Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Healing

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    The Field of Fate – Do you dream of costume drama? Historical characters? Ancient books? Do you consult tea leaves? Are you superstitious? We are all caught in the mesh of history.

    The field is too large for us to see it clearly. We can feel the pull of forces too large to resist or even rise above. We use our Dream Journal to track the stirrings of memories both past & future. Those caught in wars, in genocides, in natural disasters, are brutally unlucky. Naturally we yearn for a trustworthy clue to extract us from this maze.

    Challenge – Do you see the bigger picture? Were those who fled Germany before Hitler shut it down just “lucky” or had they learned to read the signs? Rulers by whim are especially dangerous, for their brain becomes an echo chamber rotting from within. The larger the council the better – true democracy is best, but even then there are those self-destructive ones among us desiring to “shake things up”; loving chaos for its own sake. They may hope to ride the whirlwind but no one can truly ride a whirlwind. The challenge is to see the whirlwind coming.

    Danger – Is the danger learned helplessness, our old enemy? Or is it comfort – we’ve created a prison for ourselves that’s just too cushy and familiar to leave? Sometime the danger is an inability to imagine evil: “it CAN’T get that bad” or “These people are my friends,” or ”He’s just trash talking. He doesn’t really mean it.” Famous last words. Or is it another enemy, panic? Fight and flight are not the only factory installed responses, there’s also “freeze.” Motionless, because we are too terrified to think.

    Opportunity – Have you noticed, yet, that it’s always the same opportunity we’re offered? Simply to grow up. Accept maturity. Become Godly; more like God, or as the Gnostic gospels call the Creator, “Good”. To regard each other with the wise generosity of compassion. In order to claim our opportunity we must create safe spaces to grow, think and learn.

    Models & Mentors – “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone” – William James

    “No matter how dirty your past, your future is spotless” – Drake

    “Our destiny is not written for us, but by us” – Barack Obama

    “If you can influence, direct or control your environment , you can make your life what you want it to be” – Napoleon Hill

    “Life is choice, not chance,” – Jean Nidetch

    “Winners fail until they succeed” – Robert T. Kiyosaki

    Mantra – “I choose”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Karma

    Come round –
    Goes round.
    Love reaps love
    Law reaps
    Justice
    Violence reaps
    Whirlwind.

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Art – Do you dream of artistic products – paintings, sculpture, film – or artistic endeavors such as performance and construction? Do you get ideas for fresh pieces and experience nonconformist thinking that seem to evaporate upon waking? Art is our poetic confrontation with the world, it is also our prime avenue for non-verbal healing. Only non-verbal healing can address pain we can’t even quantify. Your inner self is signaling to you that it is time for you to access another language – art – become expert in its terms, and start inventing some of your own. Only art can establish the connection with others required to nourish you now.

    You Are An Artist – Every single one of us chooses mode and objects of expression, consciously or unconsciously, every single day. We buy one object over another because it gives us pleasure, we arrange our living spaces to express some intangible quality about ourselves – a self-definition that signals to others who we are and where we are on our journey.

    Challenge – Art demands individuality. We begin by copying but we must move on to expressing our uniqueness or our soul can’t evolve. If we are happy being part of an unthinking mass we are truly “unborn.” This exploration will grant you a deep peace about being alone with yourself, a strong confidence in who you really are and a feeling of spiritual value.

    Danger – This exploration is awkward at first, and in other people’s eyes it may remain awkward forever. Why wouldn’t you copy what’s popular? Why not mimic the uncontroversially successful? The problem is, while you are doing that the core of your self-hood is dying like an unwatered plant. And if your soul is dying, you are dying. Also, being bullied by the “art enforcers” is not the only danger here because we bully ourselves worse than they could ever do. Constantly shaming yourself as a no-talent, pretending poseur is horrifyingly destructive to our precious infant specialness struggling for life. Make a resolution to start supporting yourself. The fact that a work is unsuccessful, even a horrific mess, doesn’t mean it isn’t an advance for your vision, insight and style. These are the building blocks of creation. Don’t get hung up on approval. You need teachers, not fans. Read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

    Opportunity – Open your Dream Journal. If you familiarize yourself with the lives of artists you will instantly see MESS EVERYWHERE. For the purposes of confidence building, the disastrous misfires among artists you admire the more helps you respect your own efforts and forgive your failures. Astonishing talent does exist – we learn less from these natural geniuses, much as we admire them, and more from artists who seem more in tune with our own two steps forward, four steps back methods of composition. We are trying to build the confidence to experiment. You don’t have to call yourself “an artist” if that’s too intimidating (most of us have day jobs) – you can say you’re “communing with yourself on a psychic level, and learning the language to interact with others more deeply. Because you are. It enormously enhances our pleasure in day to day existence!

    Models & Mentors – “Creativity takes courage” – Henri Matisse

    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” – Henry David Thoreau

    “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight without vision”

    – Helen Keller

    “You were born an original, don’t die a copy” – Jon Mason

    “Life beats down and crushes the art in your soul to remind you that you have one” – Stella Adler

    “There are no rules, only confidence, aplomb, style & joy” – Neil Gaiman

    Mantra – “I create”

    Meditation –

    Haiku: In the Art Monastery

    Silence blooms; bold
    Heart plunges
    Deep;
    Dares blood;
    Mind annexes Sun
    Births
    Moons

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Fruit – Harvest – Do you dream of fruit, perfectly ripe? Do you love to cook and entertain? Are you attracted by movies with long family dinner scenes, outdoors beneath an arbor? Is touring wine country a popular fantasy of yours? You are a person who is propelled forward by imagining smiles on the faces of others as the work of community and family harmony is celebrated and enjoyed. This vision can keep us going through bitter hardships.

    Challenge – Keeping these visions alive during the planting phase is hard, because the growth cycle is long and can be boring and uneventful. That’s why planting occurs in stages, so all your psychic eggs aren’t resting in the same basket. Learn to enjoy all the seasons, without hungering for a single season. This is a good time to contrast group versus individual gratification and ask ourselves, “What’s that about?”

    Danger – We become obsessed with gratification until it takes more and more to gratify us. The next thing you know you are in an addiction and no longer a planting cycle. We need to look forward to the abstemious times, sitting around the fire telling stories, without requiring “success” to be an endless party. Write these challenges in your Dream Journal and strategize with Dream Group about how to replenish your inner souls. Luckily sleep and dreams are the best model of fruitful dormancy. We need those periods and we need to look forward to their relief and imaginative nourishment.

    Opportunity – Every family’s celebration of the success and nourishment cycle is different. Are there leftover behaviors that no longer serve you? What fresh, exciting new ideas might you add? Is everyone in the family/community being well-served or are there grumpy holdouts? It’s also fruitful to listen to what the grumpy holdouts say, occasionally. How might they do things differently? If all they want is to harsh everyone else’s buzz, maybe they should no longer expect an automatic invitation to the feast.

    Models & Mentors – “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you will get but by the seeds you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

    “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter, enjoy” – William Blake

    “Every deed sows a seed, though the harvest you may not see”
    – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

    “We are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond” – Gwendolyn Brooks

    Mantra – “I thrive”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Fruition

    Self expands –
    No more
    “For” or
    “Against”;
    Blend
    Seamlessly with
    Mother Mind

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Ambisextrous – Do you dream of being the “opposite” sex? IS there an opposite sex? Are these threatening dreams or pleasurable ones? Do you dream of the fetish trophies of gender; makeup, wigs, shoes, sports equipment? Do you have frequent “freedom” dreams: flying, swimming? Wake up damp, pulses pounding? Sometimes we want to be our own romantic partner, the subject of a lifelong pursuit. This is nothing but the honorable, deep desire to truly know oneself, to master our selfhood before we leave the planet. C.S. Lewis says we are not a body with a soul, we are a Soul with a body.

    Remember – In the Dream, you are everyone. In dreams we confront ourselves, we challenge ourselves, we evolve ourselves. Write in your Dream Journal what it would be like to be your own opposite, your own Desire.

    Challenge – Woody Allen says bisexuality doubles your chances to get a date on Saturday night. Anything wrong with that? Nobody should force themselves to perform sexually; it is important at all times to move as slowly as you feel comfortable with. The sexual revolution was a lot of fun, but it was spoiled for many people by a witless prejudice against “hang-ups.” Revulsion and doubt tell us plenty. We are on this earth to hone our “gut” instinct as well as our sensitivities. Gavin de Becker, danger specialist, reminds us that fear is a “gift.” Honor it.

    Danger – Most “bad sex” stories when one sex disappoints or violates the other, start with substance abuse, undertaken with a nervous desire to get into a more relaxed or even transcendental state. All it actually does is skip over the “informed consent” part that is such an important feature of identity and will. Predators with a need for speed drug their prey! Afterwards the complex feelings of violation an shame take a life time to deal with. These facts mean we need to study trust before we study sex. What is trust? Safety? Honor? Let’s work on those issues while we develop a free space to evolve, experiment and grow.

    Opportunity – Fresh interpretations of gender make this a glorious time to be alive. I can recall when gender was a prison sentence! Now it is an invitation to live more fully, to experience oneself and others more richly, to participate in that fruitful life of which we all dream.

    Mantra – “I become”

    Models & Mentors – “The great gift of human beings is we all have empathy. We can sense a mysterious connection to each other” – Meryl Streep

    “Leadership is about empathy. It is about relating to people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives” – Oprah Winfrey

    “The capacity for empathy leads to a genuine encounter I which heart speaks to heart” – Pope Francis

    “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization” – Roger Ebert

    “Empathy has no script…there is no right way or wrong way…there is only listening, emotionally connecting, communicating the incredibly healing message ‘You’re not alone” – Brene Brown

    Meditation –

    #Haiku – Ambisextrous

    Ambisexuality:
    Joyously roused;
    By beauty
    Everywhere

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Dawn – Relief – All suffering comes to an end. “This too must pass” is a true mantra. Every dream is followed by an awakening which is followed by another dream. In the moment of relief from the fear and the tension that preceded it we are still shaking from the experience we went through. We are in no condition to make decisions. We are just so grateful that it is over. What is required of us, however, is appreciation of the cycle. We are surfing, whether we like it or not. Another wave will come. We had better learn how to ride it.

    Challenge – Mentally, we will rise above the cycle. Take a good, long look at it. This is hard to do when we are quivering and feeling victimized but it is necessary. What pattern do you see? The surfing analogy is a good one because the tides are not rhythmic nor perfectly predictable, we simply know another will be along soon. Is this necessary? Sometimes there’s a way out; we can change jobs, switch professions, get a divorce. Figure out where the pressure is coming from. Assess your abilities. What part are you good at? Where do you suck? Can you enjoy any part of this? How can your performance be improved? Most of us take pleasure in things we are good at. Can your enjoyment be deepened?

    Danger – Learned helplessness is real. We give up. We stop trying to game or even understand the system. We lie down under the shocks, no longer even trying to escape, until they kill us. Don’t succumb.

    Opportunity – You can win, but the game is bigger than our mortal understanding. Nevertheless, you can comprehend the majesty of what we are up against and appreciate it as a knife appreciates the whetstone. We learn through analogy, we remember through stories. You can always improve, becoming a graceful, competent athlete of our mortal existence until you graduate into the next sphere. You can change and affect your fate.

    Roll with the punches. When Jesus says, “Resist not evil” he means, allow evil to roll over you and smash itself against your non-resistance. Study martial arts to increase your knowledge of how to manage and overcome Superior Force. Cultivate a Dream Buddy, a dead or fictional character you know well and summon them to your aid. Ask your dream buddy.

    Dream Buddies don’t have to be actually alive or present – people choose such different characters as St. Francis, Sherlock Holmes, Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Mulan, Buddha and Jesus to be their buddies. Some are more comfortable with an animal – your personal power creature; the jaguar, wolf, eagle or wolverine. You can change Dream Buddies based on the problem confronting you. Ask their help before you go to sleep, solicit them to come to you in dreams to shed light upon your difficulty. Then the next morning, start writing and remembering the moment you wake up. Some key dreams take a lifetime to decipher.

    Models & Mentors – “Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but you never get anywhere”
    – Erma Bombeck

    “For fast acting relief, try slowing down” – Lily Tomlin

    “Happiness is the relief after extreme tension”
    – F. Scott Fitzgerald

    “Laughter is the tonic, the release, the surcease of pain” – Charlie Chaplin

    Mantra – “I delight”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Taming Wild Mind

    Raging surf –
    Wild ride;
    Harden torrent into
    Path.
    Breathe.
    Hurricane’s Eye.

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Night – Balance – We are different people in our dreams. We wake up amazed, even ashamed, of the things we wanted, said, did. Who are we, really? Are we the wishes and fears that rush through our subconscious or are we our daytime selves?


    The answer is – we are both. We must balance between the flood of desires and objectives that sleep flushes out.

    For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.

    
A time to be born and a time to die.
    

    A time to plant and a time to harvest.


    A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.


     A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.


     A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.


     A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.

    
A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.


     A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3

    Balance is a key law of nature to avoid the dreaded death-like stagnancy. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. In dreams we try on many lives. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.

    Moderation in All Things – said Hesiod, the Roman poet 750 BC and its still good advice. We use balance as a whetstone to sweeten our pleasures and soften our griefs; torrents that are otherwise unsurvivable.

    Challenge – We need to set up our brain’s “reward system” to handle pleasure and suffering or we will be prescribed drugs in an attempt to achieve the same effect chemically. Drugs can be useful as training wheels; ideally we want to teach our systems to achieve the same effect naturally. Calm is the first step to balance, so we must learn to calm ourselves. Meditation and yoga offer the best methods for reliable self-soothing. First we assert calm over our breath, then our bodies, lastly our thoughts. It’s not that difficult! Reminder: we do it every night as we fall asleep.

    Danger – Unfortunately our contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a sport, falling in love, listening to music, having children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched by thinking and planning! That’s why we are called the species “homo sapiens.” Therein lies the benefit of Dream Journal.

    The pursuit of highs without the thinking, planning, consolidating and enshrining stages always leads to excess and grief. Highs for their own sake inevitably disappoint, leading to a pursuit of more and more dangerous highs, which, if we are not thinking about them, sharing them with others and incorporating them into our beings, damage our core ability to experience joy.

    Opportunity – Joy that is held in the mind and considered is joy endlessly re-experienced. It will be yours forever, and you will be able to share it with all the people you love for the rest of your life. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides the best avenue to filter these experiences down to your subconscious level. Always have a joy to think about just as you are going to sleep, and another for when you are waking up. This will sharpen your apprehension of ecstasy and deepen your life.

    Models & Mentors – “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey

    “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” – Dolly Parton

    Mantra – “I balance”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Stability

    To assert balance;
    Employ wealth of
    Eternal universal mind

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Day – Focus – Good morning! Do you wake up fearful, fretful and exhausted? Why do the terms “woke” and “wakened” have such a bad rap, when all they mean is being fully aware?

    Being “Awake” Is Not Just Desirable but Necessary. We need awareness to achieve balance between the negative and positive forces that block or enhance us. If we refuse to wake up we are prey to indescribable fears.

    Worry borrows trouble and erases pleasure. It’s OK to plan but it’s destructive to worry. “Rumination” is endlessly thinking over a problem in a circular way – it isn’t going anywhere. If you dream only about your problems, you are at risk of wasting your valuable dreaming time.

    Learning to Self-Soothe so you can Focus productively – The Buddhists are fabulous at training the brain to calmness. This is a physical discipline and it does take practice. But as in any practice, we start out needing both effort and commitment, and you will have to “forgive” yourself over and over – “I suck at this.” Learning to enjoy the process is key. You are your own toddler. Be delighted by the effort and moved by the commitment. You don’t yell at a toddler for falling down. Study the work of Pema Chodron (libraries everywhere) for assistance.

    Challenge – Regard your mind as a “wild horse” in need of soothing and training. It is scared of everything it sees. Talk to it calmingly. Focus on small, pleasurable things, the green grass, the blue sky. Give thanks for the green grass and the blue sky. Focus on the breath – out with the worry, in with the fresh day of joy and discovery. Now close your eyes. Are you still seeing the green grass and the blue sky? Isn’t that wonderful? Now they are yours forever. Tonight you will dream about them. Cherish them in your heart.

    Danger – How strong is your negative voice? We all have at least one – some of us have many. List them in your Dream Journal. We need to recognize them to firmly push these destructive forces away. Your negative voice is belittling, angry and demeaning. It doesn’t think you can accomplish anything. It is not a helper, in fact it is toxic and we are going to tell it goodbye. Read Viktor Frankl’s wonderful Man’s Search for Meaning and Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves for advice on how to pluck the lotus of joy from the mud of despair.

    Opportunity – Learning to focus at our advanced age is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a daily practice of mindfulness and joy in the classroom of creation. Be proud of your effort, your commitment and the confidence you are modeling for all future generations that life itself is a dazzling gift. You are alive at this perfect moment for some perfect reason. Let us find it.

    Models & Mentors – “Your habits will determine your future” – Jack Canfield

    “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of success is found in your daily routine.” – John Maxwell

    ‘Practice isn’t something you do when you’re good. It’s what makes you good.” – Malcolm Gladwell

    “It’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.” – Benjamin Franklin

    Mantra – “I wake”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: From Within

    Glowing eyes:
    Focused feet
    Heart worn on the outside
    Motive’s brainchild.

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Mourning – Detachment – What if, in your dreams you hurt? You can’t put your finger on it, yet when you wake up you feel such shuddering emptiness and loss it’s a physical relief to find your dream wasn’t real. Lots of people fear such sadness as some kind of prophecy. In your sleep, you are mourning something – but what? It’s enough to make a person fear sleep.

    We Need to Mourn – Sadness is not allowed in a society where perfect strangers feel comfortable demanding you “smile.” Look at all these Instagram feeds with everybody grinning away because they’re having so much FUN and their lives are so PERFECT they never wake up shuddering with sadness. Except they are human too, so we know that they DO.
    They’re just better at covering it up than we seem to be. (And some people, admittedly are just plain shallower.)

    Are we mourning past lives? Are we mourning lives unlived? This inevitably means we have a lot of mourning to catch up on. We don’t recall our process of bargaining and acceptance so all that’s left is denial and depression. Not only that, the “causes” of your lost mourning seem so inconsequential to our “adult” selves. “So your pet died when you were five, everybody says. Your parents got a divorce. You moved five times. Get over it, already!” Time to accept the power and significance of your own feelings and the place of mourning in your life.

    Challenge – Time to feel compassion for yourself. Open your Dream Journal and ask the question, why are you dreaming these things now? Sometimes something going on in our lives reminds of that past unhealed hurt. Sometimes our collective unconscious is feeling other people’s suffering. It’s OK to think about that sadness, especially if it makes us feel closer to other people. Everyone has these lost, wrecked treasures submerged in their lives. Celebrate the fact that you are able to feel so deeply in a world where others are forced to punish themselves, take risks and drugs in order to “feel something.”

    Danger – Cultivate detachment. Learn to say goodbye. Take a breath. Let go of the toxic elements in your life. Go “no-contact” on toxic people. Read up on sadism, the better to understand the people out there who feed off and enjoy your suffering. Buddhists recommend surveying your thoughts and feelings from a distance, as in hypnotherapy, then setting them free. This is not dissociation. Dissociation is more like floating through life with all our systems repressed, feeling numb. Dissociation is not good. It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you can use that pool of tears to respond more intensely to life, to art, to music, and to each other.

    Opportunity – Resilience is our most powerful survival trait. This means that after blight, we can flourish more strongly, just the way pruned plants will. It’s not necessary to explore all the caverns of your being, but it will make you stronger. Once again, choose a buddy and a guide. Think about the “hero’s journey” story you respond to most deeply. In your Dream Journal, imagine explaining your hero’s journey to someone else. Feel free to use pictures, symbols and metaphors. After all, when we were children we did feel our world to be populated by monsters and the supernatural.

    Models & Mentors – “Detachment is power. Release all things that no longer work for you” – Shane Steele

    “To be detached means to dive so fully into the experience you dropout the other side… with full understanding you can say, “Now that I know, I can let go”
    – Teal Swan

    “In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty…freedom from our prison of past conditioning…willingness to step into the unknown surrenders us to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe…” – Deepak Chopra

    “I release the subjective thoughts, energy and emotions I am holding about people, places and things that kept me trapped in dis-ease…I can step back and allow the feelings & thoughts & energy to dissipate…I am then free to act with compassion, love & acceptance” – Angela James

    “Attachment is the fabricator of illusions – reality can be attained only by one who is detached” – Simone Weil

    “Detachment is having your life be about you, not about other people”
    – Karen Casey

    Mantra – “I release”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Detachment

    In the last phase of grief
    bless your wrestling angel –
    grow scar tissue wings

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Planets & Stars – Eternity –Do you dream of astronomical events? Are you circling the stars in dreamland? Do you find yourself studying vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams. You are struggling not with questions of death or afterlife, but the “ongoing everythingness” of reality itself. What is “time”? How long can “time” continue if nothing is “alive”?

    You Are Training to be Immortal – Immortality is neither desirable nor guaranteed. If you feel a desire to live “forever” – what is the “you” in that sentence? Matter is already immortal – Your body is composed of exploded stars. Are you afraid of the “next phase”; or do you want a certain period of your existence to continue “indefinitely’? But you know that’s impossible and ultimately very undesirable. Change is life – changelessness is stagnation. Without human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must be outside time. Perhaps what you desire is a continuation of your personal memories and consciousness. Would you ever want to know the terrible things God knows, or do you yearn for a safe return to infancy secure inside the arms of a most loving mother? Open your Dream Journal and spend some time considering your own desires. Which are evanescent, and which are everlasting?

    Challenge – Some people feel so angry and violated by life that they want to harm the future itself. They don’t want anyone to be happy, ever. While admitting that life on earth can be very unfair and terrible, you don’t ever want to be one of those people. They have “eternalized” their own misery. That is hell; they themselves have sent themselves there. You could wish to eternalize your finest moments, when you brimmed over with love, when generosity and joy poured out of you.

    Danger – Ultimate judgment is not up to us. We don’t know everything, our empathy and compassion are not boundless, we cannot “see” in all directions and dimensions. We are forced to make snap judgments on the ground, battlefield decisions an quick-time changes; but we must leave finality to God. Arrogance and solipsism are serious blinders that harm our spirit as they harm others and the planet itself.

    Opportunity – We are offered repeated opportunities for growth, for humility, for insight. We need to take advantage of these, all the while admitting that since life is a see-saw process, it is usually two steps forward and one step back. How can we recognize growth sand proceed in that direction? Growth manifests health, while harm plunges everyone into darkness. We can feel compassion without knowledge. Mentally we can wish others to avoid suffering and the roots of suffering even when we don’t understand what those are even for ourselves. Take every opportunity to meaningfully connect with others. Your spirit will automatically lighten.

    Models & Mentors – “Trust in dreams – they are the hidden gate to eternity” – Khalil Gibran

    “Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment”
    – Henry David Thoreau

    “What we do in life echoes in eternity” – Marcus Aurelius

    ‘Love is the emblem of eternity, effacing memory of its beginning and all fear of its end” – Mme. De Stael

    Mantra – “I progress”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Age

    Occlude self –
    Elide “forever” –
    Include all:
    Blue print eternity

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Paradise – Bliss – What is your definition of paradise? Do you find yourself dreaming of a tropical getaway? If you wanted to find your bliss, where would you look? You’ve become your own Dream Journal. Define heaven; raise consciousness or lack of consciousness? Would you want to know what is happening in the world or would you want to be removed from the world? Can you be happy if you know there is suffering anywhere?

    We create our own Heaven every day. As we mature, we either elevate or denigrate our consciousness. We are creating “heaven”, or “hell” – our choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?

    Are You Heaven Material? When we are young, we obsess about whether we are really liked or loved, whether we are really “popular.” As we get older we slowly realize that people like/love to the extent of their spiritual and emotional ability/depth. Shallow people offer very shallow love – nothing can take root there. It can flip in an instant. If the whole purpose of life on this planet – a struggle by any standard – is for humans to become more like God then we are being challenged to create the kind of emotional and psychic depth that understands and accepts everyone’s struggle, everyone’s challenge.

    Challenge – Bliss is a provable psychic state of timeless ecstasy mapped by “alpha waves” which can be seen in the brain. This state is called “flow”. We drift outside ourselves and belong to the universe. This is such a happy condition we long to cultivate and re-experience it, which we can do by immersing ourselves in art, meditation, love, sexual/emotional union, or deep thought.

    Danger – We bounce between self-obsession and living entirely in and through other people. Neither condition is optimal, although there are times in our lives when these states are necessary. Balance – sometimes called moderation – is the key. We are in the group, but we are not “the group”. We can elevate the group with the power of our Soul or we can drag it down through thoughtless mirroring. Some people choose to never develop a self. They pass from group to group, trying to “fit in” and quell the inner voice that says. “this isn’t right.” This is a violation of our basic human mandate: to develop a soul that is worthy of God.

    Opportunity – You are on a hero’s quest: you are the hero and the quest is for your Soul. This is both an inner and an outer quest. We have responsibilities from birth onwards; we clearly are our brother’s/sister’s keeper. We are our own keeper, too. Mistakes – sometimes devastating ones – are expected. It’s a dangerous world and we will meet more than one predator looking to make a meal of us. We must be wily as the snake and tender as the dove. Because in the end, it’s all about Love. The more you give, the more you feel.

    Models & Mentors – “Follow your bliss and walls turn into doors”
    – Joseph Campbell

    “In a state of bliss – everything is love” – Deepak Chopra

    “Joy is a connection to what matters – a sustained sense of well-being and inner peace” – Oprah Winfrey

    “I need not sell my soul to buy bliss” – Charlotte Bronte

    Mantra – “I flow”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Limitless Joy

    Rejoice in group fortune;
    Cherish,
    Cultivate
    Broadcast
    Generous bliss