Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Beauty

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

    The Bridge – Discipline

      If This Archetype Chooses You – Confusing discipline with punishment, you tried living without any and now feel too debilitated to escape the mess you’re in. Uh oh!

      From our Subconscious We Must Summon a Rescuer. That rescuer is OUR ESSENTIAL SELF. In dreams sometimes it presents as a hero, a fictional or historic figure or a spirit animal. Try reading folk or fairy tales right before bed. Fall asleep imagining strengthening muscles – physical, spiritual, emotional – growing inside you.

      You Must Reject the Substitute Self – To please others (and save yourself from harm) you have created a Social Self, a substitute self others will accept. But now it’s time to find out who you REALLY are.

      The Substitute Self Will Fight You for Survival – A battle you must win. Be firm banishing this monster who pretends to be you. Make a list of all the attributes that attract you, excite you, that you want to have, and turn them into a list of affirmations; “I am brave, I am creative, I am kind. I treat myself well and structure my time to maximize my flourishing.” Even the laziest, cruelest corner of your false, social self will ultimately collapse to reveal a Tiny Child yearning for effective mothering. Time to mother yourself.

      You are Jack AND the Beanstalk! No giant can stand against you. What kind of mother did you have? Was she supportive or carping? Kind or critical? Is she a happy person? Did HER life let her down? Make a list of IDEAL Mother Attributes, and turn them into affirmations. “I am generous, thoughtful and imaginative. I give endlessly from my fountain of blessings.”

      Discipline is the Only Path to Achieving What We Want. Nothing is achieved (or appreciated!) without discipline, which only means conforming your behavior to a previously conceived pattern. What ideas spring up when you think about this? Do you see “discipline” as always cruel? Painful? Is it one of your fears? Or the map to the orderly life you long for?

      You Are Your Best Friend and Best Parent – Nothing works in your life until you learn delayed gratification and stick-to-itiveness. But first you must experiment with other patterns – some of which –depending on your upbringing – can be hellish. So you have THAT to get past. You will definitely need to harness all your dream power to get yourself over the finish line.

      Adapt Discipline to Enhance Thriving. But who’s doing the adapting – the Cruel Taskmaster, the Disgusted Lover, the Generous Parent or the Permissive Saint? You contain all these (and they live in your dreams) so which will you listen to? Who will you empower? Which do you feed?

      The Choice You Make Controls your Future. Consult appealing patterns that have worked for others and blend to taste. Realize it’s a process; a series of moments. Develop a sophisticated discernment you can trust to guide you.

      Creatives Set Marks and Hit Them – Forming habits is easier than breaking them apart, so creatives know that preventing bad habits is the core of discipline. But bad habits sneak up on us, they will form anyway, so part of your discipline will always be turning away from something that was formerly pleasurable. Enjoy the peace that comes with each small step.

      Creatives Know How to Keep Going – Discipline is the bridge that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Always use a “spotter” – a professional who’s “been there” and who can keep you from going over the edge.

      Creatives Celebrate Their Discipline – Self-acceptance comes from experiencing our humanity to the fullest. We are “parenting” our much-loved and respected self, the one who starts out as a toddler with no self-control whom we’re trying to keep out of the fire. Forgive yourself. And keep going.

      Make Discipline Visual – Charts, maps, graphs and lists that hearten & cheer are key to purposeful pathways. Figure out a way to picture your values. Checking off boxes and cherishing the “proof” of a successful day becomes your joy.

      Models & Mentors – “Through self-discipline comes freedom” – Aristotle

      “Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you going” – John C. Maxwell

      “All success begins with self-discipline. It starts with you.” – Dwayne Johnson

      ‘Day by day – what you choose, what you think, what you do, is who you become” – Heraclitus

      #Haiku: Discipline

      Discipline is
      Choosing
      Between what you want now
      And what you want
      Most

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

      Torpor – Addiction

        If This Archetype Chooses You – Uh oh. Something’s preventing you from launching on your quest. Time to wake your Sleeping Orchid, but…It’s hard to even formulate goals with this monkey on your back, chattering in your ear. What is it?

        You’ve Become Too Attached. To … what? Investigate. Something’s controlling your mind, controlling your actions. Take it slow as you consider. Is this attachment harming your principles? Values? Relationships?

        The Creative’s Fiercest Battle – Do you dream of imprisonment? Blank walls? Chains? Our neurocircuitry mandates habit-making behavior, but our intelligence recognizes entrapment, and our dreams send out distress signals. If you’re human, there is no way to avoid addiction. Welcome to the unpleasant Club!

        We Are Wired for Addiction – If there’s no escaping it – that means you will have to fight this battle. But the good news is, this is exactly how you become Free. Anyone who hasn’t done it is still a slave to their hormones, instincts, patterning – just as animals are. Here’s the very thing you become a Creative for – your best chance to develop a free will and a free soul.

        Study Your Opponent – Turns out we have tremendous choice over what we become addicted to. Some addictions are less corrupting than others. Visit an AA meeting and the consumption of sugar and tobacco is outright alarming. Are you addicted to gambling? Do you work in sales? Were you raised in a ritualistic faith? We easily become dependent on praise, on safety, on gratification, and our brains (and our general health) show our dependency. They threaten and panic when the “treat” is withdrawn.

        Creative Challenge – This parasite doesn’t care if it kills its host. If you fear you are approaching a cliff-edge, you probably are. One test is to go on a “retreat” where your customary gratifications are not available, and attempt to form new gratifications. See what happens! Does your personality threaten to disintegrate? Great time to ask yourself: who am I really? This is such a good idea, we should build it into our lives, periodically. Just to keep us recognizing that cliff-edge where Soul and Self become separated and Free Will is lost.

        Creative Danger – We always live with the possibility that we will lose our autonomy. We want to evolve, we know we SHOULD change, but we CAN’T. There’s no shame in needing outside help. This is the purpose of interventions, to demonstrate to our eyes and ears that we are harming ourselves and our relationships. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, especially when we think we’ve finally found a substance/process that “magically” allows us to live on our particular cliff-edge – a dangerous job, risky sexual behaviors, risky recreational behaviors.

        Worst-Case Scenario – is that our addiction becomes our identity. We always have the choice of refusing to listen to our interveners – giving up on our relationships just to keep up our self-abuse. Some hardened wretches tell anyone who listen that life itself isn’t worth it without their life-threatening self-abuse. They choose to die as slaves.

        Creative Opportunity – You not only CAN free yourself, you MUST to deserve and preserve your Creative Power. It is your spiritual obligation to live this territorial existence as an enlightenment opportunity. Familiar with the saying, “Live simply so that others may simply live” ? That mandates sharing. That means ALWAYS studying your consumption, NEVER allowing yourself to turn into a greedy pig and scheduling time to be alone with the universe and with God. To check on the hardiness of your Soul.

        Models & Mentors – “You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside you” – Seth Adam Smith

        “All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings”
        – Ellen Burstyn

        “Sometimes you can only find heaven by backing slowly away from hell”
        – Carrie Fisher

        “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”. – Robert Collier

        “The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker

        #Haiku: – Addiction

        Brain cells beggared;
        Lovelorn
        Oxytocin receptors misfire:
        “Feed me!”

      1. 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