Category: #DreamTherapy

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Night = BALANCE “Resurrectionist”

    “Going to sleep in one world we awaken in another”

    Night offers a frightening universe of the invisible and the unfamiliar. How many of us have lain in our comfortable bedrooms and imagined tossed clothes as threatening monsters and scratchy tree-branches as iniquitous invaders?

    Night is the domain of nocturnal creatures we imagine are up to no good; otherwise, why seek darkness? Night is the land of dreams when all worries and anxieties bubble up from the deepest depths of our own brains and terrify us with startling and vivid visions. Childhood is largely spent trying to get used to this strange rhythm of sleep and wake, of brooding and action, of quiet and frenzy and attempting to master the suspicions and fears it rouses.

    Isn’t sleep like death and isn’t night like Hell? Where is the sun? What has happened to our loved and loving world? It helps to fall in love with Night and uncover its beauties as well as its secrets.

    Waking in the middle of the night for some exciting enterprise like Christmas, meeting a beloved, for some family ritual or religious vigil, can be a time of awe-inspiring discovery. In the Planetarium they deliberately create a mockery of Night to show us the majesty of stars and planets.

    Lovers wait for night like thieves. This is when most children are conceived, most children are born and the most powerful dreams – the ones that reveal the future – are dreamed.

    The night is a mysterious, unsettling boundary. Sages say we go to sleep in one world and wake in another. I say we go to sleep as one person and wake up as someone else. Both are true. But, quite possibly, we don’t like it. We fear the meanings, the realities, the potential behind all of this.

    Desires come to us unbidden. Do dreams separate or unite? Sleep is the land of the subconscious, the unconscious, the preconscious and the collective conscious. These are worlds we need to integrate into our Being. “Balance” is a skill that allows us to make the best of all these worlds.
    

    The Subconscious is just beneath the surface. We glimpse it frequently during the day through our reactions to art, music, jokes, accidents and friendly interactions. ‘Freudian slips” are meaning to say one thing and “accidentally” stating the opposite. Our Subconscious is our Mastermind. It can be relied on to recognize the Beloved.

    The Unconscious is deeper. We cannot access it except through dreams. Hypnosis will not take you deep enough. The Unconscious is a huge repository of fear and dread. It manifests in our daytime self as anxiety, panic attacks and psychosomatic illness. “Dream therapy” teaches lucid dreaming, when we begin to recall, learn from, even manage our dreams.

    The Preconscious is our Unborn Self. These are our Multiverse selves who chose another path, past incarnations and possible selves. It manifests itself in our daily life through mysterious attractions to styles of art, episodes of history or pattern re-enactments. Our Preconscious might recognize the Beloved because you were together in another life/world. Sometimes forging of this bond will be the most advanced stage of your souls’ journey. In both cases, recognizing and blending with the Other is a vital step in your Becoming.

    The Preconscious and the Collective Unconscious alike are activated through study, research and learning to accept and enjoy art and history. The Collective Unconscious is our group dream on this planet. It is positively expressed through Art, Shamanism and acting. It is negatively expressed by addictions, circumstances when you know you are acting outside your own control (and against the best interests of your life, health and safety) or when you are “channeling” the soul of another – acting like someone you aren’t but you can’t seem to stop.

    These patterns are broken by Rehabilitation Therapy that seeks to connect you to your True Soul, which is always waiting for you to claim it.

    Sometimes in our quest for the other we are assaulted by demonic forces masquerading as love. This is easily recognized by the question: does your Beloved improve or worsen your psychic health? If Your spiritual integrity is under threat, you will need help escaping this demon. Don’t hesitate to ask for it.


    RESURRECTIONIST

    Unearth me, lover
    I’m a jewel now
    Melted
    In that crevice you once loved so
    Well; it’s an ingot now,
    a socket
    For our mingled liquid
    Essence
    Suck it up with
    Dust-lathered lips
    Strip
    The flesh as you once did
    The clothes; I’m burning
    Cinder-hot –
    Let me astound you with
    My time-perfected skill

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Day = FOCUS “On Reading the Alumni Directory”

    “The Power of Routine”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ON READING THE ALUMNI DIRECTORY

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

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Breakthrough = EPIPHANY “Valentine”

    “I get it!”

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

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

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

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

    VALENTINE

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

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    ETERNITY “Heloise to Abelard”

    “Eternal Welcome”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Transformation = METAMORPHOSIS “Dawn Walk”

    “What truth will you become?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


    Dawn walk

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

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

    Released and
    Blown away.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Mystery: “The Bridesmaid

    “Words Fail Us”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Bridesmaid


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

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Spring = HOPE “Peacock Pavement”

    “It’s always spring within”

    Spring means beginning, 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 every cell in our body replaces itself in seven years, so springtime is a constant within us. The best thing about Spring, to my way of thinking, is that it replaces winter. I am not a winter person, though I am told some are. I usually experience a sense almost of hopelessness, right before the end. Spring is the cure for hopelessness. Spring is hope itself.

    In the darkest season of loneliness, we must find reason for hope, and the reason is always the same: refreshment and rebirth are coming. We participate in the rejuvenation of the world. We transform ourselves into turnaround specialists, turning around hopelessness and a quitter mentality into can-do optimism & strategies.

    The green plant finds a way to surge forth, the beetles wait in the earth until their time is right, the egg contains a perfect hummingbird. So we strip away our fears, negativity and hopelessness to foster the growth inside, growth in the belief that our Soulmate is right around the corner.

    PEACOCK PAVEMENT


    Femininity has its Everests –
    I will climb them daily.
    The crow’s belly’s is black,

    Envy his womb-less contentment as I stroll 
    Among the old wrappers, used condoms;
    Joints rolled tight as bedsheets

    Letters used – abused – discarded.
    Crow envies me my
    Zircon hair; a lunar map of freedom,

    Battering-ram jaw, baroque nose, the
     Greek depths through which
    My eyes record their wanderings

    Outside the convent walls, between
    The stalls, corrals, the chained-up lambs,
    The leaf-filled swimming pools:

    First act, second act, third act
    Epilogue. Number days by counting
    Depth marks round your taproot

    Showing off sporadic questings not my own
    Belonging to some future – all
    Unknowing what anyone will make

    Of these Portentous Pleiades:
    Disparate sisters,
    Me, myself and I.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Aspiration=THE FUTURE “Impure Women”

    “Creating a bucket list”

    Effort is the quintessence of Aspiration. “Success” is a different matter entirely. The struggle to achieve absorbs our attention; rest offers us the opportunity to dream yet another Aspiration.

    Contemplate the construction of our bodies; the muscle mass and muscle fiber, the growing bone and sinew that power the temples of our quotidian existence. Resting regenerates, but exercise makes them strong. So, aspire we must, nor can we ever stop aspiring. When we relax to plan a new assault, we should concern ourselves less with whether our goals are reachable and more with whether they are worthy.

    As we construct a disciplined path to create & curate our Best Other, we cultivate the perfect combination of both Present & Future living. We honor the beauty of our coming Soulmate by taking care of ourselves now. The worst thing that could happen would be if our Soulmate couldn’t recognize us because we dimmed our light in a bloat of self-indulgence. So even though we know loneliness, we feel at peace, because the future promises us glorious togetherness. Our Aspiration says so!

    Impure Women

    Between my breath
    And your breath
    Beneath the phallic
    Philanthropic statues
    Volcanic dragstrip
    Of my city
    The wounded in the scorched earth policy
    Of love
    Muster
    Linger
    Await
    Embodiment.
    We seek new flesh:
    Pills to make their
    Hearts race faster
    Stopped their faces
    Dead as clocks
    That witness
    Crimes unspeakable
    To mothers
    Versed in tabloid gore.
    Who will bring them
    Absolution now that I am gone?
    In the fresh wounds of a
    Seconal summer
    The stopped children meet
    And kiss.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking by Alysse Aallyn

    Persistence=COMMITMENT ‘Virginia Woolf”

    “refuse to surrender”

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

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

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

    VIRGINIA WOOLF: The Membraned Sieve

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

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Passion = COURAGE “Diaries”

    “What’s the bravest you’ve ever been?”

    Passion is the fuel by which we live. It can warm us, it can inflame us, it can destroy us. Without it life is dry and pointless. We are born with majestic passions that seem ungovernable.

    Our specific passions may seem strange to other people, but no one’s yet been born with none at all. The trick is managing them and making them work for us. A complication is that our passions change and evolve. Fantasies that kept us warm in childhood seem empty to us now. Sometimes in the busyness of life we find ourselves working so hard for other people’s goals our own seem to vanish and life becomes dry and tasteless.

    What do we really want? What makes us happy? What ignites our best self and completes our growth process?

    It isn’t too soon to imagine how our eulogy should read! Explorer? Poet? Dreamer? Lover? Person?

    Passion gives us courage. Courage is hard-won. Whenever it seems to come “naturally”, that’s because we didn’t assess the possible consequences of our actions. That’s not courage, that’s foolhardiness. When we understand the dangers and move forward anyway, that’s true courage.

    When we contemplate sharing our deepest self with another, what do we risk? We risk exposure, humiliation, misinterpretation, minimization, stigmatization. Those are serious risks, but the only way forward is through. Don’t pretend you don’t care or it doesn’t matter; hardening ourselves only devalues the very prize we seek as well as our ability to enjoy it and be transformed by it.

    To seek depth we must give depth. The secret is self-compassion, to accept our own humanity. Once we can do that we are given the key of seeing deeply into others. We are not interested in those pretending they are less than human – they can neither help us nor themselves. We resolve to keep going – courageously – in our search for The One.

    Diaries

    I don’t remember anything –
    Amnesiacs
    Write everything down
    Stuffed in my closet
    Among discarded gowns
    (Smelling just the same)
    Useless but
    Too beautiful to throw away. How
    I recollect & treasure
    The act of writing
    An up and over downtime scrawl
    Recall the surgeon
    Cutting at my flesh
    Tugging splitting sweating
    Recall liftoff – finally
    Airborne ; my
    Hawk’s-eye vision sees
    Backwards & forwards –
    Past into future.
    Too much dig is spoilage;
    Freedom mined is
    Priceless.