Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Beauty

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Birdsong = ART “Birdsong”

    “Express your emotions the better to understand them”


    We are not the only Creators in the Garden. We are surrounded by nest-makers and musical artists without whose Birdsong we would be tragically impoverished. Birds sing for the same reasons we do; to celebrate, to warn, to differentiate. To bond, and for the sheer joy of being alive in the Garden. Birdsong represents the artistic collaboration and complexity without which our lives would be meaningless.


    Art is our rescuer. Art forges connections at the deepest levels; preconscious & collective conscious. Art finds us when we are lost, can even locate love itself when we misplace it. Art sums up the mystery of what it’s like to be alive, questioning, yearning, negotiating, refusing, demanding.

    Back when we were mute children, longing to communicate and participate in the thrilling adult world surrounding us, we figured it was just a question of acquiring the tools of language.

    Education disabused us of that easy sentimentality. There will always be something within us that is wordless, a secret unknown to ourselves that we long to share. But what does it mean? Who can understand it? We artists devote our lives to fathoming these vast problems. Each question brings a new forest of questions. Each answer produces an ocean of answers.

    As our life crests its rise and heads for the downslope we are forced to conclude that we wish to express nothing more than our uniqueness, our exquisite irreplaceability – just like everyone else.

    The depth of the Tantric connection provides relief from the echo chamber – together we create a whole new force, immortal in feeling, universal in its application. We sing to each other in courtship, in despair, in longing, and the Soulmate sings our song back, in a different form, inviting collaborative collusion that will buttress our hopes and re-make our world.

    HAIKU: Birdsong

    Without your chord
    Duets are soulless;
    speechless
    without your
    harmony

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Firefly = FALSE LOVE “Bed & Breakfast”

    “Liars”

    The Firefly lights our dark with his luciferous magic. In some species it’s only the male, but in others both genders use this cool heat to signal to each other and we are all beneficiaries of their romantic opera.

    And it’s a complete drama with every plot twist you can think of; some fireflies impersonate desire only to attract and then kill the hopeful lover. Other fireflies deliberately use a poor impersonation to warn away competing lovers and decimate the field.

    If attacked, fireflies use “reflex bleeding” to literally poison predators with their blood. This last fact generates warnings never to feed fireflies to your hungry pet reptile! What are we to make of this mix of beauty, falsity and carnivorous intent? Fireflies may be beautiful impostors, but they are never to be envied. They exist only to mate, lay eggs and die. Some fireflies live lives without nourishment. They never even get the chance to dine.

    We are all attracted by fantasy. We each have or think we have – a list of “musts” and “deal-breakers.” Danger waits when we meet someone who actually matches all our specifications! Probably they are lying. Maybe you are, too. Possibly you didn’t even realize it until this moment.

    Maybe you want one thing on the page and another In Real Life. Maybe you want one thing in the dark and another in the light. Maybe you don’t know yourself very well! Lust hardens, love softens; how solve that essential inner/outer conflict? We need to melt – together – into a glorious plasticity that allows us to undertake the “experiment” of entering the life, desires, viewpoint of another.

    But this is only “safe” when goodwill and honorable attentions are present. If someone’s looking for a hostage, a slave, a mimic or even worse – prey – they will falsely claim anything to entice us. How can we tell the difference?

    Sometimes their presentation is TOO “good”. A “pediatric oncologist” who “volunteers at an animal shelter?” Really? Is the attraction a “problem-free” relationship without any of that scary sandpaper of conflict that molds our rough edges to fit together more harmoniously? Or is this attraction just “high-status” and “bragging rights”?

    As your grandmother warned, any salesman trying to hustle you into an instant decision is up to no good. Predators try to convince the young that by taking time to choose and trust we are ruining the experience! Don’t buy it! You’re getting smarter, and stronger by the minute! You’re within your rights –you owe it to yourself – to demand that deeds match words, and that intentions line up with performance.

    Allow yourself time to discover, evolve and revel. Live!

    BED & BREAKFAST

    “That wing of course is closed”
    said Magda whose venomous green eyeshadow
    matched her voice;
    “I’d have that lanced if I were you”
    thinks Reni
    Who never says exactly what she thinks.
    “Wrong word:  wing”
    Thinks Andreas
    “to use about a house tethered toad-like to the lawn”.
    But Andreas never says what he thinks either.
    It’s too late now.
    At dinner, they quarrel about Ezra Pound;
    Pretending to agree.
    Squeaky bedsprings bastardize this sad romance;
    Hopeless beds mandate sex is standing up.
    ( This butler may be deaf and dumb,
    But knew the best way out:
    He was in for the tip of a lifetime.)
    At breakfast the debate about Plath
    Turns violent; the biggest danger
    Of murdering yourself with a kitchen appliance is:
    They’re everywhere.
    Refreshing holiday, says Reni.
    We should do it more often says Andreas.
    Truth never spoken once.
    Mission accomplished.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    FATE “Evolution”

    “Control”

    Outside the carefully groomed garden lies the true Wilderness; the ungroomed terrain. At first the eye is confused by the plethora of wildflowers, the riot of wild grasses, the proliferation of low shrubs. The fallen and the dying have not even been tidied away.

    Slowly our senses adjust to pick out hovering butterflies, nesting birds and evidence of even wilder visitors such as rabbits, skunks, weasels and raccoons. This is their world; they prefer it to ours.

    We must admit they have a point: how can something so haphazard radiate such magnetic beauty? Sometimes we’re forced to judge their world the winner; it is definitely more intricate, majestic and evocative than our carefully raked paths. We study it to comprehend, learn, possibly mimic its effects. And as we absorb their ethos we become one of them, lowly commoners of earth, enjoying a bounty of goodness, even wealth, poured out without regard to our intent or purchasing power.

    Destiny warns; “It’s not about you.” “Fundamental attribution error” in the social sciences means confusing individual causation as determinative when mass social movements are actually predeterminative. We would like to believe that we have control over keeping our parents together, preventing war, stopping climate change, averting pandemics, getting promotions, guaranteeing the constant love of worthy Soulmates. How much control do we really have over those things?

    We are tiny creatures – out of many – finding ourselves momentarily in a tiny corner of an ever-changing wilderness. This is not our “fault”, but still, we must live our lives as best we can. Can we guarantee our future good health? No, but we can improve it. Can we guarantee our Soulmate’s future health? No, but once again, we can lead a joint healthy life, together.

    Can we avoid sorrow? Most likely not; sorrow is endemic to those who think and feel. It’s how we manage sorrow that counts. The Dalai Lama says pain is unavoidable, but suffering is voluntary.

    We are creatures of wish & fear. The wish is that we will stay alert for dangerous and destructive incidents and behaviors. Our fear is that Fate is out to get us. And in a way, it is. Age stalks us. History stalks us. But if anxiety about the future only ruins the enjoyment of today, it is not doing its job, it is sabotaging you.

    With a Soulmate, you possess two souls, two futures plus a joint Soul and joint future. This gives us not just a reason but a mandate to celebrate the ecstasy, the bliss of every moment. You are Mine and I am Yours.

    EVOLUTION
    The world that seems to us so still
    And echoes no reflection of our will
    Somehow produced the seed that in us all
    Resurrected us from worm to fish, to crawl
    Upon the earth, to stand and then
    Return a child to creep and crawl again
    In some unending pattern, sane or not
    Judging by the brain that this same seed begot
    And yet within our every cell lies curled
    A revolutionary flag to be unfurled
    To lead us on to who knows what potential end
    Beyond the reach of enemy or friend?
    Can it be that simple balls of spinning glass
    Possessed the strength to lift from this morass
    All that we are; though we don’t understand
    This torch we pass so tenderly from hand to hand?

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Fruit = FRUITION “Sweet Family”

    “Enjoy!”

    The Fruit is the sweet result of day after day of concentrated sunshine. The Fruit is a summit of achievement; centuries of unique conditions ending in delight for the senses poetry for the tongue.

    Raspberry, Strawberry, paw-paw, pomegranate, banana, apple, pear, cherry; so much nectar; so many wines. Together they symbolize for us the moment of celebration: Harvest, when there is nothing left to do but relax and enjoy. But Fruit has even more to offer than that.

    We revel in the concept of a storehouse full to bursting; a pleasure-palace of magical alchemy where the very humblest fertilizers such as dirt and sweat are transformed into visible, taste-able joy. The blood of the planet becomes our blood and the most potent chemicals of its deepest mines flood our aching emptiness with repletion.

    The Tantric Garden Harvest concept says you are about to enjoy the fruits of all your yearning, planning, efforts. You are looking into the eyes of, touching the hands of a potential Soulmate. You are close, close. The Harvest invites us to just revel in the bliss – actual and potential – of this moment. It is critical that you not “numb out.” The temptations will be there. There are plenty of chemical fast-tracks to ‘letting your guard down.” But you don’t want to do that. You want to explore that very “guard” and not make a dash for a mythical “finish-line” because the essence of Tantra is there is no finish line.

    There is only the Now, a universe of infinite possibility which has just been doubled as you gaze into the Soulmate’s eyes and hold the Soulmate’s hand.

    Sweet Family

    I want you
    To deliver our children
    With your tongue
    That deft baker’s paddle would
    Lever them out
    Warm & fresh
    In their marzipan coats
    Trailing the pineapple
    Blood-rind
    Traced with poppy-seed adornments
    Marking them as ours.
    A little boy with a pastry-tube
    Rosette between his legs
    A girl as hard & round as
    A hot cross bun
    Petals furled on her
    Crystallized convolvulus
    In whose depths lie stored
    All the honeys of the future.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Day = FOCUS “On Reading the Alumni Directory”

    “The Power of Routine”

    “Begin anew with the Day, as Nature does” says George Woodberry. What good advice! Every dawn is a fresh chance for us to put new principles into practice, make original resolves and absorb consequent lessons and engender successful strategies that bring us closer to our goals. If, as the sages say, “it’s the journey not the arrival that matters” then each and every day is, literally, the first day of the rest of our lives.

    We are launched on the journey of a thousand steps. Isn’t it the ideal to make each step as blissfully supportive as possible?

    On our quest for a soulmate, aren’t we really looking to be freed from the hum-drum round of daily ordinariness into the ecstatic upper stratosphere, the bliss of the spiritual? Isn’t that what we’re really after? This is what causes our frustration with where we’re at, right now.

    What we need is to infuse the ordinary with the spiritual, and like any skill, this attitude can be practiced and IMPROVED and we can start NOW. In Tantric Attachment, “Day” represents your supportive routine (both conscious and un.)

    Today’s goal is to make your habits conscious, improve them with mindfulness, then allow them to sink into the subliminal where they can be accessed emotionally and kinetically. We plan to turn OURSELVES into the exact life partner we have been looking for!

    Some of us are morning people – others most definitely Not. I started out in life as a night owl and after kids, I changed. Now I don’t think I can write anything intelligent past 3 PM! (It’s currently 7:25 AM.) Every morning must contain spiritual, physical and refreshment practices. Our great enemy is all this anxious doom-scrolling we all do, when we can clearly see it raises, rather than lessens our distress and confusion. Let’s figure out a way to contain it, because that helpless victim can never be our best self.

    In a frantic, worried or angry condition nobody can share or enjoy anything. The best choice would be a morning of thought, prayer, gratitude, healthful eating, gentle exercise but if this is not possible let’s keep our survey of The News, Email, etc. to a specific low number. To be loved, we must love ourselves. This is an inflexible rule. Therefore, you must keep telling yourself, “I love you. That’s why I’m taking such good care of you.” Commit to The Day!

    ON READING THE ALUMNI DIRECTORY

    I’m surprised
    So few of us have made it.
    The years seemed quiet
    The years seem far between.
    Through interstices the
    Class clowns fall –
    Sluts & giants; the
    Nobodies –
    Possessed & hunted
    Now as they were then;
    Haunted.
    “Address unknown”
    “Lives with Mom”
    “Religious cult”
    “Deadbeat”
    “Moved…nowhere.”
    My blood-mate’s still unmarried
    I wonder how
    We’d get along.
    I translate terpsichore to unknown
    Tongues, he’s Law and
    Journalism; how’s that
    Compatible?
    He lives so far away.
    Time off’s a bitch, plus
    They got my address wrong.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Breakthrough = EPIPHANY “Valentine”

    “I get it!”

    Suddenly we see the way!
    Breakthroughs look forward, never back; we are different people afterwards. Often, we feel they have been “building up” for a long time; we are amazed at what we didn’t see. But what we see now cannot be unseen. We should congratulate ourselves on our new pair of eyes, our new pair of legs. Our new life.

    You connected! A potential soulmate is now present and real. We explore our soulmate, past and future, psychically and physically. Each moment feels truthful and intense. You are on Cloud Nine.

    However, new understanding raises us to a lofty plateau. We now see that how a relationship develops over time is as important as who the relationship is with. We understand that some Soulmates are not able to back up their promises with behavior. They “want” to but are weak and feel helpless.

    Don’t get drawn into “fixing’ them – this keeps you away from finding your REAL Soulmate, the one who can deep dive all the way with you as well as ascend the highest heights. There’s no reason to be angry or embittered, the failed Soulmate already realizes that their fear and poor self-knowledge are keeping them back. This is a journey that asks the most of every one of us.

    VALENTINE

    I sent myself
    In a letter
    Heart-creased
    Like a glove, like an
    Anecdote
    Too much told
    Dear stranger don’t
    Lose me I forgot
    The rule;
    Hold back a copy.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    ETERNITY “Heloise to Abelard”

    “Eternal Welcome”

    “Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean”

    The Night Sky above our Garden reveals many secrets. The first secret is that we are a World within Worlds. And we are assured that there are further worlds beyond (as well as within), through the contradictory notions that the universe is both infinite and expanding. What a metaphor for life & growth!

    The poetry of the stars and planets is such that our history can be told through the names and patterns of constellations that are shifting. The ancients placed “heaven” right up there, with Gods & Goddesses looking down at us as we look up at them, playing with us as if we were scientific mice running an experimental maze.

    We are even seeing dead light from stars that no longer burn; a time traveling conundrum that makes a hash of what we know of past & present. Given these facts alone many of our inherited concepts about “reality” seem naive to say the least. New physics posit the possibility that time travel could age us so slowly we become younger than our own children.

    If our minds are our ticket to eternity, teaching us how to rise above our earthly circumstances, then we can learn to signal others; “I am eternal. Are you eternal?” Many people believe they are “in the Now” because they are bouncing on the surface of the moment, but they are really water spiders skimming the waves, fearful of “falling in.”

    You are not a person who is afraid of depth. Instead, you will convey the deep peace and truth of living every moment connected to Eternity. Planets & Stars reminds us to turn on our inner searchlight. Our person is close; very close. “Are you Eternal?”

    HELOISE TO ABELARD: “FROM THE FLAME TO THE FLAME”

    Master, my Brother; Father
    Confessor; my all – Before you see a nun
    Abbess in fact – antiphon of grace enclosing
    Octaves of silence.
    I had rather be your whore. Slut, jade, poule –
    What sweets! I relished those words as I craved the
    Blows you struck like kisses.
    Five, like Christ’s wounds. I counted them.

    No midwife cut my cord but You delivered me.
    Satan wormed your root; left Me whole but
    Empty. I’m still cinque-cut while
    You’re a smooth stockade. I “mistook” the veil –
    Impetuously as you stole me –
    Masquerading, copying the night
    We stole from uncle’s house
    In holy guise.

    This veil is Jason’s wedding dress –
    It cannot be removed.
    It burns my flesh, these cerements
    Cremate me. You denied me thrice, False Peter
    Though I crawl to Bethany to earn
    One word. Master, cousin, lover – slave –
    We are bound.
    This grave is not so silent as you are.

    Yes, I’ve chatted up the dead
    I’m closer to you than that tattoo you wear
    As if it became you. When you die
    I’ll be the fire that quickens
    In your veins – the centime on your eyes
    The empty scabbard left
    Along your thigh
    Your last escaping sigh – I.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Transformation = METAMORPHOSIS “Dawn Walk”

    “What truth will you become?”

    What happens when we discover that to accept a New Soulmate, we too must become entirely new? We must turn our comically ugly caterpillars into gorgeous butterflies. It turns out that in wanting the Beloved what we were yearning for was a new self, as beautiful and as magical as we imagined the Beloved to be.

    Transformation is more than mere shape-shifting; it is a complete cellular mutation; a quantum victory of design over matter.

    In the garden transformation is law. The oldest things become new when seen through fresh eyes or a shift of visual imagination. Plants capture or seduce; pods fly into silks, colors wither, embolden or whiten, dust balls eject a thousand baby spiders, a worm becomes frog.

    When you “transform” you are reborn into a new being. Unlike simple masking or disguise, this change interpenetrates the very soul. When we tire of our selves, our path, our very thoughts, nothing will satisfy but complete and total rebirth.

    Seeking wholeness, we are slowly transformed by our own longing into a receptacle for the Beloved. But they must contain us, too, Two Truths will blend together into a singular, mighty Truth. To become The Lover, we must give up the griefs, the imperfections, the pettiness, the vindictiveness of the past.

    If we accept that our future is entirely new, we can be born freshly into this fresh moment. It is this deep looking, deep seeing, deep yearning and deep acceptance that attracts our tantric lover to our sphere. Yes, terrible things have happened outside the golden chalice we now offer. Sad lessons were learned.

    There has been triumph, vengeance, loss and play. No need to dwell on any of this, it no longer describes or confines us. What does describe us?

    The peace of perfected selfhood. We are now ready to merge with yet another enlightened Self.


    Dawn walk

    Thunder crusts a gelid sky
    Light or rain –
    Feathering
    My nest with longing
    Stippled soul flushing out
    New growth; bursting from
    The steepled trees.

    This is my world and I release it
    Stelliform; Readied
    For flying – tough as spidersilk –
    Unrecognized –
    Unrecognizable –
    Even to those who birthed me
    Spent my life creating this; now

    Released and
    Blown away.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Mystery: “The Bridesmaid

    “Words Fail Us”

    Mysteries lure us in; we are born puzzle mavens. It takes experience to learn that not every Mystery has a solution; or that some solutions only redefine the mystery into even larger questions.

    Sometimes by the time the answer comes back we find that we ourselves have changed. The answer to “Who’s out there?” as could well be “Who’s asking?” as well as “Why ask?” Problems tend to be solvable only as far as we can define them. Framing the question frames the answer.

    We turn a corner philosophically when we learn to enjoy Mystery for its own sake and welcome its presence in our lives, salute its effort to instruct our limitations and listen to whatever message it can deliver. There is the majestic silence of the universe, the explosive power of a single cell, the eye that looks upon us from the forest. We are part of the Mystery. It can’t be processed, absorbed or put behind us; it can only be lived. The Mystery is Us.

    Our Soulmate can’t be “solved” any more than the tiger can cease his “burning bright” or the hound of heaven his pursuit. There will be things about our Soulmates that we never know, just as there are things about ourselves that we will never see.

    This realization is an important one for Love, Acceptance and Ecstatic Communion to take place. Realize that “solutions” and “explanations” are language and time-bound, but you and your Soulmate meet in a place beyond language and time.

    When you touch, you speak a deeper language, you meet in a timeless place that is eternal. Arguments and misunderstandings fade away – they are captured in Language and you, your Spirit and the ecstasy your union engenders are not trapped by words. You are free of promises, mistakes, even aspirations.

    You are two rivers blending, two clouds merging, exchanging psychic atoms of thought and feeling that alter the definition of Being. You are One, you are Two In One, you are Whole.

    The Bridesmaid


    Yes, I know everything.
    You’re my poor relation.
    I know of your daddy’s desk where you
    Fucked with formaldehyde fingers
    Heard you tell your sad
    Rosary of abortions,
    I know everything.
    We made love on your letters undisturbed
    As two icons. She’s imperfect
    He told me.
    Unseated by hierarchy
    We two take our place
    With the king’s crazy mistresses;
    Brewing menstrual blood coffee
    And mandrake root tea.
    Swim away, little bridesmaid,
    You’re too young
    I’m in love – we’ve got
    Too much in common ever to meet.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking by Alysse Aallyn

    Persistence=COMMITMENT ‘Virginia Woolf”

    “refuse to surrender”

    Persistence is about not giving up. How could we accomplish anything without it? 99% of life is “just showing up” Woody Allen advises. “I didn’t fail,” said Edison, “I found ten thousand methods that didn’t work.” In other words, “trial and error” was a life style for him, a “modus vivendi.” He considered existence itself just one experiment after another. You can see that for somebody like that, “success” is, by definition, right around the corner. What a happy way to live!

    When passion flags, when courage fails, when even grit founders, there is only determination. We will keep going. Our Other Half, our Lost Self is calling us and there is no going back. If we gave up now we would be at a place of cosmic distrust. It can’t happen. We may groan. We may collapse. We must sleep, the better to summon dreams to our assistance.

    Sometimes we have to ask the uncomfortable questions: what am I missing? WHO am I missing? We summon up a distinctive song we want our Soulmate to hear, perhaps a song that ONLY our soulmate can hear. And we buckle up and keep on going.

    VIRGINIA WOOLF: The Membraned Sieve

    O bliss to be red admiral afeast
    Upon a rotten apple in the grass; she dreamed that guiltily
    Woke to Leonard bringing milk
    Nessa dancing bear-like on the lawn, woke
    To pain; cylindrical as seasons
    Burning white and burning blue like friends.
    The words fell fast, the blood fell faster;
    Split the membraned sieve.
    She raced the whitecaps out to sea
    Parting the waves with her mother’s hand.