Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Beauty

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Youth = RESILIENCE: “A Bruise, A Cut, A Fever”

    Snap back!

    Youth is hungry long before dinner is ready. We recall youth as a rollercoaster of highs and lows, a mix of aspiration, beauty and joy keen as a knife’s edge. Let us never forget that sense of Spring when all things were possible and we were the linchpins holding up the universe.

    Youth’s sense of power is so disproportionate to reality it almost seems as if wisdom prohibits action rather than informing it. Like the smarter you are, the less you can accomplish! Youth rushes in places Wisdom fears to even think about. Yet the sense of possibility and the delight in discovery are so heady nothing balks Youth for long. It’s all over far too fast.

    We have discussed the fact that if you want a soulmate, you will have to kill dragons – both yours and theirs. There is trauma potential, to say the least. Every one of us have experienced trauma, many of us have forgotten it, most of us deny it. How we represent the scars of life to ourselves has everything to do with how we represent ourselves to others.

    Today’s meditation is about “snapping back,” not just “recovery” but Plan B. We may need a Plan C, D, and E. The fact that the dragon got the best of us on one or two occasions is no surprise. Remember learning to drive?

    We are really about learning to learn, learning what to fear and not to fear, learning how to react to constantly new sets of circumstances. We are resilient, we are flexible. We are cagey, we are wily.

    By the time we meet our soulmate we will have our own dragons under control, and we will have many stories to share about The Ways of Dragons.

    A BRUISE A CUT A FEVER

    Dragons exist.
    From my tree perch I watched them
    Uncaring of rules and bored by
    Their games, I wrote down
    Statistics
    In gold crested diaries.
    Fairy-tale beginnings
    Augur sour endings.
    Pole-axed by Europe.
    “This stuff matters frightfully”
    And I was affrighted.

    Culture-mad-Mother
    Forced us to look
    Then forced us to blink;
    Her timing was off.
    Dad sought his oceans
    In history, in pictures, in
    The madness of Nature;
    Encapsulates daughters in
    Unsinkable Fiberglas;
    That captain lied when he said
    We were all going home.

    Loathed masculine privilege
    I disliked you on sight
    Teased your editorials
    Insulted your proctoring
    Reviled, you prevailed.
    Kindling a clove-scented ecstasy;
    Inflaming my fevers at the same time as
    Quenching them.

    Sweeping West you
    Pulled the Atlantic behind you, smothering
    Both of us; I fought back with
    Monogrammed luggage.

    Swimming nude in your rapture we
    Posed for Swedish love manuals
    Under the falls.
    I thought I knew everything till
    I met your parents;
    Your father’s impressionist:
    Your mother convinced me
    That monsters can flourish.

    I dust you with my glitter as
    you peel my shock-pants;
    Our children wait impatiently
    To get their lives started.
    “Ask him to marry you Mommy!
    Ask him! Ask him!”

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Mourning = DETACHMENT “Hide & Seek in the Museum of Modern Art”

    “Perfect is Enemy of Good”

    After a loss, Mourning is required. Don’t recoil. Mourning is a growth process which, because it hurts so much, feels like retrenchment. But in the Garden, pruning IS growth.

    Artists try to convince us that spaces – which may seem blank or even empty to us, are part of the design. But what is the design? It makes us hurt – it makes hearts and brains hurt – even to attempt understanding of all this emptiness. All this change.

    Physicists remind us matter transforms; it doesn’t “vanish.” As we contemplate the empty spaces with a sore heart and a buzzing brain, we will need peace and compassion to appreciate the majesty of the whole design.

    We expect sore muscles after exercise, but, oddly, we don’t expect a “sore heart” or “sore mind” as we struggle along our Soulmate path. Sometimes it’s a “sore spirit.” We’re not doing anything “wrong”; life is a rhythm. The “perfection” in our imagination is actually STASIS – the opposite of “life”. The nature of the Other is to break our immature expectations of Perfection with the Wildness of their Mystery.

    If we are to create a New World together, the old world has to go! For a long time – possibly our whole life – we will be honoring our Loss. We may search for ways to reframe it (sometimes it is a blessed release) sometimes it was the shedding of a constricted skin.

    Mourning means this is not an effortless adjustment. Even joining lives triggers a loss. It is scary and new, the loss of our proud loneliness. It can feel like sadness and there is sadness that our privacy will be invaded. There is terror: we will be exposed.

    Mourning is Detachment – you can see the Lost Past drifting away from you like a child’s balloon. It is not just “OK” to mourn, it is necessary and there is no substitute. The fact that you had a worthy self, a worthy past, a dignified life and were “fine on your own” is part of what makes you Beloved.

    Your Soulmate is feeling this too. This is another thing you can share, and there are all sorts of ways to honor it. Some Soulmates need at the beginning of a relationship to keep to their own schedule. You will always need your own room, or private and alone times for retreat. It is necessary to establish boundaries such as private journals, private phones, private work. We are developing trust, as well as changing at the same time.

    Honor those sore muscles of honest effort. Just as sore muscles will slowly improve, so will this sore heart/mind/spirit. We must rub it with the liniment of love, trust, sharing, hope and self-regard. We are brave, and no mistake! Remember the promise “those who mourn will be comforted.”

    HIDE & SEEK IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

    Life class;
    It’s my game but you started it.
    Here we are, lost
    This place resembles me, a
    Swollen storehouse where
    Nothing can be explained,
    Everything’s left
    Open to interpretation.

    Outside a single tree flowers in
    Smug delusion; all this whiteness
    Weights the soul. Mastery bites
    Like teeth on lip; my
    Throbbing inner elbow
    Where the blood lies gathered.
    Lies gathered.
    Let’s admit it. Take
    Responsibility

    For once, leave no work
    Unfinished. Anonymous
    Entries win no prize.
    Pan-flash –

    Recoil.
    Powder burn –
    Person
    Less

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – searching for a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Loss = SUFFERING “Two Lovers Contemplate the Seawrack”

    “Hostage to fortune”

    Something vital you have relied upon is simply gone. This Loss creates in us an almost hallucinatory state of core wrongness. The world must be rotten if such vibrancy can be destroyed. Einstein says matter cannot be erased, only transformed, so where has our Precious gone?

    Possibly it never had a physical manifestation; perhaps it was an illusion. Or do we identify the Beloved with it its physical presence so totally that even change or sickness or age will turn it into something different? We must think about the unseen world as well as our more familiar evolving world to understand Loss.

    Loss changes us; clearly, we will never be the same again. Loss is an opportunity to confront Reality; the Reality within our heads as well as in our hearts.

    The one thing that scares people so much about Soulmating is the prospect of loss. This is so frightening some of us would rather opt out of emotion altogether rather than even imagine experiencing the pain when Precious is lost.

    What is really happening here is that we are re-viewing memories of terrible past traumas and our Soul is thinking, “I can’t go through that again.” These are unresolved terrors; we need to resolve them. Our Soulmate – just the knowledge that Soulmating is possible – is one of the ways we can do this. You need the belief that the two of you can create an eternity where you will always be together.

    Yes, the prospect of loss deepens when you love, as does Love itself. It will give us a new heart, fresh eyes, stronger hands. Love teaches us that the Universe is our Soulmate – we were born for it as it is born for us. Love can never be erased – it can only enlarge us.

    TWO LOVERS CONTEMPLATE THE SEAWRACK

    He lost her
    Spoke too soon
    As men are wont
    Affinity flew overhead
    Danced with gulls
    A jazz-mad snowflake.
    His words
    Freighted by their inner logic
    Fell to earth and lay
    Prey to busy bristle-footed worms
    Who tidily dismantle
    Subject, verb & predicate;
    Sucked out the sense and left
    The elegiac bones to rot
    Amid kelp-wigged rock & glass-rope sponge
    Cheek by jowl with
    Long dead fishermen’s wives
    Punished now for ill-set dough and
    Worse-set hair
    Mouths agape in imitation of
    The badly sutured wounds of childbirth.
    Secrets told; corpses left to nourish
    Nature’s counting-house
    One season only; sharing space
    With shattered petrels
    Feathers spewed like pillow-stuffing
    Frenzied passade of love-struck boys –
    Strewn among the shavings of these once great ships
    Built by hearts & backs of men
    Who loved their daughters far too well
    Losing them to sailors
    Crueler than the great sea-god himself;
    He who stirs our sleep these nights
    With grief-crazed cries of loons
    Casting on the waters for their
    Far-flung children
    Lost forever now
    As we are lost as
    He lost her.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Seeking a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Chrysalis = Potential

    “Hot Prowl”

    The Chrysalis looks dead; that is its disguise. A simple, broken leaf, soon to be swept away by wind or rain. But in fact, it’s a puzzle box that holds the whole universe inside itself; an unbroken chain of DNA, an augury of “becoming” dating from the dawn of Life itself. So is each of us a Chrysalis…of what? For what?

    We are powerhouses seeking ignition. We can feel the slow-gathering strength within, but we are still mysteries to ourselves. We need the Other to become a Full Being. Plato posited that man/woman are separated angels endlessly seeking their other half. Your duty is to protect the chrysalis so that it can unfold in its own good time. Be patient, your day of flight and connection comes ever closer.

    HOT PROWL

    Don’t wake up.
    Surveilled by night
    Your chiseled torso
    Slackened with exhaustion.
    Touching things that once
    You touched,
    Listening to your apnea;
    I turn away before you turn.
    Making peace with all my choices.
    It’s been worth everything –
    Winning in divorce a
    Hard-won superpower:
    Invisibility

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Seeking a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Marriage = PARTNERSHIP ; “Marriage License”

    “The light in me honors the light in you”

    Marriage can be a spiritual partnership of equals, a conscientious joining of two lives seeking to shape a common purpose animated by love. If either partner is looking for a mule, hostage, trick mirror or foot soldier, the partnership will fail. The fact that our higher purpose can only be discovered after we have sealed the deal makes marriage the riskiest enterprise any of us can expect to tackle in a lifetime, but if we succeed, the payoff is tremendous and all effort, achievement and joy will be raised to the greatest power.

    Alliances: Very little in life is accomplished alone. We long to double and triple our efforts, to see 360 degrees at once , and to work while sleeping, like some double-headed god! We spend years fantasizing about the perfect partner who will provide the invisible cloak, the seven league boots, who will take over from us in the relay race while we are fainting or shivering with fever psychological or physical.

    And then there’s the love that give us x-ray vision; loving the person we learn from, seek comfort from, who gives us strength. Marriage is a blending; our partner bringing out gifts we didn’t know we had.

    Who can we partner with for today’s challenges? What does our soulmate seek in us? What can we do to be worthy of their faith? Marriage Card is a multiplicitous maximizer of power and potential as well as risk.

    Alliances are critical in life. None of us can survive, much less flourish, without some kind of team. The size of the team often determines our success, sometimes called “social capital.” This presents a special challenge to introverts, like me, who not only like but actually need to be alone, just to recharge, work and hear our own thoughts. The Fully Committed Other therefore has even more importance in our lives.

    Marriage is the ultimate commitment, publicly forswearing all others unless you specifically rewrite your vows differently (or take no vows at all.) Is marriage too great a step for you? Unimaginable, in fact? Or is this the future towards which you have been working? If so, you need a Beloved who truthfully companions, instead of pretending to agree.

    Marriage License

    This policy does not insure against
    disfigurement
    (controlled or uncontrolled)


    delirium; anguish approximate or anguish remote;
    dismembering scars
    that fever-chart a graph of life immutable to prayer


    intransigent of purpose;
    does not insure against
    my someday knowing you


    forcing pores to open where once
    you had no skin
    dining on your heart while you


    dine out on mine.
    When I forget this I know
    You will remind me


    As we are destined to
    Remind each other.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Seeking a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Solitude = SELF-SUFFICIENCY

    “What’s your experience of being alone?”

    Solitude is required for reflection, and reflection is required for growth. Growth is required for choosing a soulmate, because the choice cannot be haphazard but the result of self-knowledge.

    Solitude is not loneliness; it is the Art of Being Alone. Wise Ones have told us that ultimately each of us is only alone; we are born alone and we die alone. Plainly, this cannot be true. We are as social a species as the ants and termites. But just as one could argue that every worthwhile achievement has been a collaboration, one could also argue that every worthwhile idea was conceived in solitude.

    I prefer to think of our “mental, emotional and spiritual pores” having both an “on” and “off” position. There is outflow, there is in-flow and there is no flow. All are necessary to the health of the human being and all are necessary to the maximization of human potential. Depth psychology merely systematizes the layers of human consciousness and sub-consciousness whose existence dreams have always demonstrated.

    Meditation and mindfulness seek to capture the exact moment when the soul experiences itself. This is not possible without regular periods of scheduled and enforced solitude. In-breath must equal outbreath until suddenly the lips of the psyche part and, as in a “magic eye” painting; the familiar world dramatically shifts to reveal under-worlds and over-worlds of multiple meanings and intense possibilities.

    Self-Sufficiency: How panicked are we by the idea of being “alone”? Even those of us who are introverts are sustained by a complex net of relationships, any adjustment to which could drive us back to infancy. Are we alone even within our relationships? Are we alone on our planet? In the universe? It is surprising how much this fear can be seen lurking behind our consciously assumed states of mental “good cheer”.

    Most of us work in collaborative ventures; nothing we do would be worthwhile without, at the very least, someone to assess or appreciate. It is time to take stock of our internal personal resources; those that owe nothing to the support of others.

    Opportunity; Much of what we think during the day is in fact a dialogue. It is salutary to ask ourselves: who are we talking to? Is this person imaginary, dead, alive? Are they helpful – or cruel? It’s common knowledge that we speak more insultingly to ourselves than we might to anyone we know! Time for a “voices” upgrade. These are part of ourselves talking to each other; possibly parts of ourselves we could do without.

    And is that the best way to accomplish our set goals? Now’s the time to understand that, given education and culture, we can never be “alone” in the sense of bereft of help. We have countless models we’ve been choosing from childhood up. Who are they? Do we need upgrade them, or just name them and learn to deploy them more effectively? Some of us are surrounded by a mix of celebrities (Humphrey Bogart in “Play it Again, Sam”) some of us by the loving dead (Granma and Grandpa) others by cultural icons (for me Shelley, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson) some of us by imaginary friends or even angels.

    What’s working for us and what isn’t? After all, we furnish our own brains. Let’s decorate by design.

    Danger! An important component of the confidence we desire to cultivate is freedom and self-determination. We all know how unsettling a date’s visible desperation can be. We instinctively back away as from a sinking ship whose whirlpool threatens to suck us in. In other words, the best way to gain a soulmate is to be able – visibly! -to live without one. This sounds nonsensical; but look at it this way, you ARE living without one. Is your desire to change your life based on the indisputable fact that your life is a mess? If so, we have to turn our attention to THAT first thing, otherwise we are the sinking ship no one wants to get near, much less, on.

    Challenge! To increase our chances of finding the best person who is right for us right now AND in our future, we have to GIVE ourselves a future. No other person can be our “future.” We need to have a vision of a future we are working towards. That is what we want to hear about our date, and that is what they will want to hear about us. It’s time to become your own best friend, the one who really cares about you and gives such good advice

    HEDGEHOG CROSSING ROAD

    Spines erect as swords
    She waits
    To tilt the windmills rushing by
    Machined from hell to trap
    Her tiny weight of soul and fur.


    She fears not.
    He who protects the sparrows
    Comforts her.
    The air is sharp
    With winter not
    With false regret –


    She lifts her head to gauge
    The moment ripe for flight
    Unaltered in her captaincy of self.
    She’ll reach eternity or the pond


    No matter
    Each complete her
    Equally.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    Flight=INGENUITY “How did you meet?”

    What if you fall? What if you fly?

    We were all born knowing how to fly. In dreams (and ambition) we recapture that lost knowledge, soaring gravity-less above our quotidian terrain. But in our daytime lives, Flight becomes lost art, a feat mastered by moths, a state of freedom we can only envy. If we want to locate a soulmate, we will need to develop “wiles.”

    Ingenuity is a critical re-imagining of “same-old, same-old.” We need to release the rage behind our boredom and adopt fresh thinking in order to find our Soulmate. We need to consider some “unlikely” packages. Maybe you never imagined yourself with a younger person, someone with children, or someone from a very different background.

    To turn our useless, stubby appendages into wings we first project ourselves psychically into the air. Discover the world from a new angle. What does the hawk see as he floats above our traffic jam?

    Suddenly, falling becomes diving, lightness equals strength and floating becomes endurance. My old school had a challenge called “Night Problems” especially popular with daters – a blindfolded couple was dumped in the middle of Pennsylvania country and expected to find a way back to the school. Alert readers will recognize this as “orienteering”, a team sport in which participants’ true characters definitely emerge!

    Back when I was engaged, marriage counselors used to recommend sharing the same toothbrush or wallpapering a room together! Believe me, if you’re going to split up, it will happen then. True character most reveals itself under these stressful conditions.

    “HOW DID YOU MEET?”

    You saw me naked
    I saw you too close- up.
    You hovered, teaching,
    You drank vodka,
    I drank wormwood.

    Between green glimpses
    You cut mountains down to size;
    I’d no idea that one could
    Take such charge of space.

    Now I’m an icicle,
    Nostrils pierced by thorns, falling
    Face-first for every launch.
    You were the king the ghost pines saluted.

    From this height, I see everything;
    How you dove and danced!
    Speeding through your love-drunk universe,
    Infecting me with your own whiteness,

    I was dizzy, till all my blood drained out.
    You challenged God;
    I was the echo following after.
    Yet here I am after all this time;

    Does anything remain of you?

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – walking the path of attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    Earth = RESOURCES
    “Green Thumb”

    The Garden we wish to share is an island in the universe that is Earth. As we travel, we soon find out that Earth itself is another Garden, almost too large for us to comprehend, containing many wonders.

    We are creatures of this planet that nourishes us; but who’s taking care of who? Gardens need a lot of care. The quality of the soil, timing and positioning of the plants, their symbiosis and synchronicity are critical. If we block the sun and clog the air with burning smoke we all suffer.

    Earth is our mother and we are her children. Mothers get old; they welcome renewal but they can’t last forever, so it is good to study sensible policies about health and healing. The key here is whether we even try to give back as much as we have received. If we make the effort, benefits will overflow.

    Our care for the earth is a model of the care we offer the Beloved Other. Is it an attractive deal? Are we givers as well as takers? Or are we just searching for a complicit Other to despoil the planet with?

    When it is a question of what we can give, we must examine our resources. This is the source of the famous kneeling offering of a diamond ring. Cynics would say a “taker” is hoping she’ll be so dazzled she won’t notice that’s ALL she’ll be getting. A honeymoon over before it even started.

    So what are the resources we are taking for granted? Often, having earth under our feet and a roof over our head is something we barely even think about. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes. Our vision stretches so far down the road to imagined “somedays” that we are impatient with “today”. Today seems so modest, so ordinary. It isn’t until we really consider the people and places that have “always had our back” that we even form the words, “thank you.” A soulmate with contempt for the familiar doesn’t trust intimacy.

    Part of the reason we lose interest in our humblest resources is that we’ve done nothing to deserve them. It’s embarrassing for us even to admit there are resources we have no control over, that come to us just by virtue of where we chance to live, or work, or who we’re related to. It makes sense to add them up and give thanks for them right now. Sometimes we find that we can assume the reins of these neglected resources after all; sharpen them up, improve them, modify and share them into an aspect of our life-plan after all.

    A good example is the rude health that often comes to all of us simply as part of our youth. We can’t rely on that forever! Are there ways that we abuse good health, good sleep, warm familial connections and may even be unconsciously reducing our future opportunities of enjoying them? Let’s make them part of our conscious plan today and stop taking them for granted.

    Why do we harm our own resources? Why can’t we use the resources that we have? Why waste our time pining for those we DON’T have? Descending deeper through the subconscious we uncover the powerful, devastating wish is to be the exact opposite to what we actually are. Our fantasy is so powerful, we can picture this person – us, but better proportioned, more beautiful, intelligent, relaxed, powerful, magnetic. Mustering all these imagined resources, we yearn to attract someone who is ALSO just like that.

    Cat-fishers know this and try to lure us into their web with borrowed pix, false profiles and Fear of Missing Out. Fantasy not only WON’T save us, it makes us hate ourselves! Now is the time to study our REAL resources – they are UNIQUE. Is it our wonderful family? Our stubborn determination? Fantastic teeth? Interesting job? Ability to laugh? Interest in others? Generosity? Friends? Faith? All these things? Think about your resume, which describes where you ACTUALLY WENT and what you ACTUALLY DID. Now try to write one about what you learned and who you became and where that stands on the path to who you want to be.

    Didn’t the mistakes lead to insight? Didn’t the suffering deepen your compassion? Are we stronger at the broken places? The further into this exercise you go the more likely you are to realize your soulmate will be lucky to have you!

    Green Thumb

    You tend my body so well you can’t
    Surprise me anymore
    You’re the surprise and
    I’m used to you
    Folding back my lettuce leaves with your tongue
    Coaxing the reluctant caterpillar
    While I lie awake giddy with
    Self preservation until
    The final firecracker moment
    When you release and flourish
    The fragrant butterfly

  • The Language of Butterflies – walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    The Moon = SUBTLE INFLUENCE : “Botticelli’s Simonetta”

    “Secret crushing”

    The Moon and the Sun have nothing in common. The Moon is a planet, the Sun is a star. The Moon doesn’t give light; it reflects light; it must be tired of being compared to the Sun. What an unfair fight!

    The Moon is our hostage, circling us slowly. Balefully. Oh, it has its worshippers. I mean, which would you rather be, Moonstruck or Sun-struck? You can recover from The Moon. The Moon seems manageable; Earth has visited it many times. The Moon is symbolic; vital for poets; unavoidable for lovers. The Moon is the Planet for people who like to sneak around. The Moon manages our tides, but subtly. Cruelly. She is the Queen of passive aggression.

    There are two ways to accomplish anything: full-frontal or “sneak attack.” This knowledge, so dear to military strategists, is one of the first things we discovered as children. You rarely get what you want simply by asking for it. Instead, you must study “the target” and determine likely responses. As children, we usually realized it helped if “target” was in a good mood! Bad mood targets say “no” to everything!

    But this simple reality has important ramifications for us adult planners: there is also “weather” in the world of human desire and accomplishment. It’s much more difficult to “take off” in a storm. The Moon is visible entirely by borrowed light, but that’s the least important thing about her. Her power may be invisible, but we can feel it in our blood, in our bodies!

    There could be no more useful introduction to the potency of Subtle Power. Sometimes in order to achieve our desire we must prepare our target to even hear us. Jesus illustrated this brilliantly in a series of parables anyone would understand. When he was asked a question, he’d tell a story whose moral was obvious. He allowed seekers to answer their own questions by first determining what “paradigm” matched their circumstance.

    Plotting the “weather” and analyzing the “players” tells us much of what we need to know when planning to move forward. It can be admirable to lay all our cards on the table, or it can be foolhardy; as men discover who propose on the first date. We’ve been given complex brains. Let’s use them to think strategically.

    Do you have a secret crush? Do you know why — or is not knowing an important part of its power over you? What’s influencing you? Where is this pull coming from?

    The moon exemplifies subtle power; entrancing its quarry like a sidewinder. That means it’s time to “think outside the box” and take a deep dive into the “hard” wiring of your motives and desires. Just how “hard” is that wiring? Just because it’s “factory-installed” doesn’t mean it can‘t be improved upon.

    “Customization” according to your unique requirements is far superior to accepting whatever your biology throws at you. Let’s study our own blueprints with a view to a possible re-design if we don’t like what we see. We all have nonsensical fears, triggers and prejudices; keeping them in darkness allows them to proliferate, even assume command. The Moon is one of the Imposture archetypes (Fireflies is the other) but the moon is more about you posing to fool yourself. 

    We who seek our Perfect Other Half wish to be free of all that. We want to know what we actually want, what benefits and what harms us and all we want is the ability to speak it honestly. Let’s compare your real self, your desired self and your social self to your desirable self – and learn.

    Can you change? This is the most important question, because you’ll have to change to blend smoothly with your other. Resistance to change – to experimentation, to re-design – is the biggest red flag there is. It’s a deal-breaker.

    SIMONETTA:
    Botticelli’s Muse

    Ah Simonetta!
    You were always
    All the faces; how we

    Pity the griffon backed toad
    Who dreams of you
    And you alone;

    Excepting your fatality –
    Eyes flint deep, pebble shallow,
    Thunder lines coiled on
    Lips pursed tight

    A tantrummy child
    Punishing parents by
    Refusing to breathe.

    As this world is not
    Perfection you can’t be;
    Yet somehow you embody

    Everything we yearn for; your
    Pear-hard belly
    Anticipating ravages;

    Unto that scar that splits you twice
    Equator-wise, spilling out
    the thistle-tailed phoenix

    Who perpetuates your face, spinning
    Ropes of rubied veins and
    Clouds of gilded hair –

    Arching you back to
    Burst you, husk and all
    Against the sun.

  • The Language of Butterflies – walking the path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    Duality = AMBIVALENCE “The Sideways Smile”

    “Love/Hate”

    Dormancy casts us into contemplation, and contemplation heightens our uncertainty. Duality reminds us that meditating on the opposites in our natures must become part of our standard meditation practice. When we desire to bring a soulmate into existence we ask ourselves: what does it mean to be “opposite”?

    Consider all sides of this equation; consider, also, that we ourselves create and trigger our own “opposites” so we must observe the infinite potential conceived by the opposite of intention, designed by the opposite of desire, spawning the opposite of Being itself.

    It is human to want two conflicting and contradictory things at once. When we “choose” any one thing, we give its shadow power. We still “want” the neglected thing: perhaps more than ever now that we can no longer “have” it. This can’t “hurt” us so long as we’re aware of it.

    We must expect the path not taken to rear up in our dreams and stake its claim to our life. When we see it, we dismiss it again: “Begone, I don’t want you. I have not chosen you.” Every time we make this statement we diminish its force a tiny bit. The worst thing we can do is become its advocate: “Maybe that’s not so bad. Why can’t I have both?” If we make that mistake we are setting up a vicious circle of longing for the way not chosen; we may decide we are more about the bad choices than the good ones: “I just can’t help myself.” Speak the words “Begone. You have no power over me. I have not chosen you.”

    Every time we say them they become a little bit more true. We have the right to become good souls by design, not monsters controlled by appetite alone.

    Approach/Avoidance. Fear/Attraction. Love/Hate. We feel all these emotions at the same time, swirling together to form a new emotion, ambivalence, which some of us try to negotiate using experimentation, “safe words”, role play. It’s possible; but rigidity is always to be distrusted. If we are manipulating a series of masks to hide behind our purpose is automatically defeated.

    What is that purpose? Self-knowledge. Self-revelation. Authenticity, followed by the bliss of Other-knowledge; other-revelation. And the fact that, together, soulmates become a multiplied force of never-yet-seen-in-the-history-of-the-world power and personhood. To achieve this goal, we learn to accept and know, tolerate, negotiate, master and revel in the wilderness within each of us and the wilderness we create together.

    This course can be fearful, even shaming. We will decide several times a day: “This is too much for me”, “I can’t do this,” “I’m not good at this.” How dare I release you when I can’t release me? How can I create you when I can’t create me?” We dare. We can. With the ultimate result that we release and create, Us.

    The Sideways Smile

    I heard you singing and remembered
    All the things that you’d forgotten
    Seeing you clearly – like
    A fish in a hailstone.


    Seeing your hands
    Long for a man I always thought
    Your upper lip too short
    Like a lion’s – in fact
    You have an animal presence –


    Placing no trust in words
    Placing no trust in love
    Pretending you’d never met me
    Creating islands undiscovered
    Worlds unreachable;


    You were the joke
    I didn’t get; I recall your sideways smile
    Blowing smoke between us
    Refusing to forgive the essential fragility that
    Marks us humans;


    Fated as you were
    Always surrendering
    To the scornful cries of your
    Invisible hecklers.