Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Healing

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

    The Rainbow = “SERENDIPITY”

      Rainbows have vast cultural, religious, and psychological implications. They announce that the storm is past and offer a gateway to somewhere obviously special, right up there in the sky, a glittering gateway offering us every color in the spectrum. “There’s a land that I dream of,” sang Judy Garland yearningly and we sang and yearned right along with her.


      Rainbows have their head in the heavens and their feet lost somewhere on earth; sheltering a “pot of gold” or so they say. But if you soar through their beckoning gates obviously you will have to leave the gold behind. Rainbows are clearly magic, yet everyone, even skeptics, even the unimaginative, can see them. This Rainbow is a gateway to whatever we desire, if we just could figure out what it is. There’s nothing earthly about the transcendence that it promises. We’re even a little afraid of it. We’re not ready for it YET. But we’re so, so glad it’s there. Just like Serendipity itself.


      What role does luck and chance play in our lives? We are all familiar with the phrase, “The harder I work the luckier I get.” But how about chance? Chance seems to determine who will be our mate, for one thing! True, we often strategize about putting ourselves in the “right place at the right time” and we want the same thing for our kids, otherwise there wouldn’t be this deadly serious skirmishing over “the right pre-school.” We are very aware of “unlucky accidents” and try to prevent those as best with can with a seatbelt and a multi-vitamin; even those of us who smoke and gamble know that much.


      But sometimes we don’t value “good luck”, especially if it’s completely unexpected. Do we feel it’s “undeserved?” If we have children who sleep easily or get good grades do we just take that for granted while focusing on “what’s wrong?” How about our own health and good looks – not to mention the love we feel around us — are those things only “treasured” when they’re gone? I think of the woman who said she doesn’t focus on whether a glass is half empty or half full but instead on who’s going to drink it and whether she will get any?

      We need more than beauty, more than strategy, more than alliances. We need Good Luck. Serendipity is Chance. What are the odds you would walk into that grocery store, check a disused social media account, return an item, misdial a call? Our whole lives seem to be comprised of Lucky Accidents and Near Misses.

      Yes, we try to learn from them, but we are spooked as well. It’s enough to make a person superstitious, because, How can you engineer happy fortune? This way: “The harder you work the luckier you get.”

      Be there. In the right place at the right time. When you’re looking for a soulmate it’s like looking for a job – it helps if everybody knows about it. Let’s widen our opportunity to Get Lucky.

      Serendipity

      All art’s
      “Controlled Accident” –
      Maybe Love is also –
      You plus God plus
      Fate:
      Equals serendipity –
      Give up power steering
      Float – Dream – Surrender
      Unto the skid

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

      Peace=SERENITY “Everything Will Work Out”


      What does it mean to have confidence in the future? We know the most attractive thing about others is “confidence.” Unfortunately, confidence can be faked, so there are a lot of people who believe that’s all it is: a shiny shop window. But if the goods don’t match the advertising, frustration and anger sets in.

        We’re looking for the long-term – immortality in fact – which can be achieved by two souls in perfect synch. We want to exude not just confidence but serenity. We want to be the person it’s peaceful and re-charging to be around because THAT person is VERY attractive.


        That kind of serenity and confidence comes from communing with the eternal. Yes, you’re going to have to “iron out” your philosophy BEFORE you find your soulmate. Christians satisfy themselves by getting to know God. Buddhists bathe in eternity itself. Karma is the “vibe” you send – if it is a peaceful one, it will come back to you.


        Peace is the absence of strife; a sense of repletion and comfort. It is less active than joy, and people are actually afraid of it, the way they’re afraid of heaven. If everything’s already achieved, then isn’t hope dead? That’s why they stir things up by taking pokes at people. Develop a concept of “peace”. A related concept is “plenty” and another is “enough.”


        When you are not actively looking for attachment, when you are feeling “enough”, people flock to you. It is because of that very sense of being “at peace” with yourself. Others want that sense for themselves, they are intensely attracted to a peaceful aura, which comes across as confidence, even if you haven’t got a single accomplishment to brag about. People like that are a relief…a relaxation…a vacation to be around.

        Can a sense of peace be “faked”? Obviously not. Time – and it doesn’t take much time – will fast reveal the truth. Much less trouble to cultivate ACTUAL peace. How do we do that? Through the calming disciplines of mindfulness, yoga and gratitude cultivation. If we can demonstrate that we are open to joy, people inevitably desire what we have.


        We are creatures of hope. If we sharpen ourselves against others as if they were cuttle bones, isn’t the absence of effort an absence of self-definition? We would just sink back into the undifferentiated mass of persons as into a heavenly cloud, all light, without defining shadow. Stop worrying! This is just “semantics” because Peace makes no sense without love and love is active. Harmony is desirable; disharmony is not. Listening to a cacophony is wearisome after the first few seconds, while harmonics, however subtle and complex, produce feelings of rightness, joy and Peace.


        What if we lose confidence and serenity?
        Doubt is human. Uncertainty is human. We armor ourselves with our belief in the promises of the eternal.

        But isn’t doubt disabling? At what point can we just relax? Most Americans think confidence comes from a track record of rewarded accomplishments. In pursuit of a soulmate, let’s imagine you in conversation with a stranger. As you’re wondering about them and trying to get to know them, you rapidly realize that spouting your resume and listening while they brag is NOT, actually, informative communication. What you really want to do is get a “feel for the other person’s “essence.”


        Are they “itchy? Restless? Or are they yearning for peace? If so, you can work with that! Experiment by “relaxing together.”

        Soulstice

        In this the Purgatory of the year
        the crystal cracks the future clear
        The fire maple stands unleaved
        And stalks the bony breast of earth bereaved;
        The sap within the corpse unseen
        Boils up a ready dynamo of green;
        The fetal fish child stirs and yawns
        An equinoctial birthday dawns.
        This is the zero hour when
        Our future dances with its end
        This winter music, echoless
        Raised up the chalice that is Us
        He gives, we are the offerings
        Unto the center and the focus of all things.

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

        The Lovers = ALLIANCES: “Best Friends”


        Becoming a lover forges an alliance for the future. We’re not talking of two raindrops crashing into each other for sex, but a mutual declaration of interest and benefit. Spend today thinking about past alliances; not just love relationships but all alliances dreamed of, suggested, made and broken.


        What hopes, plans and fears did we enter (and exit) with? What mistakes were made? The first thing that jumps out to us is that power differentials create more problems than they solve. An alliance needs to be a two-way street; any hint of “exploitation” turns it into a different kind of relationship entirely.

        Alliances must be freely chosen, with consequences fully appreciated and maturely understood. How often in life is this even possible for us? Sometimes we are limited by the power of our imaginations as well as the resilience of our hearts. Alliances should also be freely exited but how often does THAT happen? How often do our passions (and perceived needs) fall short of our principles and how much shame does this knowledge engender? And then there are issues of temperament: to what extent can introverts/extroverts hope to change their stripes?


        Think about your deepest and most rewarding friendships. You’re looking for a special kind of Best Friend, after all, so it only makes sense that most of the components appearing in your friendships will be found in your soulmate as well. Will you appreciate some of the same things? Speak the same language? Have the same values? Laugh at the same jokes? Share fears and dreams? Expose your worst/best? You still want all that! Because you need an Ally. An ally reliably comes to your defense, as you fearlessly come to theirs.

        An ally is someone you can rely on. It means you must be honest with that person, and we all know how hard that is, especially when you can’t figure out the truth, yourself. You’re feeling your way and you need a sympathetic ear. You know you will have to be their sympathetic ear as well because otherwise what you have isn’t a partnership, it’s an autocracy. Autocrats are lied to and cheated on and they die alone. That’s not what gratifies the soul. You are looking for someone who holds the key to You and by astonishing coincidence, you will hold the key to them, as well.


        The Duel

          Europe without you
          Was a funeral feast.
          I recall the procession of your letters
          Far better than
          The stream of luckless suitors
          Trying to distract me.
          Virgins aren’t distractible.
          Your seductive missives stalked me.
          Your fatal ploy was that nude picture
          Adam lonely in his garden.
          I came right home.
          I well recall the ceremonies
          Of that night!
          Your shyness
          My perfume
          Our ignorance
          Your penis
          Soft as a
          Messenger dove that folds
          To a familiar hand –
          Then wild and hard as
          A riderless horse.
          I did cry out as the candles burned.
          I swear there were some moments when
          We actually saw each other.
          But if this magic sword cuts both ways
          Why was I the only bleeder?
          They peeled me off
          Dropping me down miles
          Of antiseptic hallway –
          A princess in a bucket.
          It could have ended there
          But at your school I haunted you
          A chilly-breasted demon.
          My daytime incarnation seemed mature:
          I fooled you;
          We chatted as you prepared the skin.
          I bit down hard and
          Tasted only
          Suture wire.
          You wrote and broke off
          Our association.
          The years groaned by
          Like convicts chained
          We served our terms with no time off
          For bad behavior.
          Lust had luster,
          Excrement had ecstasy.
          The castaways the whirlwind
          Flung upon the sand
          Were calm, polite –
          We knew our way around.
          That look you gave me!
          Our unborn children shivered
          In their sausage skins
          Suddenly aware
          Their time had come.
          The tale was done
          The frog-mask
          Shivered off
          We saw:
          The you of you
          The me of me –
          Masks
          Unmirrored –
          Scars
          Unscored
          Virgins not but
          Innocence
          Restored.

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

          Inspiration=INTUITION “Shock Pool”

            We are trying to choose, that means cultivating discernment. What is “discernment”? It really means just any
            old soulmate won’t do. But how do we cultivate
            the skills of discernment? Well, a major one is intuition. It is intuition that leads to “inspiration” ; that sudden “knowing” – ‘I feel like I’ve known him all my life.
            Science says we subconsciously collect subliminal signals.

            The danger comes from a cultural problem
            that women have been encouraged to bond with men they’re not chemically attracted to but might be seen as a “good fit” for social reasons, and discouraged from developing their sexual intuition. Guess what? You won’t find your soulmate that way!

            Men, however, make too many life decisions based on status or surface impressions – they don’t wait
            around to perceive “the beauty within.” The moral of this conundrum is: Pay attention to your gut, but don’t allow your gut to boss you! Question it. Think about it. Think of the love you have received in your life and where it came from. Sometimes love potential reveals itself slowly.

            The magic of the Garden comes from Inspiration. Inspiration is the breath the Life Force moves through us – we can’t summon it and we can’t control it. When lost, we greatly mourn its absence. But when we feel its power we are elevated above ourselves. We feel we can do anything we choose. Afterwards we wake feverish, as if from a dream. As every artist and designer knows, work is more than Inspiration, but without its occasional visits work is nothing; tasteless, lifeless and void.

            Artists always have a strong sense that inspiration comes from the “outside”, not from anything “within”. It uses the component of our minds and lives and forces us to “reach outwards” into the universe of resources to answer its call. Art without inspiration is just plain hard work. Unfortunately, there will be many times Inspiration sketches out a plan and then moves on. We know the plan is Inspired but now we must implement it! Late nights & elbow grease! Inspiration can be compared to Love. Both unaccountably come and go. Just because one isn’t feeling momentarily loving about a soulmate doesn’t mean that Love has Fled – in fact it usually just means we’re facing an onslaught of effort. Life is an uphill battle – 90% Hard Slog, alas. If we’re Ten Percent Inspired we’re in the high numbers! Love (and inspiration) will return. In the meantime we’ll have to treasure the memory and blueprint a Future Plan. Discuss.

            Shock Pool

            Bored by their game
            From my perch I watched them,
            Dismantling rules, I
            Wrote down their patterns
            In gold-crested diaries. I was
            Weary of history and

            Pole-axed by Europe –
            I was affrighted
            By what mattered frightfully.
            Culture-Mad-Mother
            Forced us to look
            Then forced us to blink;

            Her timing was off.
            Father dreamed oceans –
            Encapsulating daughters
            In unsinkable Fiberglas
            Against the madness of Nature
            Loathing masculine privilege; I

            Disliked you on sight
            Insulted by proctoring
            You must be divested of
            Corduroys, wingtips, tweed
            & leather; we posed under waterfalls
            For Swedish love bibles.

            Clove-scented ecstasies
            Kindled my fevers at
            The moment of quenching them;
            Sweeping West – you pulled the Atlantic –
            Drowning us both in the riptide you created.
            The captain lied when he said

            We’d go home. Lubricated by champagne, you
            Peeled off my shock-pants
            and asked me to marry you.
            Since then illusion scorched into reality
            Providing the universe
            With plenty to write.

          1. 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

                    The Life Force – “Why do we need each other?”


                    Parents can watch this need for The Reciprocal Other awaken. At about the age of two the infant, who has belonged to the parents and who has felt like part of them, begins to show a lot of interest in the outside world. But when she sees a pint-sized someone exactly like herself, a certain sparkle comes into her eyes. She wants to clutch, bond with, play with that person. Hang on, because now the thrill-ride is beginning, the search Plato described as our search for our Missing Half. Mating behavior is an even more powerful driver in biology than feeding needs. Mating drives species to extravagant displays of seemingly dangerous behaviors, obsessive building, fighting and positioning. Species who mate for life put themselves through complex effort to secure The One. So this is biology, folks. You are in the grips of an instinctual drive it is pointless to resist. Hang on, and let’s make sure your brain becomes engaged.

                      Sex cadets

                      I shall orchestrate your life I say
                      Make your blood sing woodwind
                      Stretch my nerve harp-tight
                      Across your exo-shell
                      While you, heart racer
                      Put me through my paces
                      Pushing your muscle through
                      The gates of my life
                      Pushing past theories
                      of the pluperfect poetical
                      pushing like
                       a downhill artist
                      the speed racer you claim to be
                      Speed  devil
                      Speed demon
                      Speed dreamer.

                    1. 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?