Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Forgiveness

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

    CONFLICT – “The Storm”- “Triggers & Pushback”


    How good are we at facing bad news? Do we even want to know what it is? It’s impossible to plan for the future if we don’t intelligently strategize the things that COULD go wrong. We must weigh up our assets and debits – some of which are certainly emotional.

    Are we self-sabotagers? Do we quit right before the final push? Do we make alliances with untrustworthy people? Do we make ourselves vulnerable to dangerous people? Are we secretly hoping for “rescue” – that someone all-powerful and all-competent will sweep in and take our “mess” away? Remember back to our inner power principle, the person we want to be. Maybe we get discouraged far too easily by the negative voices in our heads. The path of lifetime self-improvement after all, started with our neither being able to talk or even stand up! Practice, practice, practice: forming “muscle” – even spiritual muscle – takes a lot of time.

    Then we must face up to fearful destruction we had no part in; perhaps caused only by the principles of waste, loss and entropy to which the entire universe is subject. We need a philosophy to carry us through these times that helps us strategize thrifty methods of maximizing and healing what resources we have left. We need to know the difference between “value” and “price”. We need to recognize the outright gifts we have been given – such as the courage and determination that brings us to this place – and give thanks for them.

      Conflict is an inevitability. No heat without friction, no forward movement without energy expenditure, no flight without first shedding our comfort carapace. When we want change, we are inviting conflict.


      The question is how much in control we feel. Triggers “set us off”; i.e. trigger any chain of events we may feel helpless over. But are we? Can the chain be arrested at any point? Let’s bring our mind to focus on the problem. Human history is created by human intelligence; let’s problem-solve. “I will arrest and re-direct this change.”

      Whore De Combat

      My sutures hurt; I’m
      Completely unavailable,
      Unsheathing your ambition you
      Laced up my body like a jerkin
      Cut my breakfast with your corkscrew
      Swiss Army
      Doubled up and put away.

      I’m fasting now
      Bracing for the worst
      I can’t eat anything that won’t
      Look right at me
      And want to know the truth;
      Who’s for real?
      What’s the state of play?

    1. The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

      Creativity : “Harness your Uniqueness”

        When searching for your soulmate this is no time to “blend with the crowd.” You need to discover exactly who you are so you can seek your complementary and missing elements. If you are uncertain or mistaken about your essential self, you won’t even recognize The One. You will be guaranteed to choose a partner based on false considerations of status or appearance. This requires you stop hiding your true self and allow it to emerge. Easier said than done! Turns out we all have been babying the shyly unique aspects of ourselves that don’t win instant recognition from the crowd. Well, we are going to have to experiment with taking Baby out for daily strolls and develop a bit of muscle. Don’t worry if the “likes” fall away – you are not trying to appeal to everyone. The creativity card means you will need to become imaginative in how you present yourself. You want someone accepting? Be accepting. You want someone brave? Be brave. You want someone who looks deeper? Look deeper.

        Fire In the Dust

        In photographs
        The ladies scream or laugh
        It’s hard to tell
        Heads back they bare their
        Grief or joy or
        Agonized relief
        It’s hard to tell.
        All that remains of them
        Tattered icons growing ever dim.

        The fountains of our fear
        Leap high at first, like dancers
        Frozen at first burst
        Of freedom
        Paralyzed abreast
        The arc
        We cannot see
        What tortuous sign these fossils
        Meant to be.

        In that first winter
        We thought the earth was dead
        Statues mated
        Trees erupted dragonflies
        The angry lonely
        Sang and cried.
        Somewhere some fetus twists and jerks
        Convergence of dynastic quirks

        So drop the toxic cloak of bitter spite that
        Melts the flesh and terrorizes night –
        Waiting out a cycle’s sum
        Spinning down to kingdom come.
        For nothing vain, came nothing plain
        This world was born
        To live again.

      1. The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

        REGRET feeds DOUBT

          As soon as we begin refining our list in search of The One, we are filled with doubt. Fear of Missing Out dictates that even as we are talking to a Possible Soulmate our eyes search out the door to see what new person is coming in. There is a glorious book, essential to artists, called The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) which is actually about self-sabotage. In the very moments when we are trying to build something critically important to our emotional, psychic and spiritual health, a demonic voice comes out of Who Knows Where, whispering, “It’s the wrong thing and you’re doing it wrong.” According to Steven Pressfield, if you listen to this voice you will never accomplish anything, because Honest, Committed Effort is required to get your project off the ground, even if it ultimately fails. And if it ultimately fails, it will turn out to be the very project that helps you see what is Really Important, and understand What to Do Next. Choose wisely; searching for a relationship that is restorative, not exploitative, a partner who is complementary and complimentary, and push doubt aside.

          Cloverleaf


          Some roads lead nowhere;
          They’re my favorites.
          I held my breath while
          You drew my face in
          Blinding strokes
          Creamed my mouth with curling lines
          Destroyed one picture; then another
          Never let me see. You
          Left at dawn while I
          Ran in circles, calling
          Raging, spending blackened
          Nights without you,
          No blue thigh to guard
          My trusting heart while yours looks out
          To gauge the coming storm.
          Trapped in cloverleaves,
          Sentenced to school by
          Streams of angry judges –
          Balked by
           The enervating past
          Of unlived lives
          Every face I paint is yours.
          Open up the chilly ruffles
          Of my breasts
          One more time –
          To beauty; yours and mine
          Electrify your
          Eldritch spine –
           Your body so much lighter
          Than the mountain that you loved
          Better than you loved me –
           The course you learned
          Better than you learned me – so
          Overconfident that
           you’ll come back
          I float across the powdered snow
          In bird-winged silence
          All-enveloping
          Unless I’m
          Lost?

          Lost and frozen like your heart?

        1. The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

          MELT into the space your desire creates: “You Got This”


          You’ve realize the immensity of your need and the enormity of the challenge. You’ve looked into your capacities and they just don’t seem to match your expectations. Now you’re scared and feeling hopeless. I’m here to remind you to “relax.” Melt into the space your desire has created. Untense those muscles because fear and hysteria, rage and feelings of worthlessness all work against us.

          Realize somewhere out there your Soulmate is feeling all these things also. This is a process you need to go through, in order to recognize the vastness of the challenge ahead. This is your time in the desert, where you will be tested. This guarantees that when your and your Beloved melt together your success will be all the sweeter. Of necessity to valuing the Other is the realization that, although there may be plenty of fish in the sea, you need a very particular fish.


          HAUNTED WEDDING
          The pregnant car disgorges
          Only us. It’s winter.
          Drunk as silver fish
          We beat our gills as light
          As hummingbirds.
          In an amethyst ring
          Of drypoint trees
          The half-built house
          Gapes and swells
          Its timbers stink of sap.
          Windrill fields occlude
          Our crossing, so you carry me
          High above the thorny osiers.
          We sleep aloft for safety
          Locked and levitating
          In this space of air
          One season only,
          Unseen by angry outriders;
          Bloodless in our wedding robes
          Like the doubled membranes
          Of the frozen flowers.

          1. The Language of Butterflies – the Path of Attachment by Alysse Aallyn

            POWER: “Doubling”

              We are filled with the excitement and power of acquisition and multiplicity. We will finally have a helper, an interpreter, an enabler, a sharer. A Second Self with its rich promise of Difference – different memories, body type, fantasies, wishes, dreams – we can indulge ourselves in. We can’t wait to get going and find this person who promises us wings and immortality! The potential sexual ecstasy alone is keeping us up nights. Imagine thoroughly exploring another and being thoroughly explored yourself – with a lifetime to do it in. We can’t yet speak the language of butterflies, but we can imagine it. We are giving ourselves wings. With such commitment, every moment becomes a lifetime. We think we may have discovered the secret of eternal youth, to see and be seen through the eyes of love.

              Angel Clothes

              You are like a ripe peach
              Swollen in the summer of your life
              And as the peach surrounds its stone
              Your skeleton enwombs your soul
              But thinly.
              I often see it shining
              Through the hollows in your cheeks.
              I need your body
              Need to know its shadows
              Sound its pleasures
              But as the stone
              Though small at first
              Must grow; feeds off the dying peach
              So your spirit will transhume your flesh
              Disgorge it in
              A thousand peaches a thousand summers a
              Thousand eternities more beautiful than
              You or I

            1. #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

              Homing – Forgiveness –
              Do you dream of home? What’s “home” to you? Sometimes we dream of a home that no longer exists, or never existed. DreamTherapy posits that “home” represents the state of psychic absolution where all mistakes are forgiven and fall away from us. We are cleansed. We dream of ultimate understanding where our sins are not too terrible to be entirely forgotten. Jesus suggests to us that state will never arrive until we learn to be the “forgivers”. Obviously, this means we must learn – somehow – to forgive ourselves.

              What Does It Mean to “Re-set”? – We don’t wish to be free of “consequences”. We want to learn and grow from our mistakes but not be humiliated and punished for them. Pretending they didn’t happen doesn’t free us. Seeing our mistakes as moves in a dance we all contribute to frees us from painful rumination and helps explain how the search for blame becomes a prison. “I did this because you –“… Human interactions are a tar-pit in which we trap and tar ourselves. We realize we need to forgive every chain in the event pattern if we are ever to have any peace.

              Challenge – Robert Frost defines “home” as a place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. Defining “they” defines your group, your tribe, your original home. Philosophy may provide an answer. Buddhists see history as a circle, Christians as a spiral. Ask these questions of your Dream Journal: which direction is the spiral headed and do we have time to learn what we need to know before there’s a cataclysm? Can you define the mess we’re all in and intuit your behavioral contribution? Is it possible to detach from the mess? Can you find a group – or even a moment (say, in yoga class) where you detach from the mess?

              Danger – Mixed up about “ultimate” right and wrong? Lots of atheists feel ”condemned” anyway. Think it through. One avenue leads to health, dignity and growth; the other leads in the opposite direction. Don’t make the mistake of “fundamental attribution error” either. Martin Luther King Jr. made a wise comment that the type of government capitalism desires is “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the rest of us.” It certainly suits corporations to lecture their employees on building a better world without incorporating any of those ideas into the bigger picture, where we have no control and they have absolute freedom. It is important that our resistance not embitter us.

              Opportunity – Forgiveness doesn’t require ignoring the past or accepting bad behavior. It’s part of an interaction where forgiveness is requested. Usually there is a recognition of fault or an expression of remorse: “I’ll never do that again!” When the requesting party seeks permission for the suffering to continue, “I can’t change” — that’ a different request. “Home” is not created that way. Hell is. Your opportunity is to point this out – if necessary, to yourself. “But if I’m not willing to try giving up my behavior because I think I’m not able to, this pattern will continually get worse.” And make an intelligent choice. “If it gets really bad I can always commit violence” is not an intelligent choice, “I need help” is.

              Models & Mentors – “It’s not an easy journey to get to a place where you forgive people. But it’s a powerful place, because it frees you” – Tyler Perry

              “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world”
              – Marianne Williamson

              “The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong”

              – Mahatma Gandhi

              “To forgive one another, we must understand one another” – Emma Goldman

              “Forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. It liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself” – T.D. Jakes

              Mantra – “I forgive”

              Meditation –

              #Haiku: Forgiveness

              Returning home with
              New eyes
              Strong hands
              Fresh translations of
              Future past