Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Beauty

  • Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

    Duality – Ambivalence

      If This Archetype Chooses You – How many people are you? It’s a subject for deep study as you try to decide. Twinning is Entwining. Sometimes we dream disturbingly about things we don’t want and people we aren’t. Feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting. It’s unsettling. What gives?

      Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality manifests all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious river. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of other peoples – dead, alive, even fictional. Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a label.

      Creative Challenge – Facing this ambivalence might seem the toughest part, but it isn’t for artists, who routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Art is the best way to express this, an enormous relief, since it’s essentially non-committal. We are “playing”. Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your work becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised to be related to those people who claim they are our family.

      Creative Danger – Society seeks to label, limit and stigmatize. Everyone is afraid of becoming our fear but Creatives need to explore every fear we have. A simple safe word can’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so fundamentally untrustworthy. That is why our identification of ourselves as Brave Creatives is so vital. The vastness of our potential cannot be controlled by language. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

      Creative Opportunity – Appreciate your Self. Don’t slam the door on your potentialities too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is Us. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to get home safe. But Creatives carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell, if we are the captains of our souls we can be the masters of our fates. (Henley.) We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence.

      Creatives Tolerate Uncertainty – Being a creative is all about balance. The experience of balance-seeking is indescribable linguistically – it must be felt experientially. Creatives learn to live in a world beyond language where we can savor uncertainty and foretaste eternity.

      Creatives Relish Paradox – Two contraries not only exist together but empower each other – that creative tension is the lifeblood of emotion, imagination and personality.

      Creatives Coast on the Knife-Edge of Ambivalence – The desired is undesirable, the only possibility is impossible and the act of wanting forbids getting. Creatives become comfortable with the pleasures of this dance: “My future dissolves in beads of sweat, my present is my mirror, my past’s a shape-shifting whirligig.” (Aallyn)

      Leaders Must Surrender – Physics is magic and dreams embody history. This quantum world of “spooky entanglements” is one in which we creatives become expert. We accept not only that the cave we fear holds the treasure we desire, but that we are both cave and treasure, indeed, fear itself.

      Models & Mentors – “It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It is this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.” – John Scott

      “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.”
      – Erica Jong

      “The Simpsons is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but drives you crazy”
      – Matt Groening

      “Poetry is the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.” – Billy Collins

      #Haiku: Yin/yang

      Inclined to spring forward
      Fade back; yin;
      Urge to return?
      Float forward;
      Yang.

    1. Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

      Rainbow – Serendipity

        If This Archetype Chooses You – You Were Born Lucky! What is the greatest piece of good luck you’ve ever had? Your parentage? Talents? Home town? Best friend? A piece of advice? A special teacher? Think about it. Have you ever been offered a piece of good luck you couldn’t take advantage of, but wish you had?

        How Lucky Do You Need to Be? Ever seen the faces of gamblers seated hour by hour at the slot machines, wearing special gloves so their skin doesn’t fall off? Seriously, who would want to be them? Is it luck itself that we give thanks for, or our ability to recognize good fortune? Perhaps it’s really just our ability to take advantage of a piece of good luck when we’re offered it. These memories have one thing in common- i.e. “ability”, which is not luck, which is YOU. Give thanks for these abilities. Let’s learn to develop “gratitude thinking”.

        Creative Challenge – A different way of thinking about fortune is not all the wonderful things that didn’t happen, but the terrible things that COULD have happened – and didn’t. In other words, let’s try adopting a “glass half full” perspective and see how far that gets us.

        Creative Danger – Now that you’re committed to the creative path, the danger is always the same – recognizing your power but giving control of it over to some other entity that almost certainly doesn’t have your best interests at heart. We’re usually not even aware we’re doing this. But when you want to “be lucky” what does that mean? In whose eyes? Let’s put ourselves firmly in the driver’s seat and take a look at the path ahead of us. Do we want to go there? Do we really trust these people? Or are we the dog throwing away a real bone to reach the illusory bone we see pictured in the watery reflection of Aesop’s Fable?

        Creative Opportunity – As we negotiate our mortal existence we have a unique chance to take advantage of serendipitous appearances and encounters. If we recognize it. Compare your path to the immortal framework of eternity and ask, How am I doing?

        How Did We Get Here? Turns out your map was only a suggestion.


        We are mapping as we go along. However, life is even more interesting, it turns out, than our imaginations.

        After the Storm – Comes the Rainbow! Every visible color – carefully separated out – forming an arch to give us a glimpse of heaven! If it didn’t provably exist, would we still believe in it?

        List Your Rainbows – Clouds may or may not have silver linings. Rainbows are a complete surprise – unconnected to the storms that spawned them. Write about the surprises in your life in your Training Journal. How many were nasty? How many joyous?

        The Universe Conspired – To bring you to this moment. You zigged, you zagged, you wound up here. Give thanks!

        Models & Mentors – “Serendipity is when you find things that you weren’t looking for because what you are looking for is so damned difficult”
        – Erin McKean

        “Steer Into the skid” – Alysse Aallyn

        “Here you are moving ahead bravely in spite of everything going wrong” – Rithvik Singh

        “Take advantage of happy accidents” – Vincent van Gogh

        “There are no coincidences” – Sigmund Freud

        #Haiku: Rainbow – Serendipity

        Happenstance –
        Fortuitous
        Chance; we’re
        Born lucky
        We just don’t know it.

      1. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        The Calla Lilly = FORGIVENESS “My Grandmother’s Ghost”

        “Is forgiveness possible?”

        In the language of flowers, the Calla Lily is forgiveness. Forgiveness is like coming home. It hypothesizes a place where the past doesn’t matter, mistakes are healed, and love conquers all. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?

        Soulmates create heaven for each other, but we can taste and enjoy it, now. Nothing is held back.

        Love requires that each desire the other’s “good.” There is no tiny part of us hoping for the other’s denigration so that we can rise. This means forswearing the Scarcity Mentality. We must believe there is enough love for us both.

        Love without status, without competition. Just closeness, forgiveness and togetherness. If a Soulmate keeps pushing his Beloved into position of Enforcer, Critic, Teacher or Detective, the relationship is under such threat its future is imperiled. One can hardly be forgiven until one stops being a danger to the soul of the Beloved and the soul of the relationship. We must commit to desiring the other’s good, and to demanding health and life for ourselves.

        When the Calla lily arrives at your door, not just forgiveness but absolution is in the offing. We know there can be no forgiveness for us unless we have learned to forgive others, but perhaps the hardest thing is to learn to forgive ourselves.

        We must even forgive God for the pulse of history and the electricity of circumstance, for the physical web in which we are all caught. Give up trying to assess who did what to who and why; letting it all go as your eyes turn to the future.

        There is no resolution in simply showing wounds or admitting wrongdoing; but there is healing available when we hold each other up in the light. But we have to want it. We must want to come home.

        How many times do we have to forgive ourselves? When asked how many times we need to forgive others Jesus made the quick calculation of “seventy times seven” meaning, “a lot.” If you think about it, you’ll realize we are going to have to forgive each other and ourselves a lot more times than that! Possibly multiple times per day for the rest of our lives. Don’t we have to forgive ourselves for constantly underestimating ourselves, for saying “I can’t do this” without even trying, for insulting ourselves and verbally (and for all I know physically!) Be a loving partner to yourself so that your Beloved knows how to love you.

        Meditation: We’re branches of the same tree – W.B. Yeats

        My Grandmother’s Ghost

        My grandmother never cried
        Emmie you’re a stoic
        Everyone admired her. That’s why
        She haunts us; pressing her face accusingly
        Against the glass beneath the stairs.
        On windy nights she
        Threatens God, maligns
        His angels; for the little boy who died
        Of scarlet fever; without once
        Calling her name; and the collie dog run over
        And the storm that forever uprooted
        Her wedding tulips.
        Mother shakes her head, says, “Poor Gran
        Will never be done; she’s got
        Too much grief to catch up on.”

      2. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        The Gazing Ball = PROPHECY “You Are Not Lost”

        “Who can foretell the future?”

        If you could, would you?

        Would you find yourself performing all the same actions all over again?

        What do you most regret? Sometimes grief lies in wait for us at our happiest moments. What would you change, if anything? How about altering your Soulmate, fellow traveler on life’s journey? Would you roll those dice again?

        Skeptics say a stopped clock is right twice a day, but whatever the causation, sometime prophecies come true. A creeping suspicion bubbles up out of nowhere – manifesting as reality. We guess restlessly at “The Truth.”

        This glittering gazing ball at the center of our garden reflects our hopes, wishes and dreams, one of which is that it confers the gift of prophecy. We know we must be right about some future event; but if we share our knowledge too often we are discredited or disbelieved.

        Perhaps all we need is to cultivate our gift; forget “knowing”; concentrate on the blur of memory and project it forcefully into the future. Think about past, present and possibility, making all our choices with our Wisdom Eye fully open. It could be that the answer to the question we seek is already known to our Soulmate if we can only learn to trust and understand.

        What fresh new worlds might we create with our clear shared minds?.

        YOU ARE NOT LOST

        Do forests think?
        These trees know where they are
        In spite of all our attempts
        At subjugation
        We are all still here
        In spite of prophets who
        Calculated chances of survival
        With the eye of a murderous god
        Every one of us
        Who has ever been
        Is still here

      3. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        Thorns = The thief = DISPOSSESSED “On Being Disinherited”

        “Could you steal? Have you?”

        The rose attacks; you are cut, pierced. Thorns signify “Don’t mess with me or you’ll be sorry.” The Garden itself has the capacity to cut you to the quick.

        What if the garden itself is under attack? Ravaged? Despoiled? Extinct?

        Dispossession is much more complicated than mere loss. It means something we thought was ours isn’t. “Thorns” remind us of hidden dangers. Ownership may be quietly transferred behind the scenes, or they may convince you it never existed at all. What is “ownership”, anyway? Are we entitled to the Soulmate’s love?

        Entitlement of some kind is at risk. Property? Dignity? Expectations? It can be very modest; a chair, a single room, a blanket. Not yours anymore. Nothing you can rely on. We must ask ourselves; are those we trust to act for us are fundamentally untrustworthy? Who or what do they represent?

        Contracts dissolve. In a class based society we suddenly find ourselves divested, plummeting down, down to the despised and the ignored. This is frightening and disorienting.

        The rules have shifted; the law has changed. We are looked on as an interloper at someone else’s party. Now we are viewed as dishonorable supplicants in danger of capture and incarceration.

        Thorns remind us of a wider meaning; a warning that ultimately we can “own” nothing: everything we use is shared. Even our own body, this ship we use to forage through the seas of life, can turn against us, behaving in completely unpermitted and unfamiliar ways.

        Feeling dispossessed is a shock to the system. Hustle culture places pressure on us to take, take, take, grab or “lose out.” When ‘Thorns” appear in your daily meditation it means it is time to have some serious thoughts about the nature of “ownership”; what you want versus what you can have; what you can control versus what you can’t and ultimately, who you can trust. Who’s feathering their private nest instead of honoring a contract?

        How can you gain through losing? Does real freedom lurk behind these dispossessions? The hermit crab carries his house on his back. When he outgrows it is when he shops for another house. It clearly wouldn’t benefit him to be dragging two houses around; he wouldn’t be able to move.

        But some of us are so burdened with junk we’re completely immobilized. Yet being robbed not only isn’t any kind of relief, the sense of violation lasts for years. The only person who can rid us of our stuff is Us. We just must set to it and figure out what’s baby and what’s bathwater. It’s a lifelong process. But being light and free can be intoxicating and addictive. Maybe a contract needs renegotiation, or shouldn’t exist in the first place.

        Sometimes a Soulmate fails the test or sharing, caring and giving. Or we fail. Maybe it is just once, and after a recovery period we will be better communicators. But maybe, like the hermit crab, we have outgrown this particular shell.

        After all, we’re planning to end up with wings. Maybe once we’ve soared we won’t want to live any other way.

        ON BEING DISINHERITED

        These are the tasks
        Performed without feeling;
        The snipping the
        Slashing
        The shredding
        Bundling into bunches
        You are the remote ogre
        And I the crying child.
        Why do partitioned pieces
        Melt before they touch?
        You fear to give;
        I am helpless to receive.
        Imagine we change places.
        Would that explain
        Your fear of me?

      4. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        LAW = “The Statue”

        “Vows”

        In the garden stone figures mock us and memorialize us. They can be reassuring or uncanny as if secretly intuiting our states of mind. We put them there to remind us – of what?

        Lovers make promises to each other. We do it spontaneously, offering ourselves on the altar of our own desire. We solidify our vows publicly in paper, legal filings, photographs, video, topiary, marble, even stone.

        What promises can we make and what promises can we keep? Do these promises allow space to evolve over time? At least we can answer that last question with a heartening “yes.” Our promises are not set in stone. We are not our statues.

        Soulmates are in tune with each other. We can feel each other’s evolving spirit, sometimes before the other even can. We know when the petals lose their glisten, when the wings droop.

        Did we make a promise to be “perfect”? We know this is not possible or even desirable. The only real promises we can make are to be present, to be honest, and to treat the desires of the Beloved Other as Sacred. But we all have boundaries and we must be honest about uncovering and examining those.

        Some can be broken and re-set, some can’t. Does that mean a Soulmate can be temporary? We are temporal beings, but someday we will meet on the eternal plain.

        #HAIKU: The Statue

        Rose-choked;
        Tagged;
        Sentenced by time
        I stand Mute.
        Freeze! I see you!
        Who has won?

      5. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        The Snake = ADDICTION “The Columbine”

        “Just when things are going so well -”

        Because we’re afraid of snakes, we attract the deadly columbine. We can’t recognize danger and we don’t know how to summon real assistance.

        In the language of flowers the Columbine means “Anxious Folly. Resolved to win.” Our folly prevents our winning.

        As for snakes, there are many of snakes we depend on in the garden. But every now and then a poisonous one wanders by. How do we tell the difference?


        How can we win when we poison ourselves? It’s to lessen that anxiety, to get back to what we assume is “baseline.” But it isn’t. We just haven’t found our baseline yet, and by mimicking the baseline of others we get farther and father from ourselves.

        This is why recovery from addiction involves finding ourselves. We can’t find a soulmate when we don’t know who we are.

        Our toy-box of pleasures is quite pathetic, but that’s not our fault. We are wired for addictions, with a biological view to turning such basic pursuits for food, mating and recreation subconscious so we can use the front of our mind to think about other things.

        You can tell addictions are destructive (and not all of them are!) if they crowd out human flourishing and ruin sharing and our ability to share. “I want to feel pleasure with you” becomes, “Let’s cycle through my tragic past of suffering before I found you.”

        Not good. To get out of this mess we cultivate the gift of change, of evolution. We will share and learn to tolerate discomfort. Hold tight. Often the addictions gained their grip over us because we were seeking to escape change or discomfort! The good news it, it’s never too late.

        The better news is, this re-discovery and re-creation of the self is one of the life-transforming experiences to share with a soulmate and if you have no soulmate yet, here’s a crucial step to getting yourself ready to present to the world as the Real, the Essential, the True You.

        Always look for help. Set up a program and a feedback system for accountability and efficiency and spiritual support for the inevitable withdrawal that’s coming. It’s only giving birth to your stronger, better, best self. You know it’s time.

        HAIKU: The Columbine

        Gambler’s inferno
        Dissolves will
        Slavery
        Wrecks pleasure-
        Luck? Loss?
        Choose.

      6. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        The Poppy = SUCCESS “The Lovers”
        “Successful in your eyes”

        The Poppy signifies oblivion and eternal sleep in the Language of Flowers. This source of heroin and morphine will definitely obliterate your personality, despite protecting you from pain. Does that sound like success to you?

        The greatest pleasure of Soulmates is creating a world all our own, with its own rules and reality. If our Soul Unit is a success, we are a Success. The harsh judgments of the outside world, operating as it does casino-like with few winners and a vast “majority” of losers, fade in impact.

        All that is required for joy is that we must be a success to each other, and we must be a success together. This mandates constant soul-searching as we step through life’s landmines, both singly and alone. There is no more restful peace than ultimate confidence that someone’s got your back.

        Haiku: The Lovers

        Falling upwards
        Into you
        My other wing, my second
        Clapping hand

      7. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        The tulip = ILLUSION “Gothic Novel”

        “Seeing what isn’t there”

        Illusions are VERY attractive. We WANT them to be true. In my childhood Superman leapt tall buildings in a single bound – all us kids could recognize the fun, the power, the joy in that.

        Limitations are unpleasant. We can work to expand them, or…we can dream. Every culture warns the dreamer against getting lost in fantasy. The Tulip is a historic emblem of delusion – impoverishing generations of otherwise intelligent Dutch merchants in a fruitless gamble. Now the Tulip warns that you may be counting on something – or someone – that is false.

        Our society has been fueled by misinformation ever since Edward Bernays, founder of modern advertising, wrote his book Propaganda in the 1920’s. Since then legal beagles have defended the right to “puffery” and “spin”, even to saying something manifestly untrue; “miracle pills!”

        Advertisers are very honest about manipulating us through wish and fear. We are eager to buy the illusions that seem to promise a warm social life, a happy home or radiating beauty. Lately misinformation has taken a distinctly evil turn as billionaires base their fortunes on convincing us that pollution isn’t dangerous, the climate is fine, science is untrustworthy, the election was stolen and oligarchic rule is what we really want.

        The question to consider is, what is our benefit in believing and propagating obviously harmful facts? The rifle-toting man who broke into a Washington DC pizza parlor thought he was a heroic savior of children. He’s now serving a prison term.

        Why is violence such an attractive answer? Forget stockpiling bear mace and bullets to abuse your fellow citizens. We need some other way to soothe our raggedy self-esteem apart from clinging to grifters and liars.

        On the other side of illusion lies reality. We need to take a look at it, savor it. Often it’s a kid tugging at our clothes begging us to stay, focus, share; not lose ourselves in a fantasy world.

        The need for illusion prevents us from finding, seeing and keeping a Soulmate. We must work to make reality less terrible, so that we don’t become dependent on illusion as a pleasure source. Illusion rushes in when life seems meaningless. Joining groups of honest seekers directing their paths with love can save us. When we are surrounded by love we will attract love. Check the philosophy of the group you hang out with. Is it “Let’s you and him fight?” or “Let’s seek joy for all.”

        GOTHIC NOVEL

        A woman alone is open – gaping,
        Button hole without a button hook.
        She carries her muff held stiffly
        Out before her like an offering
        Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers
        Slit the pause like razors.
        This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur.
        “I prefer the window up, thank you”
        “I prefer it down”.
        She lights a Sobranie to remind her
        Of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen
        Lean forward, reading the initials
        On her morocco case.

      8. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        Foxglove = MEDICINE “Alyssum”

        “Intervention”

        We find ourselves now in an endless pandemic, a New Normal caused by our aggressive human interference with our planet’s wildlife. By a miracle the same pharmaceutical companies that have been competitively bleeding all of us dry have come up with a vaccine that seems effective at keeping most of us out of the hospital. Wouldn’t want to kill the golden geese!

        But it doesn’t work if you don’t take it and, wonder of wonders, a substantial number of Americans have become suspicious of the medical establishment! Since insurance companies have been advertising for years that healthcare is “our choice” based on “what plan we can afford” I for one am not surprised.

        This is the only possible end result of a gated health care system that actively despises “Public” health as “radical socialism”!

        So where is our Soul & our Soulmate in all this, our little, fragile, mortal, human body that drew the “medical intervention” card only this morning? “Medical intervention” is represented in the Tantric Garden by the humble foxglove.

        Foxgloves contain digitalis, the building block of cardiology care. Where do we stand on intervention? We may create a “perfect world” with our Soulmate but does that mean we can let no one in? A moment’s thought convinces that we must keep the freshening breezes of this world blowing as long as we are in this world! “Help” will always be needed and hopefully, offered.

        Can we learn to trust the Helpful Intervener? We don’t want to create a love nest so fragile it is threatened by any outsider. Instead, we want to make certain we avail ourselves of every good advancement and improvement opportunity in our oh so imperfect world.

        ALYSSUM

        What wound is this?
        Flowering? Flowering?
        I wake at two am
        Immobilized –
        A curvilinear clamp
        Half hoop clenching
        My right side.
        .

        It could be the strain of
        Fishing for a future
        Hooking sky through a
        Porthole window or
        I could be over-organized. The
        Doctors dismissed me in
        My mother’s name.
        “You dare to be angry?
        You dare to grow old?
        You are a false alarm.”

        I say a prayer to the great night heron, that
        Pregnant thief of dreams –
        Solitary hunter calling to collect me.
        Dream he rises
        To unleash the silken sinews
        Of submission from my torn and
        Tethered wing –
        Feathered like a revelation
        Stippled like the phases of the moon
        Birthing spirit, coming
        Coming, coming
        In his cloud of fire.