Category: #GoddessFreedom

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

    Let Go of the Past – Don’t Worry.

      Can Creatives afford to relax? Seems counterintuitive right before a big project, doesn’t it? Well, First Lesson of Creative Boot Camp is that creativity is Counterintuitive. Other people rush away from the burning building – planning on being EVEN MORE SCARED the next time. Well, we are going to master our fear. We are going in.

      Consider the “Letting Go” archetype – swimming, flying, dreaming. Does it speak to you? You’ve summoned up your power – now you’re overwhelmed with fear – are we challenging the goddess? Insulting the universe? This is an age-old dread felt by every human that intended to accomplish anything since the beginning of time. You’re declaring your place in the world. Your past memories are of others firmly trying to “place” you and keep you there. Dismiss them from your thoughts. You’re alone now, with your own potential – and it’s the most exciting place to be in the world.

      Everybody Panics – I had my first panic attack at age 5 (I got lost outside a movie theatre) and another at age 11 when I descended deep, deep, deep into a cave. (I think the guide was deliberately trying to scare us.) I didn’t know at the time what these episodes were – my parents and sisters saw them as embarrassing annoyances – but looking back it’s clear what was happening to me physically was as a result of what was happening to me mentally.

      Relaxation In the Face of Panic – Learning to tolerate psychic dissonance, to be interested in it and challenged by it is what we’re all about. It’s a sign that we’re in the presence of the Deep Stuff – the things that galvanize our deep subconscious and if we can just seize control of that, we’ll access our true power.

      Learn Relaxation Techniques – There are so many and you should experiment with all of them! Learn what works for you and – key – what you enjoy. You will find yourselves using these techniques all the time. To get to sleep, to get through difficult experiences or just to access your subconscious when you have a question.

      Breathe Deeply – The very first thing is mastering control of the breath. Pregnant women learn all kinds of helpful breathing techniques in Lamaze; panting, counting; deliberately slowing down and speeding up your breathing. In yoga you will learn Lion Breaths to make you feel powerful. They are very similar to the gasps and shouts in martial arts and will affect your opponents. Watch the Maori war dance on YouTube.

      Get Out Your Training Journal – write down the techniques and your reactions. Appoint a time to practice these every day. Your breath connects you to the universe and all living things.

      Models & Mentors: “The first thing to learn is the breath.” – Confucius

      ‘Breathe In. Let Go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure, and give thanks for that.”
      Oprah Winfrey

      ‘Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor” –
      Thich Nhat Hanh

      “While we breathe, we hope” – Barack Obama

      #Haiku: Every Breath You Take

      Life isn’t numbered
      By breaths you take but
      Moments
      That take breath
      Away

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

      The Goddess – Power

        When This Archetype Chooses You – Is this your archetype? You are one of the Elect. Most people feel that because the Goddess archetype represents power it’s the most valuable archetype in the Creative Oracle. But creativity 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 Goddess 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.

        Creative 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.

        Creative 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.

        Creative 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 creatives? 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 Creative: 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 Creative. 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 goddess 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

        Haiku: Wyvern

        My power
        Beast bristles
        Fire;
        Eats critics
        Guards path
        Sleeps in my
        Mirror

      1. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        LAW = “The Statue”

        “Vows”

        In the garden stone figures mock us and memorialize us. They can be reassuring or uncanny as if secretly intuiting our states of mind. We put them there to remind us – of what?

        Lovers make promises to each other. We do it spontaneously, offering ourselves on the altar of our own desire. We solidify our vows publicly in paper, legal filings, photographs, video, topiary, marble, even stone.

        What promises can we make and what promises can we keep? Do these promises allow space to evolve over time? At least we can answer that last question with a heartening “yes.” Our promises are not set in stone. We are not our statues.

        Soulmates are in tune with each other. We can feel each other’s evolving spirit, sometimes before the other even can. We know when the petals lose their glisten, when the wings droop.

        Did we make a promise to be “perfect”? We know this is not possible or even desirable. The only real promises we can make are to be present, to be honest, and to treat the desires of the Beloved Other as Sacred. But we all have boundaries and we must be honest about uncovering and examining those.

        Some can be broken and re-set, some can’t. Does that mean a Soulmate can be temporary? We are temporal beings, but someday we will meet on the eternal plain.

        #HAIKU: The Statue

        Rose-choked;
        Tagged;
        Sentenced by time
        I stand Mute.
        Freeze! I see you!
        Who has won?

      2. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        The Tree = ENLIGHTENMENT “My Beautiful Twin Sister”

        “You can if you think you can”

        Trees knit a garden together. Thy hover over us the way we remember helpful adults from childhood. They are the elders of our loving garden family.

        To be “awakened” is to experience life as it really is. Lots of people are repelled by this notion. Why bother to wake up when the news is so bad? Remain in the happy dream state brought to you by the Sackler family or some other pharmaceutical conglomerate, or by your favorite source of baseless propaganda.

        That lasts as long as you can afford their product. As every rube discovers, Happy Dreamland’s price keeps getting steeper until one day, you can’t pay it at all. Then you are awake and desperately uncomfortable, whether you like it or not, and the life around you has gone to shit. And not the helpful, fertilizing kind.

        A common approach to Soulmate-seeking is to try to find someone to join you in Dreamland, or to aggressively shop for a Dreamland you want to join. What these people don’t know is that Soulmates create their own world together; and this is a process that can’t be rushed. Seeing yourself and life as it really is begins by being very uncomfortable, but enlightenment comes eventually, and it promises real peace.

        The first improvement is to stop complaining about other people and all the things you can’t fix. Look at and into each other. And then it hits you – that simple thing we always “knew” because we’ve been told over and over: Love is the answer. (“Why Live?” is the question.) Take a walk… together. Look at the stars…together.

        Stroll through an art gallery…together. Every joy is multiplied and magnified and now the question is, Aren’t we lucky? Well, aren’t you? And the gratitude for the chance to live for even a moment in this spectacular universe comes pouring out.

        MY BEAUTIFUL TWIN SISTER

        Twenty months
        Made you the boss
        But my twin just the same
        I gazed adoringly
        Into your dark power.
        You braved everything
        Always being first;
        Parting airspace with your muscle
        To improve my flight – you
        Schooled boyfriends
        Husbands, children
        Teachers
        Bent whole administrations to your will.
        For my benefit you
        Deconstructed history,
        Logic, told me
        Who to read and what to think;
        Volunteering for a better world.
        Protester, Marcher, you
        Learned Amslan
        Just to empathize;
        Conquered mountains
        Just for fun;
        Shifting derailleurs, snowshoeing
        Surefooted through so many
        Frosty seasons. Inside
        You were just like me;
        Scared, hesitant, fragile
        Pushing yourself out there;
        A revelation of
        Impossible courage
        Giving me a lifelong template
        To admire.

      3. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        Orchid = UNIQUENESS “In the Butterfly Pavilion”

        “Singletons”

        You will never rub the edges off each other, says the Orchid – and that is a good thing. You don’t want to. We’re not here to “bland out” or diminish each other. We are here to enhance and free each other.

        We pay homage to each other’s special qualities. Naturally it helps to know where each other is headed but not even the Self really know that. Ultimately, we are mysteries to each other.

        We must be each other’s Map and each other’s Mirror. The challenge is to accept and honor each other’s strangeness; singularity. You were drawn together for a reason. Sometimes it prickles and we feel ourselves shrink, or even withdraw. That is the rhythm of the tango we have undertaken.

        Many Soulmates welcome costume and role play to try to express the range of interests, the force of questions, the eagerness of exploring and adventuring we will always have. The key is to be aware of the rhythms of advance, retreat, resist, re-fashion, re-remember. Expect these. They are necessary to our continued growth. Our relationship is a greenhouse and we must check constantly on the health of our tiny plants. Fill air and soil with love and…release.

        In the Butterfly Pavilion


        This evening you said you wished
        I was more conventional.
        I bowed my head. I did not speak.
        Outside the animals leaned together,
        Holding breath
        To hear my answer.
        The cats-tongue ferns
        Swelled up like swords, pushed out the stink
        Of possibility while
        The rabbit-blooded lawn curled back: 
        Sows littered in the cyclamen
        Phlox flamed  
        Dwarf stars
        Broke free
        Spew molten ore
        Across a sky now
        Darkening to night.
        Nighttime is my kingdom.
        I fold my hands in my sleeves and
        Wait.

      4. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        Firefly = FALSE LOVE “Bed & Breakfast”

        “Liars”

        The Firefly lights our dark with his luciferous magic. In some species it’s only the male, but in others both genders use this cool heat to signal to each other and we are all beneficiaries of their romantic opera.

        And it’s a complete drama with every plot twist you can think of; some fireflies impersonate desire only to attract and then kill the hopeful lover. Other fireflies deliberately use a poor impersonation to warn away competing lovers and decimate the field.

        If attacked, fireflies use “reflex bleeding” to literally poison predators with their blood. This last fact generates warnings never to feed fireflies to your hungry pet reptile! What are we to make of this mix of beauty, falsity and carnivorous intent? Fireflies may be beautiful impostors, but they are never to be envied. They exist only to mate, lay eggs and die. Some fireflies live lives without nourishment. They never even get the chance to dine.

        We are all attracted by fantasy. We each have or think we have – a list of “musts” and “deal-breakers.” Danger waits when we meet someone who actually matches all our specifications! Probably they are lying. Maybe you are, too. Possibly you didn’t even realize it until this moment.

        Maybe you want one thing on the page and another In Real Life. Maybe you want one thing in the dark and another in the light. Maybe you don’t know yourself very well! Lust hardens, love softens; how solve that essential inner/outer conflict? We need to melt – together – into a glorious plasticity that allows us to undertake the “experiment” of entering the life, desires, viewpoint of another.

        But this is only “safe” when goodwill and honorable attentions are present. If someone’s looking for a hostage, a slave, a mimic or even worse – prey – they will falsely claim anything to entice us. How can we tell the difference?

        Sometimes their presentation is TOO “good”. A “pediatric oncologist” who “volunteers at an animal shelter?” Really? Is the attraction a “problem-free” relationship without any of that scary sandpaper of conflict that molds our rough edges to fit together more harmoniously? Or is this attraction just “high-status” and “bragging rights”?

        As your grandmother warned, any salesman trying to hustle you into an instant decision is up to no good. Predators try to convince the young that by taking time to choose and trust we are ruining the experience! Don’t buy it! You’re getting smarter, and stronger by the minute! You’re within your rights –you owe it to yourself – to demand that deeds match words, and that intentions line up with performance.

        Allow yourself time to discover, evolve and revel. Live!

        BED & BREAKFAST

        “That wing of course is closed”
        said Magda whose venomous green eyeshadow
        matched her voice;
        “I’d have that lanced if I were you”
        thinks Reni
        Who never says exactly what she thinks.
        “Wrong word:  wing”
        Thinks Andreas
        “to use about a house tethered toad-like to the lawn”.
        But Andreas never says what he thinks either.
        It’s too late now.
        At dinner, they quarrel about Ezra Pound;
        Pretending to agree.
        Squeaky bedsprings bastardize this sad romance;
        Hopeless beds mandate sex is standing up.
        ( This butler may be deaf and dumb,
        But knew the best way out:
        He was in for the tip of a lifetime.)
        At breakfast the debate about Plath
        Turns violent; the biggest danger
        Of murdering yourself with a kitchen appliance is:
        They’re everywhere.
        Refreshing holiday, says Reni.
        We should do it more often says Andreas.
        Truth never spoken once.
        Mission accomplished.

      5. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

        Fruit = FRUITION “Sweet Family”

        “Enjoy!”

        The Fruit is the sweet result of day after day of concentrated sunshine. The Fruit is a summit of achievement; centuries of unique conditions ending in delight for the senses poetry for the tongue.

        Raspberry, Strawberry, paw-paw, pomegranate, banana, apple, pear, cherry; so much nectar; so many wines. Together they symbolize for us the moment of celebration: Harvest, when there is nothing left to do but relax and enjoy. But Fruit has even more to offer than that.

        We revel in the concept of a storehouse full to bursting; a pleasure-palace of magical alchemy where the very humblest fertilizers such as dirt and sweat are transformed into visible, taste-able joy. The blood of the planet becomes our blood and the most potent chemicals of its deepest mines flood our aching emptiness with repletion.

        The Tantric Garden Harvest concept says you are about to enjoy the fruits of all your yearning, planning, efforts. You are looking into the eyes of, touching the hands of a potential Soulmate. You are close, close. The Harvest invites us to just revel in the bliss – actual and potential – of this moment. It is critical that you not “numb out.” The temptations will be there. There are plenty of chemical fast-tracks to ‘letting your guard down.” But you don’t want to do that. You want to explore that very “guard” and not make a dash for a mythical “finish-line” because the essence of Tantra is there is no finish line.

        There is only the Now, a universe of infinite possibility which has just been doubled as you gaze into the Soulmate’s eyes and hold the Soulmate’s hand.

        Sweet Family

        I want you
        To deliver our children
        With your tongue
        That deft baker’s paddle would
        Lever them out
        Warm & fresh
        In their marzipan coats
        Trailing the pineapple
        Blood-rind
        Traced with poppy-seed adornments
        Marking them as ours.
        A little boy with a pastry-tube
        Rosette between his legs
        A girl as hard & round as
        A hot cross bun
        Petals furled on her
        Crystallized convolvulus
        In whose depths lie stored
        All the honeys of the future.

      6. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars -Seeking Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

        Symbiosis = INTERDEPENDENCE “Impure Women”

        “I need you because you need me”

        Symbiosis is interdependence: far from being exploitation, most species require another’s contribution in order to flourish. Sometimes symbiosis is unacknowledged, especially if one of the partners is using “win/lose” reasoning and agonizes about who’s getting “more” out of the relationship.


        Turning a mutually beneficial relationship into a struggle for dominance marks the end of what could have been a thriving partnership.

        You can have rapturous sex with anybody. You can have devoted friendships with lots of entertaining, interesting people. Soulmating is deeper than that.

        You need each other. You can’t live without each other. Yes, you can bail out now if this sounds scary. Otherwise, that’s what you’re in for. You’re going to have to reveal – often discovering it for the first time yourself – what your needs are, and you’re going to have to be willing to put your shoulder to the other person’s wheel. You nourish each other.

        You’re going to slay each other’s dragons and set each other free FOREVER. This is NOT for the faint of heart. Better leave now if you were just hoping for a nice date, delicious sex, or someone to take home to Mom. Because the dragons WILL show themselves.

        Haiku: I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

        Only soulmates can
        Slay each other’s dragons
        Says Tibetan Master

      7. The Language of Butterflies: the Path of Attachment by Alysse Aallyn

        The Language of Butterflies: the Path of Attachment by Alysse Aallyn

        Assess your potential to connect. We wake alone, but we are on the path of Attachment. Ask yourself; do you seek balanced, indestructible attachment, synchronous, not disharmonic relationship; a connection that is symbiotic, not exploitative. If the answer is Yes, you are on the path of Paradise.

        How can we achieve these goals? First, we must understand and accept our Self, our Ego, with all its quirks and flaws, needs and yearnings, limits and possibilities. Then we must understand the Other; the Lover. We must attune ourselves to the structure of their yearning to begin to construct our duet, our dance. After that we must negotiate the rapids of relationship with each other and with the outside world. Danger! Excitement! Ecstasy! Despair…Compassion.
        Union.

        We are caterpillars, you and I, attempting to learn the language of butterflies. We are unprepossessing creatures, daily absorbed in infantile needs of eating and excreting, but we have a firm promise of a future in which we stretch our gorgeous wings.

        Paradise

        Without eyes

        Ambitious goldfish float

        Dream of skies

        Where fins are wings

        Lily pads are clouds

        Swollen tight

        as seed pearls; gullets

        Safe forever from

        vengeful squid or

        Killer waves.

        Who can say if in their time of death

        Those dreams don’t live

        Bursting skin;
        Trailing comets,

        Scattering scales like stars

        Spilling the pond and soaring limitless

        To be whales

        To be gods

        To be free?

      8. #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

        Bristling – Resistance – Feeling muzzled by day? Do you wake up angry from unrefreshing sleep? Worried? Afraid? Do you gnash your teeth while unconscious? Do you love proving others wrong? When others speak are you eager to jump in and “set them right”? Is your favorite word, “No?”

        Resistance is Never Futile – We woke on this planet for a reason. Its sensible to conclude that self-definition must be key – after all, we can’t make our contribution unless we know who we are. Strangely, we get a lot of push-back on this seemingly basic enterprise. First, enormous cultural pressure: “We have only a few slots available for specific individuals!” Educational advice seems to be: Make yourself one of those Designated Persons no matter who you are, really. It’s enough to gnash anyone’s teeth.

        Challenge – It’s never too late to Get Real. Open your Dream Journal and doodle out the circumstances where you are relaxed, happy, creative and “In-Flow.” That “flow” state is true “bliss” – your brain oozes alpha waves as you sink into an interesting reverie, losing your usual sense of separation from the universe. Suddenly, we experience “Eternity”. Is this achieved for you through music? Dance? Composition? Reading? Sex? Prayer? Some lucky people access this state through meditation alone. It is certainly worth a try; meditation is very good for your brain.

        Danger – The danger is not navel-gazing (micro study can be very revealing) but solipsism. If you are not accessing the universe through your Self, then you are truly Alone, which is a hideous condition (may in fact be Hell.) In our increasingly autocratic world we are becoming very familiar with Aging Babies who expect the rest of us to nursemaid their fussy, immature modality because Growing Up is Ouchy. For God’s sake, for your own sake, for the benefit of the Universe and in hope of Eternity, don’t become one of THOSE. OR one of their enablers.

        Opportunity – Resistance Training Makes Us Stronger. Your whole life, your experiences, your very dreams, have brought you to this moment. Your resistance has blossomed into an individualized focus that must defeat their blander, blunt opposition. You lose nothing – gain everything – by becoming yourself. How? Begin the investigation. What do you like? What do you wish? What fears can you surmount? What do you dream?

        Models & Mentors – ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty” – Thomas Jefferson

        “Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory”

        – Frederick William Faber

        “To fly we must have resistance” – Maya Lin

        “The history of liberty is a history of resistance”
        – Woodrow Wilson

        “The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution the more resistance you will feel” – Steven Pressfield

        Mantra – “Self-determined”

        Meditation –

        #Haiku: The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good

        Static
        “Perfection” is
        Death’s alluring guise;
        Resist:
        Demand
        Birth pangs