loves things where the water and
the earth kind of work it out and form a gelatinous colloid, and the food basically is like a warm sweet mud.
Salt people go for the warm sweet mud-like food group. Mud, mud, glorious mud. Perfectly lovely for cooling
the blood. Glorious mud. Remember that old song? So the salt constitution is looking for the world to be
warm sweet mud. Lovely -- what you pay for to be in the spa. Just be there. Oh yeah. Zzzz. The mood of the
salt is that the water and the earth come together, and they make this gooey thing, but not sticky like the sulfur
fire . Not that sticky burning feeling. Not hot and burning and sticky like tar. No, smoooooth. Gooey.
Slippery. Yeah. Salt loves that because as substances salts goes from being crystalline to being a colloid to
being a solution. Then they go back into being a colloid and then into a crystal again. A colloid is an organic
crystal that can become gooey. So the colloid is really the characteristic of the salt in the middle of its
transformation from a crystal to a solution.

A jelly is a colloid. Jello is a colloid. Your connective tissue is a colloid. Your fingernails start out as a colloid
and then precipitate out into a kind of dry skin. The same with your hair. So anywhere where is a kind of
gelatinous something or other, or a kind of a jello like mud condition, that's the salt living in there. The salt can
go up into the water and then down into the crystal. But it doesn't have any fire. If it gets fire, the colloid dries
out and turns to dust as the gelatin burns up and the life potential goes away, and then you just have dust, and
then the dust gets more and more dusty until it becomes so fine that it just self combusts like wheat dust in a
grain silo and then you're in the fire pole. But when the salt goes through the fire and turns to dust and ignites

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it can no longer form a colloid, it can no longer be a support for life.

What the salt constitution is really afraid of is too much fire, because they'll dry out, and turn to dust and they
won't be able to relate to the water again. And what the fiery sulfur is afraid of is that they're going to cool
down too much and get soggy. The sulfurs don't want to get soggy. They want things to just cook all the time,
to fester and to keep bubbling. The sulfur, when it is in balance eventually ends up rendering whatever is
cooking into a more intimate condition known to alchemists as "moist". This is the paradox of sulfur. If they
keep cooking they become moist. This is polar to the salt which is moist and colloidal to begin with but if the
salt becomes unbalanced the salt constitution becomes dry and dusty.

If left to themselves sulfur constitutions would just keep festering and cooking until they began to ooze grease,
and the salt constitution would swell up into a large ball of colloidal substance which would eventually dry out
like a puff ball mushroom. In these polarities the two constitutions would not have anything to say to one
another.

So the third constitution, the vata, the mercury, brings the other two into interaction. The vata constitution is
aware, we could say chronically aware of imbalances of salt and sulfur. So if there is any imbalance within ten
miles of the mercury constitution, it takes the imbalance personally. Soul wise the mercury constitution is
incredibly aware of currents of meaning shifting between people. A mercury person knows exactly who's
thinking what, when. That's good, but it's also very crazy making, because by being so aware of every
imbalance the mercury constitution never gets any rest. They never get any rest because the world, Lord help
us, is totally full of imbalances, and the mercury constitution expects that somewhere there would be balance
and rest if it was a better world. But damn, here comes the newspaper in the morning and there we go. The
currents of imbalance start.

Alchemically this mercury pattern is good, because it brings these other two constitutions into interaction. But
the problem is that this becomes a desire in the mercury constitution, and the desire in the mercury constitution
is to know what exactly is going on with everything, all of the time. The salt constitution wants to know when
lunch is, and the sulfur constitution wants to know when the next encounter is, because that's where the fun is.
And the mercury constitution wants to know why was I put on this earth? What's the meaning of existence?
The mercury feels like asking everyone, "does existence make sense to you? Do you get it? Does life make
sense to you? Really, do we all have to keep doing this same stupid life thing again and again?"

This type of obsessive inner posture reveals the Achilles heel of the mercury, because the mercury becomes
imprisoned in repetition, because the constantly have to bring salt to the sulfur and the sulfur to the salt.
Constantly. That's their whole thing. So they just have to keep repeating the same thing with people. "Will you
never learn?" they say. "Can't you see that what you're doing is going to result in this?" And the mercury can
see it, but they can't do a blessed thing about it. So what happens is it drives them nuts, because they can see
the polarities so clearly. They live in the oscillation between the two poles. They are the oscillation and they
know it. They know that, this too shall pass. That's written in their blood serum. This... shall pass. This is
going to change. Watch this change into that, and watch it next week change back again. Isn't that interesting?
And then when they try to explain that to somebody, it doesn't usually come across too well. So the mercury
has to find satisfaction in being able to form images that are accurate to the phenomenon that is changing even
as we speak. The only saving grace for them, is that they can easily take what they know and then make it
appear as if it was someone else's idea. If a mercury tries to go head on with a sulfur, that's it for the mercury.
Intellectually, the mercury can argue any position, so the other two usually consider them to be intellectual
lightweights.

Here's a gesture for a sulfur in giveaway. (Sticking things in his pockets) [laughter] So giveaway to one
constitution may not be what it is to another constitution. Here's giveaway to a salt. (Tossing papers from a
stack slowly one by one and watching each one fall all the way to the floor) [laughter] Is it lunch time yet?
Here's a mercury in giveaway. (Picking up the papers from the floor and starting to read each one and then in
an instant switching to another etc., etc.)

And the mercury in giveaway is telling everyone, you need to give that to them, and you need to give that to
them etc. but the mercury can't really give away by doing that. And the sulfur can't do give away by gathering
all the cookies into his pocket. The sulfur has to give the cookies to others. And the salt has to volunteer to
instigate an initiative. All right. I'll do it, but I won't like it. And I'll only do it if I can have extra time off for

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lunch. So what the sulfur has to give away is the need to control the mood of give it to me, give it to me. And
the sulfur has to learn to say "all right, tell me what you think should be done with this." The sulfur wishes to
dominate so much that they can't get any satisfaction. They care too much about how it all has to come out.
They feel that things have to come out just so. Unfortunately things never cooperate in this, because there's all
these other wiggly things happening all the time, and dammit people always mess things up! "So, look, just do
it my way and we'll all be happier!" That's the sulfur gesture.

[Question:] What really is the problem of the mercury constitution again?

[Dennis:] The mercury has to get salt and sulfur balanced in their own constitution and give away trying to be
everything to everyone.

[Question:] What can help to heal imbalances in mercury?

[Dennis:] Forming an image and thinking it backwards into silence is a beginning. as well as a daily practice in
observing phenomena that are lawful. Lawfulness to the mercury seems somehow suspect. The mercury
person just wants things to change. They don't care how they change. They just want them to change. Trying
to perceive what is lawful change and what is not lawful is very healing for a mercury.

[Question:] What is the real nature of the mercury giveaway?

[Dennis:] If mercury tries to form an accurate or lawful image, it starts to slow down to somewhere within the
speed of light. And as that happens these people start to recognize, oh yes, there's more to life than just doing
stuff and networking. They realize that humans can actually think about something for longer than three
seconds. They also realize that if they had enough fire, they could actually get something finished, rather than
starting a zillion things forever and ever, which is cool when mercury needs to get some energy. The code of
the mercury is When you get lost, just start something. But mercury is very good at starting things and not
very good at finishing things or most especially getting things organized. You know the ROS word. So what
the mercury has to give away is flightiness. This constitution has to give that away and say, "I'm actually going
to learn something that is objectively sequential that's not just dependent upon my ability just to tell cool
stories. I'm going to actually have to study something that other people have studied and figured out, and that I
must apply my attention to. I must be able to think something in a consequential way." To do this is a
giveaway for a mercury. What they're giving away is the freedom to just say "this lawfulness stuff bugs me.
I'm going out for a walk. Who cares about the right genus or species name? Botany. Huh! I just want to go
look at the flowers. Isn't that enough? Who cares about ratio and proportion? I'm a creative artist. My creativity
is a god given gift. Why do I have to give away that I'm creative? I don't have to play by your rules." That's
what the mercury has to give away. And when they do, they'll find that the nervousness they have goes way
down. Their nervous energy becomes integrated. And the force of the mercury gets hold of sulfur and salt and
weaves them together, and then suddenly these people experience really deep creativity, which involves an
incredible amount of being able to keep a question open for a long time. That's what the salt gives to the
mercury. And then when the answer starts to come, to be able to get something done about it, that's what the
sulfur gives to the mercury. And then when they actually have the thing done, to turn right around and let it go
and act as if the answer that they just got is not the answer, and just keep the process open, keep the question
open that is salt.

[Question:] Why salt?

What I just described would actually be a salted mercury, because the salt can stay in a question for a decade,
as long as there's lunch. The mercury allows the person to keep returning in a rhythmic way to the question
and the salt lets the person not go crazy that there is no answer. In these complex relationships the mercury is
the one that must bring stuck things into movement. As a result the mercury constitution is the one that is most
easily set out of balance. It is also the last one to come into balance. Mercury is always anticipating a little bit
that something will go out, so as soon as mercury goes out, it doesn't go out a little bit. It goes way out. And
then it says oh god, I'm way out! I have to compensate. Whoooom! Bang! It's way on the other side. That's the
problem. Extremes. So what the mercury has to do is find rhythm. Rhythm is great problem of the mercury.
And it sounds odd because the mercury is rhythm. But there's a difference between oscillation and rhythm. So
the mercury has to transform oscillation into rhythm, and to do that, they have to give away the addiction to
extreme states. They have to just give that away. But we don't know any people like that do we? [laughter]

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Rhythm is the gift of mercury and rhythm is the wound of the mercury.

Each constitution has a gift that it brings. The salt brings the ability to simply keep cycling a question without
getting an answer. And foods which support that are cooling, succulent, soft, easily digestible, just cooked all
the way out till it's blended. Everything's blended. It's all blended. Smoothies and things like that help us to
keep open without falling into the salt wound. Custards and pies and things like that soothe the dry and
precipitating wound of the salt. That's what the salt loves, soothing warm sweet things. The sulfur needs some
of that. But if the sulfur just says oh yeah, egg custard. Cool. How about egg custard? Yeah, I could eat a lot
of egg custard. We went there earlier.

But, you know, there's a question in this; because we're talking here about satisfaction. Suppose that you are a
sulfur and your doctor tells you that the big steak that you always eat at dinner is killing you. He recommends
that you avoid it. But there is no satisfaction in this and the thought of eating salad for dinner makes you think
that death would be better. So if you find out that the food you want is bad for you it will be easier to give up
if you find something which is acceptable and that also gives you satisfaction . It's better to eat the sulfur in an
egg custard than a big fatty steak. And so if we can make a deal with ourselves that we won't eat the steak and
get the salad, It might be that instead of the Dr. Pepper we can have some sweet egg custard after the salad,
then we're having satisfaction even though we are not eating the steak. Through the sulfur in the egg custard
we're still getting what our constitution is looking for, but we've made a really good compromise and a
substitution which helps us to cool out the blood. See, something like that.

And that's where the creativity comes in your inner work, is trying to find the thing that is a picture for you of
why the dissatisfaction is there. What is it that is causing the dissatisfaction so that you can try to substitute
something which will appease the hunger that is inherent in our constitution and yet will not feed the cravings
of the shadow side of the B constitution. A very good place to start the inner work is in paying attention to
what we eat. Try to substitute something which will give satisfaction for a food which is a problem.

Very often people who are sulfur people who start to do this and they give up red meat and very yang things,
what they'll often say is, "yeah, I don't miss meat so much. I don't miss red meat, you know. I mean I have a
little chicken, I have a little fish, this is all right. But do you know what I really miss? I miss the crunch." The
sulfur gets great satisfaction when the canines go through the flesh and come in contact with the bone in there.
The crunch is very satisfying. So there is something in the crunch that they miss when they have a little piece
of poached salmon or even egg custard. These things are good substitutes protein-wise and blah blah blah. But
it just doesn't do it in terms of crunch the bone. [laughter] There's something in that, you know, crrrrunch. So
beef jerky is more satisfying than egg custard, because of the crrrrunch. And there's something in that. So if
you're really a bona-fide sulfur, then maybe a switch to a little treat of turkey jerky will do it, or something like
that. Who knows? But it's the satisfaction of the whole experience that is where there are great possibilities. If
you're struggling with these types of things, take a look at that. So try, when you take something out of your
diet, to find what the real satisfaction was in the old food. If you work meditatively with the picture of you
eating the forbidden food there will often be a yearning that comes up. Try to picture in yourself, what this
yearning would be. If you can find this picture in yourself, then ask yourself if there is something else that
moves like this? Is there something in a particular season that reminds me of this? Go through the grocery
store, but don't go through the grocery store on automatic pilot; because on automatic pilot you're going to buy
a lot of stuff that is going to tell you that you should take it home and make friends since you can't have your
old friend anymore. At these times the grocery store is like the lonely hearts club. Go through and look at the
salad fixings. I know, it's green and you are after the meat. Just go through and look and see is there is
something there that causes a kind of a recognition that if I had this thing it would take care of my craving. Or
it may be a particular form of food which can bring satisfaction. Maybe the thing for you, if you're struggling
with sulfur and you need the crunch, would be getting some kind of grain cereal (which gives you a similar
kind of fire -- the grain gives you a similar kind of sulfur) that had a little more crunch to it. It may be
something as simple as that, that you could substitute for this thing that was killing you.

[Question:] I'm very sulfur and I've been working with this since last fall. One of the things that I discovered
in this is that sulfur kind of associates satisfaction with being spent. You like to work really hard and enjoy the
satisfaction of being spent. But part of the practice has been to be able to slow down enough to notice that
satisfaction as something besides being spent.

[Dennis:] Yeah, wow. That's big.

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[Question continues:] So the shift in what feels satisfying is also important.

[Dennis:] Thanks, that's a higher level of this work. If you find something to satisfy the mouth urge, then that
is the door to the constitution. It's like what goes in the mouth creates a whole panorama of smells and textures
which are the beginning of the process of digestion. And once we can satisfy that, then we can begin to see,
well god, I eat at fifty miles an hour. It may be that we eat that fast because we're afraid that the flavor isn't
going to last or something. So we eat and eat but still there is no satisfaction. So maybe to slow down the
speed of the eating we could put an hour glass on the table to remind us to slow down. Just something gentle
like that. To say to myself I can't finish my meal until that sand stops falling.

I knew a guy who was a real sulfur. He went through a "you have to chew everything twenty-five times" diet
phase. That's fierce. But it was good for him because he eventually died of cancer of the digestive system. So
his doctor was right on telling him to chew his food like that. This guy could eat a whole chicken and then go
for the Cheetos and beer. To him this was no prodigious feat. This was just what you do when you are
hungry. If you went to dinner at his house they would bring out three chickens. One for him, one for his wife
and one for the company. This is truly amazing. It wasn't a game hen, you know? It was like a real chicken. So
that type of craving goes way beyond the biology of hunger. In Africa they dip the chicken in water enough so
that the whole village gets the soup. So it's more in the direction that Linda was talking about: watching
yourself do this thing and saying where is my satisfaction not happening for me? I'm focusing on food
because it's a place where a person can really start to work on themselves. Over the years what I've learned in
doing this work is that I would sit there on Wednesday afternoon during office hours talking to people about
taking flower essences and homeopathic remedies and meditations and exercises and whatever and I finally
realized that no amount of exercises or remedies can overcome poor eating habits. I would talk with people
again and again about their soul dilemmas and what it would all boil down to was what they were eating. And
it became crystal clear to me that that what a person is craving to eat is the place of the beginning of the work --
of what you put inside of you as food has a great deal to do with how you see yourself .

[Question:] What is the gift of sulfur?

[Dennis:] The gift of sulfur is that it gets things done. The gift of Mercury is that it can bring balance by
uniting the extremes. The gift of salt is that it can really know. It takes a long while for a salt person to know
something, but when they know it, they know it -- inside out, upside down, front and back. They really know
it. They permeate it. Like salt permeates water. They permeate what they are working with. They just keep the
problem cycling so long that it eventually dissolves into a solution. What was once a lot of different parts is
now all one thing, one custard. This used to be an egg. This used to be a banana. that condition is salt in one
extreme. If I just keep working with the water and the earth they both move towards each other and form a
solution or a colloid. Then the egg and the banana are brought into a higher salt condition. Where what was
once separated now has been brought into unity. Now it's custard. If the custard is just about to form and is
still in a solution and I add table salt the custard will fall to the bottom of the bowl and the water will rise to the
top of the bowl. This the salt as a manifestation.

The sulfur in this is the process by which we cook the original solution of eggs and milk and bananas. The
cooking drives the salt parts of egg, milk and banana into a more unified state as we gradually add heat and
stir. The stirring is the mercury. this rhythm enables the sulfur of the warmth of the cooking process to lift the
separate components of the mixture into a more intimate state. If I let this happen gradually then the custard
sets. If I shock the mixture by adding salt to the solution the custard falls out and it gets back to the original
salt form. If the custard sets into a pudding the sulfur yields to a salt at a higher level. The salt like mixture has
now become a colloid, a salt which resembles life, a living mineral. The sulfur brings things into a more
intimate condition. Cooking is sulfur as is baking. The different constituents become integrated in a more
intimate way. The gift of the sulfur is that when sulfur is applied to situations things get done they become
more enhanced and integrated.

[Question:] What does Mercury like to eat?

[Dennis:] Mercury likes to eat sweet things, the higher refined the better. Mercury types want the buzz. Forget
food! Food is for wimps! Food brings me down. Food makes me want to go lay down, if I'm a mercury, after
I eat it. So, yeah. Just the buzz. Then mercury is hungry again in ten minutes. Everything to a mercury is
Chinese food. It just goes right through, zoom, like that. So because it goes right through, stuff that takes a

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long time to break down in my digestion means I can't be in working on my computer with one hand and a Jolt
Cola in the other. That's a mercury picture there. So what the mercury is struggling with is that it has a deep
addiction to quick energy, which is highly processed grains, sugars and stuff that's just about to almost burst
into air and light. Mercury loves substances which are almost not there, like sugar. So sugar in any form is a
favorite mercury food. So what the mercury has to do is learn to find the same satisfaction that they get from
sugar satisfaction , which is mostly in the mouth and in the blood. That's where the satisfaction is. Try to find
other foods in the daily round which give that feeling of energy and vitality but in a much more integrated way,
something like (I know you're going to laugh), but a parsnip. Ha ha ha, right? Ha ha ha, parsnip. Yeah, right,
parsnip. She's going ugh! Parsnips?

[Comment:] What about parsnips baked in butter and brown sugar?

[Dennis:] Yeah, they will give you a mercury buzz. They're mercury power food.

[Comment:] Butter and brown sugar, ummm!

[Dennis:] She's been there. Skip the parsnips! Just eat the butter and the brown sugar! The parsnips are just
filler. It's just bulk. Look, you're mercury you don't want bulk! So if you are a mercury honey bee see if you
can get the sugar away from you and when at four o'clock your glucose tolerance says give me the sugar, eat
something like an apple and a handful of blanched almonds. Wait until the glycemic index gets critical and then
have your little safety blanket of your apple and almonds. Zzzt - hah! Okay. Blood sugar. I'm back again. Do
that for a month and then go out and eat some sugar. What you find is that the sugar tastes very bitter. It tastes
like some kind of metal. It tastes like you have a penny on your tongue.

[Question:] Is carbohydrate craving the same as sugar craving?

[Dennis:] That is the biggest question in nutrition that there can be.

[Question:] What does that mean?

[Dennis:] What does it mean? It is the trick question in nutrition because there are carbohydrates and then there
are carbohydrates. So if your source of carbohydrate has been removed from life then the blood becomes
mineralized and the ego has a rough time living in it. Too much refined sugar and the blood becomes very acid.
We have to really watch the word sugar. Plastic as an oil by product is a cousin to sugar, sort of. It's kind of
been rendered out of what once was a living form that had carbohydrates as the basis for the energetic life.
Take a sugar cube in a spoon and put some brandy on it and set it on fire. You can kind of cook it so that it
will turn into this black little carbon goop on a spoon. If you boil it and cook it down, it will form a carbon
shell that looks like bakelite. Take coal and bake it until it melts, that's bakelite. Bakelite is what light switches
used to be made of before there were plastics, it was made from coal tar. We could call it petrocaramel. I'm
stretching things a bit, but just a bit. Sugar is a mineral.

The more complex the sugar, and the more natural the sugar, the more the sugars are integrated with enzymes
and other things that help in the digestion and assimilation of the sugars and starches. That's how we find the
sugars in fruit. They are imbedded in enzymes. The more simple the sugar, like a cane sugar the more it has
been refined and refined and refined, until it is really a mineral. It's like a metal almost. If you take that, then the
whole blood system goes whoa, way out somewhere. But if you take the sugar combined with enzymes and
with other digestive things that are in the fruit itself, j and vitamins and whatever, then when that goes into the
system it's not a simple sugar. It's a complex sugar and it has to take time to get broken down. Then it takes a
long time for it to get in the blood and blah blah blah. Then you don't get the buzz. But maybe it's the buzz that
will give you the satisfaction. That's a problem. So the sugar is a good way to get a buzz, because you only
have to pay whatever for a candy bar and then you have an instant buzz in your pocket. Whereas if you ate a
banana, well, huh, where's the buzz?.

So let's go to the next level. If we're talking about satisfaction and we're talking about food, the real satisfaction
is that our food represents the will of somebody else. If we forget that, there is a tremendous component of
satisfaction that is not available to us. It's just somewhere else in our consciousness where we cannot get to it.
We can find ways of working with food to actually bring it somehow into consciousness that this food come
Ss from somewhere, and it has a biography, and it means something beyond just satisfying a craving. It is

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very helpful to try and reinvest food with the idea that somebody did something to make this food happen. It
does not appear by itself. We could also look for unsprayed or organic or bio dynamic food. All of that lines
up, and increases the satisfaction element of the process of eating and getting nutrition. If we just analyze food
for its daily requirement of nutrients, these things wouldn't show up as factors at all. And yet they are very
important for the sense of satisfaction.

So at the next level there is what makes the food become less of a substance and more a process. Here it is
useful that we build some type of inner relationship to the whole process of either growing, or preparing, or
presenting the food. That the whole ambiance around the whole ritual of food has to do with a sense of
gratitude to what this really is as a gift that's given to us fro the cosmos and the earth. If it simply becomes
something that we put in the organism as a substitute for cravings, then it's no longer food as it is intended to
be for us by the hierarchies . It no longer satisfies the whole being. It only satisfies the minimum daily
requirements. That kind of thing is the ultimate basis for cravings. That's the problem in a way that goes even
beyond the liver and the lungs and the kidney and the heart and the salt and the sulfur and the mercury.

If we follow along, we started out with stuff like carbon, and now we're getting up here into soul territory and
attitude and perception and what Marga said the other day, the attitude of gratitude. It's the inner attitude of
being grateful that is the biggest source of satisfaction. But it's the hardest thing to get to, because everything in
the whole culture is steering us in the other direction of simply the faster the food is prepared the better it is.
That's the picture. It's an image that's reinforced again and again. I had an experience of flying at the Dulles
International not too long ago, and I had put something to eat in my bag, but the airline food looked like
something from some other planet, so I ate what I was saving for later before I got to Dulles. When I got into
the airport, I had a two hour layover, and then I had another two hour flight to get to my destination, so I was
stranded in strange-food-ville. I walked up and down that whole airport. Nothing! There was nothing I could
eat in there and be able to function when I got to my destination. It reminded me of experiencing I had when I
first found I had food allergies of walking through a grocery store with a cart. No I can't eat that. I can't eat
that. I can't eat that. I got to the end of the grocery store and I had the strange experience that whole place was
filled with poison. It was awesome!

[Comment:] Now you know why they call it Safeway food and drug.

[Comment:] The same thing happens to me going on planes . . . There is very little that I can eat except
watermelon.

[Dennis:] So I guess we eat the watermelon. So now when we get to the question of whether or not it has to
be organic to give us satisfaction, now we have to look at our constitution. Human beings can go all the way
out there and say, it has to be totally organic from 2,000 feet on Maui and then I'll eat it. We can go that way.
We could, but let's not. I recently heard a story about an American guy traveling in Africa. He dropped a jar of
peach jam in the mud of a bus stop out in the country. An old African woman was there. The jar shattered. The
American and the African both looked down at the shattered jar. The woman looked at the man and bent down
and picked up the shattered jar of jam and scooped out the jam with her fingers. She spit out the shards of
glass as if they were fish bones. The man felt very American.

So somewhere in this all is this principle that I've been trying to drive at all along, and this is we have to find
out for each individual what will give us satisfaction, but what gives us satisfaction may not actually make us
happy; because life is not arranged so that everything will be happy for us. If life not being happy means that
we are paralyzed, then the adversaries are succeeding in taking a sense of satisfaction away from humans. In
this condition humans feel that she challenge is so big that nothing can be done by beating on things in the
world. If we are working on ourselves and we run into the wall of our powerlessness to control the world our
practice will lead us back to changing ourselves on the inside. However, to do this is a lot bigger than just
changing our diet. So I don't want give the picture that we can eat our way into heaven, because that's not what
I'm talking about. But changing what we eat so that we can get some satisfaction is a fundamental of the
healing experience.

The truly difficult part in this is that we are all satisfied by different things. This fact points past the basic urge
of hunger when seeking solutions. What is satisfying for me might be that I'm okay eating just watermelon,
because maybe I've been in so many situations where I couldn't eat anything at all due to sickness that it is fine
that the watermelon I'm eating as a fast is not organic. I eat it and I am satisfied. Or maybe I haven't eaten for

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two days, so I can spit out the mud and the glass shards from the broken jam jar and I am satisfied. There's an
old saying, I complained about having no shoes until I met a man who didn't have any feet. The modern
version is "I've been down so long it looks like up to me."

We in this culture live at a time where, if we don't like the way the produce looks in one place, we can go
across town in our car ten miles and get produce in another place. But if we don't have a car or the nearest
produce is in the next state then that is a problem. Go to a small town grocery in Kansas and look for produce.
Try it sometime. You'll learn a lot. What they sell for broccoli in Kansas is just something else. Or ask for an
avocado. An ava- what? Or, do you have any quinoa? Can you spell that? And you spell it and they go I never
heard of that. Well, we have quinoa spelt flakes in Wild Oats and even at Raleys. And it's great! But having
these abilities to do this might just make satisfaction a little harder to get.

[Question:] I'm curious what the role of sensation and digestion . . . If I'm just living my mundane life, there
are no bounds in my appetite yet if I get away from this environment and I'm physically active, my appetite
goes down. My satisfaction is up and my craving is down.

[Dennis:] Yes! Yes! So let's go up now to the next level, up into sensation. We're just moving octaves now.
Rudolf Steiner gives the picture that there is a cosmic nutrition source as well as a physical nutrition source.
The cosmic nutrition source has all of the same type of patterns that are present in the earthly nutrition source
with its colors and textures and flavors. The cosmic nutrition source is the forces of the sensory experiences
we have in a day. The colors and movements and soul moods which food stimulates in us has a counterpart to
the colors and movements and moods which our sense environment stimulates in us. With both the cosmic
nutrition and the earthly nutrition we have exactly the same problem. The problem is can I find in an
environment like Fair Oaks a place where I can go to get some sensory satisfaction, some good cosmic
nutrition. So there's the river and the coast and the Sierras. But what about in my life locally? In one's life there
can be those little places consciously placed to offer good cosmic nutrition. A healing place could be a little
shrine with a little waterfall on your window sill. When you come out in the morning and you hear that sound
there is cosmic nutrition. Or there could be something like a bird feeder outside the window. It doesn't have to
be Yosemite, sometimes a little birdfeeder outside the window is a little better than fighting the crowds at
Yosemite. Good art on the walls or flower arrangements can be a great source of cosmic nutrition.

[Comment:] I was the housing coordinator for Rudolf Steiner College for a while and had the opportunity to
visit homes. What I discovered was people's homes are their sanctuaries. They were very beautiful. I was very
impressed.

[Dennis:] Yes. The point is even with bad food we can bless it and love it and this transforms our satisfaction
in eating it. Maybe we have to buy produce or meat in Raley's in plastic, but we can put love into it in the
preparation and presentation and the mood of the place where we eat it. Maybe we have to see the billboards
on the freeway, but we can be a loving person in the context of those billboards on the freeway, and that
begins to form a tincture in the environment around us that starts to transform things. The art is satisfaction
hinges on the ability of humans to transform things. It is essentially an alchemical transformation of the corpse
into gold.

The highest form of this work is to be able to access the inner experience that no one is really to blame for all
of this junk. This is the viewpoint of the dead. They see that there are adversarial forces that are in the world
that are at work to keep the human being subject to the fear of not being in control. And when another person
is struggling with something fearful, and we have a particular constitutional fear of something which goes
against their particular constitutional fear of something, That's when the blaming starts. When this happens the
dead see that we are no longer humans but that Lucifer and Ahriman are dividing the corpse. In these
situations it is alchemically possible to be able to find the place where we can go to the spot where we are
getting some satisfaction. Maybe we can go to the mountains in our imagination and let that imagination
influence our fearful soul mood. Through our inner practice we can bring the cosmic nutritional mood of the
mountains to the situation, and the atmosphere will change. This is a great soul alchemy of transformation.

It once was the cast that people would organize over some issue and one tribe would go over the hill and say
to the tribe over there, this is the way it's going to be. Do this as we say or there will be trouble. Even though
this is the way the world still is, it is important to note that it is not working. This is party politics, and it's just
a joke anymore. So now, instead of tribes going over the hill we have another party on the hill saying that the

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last political party on the hill really was the source of all the trouble since Moses. That party will get into
power and then ten years from now the other party will take over the hill and say the same thing, and they'll
have proof to prove it. Is this the answer?

So it looks like it's not what party you're connected to that matters. It's not what organization you're connected
to. The Anthroposophical Society is going through the same types of problems and the same struggle of
members saying that they like what's happening but they don't want to be part of a club. They are very suspect
of party affiliations. This is what Rudolf Steiner calls the war of each against all. Clubs are not cool anymore at
a certain level, and it's getting to the spot where everyone is against everyone else because everyone has their
own agenda. When this becomes exponential, that's the war that Rudolf Steiner calls the war of each against
all.

But it's not that that's entirely bad. It's a wake up call to the fact that we consciously have to build bridges to
become the other, and that involves turning the soul, finding some balance in sensation, finding some balance
and satisfaction in the cosmic nutrition in the soul, finding for ourselves what works and what doesn't in terms
of diet and intake of sensation, so that in a given social context we are an aware part of the solution rather than
unconsciously provoking the problem. Turning the soul allows us to simply offer an open consciousness to
the situation and be present in case someone asks us to do something. It's a very different way than we've been
trained to work, but it is the Rosicrucian stream of preparing, preparing, preparing, preparing and then waiting,
and at the proper moment ask the question. Don't make a statement, but ask a question. And if we prepare and
wait, the situation will come where the question needs to be asked, and we'll ask it and it will do it's effect, but
we won't have the feeling like it was us that did it. To do this alchemy requires a store of satisfaction in the
moods of the soul. But when it can be done it is a healing through the experience of deep satisfaction of the
craving to get more satisfaction. It simply gives us an exponential satisfaction. The alchemy of satisfaction is
another level of satisfaction that was originally the root of the political will to serve others. But politicians have
a hard time serving anymore. They may start that way but the power structure puts great pressure on that ideal.
Politics provides the temptation to be self-serving under the guise of serving the party. Public service has
gotten into weird places because of the adversaries.

[Question:] How do you know when to do something or not do something? Like writing a letter to someone
or making a phone call to tell them about something I think should be changed, you know to be an activist?
How do I know to write the letter or make the phone call or not, or go and meditate on it and someone else will
make that phone call.

[Dennis:] If you really have an issue that is burning your soul, it is best to write the letter, address it to
yourself and then you mail it to yourself, and then you open it up, and then you read it as if your enemy was
sending it to you, and then you meditate on what would I do if I got this letter? Would I want to go fire bomb
their car or what? If, after reading it you feel like you can still send that letter, send it. But guaranteed you'll
probably change some of the phrasing. If you change the phrasing, send it to yourself again or put it in the
back of the file for a week. By the fifth time you've probably taken out all the poison barbs and you've owned
everything you can within the problem, which is often what you're trying to accuse them of. When you can
own some of the stuff there will be things which will be left over that you can't own. This is what you are truly
upset with. But by now, through the owning process you probably have the ability to turn the soul. When you
soul has turned from the blaming and projection it is possible to approach them in a way which can frame the
problem as a common concern. From this soul space we can ask them if we can work towards a solution. And
then we send that one. Which one do you think is going to give you more of a response?

That's what I'm talking about in the idea of turning the soul, because then that letter will go into the other
person's mailbox and they'll go, "boy this person really cares about this and they're not blaming me. I'm going
to give them a call." We've just gotten their attention. Fundamentally their attention is what we want. But when
we throw a depth bomb in that person's mail box, they either put it in the circular file or we get the same back,
we suddenly feel slighted and attacked and ask where did that attack mode response come from? That's a big
question. So every time we write a letter where we feel like John Wayne storming Iwo Jima try this out.

This tendency to lash out in righteousness is a great danger in writing e-mails. You write the ICBM response
and then kick back and enjoy how cool your response to their email looks sitting there on you monitor and
then CLICK. Thermoneuclear war. This is true. There have been studies done on this. Most dilemmas, most
really bad stuff that happens, human resource type stuff that has happened in the last couple of years is a result

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of from the hip ballistic missle e-mails. An e-mail from your manager comes in that says. CLEAN YOUR
DESK!!!!!!!!!!!!! What you read is, clean your desk...STUPID!!!!!!!!!!! The manager just thought that they
would use all caps and add the little exclamation points because they are so much more graphically effective
and they are so easy to make. You know, all I have to do is hold down my finger. Maybe the manager was an
art major in college and they may even have the thought that the message kind of looked artistic, kind of like
the message and the medium are having a happy marriage in this email. This is what was going on in the
managers head in response to flack that they got from their boss that the big cheese was coming in the morning
and was anally retentive about sloppy desks. So the manager just writes an e-mail, and adds the little creative
graphic embellishments just to break up a bad day, and spams the department. So the worker gets the e-mail.
What will be the response?... Oh Yeah? clean this, jerk! The employee fires up the internet connection, and
there goes the guys job.

So anything you would like to put out towards another person, go and write it out and then send it to yourself
and say what would I think of the person who sent this? And then you're getting balance. This alchemy of
turning the soul is all about balance: salt, sulfur, mercury, whatever your constitution is, you have to get it to
move to the other pole. If it's the one in the middle, you have to bring the two ends in to the middle to balance
it. Satisfaction is nothing more than finding a sense of balance in your cravings and integrating your cravings
into the general flow of moods in you soul in such a way that there's not the blame tape playing all of the time.

Finding something where everyday we can say to ourself this is my little treat, is very important. This is my
treat. It could be a glass of almond milk, for God's sake. My wife and I kind of laugh at ourselves when we go
wow, big night on the town! A glass of almond milk, cool! But I'll tell you there's a tremendous satisfaction in
it. There's no hang over, there's no buzz, and in the morning I feel a lot younger than I did the night before. As
I get older and I try to still do the things which get me going, what I'm finding is I'm having to substitute a lot
of things that gave me satisfaction that were causing my energy to just go down and down and down. It's just
as Peter says, the inner pictures that you feed yourself change your needs for nutrition. And it's as Arthur
says, when you just pay attention inside and you don't pay attention to ambiance, and you don't make it a social
consciousness of where your food comes from, you are depleting your energy.

Let's go get some nutrition. [laughter -- it's snack time.]

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