Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Healing

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Daisy = LOVE “Is love real?” “Love Waves”

                Love is the secret. Love is the answer. Love is what we say we feel when we look into the Soulmate’s eyes According to our long, rich tradition of romantic literature, it’s a connection/identification with someone else so powerful (and so rewarding) you would walk through fire for that person. 

                Biblically defined as:

                “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” 

                Love is the opposite of the winner/loser “fuck you” ethos. 

                Love is patient. We can’t expect the Soulmate to be on the same page with us immediately, or all the time. We must work out our differences, analyze our difficulties and strategize        solutions. Love takes time.

                Love is kind. We handle each other gently, with care. Thoughtfully, with reverence. Slowly. Savoring.

                Love does not envy. We are not competitive with each other. When we wrestle, it is in play, for joy, not because we want to         trounce the Soulmate or knock the feet out from under the Beloved.

                Love does not boast. We are not seeking to impress each other. Love is not a hierarchy where we can lift our status above the Loved One.

                Love is not proud. We can admit fault. We can say we are sorry. We can weep with the Beloved and we can begin again.

                Love does not dishonor others. There is no “score”, no winner  and no loser. We don’t take tattletales of the Beloved to friends, family, social media or the public space. 

                Love is not self-seeking. It is not transactional: “what can I get out of this” “you are not giving enough” “you are not making me look good.”

                Love is not easily angered. We resist anger, touchiness, rage over our wounded narcissistic self-importance. If we are angry we cannot join, touch each other, embrace whole-heartedly or solve problems. When you get angry over a problem, now you have two problems. 

                Love keeps no record of wrongs. When we say, “I forgive you”, we mean it.

                Love does not delight in evil. We do not seek the diminishment or disrespect of the other. Popular “bondage” and “sadism” games that memorialize the helplessness and subjection of the Other are dangerous, volatile and can be triggers of past dangers and will map out a bleak and lonely future.

                Love rejoices in the truth. The truth evolves because our brains evolve. Truth is a process as our lives are a process. We are all heading for an end goal – both together and separately – if we        can   figure out what it is. Truth is our ally in this dilemma, because it tells us the real results of all our strategies which allows us to calibrate our efforts and improve our outcomes.         We must speak truth to each other and we must grow in stature enough to dare to speak truth to Power.

                Love protects. We shelter. We nourish. We steward. We cherish. We assess. We unite.

                Love always trusts. We believe. We have the best assurance that God is good and that truth, justice and love will win in the end.

                Love always hopes. Things will get better tomorrow. We will         work towards constant improvement.

                Love perseveres. We will never quit. We are in this for the long haul.

    Meditation:  I am part of all I have met  – Tennyson

    #Haiku: Love Waves

    Sound travels forever

    Like love;

    Stars’ boundless dance

    Launched

    By mortal hearts

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Cherry Blossoms = Paradise=BLISS “Love the Magician”

    Finding your bliss: Cherry blossoms promise: “Good things to come.”

    Everyone’s Paradise is different. For some it will be just like church, for others it’s the eternal “fish-fry” described in Green Pastures.

    Some people say it will be a place without animals, enemies, insects or unbelievers, others say it will be just like Earth. Some think it’s an endless loving embrace, others say a “roll in the hay” with “70 virgins.” (Imagine that being appealing!)

    These ideas are understandably small and based on limited and very individual human knowledge. This makes Paradise a mental construct; some kind of an existence of all joy and no pain. We can almost barely imagine that. What we can’t seem to imagine is a Paradise where all participate; in other words, how can we feel joy if “wrong thoughts”, “impure behaviors” and “bad people” are rewarded?

    Jesus was asked this question and his answer sounds suspiciously like “get over it.” He told a long story about toilers in the vineyards paid the same amount no matter how late they showed up, just because the owner was so full of generosity and joy.

    Something to think about. I personally treasure the idea that Paradise is a place where “every tear will be wiped away.”(Revelation)

    Once we have faced up to our personal inadequacies, admitted the power of our global longing and contemplated the possibility of severance, are we ready to surrender to bliss? Cherry Blossoms guarantee that ecstasy is coming. But what is ecstasy – how uncomfortable will it be and how will we recognize it?

    Ecstasy is the blurring of our boundaries into the beloved. Time vanishes, there is only the ecstatic present. You have experienced this before. Disappearing in to the safety of a loving parent’s arms you felt connected to them in a galvanic way – you and they were part of each other’s being. This is the connection Jesus offered when he called God “Daddy.”

    A mature connection with the Beloved is even more powerful, because we get to be both parent and child, recipient and giver, all at once and in the same moment. What joy!

    Meditation: Long live the weeds and the wildness – Gerard Manley Hopkins

    LOVE THE MAGICIAN

    The Magician is a Capricorn
    Bleeding cock’s milk from nipples
    Pale like mine but
    Maler.
    Illusion, he says is memory
    Of things that should have been.
    Doves and rabbits he entices
    From sacred groves between my legs
    Placed by ruse, and freed by art.
    When he dies, passion turns his eyes
    To quarters.
    He hears the world but faintly
    Through his one good ear.
    The other turns to me,
    Safecracker’s daughter.
    Trust the magician, voices tell me
    He knows when to drop the dice.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Calla Lilly = FORGIVENESS “My Grandmother’s Ghost”

    “Is forgiveness possible?”

    In the language of flowers, the Calla Lily is forgiveness. Forgiveness is like coming home. It hypothesizes a place where the past doesn’t matter, mistakes are healed, and love conquers all. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?

    Soulmates create heaven for each other, but we can taste and enjoy it, now. Nothing is held back.

    Love requires that each desire the other’s “good.” There is no tiny part of us hoping for the other’s denigration so that we can rise. This means forswearing the Scarcity Mentality. We must believe there is enough love for us both.

    Love without status, without competition. Just closeness, forgiveness and togetherness. If a Soulmate keeps pushing his Beloved into position of Enforcer, Critic, Teacher or Detective, the relationship is under such threat its future is imperiled. One can hardly be forgiven until one stops being a danger to the soul of the Beloved and the soul of the relationship. We must commit to desiring the other’s good, and to demanding health and life for ourselves.

    When the Calla lily arrives at your door, not just forgiveness but absolution is in the offing. We know there can be no forgiveness for us unless we have learned to forgive others, but perhaps the hardest thing is to learn to forgive ourselves.

    We must even forgive God for the pulse of history and the electricity of circumstance, for the physical web in which we are all caught. Give up trying to assess who did what to who and why; letting it all go as your eyes turn to the future.

    There is no resolution in simply showing wounds or admitting wrongdoing; but there is healing available when we hold each other up in the light. But we have to want it. We must want to come home.

    How many times do we have to forgive ourselves? When asked how many times we need to forgive others Jesus made the quick calculation of “seventy times seven” meaning, “a lot.” If you think about it, you’ll realize we are going to have to forgive each other and ourselves a lot more times than that! Possibly multiple times per day for the rest of our lives. Don’t we have to forgive ourselves for constantly underestimating ourselves, for saying “I can’t do this” without even trying, for insulting ourselves and verbally (and for all I know physically!) Be a loving partner to yourself so that your Beloved knows how to love you.

    Meditation: We’re branches of the same tree – W.B. Yeats

    My Grandmother’s Ghost

    My grandmother never cried
    Emmie you’re a stoic
    Everyone admired her. That’s why
    She haunts us; pressing her face accusingly
    Against the glass beneath the stairs.
    On windy nights she
    Threatens God, maligns
    His angels; for the little boy who died
    Of scarlet fever; without once
    Calling her name; and the collie dog run over
    And the storm that forever uprooted
    Her wedding tulips.
    Mother shakes her head, says, “Poor Gran
    Will never be done; she’s got
    Too much grief to catch up on.”

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Gazing Ball = PROPHECY “You Are Not Lost”

    “Who can foretell the future?”

    If you could, would you?

    Would you find yourself performing all the same actions all over again?

    What do you most regret? Sometimes grief lies in wait for us at our happiest moments. What would you change, if anything? How about altering your Soulmate, fellow traveler on life’s journey? Would you roll those dice again?

    Skeptics say a stopped clock is right twice a day, but whatever the causation, sometime prophecies come true. A creeping suspicion bubbles up out of nowhere – manifesting as reality. We guess restlessly at “The Truth.”

    This glittering gazing ball at the center of our garden reflects our hopes, wishes and dreams, one of which is that it confers the gift of prophecy. We know we must be right about some future event; but if we share our knowledge too often we are discredited or disbelieved.

    Perhaps all we need is to cultivate our gift; forget “knowing”; concentrate on the blur of memory and project it forcefully into the future. Think about past, present and possibility, making all our choices with our Wisdom Eye fully open. It could be that the answer to the question we seek is already known to our Soulmate if we can only learn to trust and understand.

    What fresh new worlds might we create with our clear shared minds?.

    YOU ARE NOT LOST

    Do forests think?
    These trees know where they are
    In spite of all our attempts
    At subjugation
    We are all still here
    In spite of prophets who
    Calculated chances of survival
    With the eye of a murderous god
    Every one of us
    Who has ever been
    Is still here

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The labyrinth = COMPLEXITY

    “What’s the ultimate secret?”

    The Labyrinth draws us in, yet we are fearful. In the garden lies this ultimate puzzle – that for which there is no solution, because the Labyrinth keeps adding corridors toward – where?

    We don’t recognize that our longing for stasis is really a longing for death, so that if we wish to live, we must commit ourselves to the constant flow of fresh experiences, discoveries that train our eyes in new ways of seeing.

    The Labyrinth changes us at the same time as we demand – and sometimes succeed in forcing – changes from it. We have pledged to leave our mark upon it. Nothing shakes our certainty that this puzzle pines for us every bit as much as we yearn for it. Is your soulmate waiting in the center of the labyrinth? What if the labyrinth has no center?

    Soulmates have an edge; we have eyes in the back of our heads. Our sixth sense seeks the others out and once we join hands, we become a four-eyed dragon. Not only can our eyes see forward in time and backwards in history – but now we have the benefit of two Third Eyes – two seats of wisdom.

    Why does the Labyrinth keep separating us? Because labyrinths are a series of puzzles without answers – designed to educate us to embrace the next problem.

    You were just around that corner – now suddenly your essence has departed. The aura I counted on with certainty has evanesced.

    What happens if one day you look at me with a different face and I realize your brain – that Seat of Self – has been affected and You and no Longer You?

    And then there’s Bad Magic – the lies that draw us – or one of us – in – to live – however momentarily – in Crazy World. The defining feature of Crazy World is sickness. Sickness, death and hopelessness are cultivated as if they were precious plants. You know you must get out as fast as you can. Yes, you should try to save each other but you will both be lost if you can’t get the oxygen mask over your own face first and return the trustworthy flow of life-giving reality.

    Our brain, the thinking organ with which we confront and negotiate the Labyrinth – is a labyrinth itself – possibly the model for all the labyrinths to come, but to comprehend the vastness of the universe all we have is this tiny human brain. Even as Soulmates touch Third Eyes together to join through Literature, Science, History and Art with all the human brains there have ever existed, can we gauge the immensities of inner and outer space? We can, if we are unafraid of complexity.

    The further we journey, the more we see. Every “solution” posits yet more problems. Hold hands and don’t be frightened. Our simplified language will inhibit our understanding until we invent placeholder terms to represent the “unknown” – just as in math – so we can begin to imagine a way to place them into our calculations. Luckily you don’t need to know everything there is to know about the ocean just to ride its waves; but you do need to appreciate the majesty, the mystery and the danger keeping you afloat.

    Heraclitus said you can never dip your hand in the “same river” twice. Even if you dip for the second time just moments later, the water itself is completely different. We are all rushing forward and there is no going back. Soulmates rush on together.

    She

    At the heart of the labyrinth
    She sits
    Repairing
    Sores of everyday
    Occurrence
    Insults, slights, poor
    Choice of Words &
    Turns of phrase.

    From the heart of the pond she
    Heals the otter’s sorrow
    The bobcat’s grief
    Orchestrating cries of loons
    Into family symphony
    Forever exploring but
    Having home to come
    Back to.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Thorns = The thief = DISPOSSESSED “On Being Disinherited”

    “Could you steal? Have you?”

    The rose attacks; you are cut, pierced. Thorns signify “Don’t mess with me or you’ll be sorry.” The Garden itself has the capacity to cut you to the quick.

    What if the garden itself is under attack? Ravaged? Despoiled? Extinct?

    Dispossession is much more complicated than mere loss. It means something we thought was ours isn’t. “Thorns” remind us of hidden dangers. Ownership may be quietly transferred behind the scenes, or they may convince you it never existed at all. What is “ownership”, anyway? Are we entitled to the Soulmate’s love?

    Entitlement of some kind is at risk. Property? Dignity? Expectations? It can be very modest; a chair, a single room, a blanket. Not yours anymore. Nothing you can rely on. We must ask ourselves; are those we trust to act for us are fundamentally untrustworthy? Who or what do they represent?

    Contracts dissolve. In a class based society we suddenly find ourselves divested, plummeting down, down to the despised and the ignored. This is frightening and disorienting.

    The rules have shifted; the law has changed. We are looked on as an interloper at someone else’s party. Now we are viewed as dishonorable supplicants in danger of capture and incarceration.

    Thorns remind us of a wider meaning; a warning that ultimately we can “own” nothing: everything we use is shared. Even our own body, this ship we use to forage through the seas of life, can turn against us, behaving in completely unpermitted and unfamiliar ways.

    Feeling dispossessed is a shock to the system. Hustle culture places pressure on us to take, take, take, grab or “lose out.” When ‘Thorns” appear in your daily meditation it means it is time to have some serious thoughts about the nature of “ownership”; what you want versus what you can have; what you can control versus what you can’t and ultimately, who you can trust. Who’s feathering their private nest instead of honoring a contract?

    How can you gain through losing? Does real freedom lurk behind these dispossessions? The hermit crab carries his house on his back. When he outgrows it is when he shops for another house. It clearly wouldn’t benefit him to be dragging two houses around; he wouldn’t be able to move.

    But some of us are so burdened with junk we’re completely immobilized. Yet being robbed not only isn’t any kind of relief, the sense of violation lasts for years. The only person who can rid us of our stuff is Us. We just must set to it and figure out what’s baby and what’s bathwater. It’s a lifelong process. But being light and free can be intoxicating and addictive. Maybe a contract needs renegotiation, or shouldn’t exist in the first place.

    Sometimes a Soulmate fails the test or sharing, caring and giving. Or we fail. Maybe it is just once, and after a recovery period we will be better communicators. But maybe, like the hermit crab, we have outgrown this particular shell.

    After all, we’re planning to end up with wings. Maybe once we’ve soared we won’t want to live any other way.

    ON BEING DISINHERITED

    These are the tasks
    Performed without feeling;
    The snipping the
    Slashing
    The shredding
    Bundling into bunches
    You are the remote ogre
    And I the crying child.
    Why do partitioned pieces
    Melt before they touch?
    You fear to give;
    I am helpless to receive.
    Imagine we change places.
    Would that explain
    Your fear of me?

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Version 1.0.0

    Thistle = RESISTANCE = “The thistle”

    “Do we really want love? Can we tolerate togetherness?”

    The thistle threatens, “Touch me Not.”

    It is inevitable that we experience Merging on some level as Identity Loss. This is the source of the power struggle which plagues, and should plague, all relationships: who’s going to drive this bus? (The answer is Each/Both/Neither. Power flows in, out and between, like the tide.)

    If “who will drive” doesn’t emerge into consciousness then the problem lies very deep and must be urgently addressed. It’s always important to keep in mind that one soul isn’t “absorbed” while the other “inflates”! That’s not how it works at all!

    For example, those who study the contemporary meanings of the word ”fuck” will be justifiably alarmed. If you are “fucked” you’ve been “taken.” You’ve been “had,” emptied, eviscerated, exploited. You are left worse off.

    One person is diminished, the other is a conqueror in this scenario. Soulmating cannot and will not happen under such conditions – both souls will be erased. Considering that sex is the glue that fuses souls, exploitational thinking is profoundly destructive. “Mated” is a much better term, but even that fails to encompass the transfer of self into a central Us that is so much desired, feared, dreaded and resisted.

    You desperately need each other’s pollen to ignite true fertility in the soul. Relax. Experiment. Allow the Other to instruct you in their Wildness. Offer up your own exotic difference. Join.

    #HAIKU: The Thistle

    Pry me out
    I fly back hard
    Invigorate world
    With wilder honey

  • 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?

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Snake = ADDICTION “The Columbine”

    “Just when things are going so well -”

    Because we’re afraid of snakes, we attract the deadly columbine. We can’t recognize danger and we don’t know how to summon real assistance.

    In the language of flowers the Columbine means “Anxious Folly. Resolved to win.” Our folly prevents our winning.

    As for snakes, there are many of snakes we depend on in the garden. But every now and then a poisonous one wanders by. How do we tell the difference?


    How can we win when we poison ourselves? It’s to lessen that anxiety, to get back to what we assume is “baseline.” But it isn’t. We just haven’t found our baseline yet, and by mimicking the baseline of others we get farther and father from ourselves.

    This is why recovery from addiction involves finding ourselves. We can’t find a soulmate when we don’t know who we are.

    Our toy-box of pleasures is quite pathetic, but that’s not our fault. We are wired for addictions, with a biological view to turning such basic pursuits for food, mating and recreation subconscious so we can use the front of our mind to think about other things.

    You can tell addictions are destructive (and not all of them are!) if they crowd out human flourishing and ruin sharing and our ability to share. “I want to feel pleasure with you” becomes, “Let’s cycle through my tragic past of suffering before I found you.”

    Not good. To get out of this mess we cultivate the gift of change, of evolution. We will share and learn to tolerate discomfort. Hold tight. Often the addictions gained their grip over us because we were seeking to escape change or discomfort! The good news it, it’s never too late.

    The better news is, this re-discovery and re-creation of the self is one of the life-transforming experiences to share with a soulmate and if you have no soulmate yet, here’s a crucial step to getting yourself ready to present to the world as the Real, the Essential, the True You.

    Always look for help. Set up a program and a feedback system for accountability and efficiency and spiritual support for the inevitable withdrawal that’s coming. It’s only giving birth to your stronger, better, best self. You know it’s time.

    HAIKU: The Columbine

    Gambler’s inferno
    Dissolves will
    Slavery
    Wrecks pleasure-
    Luck? Loss?
    Choose.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Pond = JUDGEMENT “Devourer of Hearts”

    “Does truth ever come out?”

    The Pond may reflect what it sees, but we know it has depths. There are things in there, moving around, looking back at us, possibly making calculations about us. The pond is deep enough so that we could swim – and never touch bottom.
    When we look into a mirror, is the mirror looking into us? We know the answer is always Yes as long as we have a Soulmate. We function as each other’s mirrors. World within world; bubble within a bubble; our vision alters. We learn from each other what Truth really is.

    Truth lies just beyond our vision, but luckily our Soulmate provides eyes in the back of our head. The Truth will out. The Pond waits quietly, knowing someday it will repossess. Hidden creatures study us as we study them. We remember what it is like to dip beneath it surface and gaze back at the blurry universe – blurry now – where some breathe air. Goldfish will nibble at our skin while spiders tangle in our hair. Someday we must acclimate to a different ethos. Appearing in your spread, The Pond means Judgment is coming. It can be good or it can be bad: it is up to us.

    Because that’s what we’re scared of, isn’t it? We know how we make judgments: Interestingly, in our everyday life it seems like “judgment” is constantly changing. There’s appeals, and reconsiderations and every now and then some “delivered and done” decision is disinterred and we all publicly agree: “That was wrong.”

    So, like a lot of “finite” things, “judgment” is a “concept”, just like the theory that if you keep dividing a distance in half you’ll never reach zero. We’re afraid of “bad” judgments, that’s the truth; because we judge ourselves harshly: “Why can’t you do anything right?”

    And we are cognizant of a Group of Others – lets call them by their true name – bullies – who are actively seeking tender vulnerabilities they can exploit. Once they realize what a mess we are won’t that be the Final Judgment we can never recover from?

    We are a fearful species. And a lot of our fears, it turns out, are hardwired. Behavioral experts pointed out a hundred years ago that children are automatically afraid of things like snakes and cliffs but not speed or electric light sockets. Fear isn’t rational.

    And since we are a social species it only makes sense that at least some of our fears would be “social” in nature. But here’s the rub: defensiveness ramps up anxiety and most – if not all – of obsessive behavior is engineered to distract us from anxiety! We’re pigeons pecking at ourselves! So we’re not doing ourselves any favors by getting hysterical about “what other people think.” Better work on maintaining our calm and maintaining our wellness program. Remember, soulmates can save each other.

    Haiku: Devourer of Hearts

    Scaling hearts
    For final judgment:
    Soured hearts
    Desiccate;
    Tantric hearts
    Burgeon