Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Gender

  • Purrsiflage – Today’s Horoscope for Your Inner Cat with Alysse Aallyn

    Jan 2

    Today the Universe Wants You to Know – You are standing on the edge of possibility. Imagination tells us what COULD be. Potentiality alerts us to the possibilities. In the multiverse, physicists assure, everything is happening somewhere. The stick-colored, dead-seeming chrysalis contains nature’s most beautiful sprite, the butterfly. The invisibility of potential discourages predators by daylight, but at night, the chrysalis opens and we are free.

    Remember: You Contain Multitudes – Your real self is still asleep. What color will it be? It will be every color. You are the apex of your family tree. Walt Whitman describes us, as well as himself. Be wary of the “restrictions” others place so confidently upon you. Question them. Be the first in your family to — do something. Because you ARE the first in your family to be you. You are unique. In day dreams and night dreams, on conscious and unconscious levels, you explore all the odds and contingencies.

    Don’t Be Sidelined – People we love, need and admire, keep trying to pin us down. They want to get to “know” us so they can “rely” on our sameness. They want us to stay where they left us, like a coat or umbrella. We willingly place limits on ourselves, just to be accepted. But you are unrestrained in your wild and dreaming imagination.

    Preserve Your Inner Wildness – Think of the story of Max, who voyaged overnight to play with the Wild Things until he finally decided he wanted to return to his safe, warm, familiar bed. Every action you perform, every thought you think, suggests and then creates its opposite or “shadow” as Jung would say. Free yourself to consider all the alternatives. Then Purrsons fly above them.

    Purrsons Are Warmed by Inner Fire – Purrsons don’t listen to the limitations others have set on them. Who would believe that dried up ugly chrysalis is going to turn into a magnificent butterfly? Yet it will. You have the butterfly within you. When you concentrate, you can feel its wings stretching and expanding.

    Can We Lose Ourselves?  Will we become Peter Pan who was replaced and now can never come home? Fear is a valid reaction when danger is about. But danger is triggered by lack of escape. Keep all your psychic escape hatches open.

    What Fable Do You Cherish?  We tell ourselves stories. Harry Potter, Narnia or Marvel? Expand it outwards. Insert yourself. So many discoveries have been made from and through fantasy fan fiction they are too numerous to mention here. But allowing yourself to dream is key. Imagine you are outfitting your inner butterfly. What colors? How about all colors, constantly changing?

    Purrsons Are Quick-Change Artists – Purrsons might become a butterfly or a snowflake or an orchid or some new form that hasn’t been created yet. Purrsons are always avatars. Every cat is distinct. We keep ourselves at peak readiness to accept the universal challenge. We realize life is a dance, we can adapt to its steps and offer steps all our own.

    Purrsons Protect Their Potential – Others will constantly try to constrain and define you and herd you into their enclosure. Don’t go. What you will become is not up to them, it is not even up to those who mentor and love you. It is up to you.

    Purrsons Protect the World’s Potential – The young, the aged, the helpless, the teacher, the crossing guard, the medic, the harvester – these are people who shepherd the universe into a positive becoming. They are occupied with vital work and can’t protect themselves or those they help. Life’s Purrsons will protect them. The forces of destruction are all around us, the universe can’t afford to waste a scrap of its positive potential.

    Models & Mentors – “The only person you are destined to be is the person you decide to become” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

    “Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations but your potential.  Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed but with what it is still possible for you to do.”        –  Pope John XXIII

    “Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality”

    – Deepak Chopra

    “Accept whatever comes and meet it with the best you have to give” – Eleanor Roosevelt

  • Purrsiflage – Your Inner Kitty Horoscope with Alysse Aallyn

    Jan 1

    Today’s Horoscope Emphasizes Youth – It’s still there, bubbling away inside you. You’re always ready to bounce back. Have you been dreaming or thinking about your childhood? Your conscious mind is always “mining” your subconscious for guides to the way you feel now. Did you pick the wrong path, and if so, why? Can you summon the effort to go back and fix it?

    “You’re as Young as You Feel” is a true saying! Ever met a “young” seeming old person? They are interested in everything. They are not frightened by new ideas. They don’t talk endlessly about their illnesses, complaints, how the world has gone to hell.  

    They look forward to the future. The nature of “resilience” is that you “spring up”. Launch yourself! You can actually use mistakes as energy, to improve your future planning. Surely you’re familiar with the principle behind “resistance training.” You get better muscles that way!

    Purrsons Are Battle-Tested – How does the kitten inside you feel eternally “young” when life keeps beating you down? The way to improve your resilience is to improve your philosophy. Do you believe people get old, they can no longer participate in the rat race, are shoveled under and it’s over? Now there’s an inspiring pep talk for the locker room!

    Purrsons are Resilient – Purrsons are young forever because they never give up. Resignation is never in their vocabulary. Combine that with the far-seeing wisdom that accelerates planning through experience and you have a Superpower.

    Love and Intelligence REQUIRE Wisdom – Adopt a philosophy that gives you hope. This is easier to do around young people. Grandparents identify with grandchildren. It’s good for both of them.

    Don’t Get Stuck in a “Feedback Loop.” Don’t hang around depressing, toxic people who mouth depressing, toxic notions. In our society, old people are shunted off onto sidings, gathered together in communities that focus on “nursing”. Depressed yet? Re-orient your mind to focus on “health.” Resilience is a requirement to embrace healing for wounds of all types.

    Purrsons Preserve the Hope of Youth – Hope is the Purrson’s religion. Life will always win out, will grow even against despair.

    Purrsons Preserve the Joy of Youth – Fighting difficult battles (even with oneself) means the relaxation afterwards feels extra delicious. Purrsons can play with anyone because they are still their child-like selves. That is part of what we are fighting for.

    Purrson Opportunity – In a famous letter to Ann Landers, someone who wanted to go to medical school bewailed that they would forty years old when they got out!  Forty! Landers asked, “How old will you be if you DON’T go?” “Wise” people are those who realize HOW YOUNG THE REST OF YOU really are, many of whom complain vigorously about being “too old” to do whatever they dream of. 

    You have plenty of time, because ALL time is NOW. Your new mantra? “Spring back.”

    Purrsons Never Give Up – Surrendering can be a strategy. It is not giving up. There may be snow on the roof but there is plenty of fire in the fireplace. Sometimes, however, it is good to keep our fires to ourselves. Timing is critical. We know how to bide our time.

    Models & Mentors – “Reasons for hope – our clever brains, the indomitable human spirit and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action” – Jane Goodall

    “We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward” – Isabel Allende

    “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts’ – Winston Churchill

    “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny”

    – C. S. Lewis

  • Purrsiflage – Today’s Horoscope for Your Inner Kitty with Alysse Aallyn

    Dec 30

    The Universe is Telling You It’s Time to Make Friends with Yourself. To become self-sufficient. Are you good company? Have you been fearing time alone? It is vital that we carve out time to reflect on all that is happening to us and the part we play and want to play. Our dreams alone could fill a shelf of books – plus we have to cultivate, curate and care for our daytime Purrson. Sometimes we have other people to care for and relationships to manage. We need to learn how to be our own best friend.

    Your Mind Is Your Most Important Tool – Sun Tzu reminds us that all battles are won and lost in the brain. Your mind determines your experience which controls your mind which develops your experience in a perfect feedback loop. In a culture based on “likes” from strangers we are all too ready to hand the reins of our brain over to some algorithm. Advertisers, influencers and partisans do NOT have your best interests at heart. We must learn how to turn that feedback loop into an upward trending spiral.

    After the Party Comes Cleanup – We have been taking control of our routine, our trajectory, our dreams and our thoughts. Now we need to develop self-confidence. Frustrated Purrsons devour themselves. We need to trust, not fear, our responsive reactions. This takes practice – “reps” in the words of the physical trainers. There is no need for two weeks alone on the Appalachian Trail (nice as that would be) because we are already alone inside our heads. Check your voices: what are you saying to yourself? “Good effort” or “Idiot”? It matters! Many of us treat ourselves worse than we would treat any other human (or pet.) That must change today.

    Purrson Danger – We are not proposing a life without feedback or a divorce from reality. If you really were your own best friend, you would protect, not exalt yourself. You would strategize towards health and having something worthwhile to share, not secrecy and isolation.

    Do You Hate Your Thoughts? – A recent poll discovered that most people would rather experience electric shocks than spend time alone with their thoughts, doing nothing but thinking. Just as mapping your future is a Purrson’s job, so is mapping your brain.  Make yourself a person it’s a pleasure to spend time with. You are not lonely when you enjoy your own company.

    Your Training Journal Is Your Mirror – It anchors you with its reflection. It is not necessary to write long pieces – lists or single words are adequate. Visual thinkers may want to sketch out or paste in pictures. Your Training Journal answers the following questions: Where Have I Been? Where Am I Going? Who Am I? Meditate 20 minutes a day on these issues.

    Purrson Opportunity – find a voice you respect and admire on which to model your new internal voice. Can you check with this person that you are on the right path? We all need a life coach or a cheerleader in our corner. Learn to enjoy time alone by building in rewards – indulging in nourishing hobbies as simple as walking and reading. You don’t need rocket science, you need a healthful day to day peaceful retreat inside your own head.

    Ask Yourself What You Take For Granted – This is the part of the picture that’s hardest to see. Because we take it for granted! Here is where your study of models can be helpful because you will be surprised by other people’s automatic assumptions.  For example, some people assume being a Purrson means putting yourself at the mercy of fickle public taste, whipsawing between hedonism and rejection in an atmosphere of deprivation and hardship, but to me, Purrpersonhood  is the peace of totally owning oneself, exploring one’s ideas and being responsible for oneself.  It is serfdom to the malignant or shallow minds of others that spells suffering and hardship.

    Gratitude Practice – Gratitude must be part of your everyday practice. Give thanks for this wonderful body, with its aches and cuts and bruises, as it eagerly shapes itself according to your efforts.  Give thanks for the freedom of your mind. Give daily thanks for the honor of being a Purrson.

    Models & Mentors – “Loneliness is the poverty of self – Solitude is the richness of self.” – May Sarton

    “The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude”  – Voltaire

    “Solitude is necessary for creativity” – Picasso

    “The best thinking is done in solitude” – Thomas Edison

  • Purrsiflage – Today’s Horoscope for Your Inner Cat with Alysse Aallyn

    Dec 28

    The Universe Says I Told You So – Confusing discipline with punishment, you tried living without it and now feel too debilitated to escape the mess you’re in. Ouch!

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

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

    The False Self Will Fight You for Survival – This is a battle you must win. Be firm banishing this monster who pretends to be you. Make a list of all the attributes that attract you, excite you, that you want to have, and turn them into a list of affirmations; “I am a Purrson because I am brave, I am kind. I treat myself well and structure my time to maximize my flourishing.” Even the laziest, cruelest corner of your false, social self will ultimately collapse to reveal a Tiny Child yearning for effective mothering. That means it’s time to mother yourself. Remember, you are both Jack AND the Beanstalk! No giant can stand against you.

    What kind of mother did you have? Was she supportive or carping? Kind or critical?  Is she a happy person? Did HER life let her down? Make a list of IDEAL Mother Attributes, and turn them into affirmations. “I am generous, thoughtful and imaginative. I give endlessly from my fountain of blessings.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Purrsiflage – Your Inner Kitty Horoscope for Today with Alysse Aallyn

    Dec 27

    Today’s Horoscope Says… – Uh oh. Something’s preventing you from even beginning on your quest. It’s hard to even formulate goals with this monkey on your back, chattering in your ear.  What is it? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings”

    – Ellen Burstyn

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

    – Carrie Fisher

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

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

  • Purrsiflage – Horoscope for Your Inner Cat With Alysse Aallyn

    Dec 26

    Today the Universe Asks You This Question –  How many people are you? It’s a subject for deep study as you try to decide. Twinning is Entwining. Sometimes we dream disturbingly about things we don’t want and people we aren’t. Feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting.  It’s unsettling. What gives?

    Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality manifests all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious river. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of other peoples – dead, alive, even fictional. Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a label.

    Purrson Challenge – Facing this ambivalence might seem the toughest part, but it isn’t for Purrsons, who routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Art is the best way to express this, an enormous relief, since it’s essentially non-committal. We are “playing”. Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your dreams becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised to be related to those people who claim they are our family.

    Purrson Danger – Society seeks to label, limit and stigmatize. Everyone is afraid of becoming our fear but Purrsons need to explore every fear we have. A simple safe word can’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so fundamentally untrustworthy. That is why our identification of ourselves as Brave Purrsons is so vital. The vastness of our potential cannot be controlled by language. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

    Purrson Opportunity – Appreciate your Self.  Don’t slam the door on your potentialities too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is Us. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to get home safe. But Purrsons carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell,  if we are the captains of our  souls we can be the masters of our fates. (Henley.) We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence.

    Purrsons Tolerate Uncertainty – Being a Purrson is all about balance.  The experience of balance-seeking is indescribable linguistically – it must be felt experientially. Purrsons learn to live in a world beyond language where we can savor uncertainty and foretaste eternity.

    Purrsons Relish Paradox – Two contraries not only exist together but empower each other – that Purrson tension is the lifeblood of emotion, imagination and personality.

    Purrsons Coast on the Knife-Edge of Ambivalence – The desired is undesirable, the only possibility is impossible and the act of wanting forbids getting. Purrsons become comfortable with the pleasures of this dance: “My future dissolves in beads of sweat, my present is my mirror, my past’s a shape-shifting whirligig.” (Aallyn)

    Leaders Must Surrender – Physics is magic and dreams embody history. This quantum world of “spooky entanglements” is one in which we Purrsons become expert. We accept not only that the cave we fear holds the treasure we desire, but that we are both cave and treasure, indeed, fear itself.

    Models & Mentors –  “It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It is this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.” – John Scott

    “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.”

    – Erica Jong

    “The Simpsons is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but drives you crazy”

    – Matt Groening

    “Poetry is the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.” – Billy Collins

  • Purrsiflage – Your Purrperson Horoscope with Alysse Aallyn

    Dec 14

    Today the Universe Has a Message for You – You Don’t Have to Go Through This Alone. Check your friend list. Do you dream of love, sex, connection? Hand-holding, hugging, family celebrations? You were born to search for Alliances. An alliance is symbiotic, good for both sides of the equation. To reach out, you must each decide your motive (“I Could Use a Friend”) and approach with the CERTAINTY that you are WORTHY of friendship. This last one is tricky because we are ALL looking for validation.  This is the source of many “imposter” dreams where we find ourselves naked in front of the entire class, unprepared on Test Day!

    Love Begins With Friendship: You Are a Giver and Worthy of Help – We can’t see everything because we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads. Luckily, we are surrounded by other humans, struggling, just like us.  If we pledge to help each other, we can dispatch terror and celebrate joy! Comforting! But how can we tell the difference between Builders and Exploiters? We don’t want to end up devoured; someone else’s temporary “fuel”.

    Purrson Danger  – When someone is trying to mangle your self-esteem, recognize that fact. Some Purrsons purposely diminish themselves to attract mates: Bad Idea. Even if it comes in the guise of “friendship” any person who takes you up on that offer is an enemy. This is not what friends, and certainly not lovers,  are for. When someone is trying to “capture” you, i.e. limit and control your possibilities and behavior, that person is a hostage-taker looking for slaves. NOT a friend.

    Purrson Challenge – How to recognize friends? Friends are honest: “I just don’t like that dress but maybe it’s me.” Friends are forgiving, ‘I’m sorry, I was having a bad day. I know you’re sorry, too.”  Friends are fun, “Let’s cheer ourselves up.” Friends are helpful: “Let’s figure a way out of this.” Are you honest, forgiving,  fun-loving and helpful? You’re ready to be a friend. Friendship is a good place to start. Be the friend you want to have – warm, funny, loyal, truthful.

    Love Enriches – It Does Not Deplete – – Friends are a mirror in which we see ourselves. We can experiment with possibilities, we can expand our reach.  Our intelligence is doubled, as well as our efforts.  Our sorrows are halved and our ideas are increased exponentially.  Reach out! You never know until you try. And there’s always the possibility of Love and a deepening sexual connection.

    Love Transforms as Purrpersonhood Transforms – Things you thought you could not do seem possible now because someone believes in you. Believe in yourself because they do, and honor them by believing in them, in return.

    Locked Back to Back the Purrson Pair Sees Everything – Gaze turns outward at the world, not inward on each other. Are you chewing or strengthening? Learn the steps of your tango. Add new steps of your own.

    As You Change, the Couple Changes – Compare Training Journals. Are you evolving? Can you evolve together? Is it safe to speak the truth? Does one partner try to dominate? Does one partner use infantile behaviors to get “their way”? There is no “one way.” As joint Purrsons, the couple has goals also. Compare. Allow differences. The truth will be revealed.

    Models & Mentors – “You are my sun, my moon and all my stars”

    – e.e. cummings

    “All that we love deeply becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller

    “Love makes your soul crawl out of its hiding place” – Zora Neale Hurston

    “Love is not proud or boastful, keeps no record of past mistakes – love rejoices in the truth” –

    II Corinthians

    “Laugh as much as you breathe, love as long as you live” – Rumi

  • Purrsiflage – Your Purrsonhood Horoscope with Alysse Aallyn

    Dec 10

    The “Power” Issue will control your day – Is this your archetype? If so, consider yourself one of the Elect. Most people feel that archetype of Power it’s the most valuable archetype in the Purrson Oracle.  But purrsonhood builds over time, and power can destroy in an instant. We are well familiar with fires that get out of control, rage-fueled spirals, explosives that blow up in your face and escalating weaponry. How do we master such an overwhelming force?

    You Must Own Your Power – Accept that you have the force within you to get things done and to bend unfriendly circumstances to your desire and will. To others, creativity looks like magic.  Accept that. Isn’t that what we all want – a little magic?

    You Are Iconic – But the Power archetype is about the inherent magic that is especially, irreplaceably You. You have a power no one else has, incorporated in your being, your possibilities, your desires and your memories.  This takes a lifetime to accept because we all nervously want to be Someone Else and experience existence through the armor of Having only an Outside instead of just the very vulnerable Inside in which we all feel imprisoned.

    Dreams Instruct You –  Your dreams bring all these passions together as psychic poetry, elucidating what you think you want, what you hope you want and what you are afraid you want. The ultimate magic will be to seize conscious control of this potent power source.

    Purrson Challenge – The challenge is to truly connect with others, reveal our world Inside, and avoid blasting their apparently impenetrable Outside with our terror, our longing and our fear.

    Purrson Danger – We cannot take hostages and we must never become a hostage. Freedom is a fine line to walk. If we wish to reach out, we must treat others with respect and claim like respect for ourselves. Accept your “experiments”; do not fear them but allow them to take you where you need to go.

    Purrson Opportunities – There will be stumbles and terrors aplenty, also successes that LOOK like stumbles and terrors, but which we only realize on reflection were real leaps forward. This is why we must carefully assess our daily efforts without being harsh with ourselves. Speak gently to yourself as you would to a most beloved child. You are your own Most Beloved Child. It is not selfish to commit to this belief, it is simply placing the oxygen mask over your own face FIRST so that you can administer this life-saving force to others. Find someone with whom you can share your journey, without fear or judgment. This connection will teach us everything we need to know about how to connect with others.

    Fear & Trembling: Where would we get the courage to become purrsons? Human history begins with an enormous fear of God or whoever is causing all that lightning, those earthquakes and striking everybody down. Killing small helpless, pretty things was meant to be flattering and propitiatory to this God (I don’t get it either.) then Jesus came with a message about how God was really loving, generous and wanted the best for us. We know how that turned out.

    Becoming a Purrson: As children, we struggled to understand where we fit on the power spectrum. I tried killing a snake and experimented with bullying other children the way I was bullied. I didn’t care for it. The only relief was in thinking about, researching and understanding what was going on. My earliest researches, as for many children, were in astronomy and dinosaurs. The cold magnificence of the planets and the complete wipeout of the dinosaurs gave me a way to stand back from the immediate suffering of the schoolyard. I then moved on to the early Egyptians who tried to solve their problems through magic and art. The art was visually appealing and the magic was emotionally soothing.

    Pick Your Battles: I saw that most schoolyard fights were a reaction to the immediate suffering of pain or confusion, and that they magnified, rather than solved, those problems. There was a manifest holiness about this discovery. It rescued me from the torture of everyday life and elevated me to a plane where every other contributing thinker had already become immortalized.

    Study & Strategy: I read everything I could get my hands on in history and biography (research) and in fairy tales (magic). When I fell in love with the novels of C.S. Lewis and Rumer Godden, the world judged my taste good – when I discovered Agatha Christie, it did not – but it turned out everyone else was reading her too. Agatha is a short course on human nature (original sin) and a proponent of both the scientific and Socratic methods. She’s great training for a Purrson. I wrote it all down in my Training Journal.

    Claiming Your Power: By the time you’re a teenager you can see you have some power – some mental, some physical. The question is developing it and finding appropriate gurus. Avoid the dominance/submission game.

    Keep Going – Recognize that you have been touched by the power and honor her by being grateful for the glorious gifts of life.

    Models & Mentors: “I did not deceive you. I permitted you to deceive yourself.” Agatha Christie

    “An Indian proverb says everyone is a house with four rooms – physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. Most of us live in one room or the other but if you don’t visit each room each day you are not a complete person.” – Rumer Godden

    “You are never too old to dream a new dream or set a new goal”

    – C. S. Lewis

    “You have to believe in yourself” – Sun Tzu

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: The Columbine

    Reckless

    Drought victims

    Seek flood;

    Drenching mimes

    Drowning;

    Overwhelms

    Parched cells

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: What Lies Beneath

    Shocked pond

    Won’t settle. I’m

    Alert for

    Deep reveals –

    Clearing – 

    Wait –

    See –

    Know