Category: Creativity

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

    Planets & Stars – Eternity

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Eternity has need of your perfecting self. Do you dream of astronomy? Vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams, where change has slowed or stopped. You are struggling not with questions of death or afterlife, but the “ongoing everythingness” of reality itself. What is “time”? How long can “time” continue when nothing is “alive”?

    Creatives Train to be Immortal – Immortality is never guaranteed. When you imagine “life forever” – where is the “you” in that context? Matter is already transmutably immortal – Your body is currently composed from the atoms of exploded stars. We all tremble at transitions; but do we really want certain phases of our existence to continue “indefinitely’? Seems not only impossible but repugnant.

    Change is Life – Changelessness is Stagnation. We are “perfecting”, never perfected. Without any human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must exist outside of time. Fiercely we insist on the continuation of consciousness. But do we really want to know the terrible things God knows, or is what you really desire a return to an infancy safe inside the arms of a most loving mother?

    Creative Challenge – Some people feel so threatened, angry and violated by life that they want to harm the future itself. They don’t want anyone to be happy or gratified, ever. While admitting that life on earth can be very unfair and terrible, you don’t ever want to become one of those people. They have “eternalized” their own misery. That is the very definition of hell; and they themselves have sent their own selves there. Creatives can eternalize our finest moments, when we brimmed with love, ecstasy poured over us and generosity and joy poured out.

    Creative Danger – Ultimate judgment is not up to us. We don’t know everything, our empathy and compassion are not boundless, we cannot “see” in all directions and dimensions. Creatives are forced to make snap judgments on the ground, battlefield decisions and quick-time changes; but we must leave finality to God. Arrogance and solipsism are serious blinders that harm our spirit as they harm others and even the planet itself.

    Creative Opportunity – We are offered repeated opportunities for growth, for humility, for insight. We need to take advantage of these, all the while admitting that since life is a see-saw process, it is usually two steps forward and one step back. Creatives recognize and enhance growth; ideal growth conditions lead to health, while harm plunges everyone into darkness. Mentally we can wish others to avoid suffering and the roots of suffering even when we don’t understand what those are even for ourselves. When creatives connect meaningfully with others all spirits lighten.

    Models & Mentors – “Trust in dreams – they are the hidden gate to eternity” – Khalil Gibran

    “Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment”
    Henry David Thoreau

    “What we do in life echoes in eternity” – Marcus Aurelius

    ‘Love is the emblem of eternity, effacing memory of its beginning and all fear of its end” – Mme. De Stael

    #Haiku: Beginners’ Mind

    I never
    Graduate;
    Freshened by
    Eternally
    Discovering.

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

    Loss – Suffering

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are hurting. If you can no longer feel pain, you are numb. Every religion and philosophical system must account for the misery we see around us – storms, flood, volcanos, disease, human frustration and animal predation.

    Creatives Get Used to Loss – Do your dream explore inner and outer pain? How much is fear, how much is anxiety, how much is collective unconscious and shared human history? We fear there is no possible paradise where everyone can be happy all at once. How do we educate ourselves to surf this intolerable dilemma?

    Pain is Joy’s Shadow – Joy is an excess of feeling and so is suffering. When we long to “numb out”, we numb everything. If we live our lives in fear, we avoid the potential excitement of holding our breath on the edge of discovery.

    Creatives Dare to Feel it All. Bravely we take on the feelings of the entire planet to show that we can’t be destroyed by them. Creatives explore and expand the edges of perception and assessment. Philosophical coping mechanisms can be Buddhist – “It’s all illusion”;“ Practice taming the wild mind”; or religious – “Suffering brings us closer to God in developing compassion for all creation” and “Birth pangs are necessary to bring new life.” Any way we can keep our mind and soul responsive and deepening benefits the whole planet.

    Don’t Surrender to Learned Helplessness – Too much suffering breeds inertia. We stop even trying to better our human situation while attracting predators to such easy prey. Even worse, we become predators ourselves, bragging to the godless that we are the new potentates. Cruelty breeds endless cruelty. There must be a way to step off this treadmill – there’s enough suffering going around without manufacturing more.

    Creative Daring Frees the Universe – Imagination itself comes from discomfort, even misery. We see a need to expand our mental repertoire, to magically increase the very dimensions of thought that seem to imprison us. As a species we have broken through this many times. Further epiphanies await.

    Models & Mentors – “You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered”
    Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

    “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard”
    A.A. Milne

    “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can suffer such deep sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them”
    Leo Tolstoy

    “What we once loved we can never lose for it becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live” – Norman Cousins

    #Haiku: Profit/Loss Analysis

    Does autumn lose summer
    Warmth or
    Gain snow-blanket?
    Peonies decide.

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

    Transformation – Metamorphosis

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are about to undergo a major transition. Are you a SciFi fan? Do you dream of bionic humans? Robots? Cryogenics? How about caterpillars becoming moths and butterflies? Acorns don’t look like oak trees, pollywogs don’t resemble frogs. It is quite common in nature to evolve into some unexpected form. What a metaphor for us, as Ovid’s Metamorphoses postulated centuries ago. We speculate about humans becoming invisible, disguising themselves as bats or wolves; Greek gods “became” swans and bulls to further their purposes. Our imagination is rich with all these possibilities, as is our literature, theatre and film. At a funeral, we look at a bird invading the church is a whole new light. Is it a message? An incarnation?

    Your Possibilities are Infinite – Every time you buy a bottle with an animal on the label you are calling on the powers of that creature just as your ancestors did. We suspect consuming even the “idea” of a creature might confer their powers. We also heard the legend that when a human husk breathes its last, the soul escapes and may reincarnate in heaven or even in another life as something entirely different, perhaps without blemish, wholly beautiful for once and for all.

    Creative Power – Who’s your power animal? What supernatural gifts do you desire? Give yourself the freedom to think about the talents you yearn for and the purposes you’d put them to. You can define yourself this way, experiment and play. You might not wish to be a dragon every day of the week, but once in a while it could be fun. How can you cultivate these gifts, desires and yearnings in your present-day life? Don’t these dreams make you a bigger, more important creative, even if nobody knows? What if they did know? How might you tell them and who would you tell?

    Creative Danger – We don’t want to jump off buildings pretending we can fly. We’re expanding our psychic repertoire, not trying to escape into fantasy. The most commonly yearned for gift is omnipotence. But think how terrible life would be – not just for others but for YOU if your whims and fantasies were never checked? Often our wish is that we be spared the pain of growing up. But who wants to remain a toddler forever? As we get older we are REALLY coming into our own and knowing and sharing our true self. A joy not to be missed. Pity the toddler who prays to fly through the air so he doesn’t have to learn to walk and risk falling down.

    Models & Mentors – “Nothing gets transformed in your life until your mind is transformed” – Ifeanyl Enoch Onuoha

    “Every success story is a tale or adaptation, constant revision, and change”
    Richard Branson

    “Perfection is constant transformation” – Nia Peeples

    “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not fighting the old but building the new” – Socrates

    #Haiku: Being Is Relationship

    Electric seeks
    Charge;
    Transformer –
    You’re my lock on
    Immortality

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

    Mystery – Faith

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You long to uncover the solution. Do you have faith that there IS a solution? What is your tolerance for the mysterious? Given how the universe works, you may need to crank that tolerance up a notch. Do you dream of apocalypses? Religious iconography? Are you a mystery fan but irritated and underwhelmed by most “reveals”? How much uncertainty can you tolerate? Are you afraid of the dark? Chronically underslept? Fearful of being alone? The Mystery archetype warns, you have a profound need for faith in your life.

    The Faithful Are Rewarded – Untrusting people are untrusted. George Bernard Shaw said it best: liars can’t believe anybody. Everyone knows this, but even so we often rush to trust where it isn’t warranted, then enter a cycle of disappointment, yearning and ill-placed hope that drives our mood still lower. We need somebody and something to rely on. How can we find them?

    “People Don’t Remember What You Said, They Remember How You Made Them Feel.” Recall your childhood – the people you loved and trusted and the people you were scared by and nervous about. You were developing a “gut instinct.” Who were the friends that stayed with you in the face of adversity and who were the ones who dropped away?

    Love Always Makes the Difference. It is the magic salve that soothes and heals life’s inevitable bumps and scrapes. People who offer real love you can have faith in, people who offer something else – status, belonging, self-serving rationales – disappoint us. Faith gets stronger the more it is proved. We may hope for a good day, but we have faith that the sun will come up.

    Faith Is Trust in the Worthy -– Sometimes the mysteries of life are deliberate confusions to keep us confused. Why can’t our politicians ever inaugurate the policies that are the reason we elected them in the first place? They try to convince us that “secret cabals” and “unknown enemies” are at fault. They want us angry and befuddled so we won’t place the blame where it belongs and demand accountability. Secrecy serves the purposes of darkness. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

    Creatives Demand Transparency & Accountability. Outline your beliefs and begin to act on them. Some mystery is endemic to existence but when people sharply change direction we can still track their path. Less smoke and mirrors and more step by step upgrades are something we can all agree on.

    Creatives Grow in the Level of Mystery We Can Absorb. Algebra has logical answers, quantum theory does not. We solve the puzzles that mystified us as children and keep solving until we come to the puzzles no one can solve. But we keep trying! The limits and un-limits of physics and space are constantly being mapped. We are not content with the label “here be dragons” placed across the unknown. We no longer believe God resents and punishes exploration, science and development. A vaccine was developed against a mystery illness in just one year.

    No Hope Without Faith – Insoluble mysteries often concern motivation – the spring-work of the soul. Why do we make ourselves miserable? Artists teach us that these questions can be “solved” by posing them differently. Depth psychologists tell us that the shallow reasoning of our surface mind is far less important than deep memories and drives we can uncover through emotional and analytic spelunking. Creatives love mysteries. Develop faith. Never give up.

    Models & Mentors – “Faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase” – Martin Luther King Jr.

    “Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong.” – 1 Corinthians 16:13

    “Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there till some light returns” – Anne LaMott

    “If we fight with faith, we are twice armed” – Plato

    #Haiku: Mystery

    Can’t
    “Get to the bottom of”
    World, thought, faith, time or Love; it’s
    Bottom-
    Less

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

    Spring – Hope

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You Have Reason to Hope. You Cannot Be Too Hopeful! Is Spring your favorite season? Do you dream of unfolding buds and exploding flowers? Is “the mustard seed” your favorite parable?

    Spring Always Follows Winter – after dormancy, now arrives the season best calculated to provide ideal conditions for growth. Spring is all beginnings, freshness, newness. It starts small – barely recognizable – the tiniest frond of green among the blackness, calling forth an answering shiver from somewhere deep inside us. We are told that very cell in our body replaces itself in seven years, so springtime is a constant within us. Hope courses through your body with every flush of oxygen and blood empowering our systems.

    Hope is Creatives’ Fuel. Hope is eternal. Do you dream of uncovering buried truths? What is your quest? Will it ever be over? Hope is not about “resolution” but about envisioning a future you have a hand in promoting. You feel a sense of awe, but also ownership and some pride. This is YOUR discovery. Now you want to share it with the whole world.

    Creative Challenge – Don’t waste your imagination on games. Games can be a training ground but all too often our society seeks to harness and entrap your energies onto a treadmill that benefits only the few. Your dreams, your aspirations, your thirst for knowledge, is wider than this. You know the complexities of the universe are even more amazing than anyone has guessed and you want to call attention to them. You need to learn how.

    Hope Is a Sacred Obligation – Life persists in spite of entropy, In spite of darkness, in spite of destruction. Life is a perpetual motion machine fueled by hope, and creatives are the priests of life.

    Creatives Nurture Hope and Pass It On – Hope is the condition of believing better things are possible. It is mandated by the fact that all growing things need nurturing if they are to flourish. Creatives are the mothers of the universe.

    Creative Dangers – include tunnel vision, paranoia and megalomania. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Obsession becomes obvious when harms become visible. Don’t “give up” because you can’t seem to impose your vision on the world. Are you eating and sleeping? Maintaining your relationships? You can’t achieve bigtime without a team and you need to keep your team happy & nourished. Conflating the majesty of discovery with your own personal majesty – needing that majesty – separates you from human kind and that can’t go well. It blinds you.

    Paranoia Seeds Fears that others are stealing from you, riding on your coattails, tarnishing your legacy. But each patch of fresh ground you conquer leads to more discoveries. The astonishment – and the astonishers – never stop! Practice humility and gratitude. Aren’t you lucky to be a part of all this? Isn’t it wonderful?

    Creative Opportunity – Assembling a “team” is critical. TEAM isn’t a formal concept and it doesn’t mean maintaining a payroll. It requires finding the energy to keep your hope alive while keeping it realistic in the community. This implies explaining yourself over and over, developing your idea. Allow others to offer the energy of their perspectives. Even when you see them as wrong-headed, they can operate as whetstones, sharpening our vision. Most important are supporters who catch a “contact high” from the joy of your insights. This happiness creates a nourishing environment that powers us forward. Move confidently in the direction of growth and away from diminishment.

    Models & Mentors – “Hope is being able to see there is light in spite of the darkness” – Desmond Tutu

    “What I try to cultivate is not blind optimism but radical hope” – Junot Diaz

    Be astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver

    “Everything that is done in this world is done by hope” – Martin Luther

    “Only in darkness can you see the stars” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    #Haiku: Altruism

    Crows call “Come Eat!”
    Across trees in hope
    Someday strangers
    Feed baby
    Crows.

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

    Persistence – Commitment

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Don’t Be A Flibbertigibbet. Do you dream of rings? Tokens? Trophies? Collecting and collectibles? Antiques, graduations, pawn shops, art museums? Ceremonies? Awards? Rewards? You are longing for the symbols that consolidate desire. But desire is nothing without will. What is your conscious will? Subconscious? Unconscious? Collective conscious will? What ignites you? You are a creature of Now, a chip on the whirlwind, but you will soon manifest power over yourself and the future.

    Creatives Are Athletes – Our skills aren’t very good at first. We know there’s nothing “magical’ about becoming a pro! Who said it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be good at something? Isn’t that, like 27 years? In other words, when you really want something, you’re going to have to make a major life commitment to make this possibility a part of yourself.

    Creatives Hang In There – Being committed means you already know it will be difficult and you will have to push through. Creatives do their best to inform themselves of the challenges ahead and to brush up all their skills, but nothing substitutes for dogged day to day stick-to-it-iveness.

    Creative Challenge – Are you up for sacrifice? Not many people are! You’re going to have to skip the easy, tempting treats – physical, spiritual, emotional – to satisfy the demands of your training. There’s really only one way to do this. You’re going to have to change into a person who LIKES and PREFERS the goal-driven lifestyle. It’s easier if the lifestyle’s not TOO restrictive. By that logic, you can see that it makes sense to start off slow and build – just like you would in the gym. No sense overwhelming tender muscles with weight they can’t handle!

    Creatives Never Surrender – Retreat is only a re-framing. You wait to see a better way to reach your goal. And sometimes new information makes for a goal change. No shame, there! This is the sign of lifelong learning. Creatives are life-long learners.

    Creative Danger – There’s the risk that our self-control will be sabotaged. Addiction. Getting obsessed by something that may have started off healthy, even noble. Suddenly you’re in a downward spiral.

    Admit When You Need Help. Is your obsession interfering with work? Relationships? Health? Are friends and family intervening, starting to talk? When a commitment turns deadly – and we know even romantic relationships can do so – reach out to someone with a balanced perspective. Likely there’s a plan already developed to get you back on track without losing the gains you’ve already made.

    Creative Opportunity – Persistence in a healthy commitment is the best path to transformation there is. You truly can become a different person, the person you always wanted to be, over time and in tiny steps. When I wanted to give up sugar, I consumed a lot of fake sugar at first, then less and less over time, until now I can’t believe I ever liked or was satisfied by that stuff – real or fake. My palate has changed, so has my health and so have I. That doesn’t mean I don’t eat the occasional wedding cake! I enjoy my new-made self, and so can you.

    Find a Buddy on the Journey – a tried and true pathway. Use mindfulness to examine cravings, release them and calmly set yourself free. Track everything in your Training Journal.

    Creatives Honor Their Contracts – Creatives make alliances and promises. Some promises conflict with each other. Some contracts we end up not wanting to fulfill but there is just no way out but through. Creatives know how to concentrate on the future and keep trying to negotiate win-win modifications to ease everybody’s ride.

    Models & Mentors – “Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent”
    – Steve Martin

    “Failure is a requisite for success. If you want to succeed, double your rate of failure” – Brian Tracey

    “Success is the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes on something others would give up on after thirty seconds” – Malcolm Gladwell

    “Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism” – Albert Einstein

    #Haiku: Commitment

    Means you don’t give up
    Just because you want to
    Grit teeth
    Point jaw
    Plunge
    On

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

    Meditation – Mindfulness

    If This Archetype Chooses You – It’s time to open your Third Eye and access your Inner Wisdom. We may physically live in the Now, but it is our greatest good fortune as a species that we can enrich our present with powerful visions of past and future. In our dreams, we can expand this to universal pasts and futures. “Now” serves as the lens through which our Body stays focused. To be absent from the Now is to miss the key to ecstasy that is our birthright.

    Patience Multiplies Wealth – Wealth can be psychic, emotional, spiritual as well as physical, financial and actual. Eating unripe fruit robs us of our harvest. Therefore, we learn to settle into the Now, line up our Past, Present, Future with our Conscious, Subconscious, & Unconscious levels. It’s a trick we master through the practice of meditation, which is the opening the Third Eye. The first step is Emptying. Push your thoughts, memories, worries away. Concentrate solely upon your breath. If this is too hard, choose a mantra (such as “Thank You” or “Namaste”) or a piece of music without lyrics (Marconi Union’s Weightless is fabulous for this.) Just celebrate the emptiness, the Nothingness. As thoughts come to you, release them like balloons. Celebrate You.

    In the Control of Your Own Mind Lies all Freedom. Without it you are a slave, whatever the world may think. Buddhists call your mind a “wild horse” that must be tamed. Learn to greet the Now as an old friend who knits everything that is “you” – all the scattered psychic pieces – back together. You can FEEL the healing.

    Risk It – In our new digital world it’s very difficult to claim Time for yourself. Can you turn off all the flashing lights, the alerts, the signals, the seductions, the threats? You absolutely must learn to do that, you must feel “important” enough to do it. It’s a lifelong job that soon becomes a respite you greet as an old friend. Turns out, feeling entitled is the most difficult part of the task. Tell others, “This is my recharge time. It’s absolutely critical.” Twenty silent minutes per day. Alone. You. Finding Eternity – and the Eternal You – through the Now. It doesn’t come easily. It comes through your infinite willingness, your scrupulous patience, your holy dedication. Don’t give up on You.

    Give Up Your Competitiveness. – Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Surrender your expectations. Push away the sadness, the depression, the loss, the anxiety, the rage, the worry. All can be released into the universe, floating away from you to pop harmlessly in the stratosphere. You are alone now with the infinite. Slowly you begin to feel the pleasure, an indescribable ecstasy in which your ordinary human body becomes incandescent. Suddenly you want better things for yourself. More sleep. Better dreams. Healthier food. A world of love and joyous possibility. Dip your toe in that completeness, twenty minutes per day. (Or more, if you can.) Now you have a glimpse of Heaven.

    Creatives Tune In to their Energy Source – Creatives learn to treasure their peaceful daily meditations as a source of strength. If you allow the pool of your mind to settle, you will be able to see deeply. I personally prefer eyes-closed meditation. Concentrate on your slow deep belly breaths. If a thought jumbles past, think the word, “Clear”. Keep breathing. Keep clearing. You will feel rooted to the soil, grounded on the earth. The energy will start to bubble through you.

    Creatives Stay Focused – Split focus – sometimes called “multi-tasking” – is the current work modality for a reason, and the reason is that it diminishes your psychic power. If you focus your full attention on anything or anyone, you will begin to feel the power flow between you and this object/idea/person. This is scary at first, but you will get used to it. Living beings (plants included) flourish under this attention and the connections that are made last forever.

    Creatives are Mindful – Understanding the power of the Now is your creative strength. You are entirely here, entirely present in this moment. You have completely accepted your current incarnation. There will be time, alone with your Training Journal, to savor the past and call upon the future, but for this moment you know how to be entirely present in the Now. It is unbelievably powerful. It feels like Love.

    Models & Mentors – “What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you become” – Buddha

    “You can’t stop the waves but you can learn how to surf” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

    “It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a world where exhaustion is a status symbol” – Brene Brown

    ‘You are the silent watcher of your thoughts. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the joy beneath the love and pain” – Eckhart Tolle

    #Haiku: Meditation – Mindfulness

    Joyous
    Breath
    Supports
    Eternal now:
    Blossoms spirit;
    Sparks
    Thoughts,
    Shared
    Dance

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

    Waterfall – Change

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You Instinctively Resist Stagnation. Your conscious mind may reflexively seek stasis, which it interprets as “security”, but your subconscious rebels. It demands change! In the meanwhile, outside of your awareness, your unconscious is always changing, evolving fiercely along with the drama playing out in the entropical human race. Tune in!

    Consult Your Dreams – Dreams can signal what a desire for change portends. When was the last time you had a falling dream? Or a rushing water dream? A surprise dream or an accident dream?

    Change Is Inevitable – Not just change, but revolution. Revolution is what we creatives are all about. Cultivate flexible thinking. Don’t invest psychologically in rigid, one-way requirements.

    Thought Exercise – What if everything were completely different? What if things turned upside down? This is the kind of planning and strategizing asked of creatives. What’s the “Last Best Option?” Shape your change towards growth by asking, is this making me a better, stronger person, or a more fearful person? More competent, less dependent, more unique, less compliant, more imaginative, less angry, more joyous, less envious? Evolve with me! Prepare to streamline!

    Fundamental Attribution Error says we blame ourselves for world conditions over which we have no control. Check your guilt/anxiety levels. If they are raging, is there anything you can do to ameliorate the causative circumstances? Being without guilt or anxiety is NOT the goal – that would describe a sociopath! But being crippled by guilt OR anxiety when there’s nothing you can do about it is disabling. And we’re in the empowerment department here.

    Manage Your Evolution, or you’re headed downhill. Travel ever upward along the spiral. What are the attributes you admire? Develop a picture of yourself as a wise being emitting light. Nurture calm, contentment, gratitude – in the midst of a thirst for new ideas and experiences to add to your expanding galaxy of knowledge.

    Be Ready for Anything – Play out the scenarios in your Training Journal. Have a plan A, B, C. Learn chess to help with thinking of several moves ahead. Ask others, “What would you do?” As you read/watch a piece of fiction, imagine yourself inside this problem. You can also learn a lot from history. Start a “What IF? Club” in which members dream up survival scenarios. Play the game Worst Case Scenario.

    Models & Mentors – “Progress is impossible without change”
    George Bernard Shaw

    “Change is the law of life. Those who look only to past and present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

    “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes after continuous struggle.” – Martin Luther King

    “It is not the strongest of our species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change” – Charles Darwin

    #Haiku: Unwanting

    Curbing desire
    Won’t work;
    Evolving desire will.
    Admit it:
    We’ve changed.

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

    Paradise – Bliss

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Suffering isn’t eternal. Your ultimate ecstasy is guaranteed. But what is your definition of paradise? Some people want to see their enemies suffer. That’s what the view looks like – in hell. But if you wanted to find your own bliss, where would you look? Dreaming of a tropical getaway? Is your definition of heaven raised consciousness or lack of consciousness? Would you want to know what is happening in the world or would you want to be removed from the world? Can you really be happy if you know there is suffering anywhere?

    If There Is a Hell, Multiverse Declares Its Opposite Must Exist - As we mature, we can choose to either elevate or denigrate our consciousness. We are creating “heaven”, or “hell” – our choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?

    Are Creatives Heaven Material? When we are young, we obsess about whether we are really liked or loved, whether we are really “popular.” As we get older we slowly realize that people like/love to the extent of their own spiritual and emotional ability/depth. Shallow people offer very shallow love – nothing can take root there. It can flip in an instant. They “forget” because there’s nothing there. If the whole purpose of life on this planet – a struggle by any standard - is for humans to become more closer to God then we are being challenged to create the kind of emotional and psychic depth that sees ”inside’ - understands and accepts everyone’s struggle, everyone’s challenge.

    Creative Challenge – Bliss is a scientifically provable psychic state of timeless ecstasy mapped by “alpha waves” which can be seen in the brain. This state is called “flow”. We drift outside ourselves and belong to the universe. It is the condition called “mastery.” This is such a happy state we long to cultivate and re-experience it, which we can do from immersing ourselves in art, meditation, love, sexual/emotional union, or deep thought.

    Creative Soul – Non-Creatives bounce between a fussing self-obsession and living entirely in and through other people. The poor things. Neither condition is optimal, although there are times in our lives when these states are necessary or unavoidable. Why should we ever leave our paradise and re-enter their wretched world? Because transforming suffering into knowledge is the creatives’ superpower. Balance – sometimes called moderation – becomes the creatives’ operative methodology. Creatives learn to be IN the group, but we are not of “the group”. We do not subjugate our brain to the “group mind” but contribute our educated, enlightened brain-power to it. Creatives elevate the group with the our Soul power even when others try to drag it down through thoughtless replication of idiotic non-ideas.

    Self-Lessness is A Terrible Fate - Some people choose to never develop an individuated self. They pass from group to group, trying to “fit in” and quell their inner voice that warns. “this isn’t right.” Creatives call attention to violations of our basic human mandate: developing a soul that is worthy of God.

    Creatives are Individuals Who Become More and More Unique - You are on a hero’s quest: you are the hero and the quest is for your Soul. This is both an inner and an outer quest. We have responsibilities from birth onwards; when we come to consciousness we can clearly see we are our brother’s/sister’s keeper. We are our own keeper, too. Mistakes – sometimes devastating ones – are expected. It’s a dangerous world and we will meet more than one predator looking to make a meal of us.

    Creatives Know Where They are Going – Elevate, denigrate or disintegrate. Your choice: every minute of every day. consciousness. “Heaven”, or “hell” – your choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?

    Creatives Know Bliss – Bliss is the haze that comes after successful efforts. Bliss is the creatives’ prize. It comes not only from doing well, but from intending to do well and shaping your soul and purpose and ideation toward Wellness.

    Creatives Choose Heaven We must be wily as the snake and tender as the dove. Because in the end, it’s all about Love. The more you give, the more you feel. The more you give, the larger your capacity for ecstasy.

    Models & Mentors – “Follow your bliss and walls turn into doors”
    Joseph Campbell

    “In a state of bliss – everything is love” – Deepak Chopra

    “Joy is a connection to what matters – a sustained sense of well-being and inner peace” – Oprah Winfrey

    “I need not sell my soul to buy bliss” – Charlotte Bronte

    #Haiku: Bliss

    You and
    I
    Merge;
    Evanesce;
    Solids
    Deliquesce:
    Fire,
    Air
    Acquiesce.
  • Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

    Flight – Ingenuity

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Contemplating Escape? Everyone has flying dreams! In those moments, we experience absolute power and potential, which is exactly what these dreams are about. We often wake from them with a feeling of disappointed sadness: “You mean I’m earth-bound? I want to go back!’

    Creatives are Transformers – Your mind is a potent tool that not only solves “problems”, it transfigures them with transcendental thinking. Difficulties dissolve as the potential for revolution becomes clear. The Creative Oracle Flight Archetype asks us to “rise above” the problem and survey it from another angle. We soar over the difficulty! Our most transformative tool is the question: “What if?”

    Ingenuity sees Connections where Others see Limits. Ingenuity
    relaxes by “tinkering.” Let’s become expert at cultivating the alpha brain waves to achieve “flow” – a condition of subconscious harmony where ideas spring up and potentialities thrive. “Flow” is true freedom.

    Can You “Waste” Your Life Daydreaming? I’m one of those people who says “No”! But the mind is full of traps – cultural, educational and emotional – to keep us on a sabotaging treadmill of circular reasoning that gets us nowhere. Usually you can tell this is happening when you hear an intrusive “voice”: “You shouldn’t be doing this” “You’re an idiot” “That won’t work.” That’s not you talking, it’s the “Hidden Enemy” out to undermine your efforts to focus and connect. Without the confidence to dream, think and experiment you can’t become your best self.

    Creative Opportunity – We need a supportive environment where voices saying, “You can’t do it” are drowned out by empowering affirmations. Some people use music to achieve this state, others use meditation. If the voices persist, you will have to focus on THAT as the problem and tackle them directly with a conscious daily practice of studying where they came from. Who are they? What happened to those people? Why did they attack you? Now that you are no longer a child you can usually see them for the tiny, disappointed, bitter little minds they were. These are not forces to emulate. Deliberately let them go. “I am sorry for you, but you have no power over me”.

    When You Can’t Go Backwards or Forwards the Only Solution is Up – Creatives are accustomed to thinking outside the box because they long ago realized they would never fit the box society had chosen for them.

    Creatives Invent – Creatives figure out brand new ways to do things based on innovative reasoning and creative solutions.

    Creatives Adapt – Creatives have been strategizing in their Training Journals and mapmaking on their Vision Boards for so long soon they can do it in their heads, on the fly. We know Plan A will probably not happen, possibly not even B, C, or D but a combination of all these or something new entirely that comes to you suddenly, in the heat of the moment.

    Creatives Amaze – Surprise is the entire art of War, says Sun Tzu. Learn to enjoy the unexpected. Don’t allow others to dictate your behaviors and modalities. Creatives are free.

    Models & Mentors – “No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy and the untiring hope of the human spirit”
    Bill Clinton

    “Mathematical reasoning is the exercise of inspiration and ingenuity” – Alan Turing

    “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it” – Albert Einstein

    “Those who do not think outside the box are easily contained” – Nicolas Manetta

    #Haiku: Flight – Ingenuity

    I can’t
    Becomes “I will”:
    Eyes closed,
    Dreaming:
    Fantasy prompts
    Invention