Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Healing

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Recovery & Rebirth –

    The compulsion of recurring dreams torments us. These re-envisagings of past events re-enact Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for all to see, shaming and blaming at the same time.

    My recurring dreams all involve writing, my sister’s involve the car accident she was in at four years old.  Get out your Dream Journal. Consult your Dream Buddies. Do you have recurring dreams? What are they trying to tell you?

    Don’t be afraid – You’ve got this. We’re going to change your dreamscape. We’re going to begin dreaming about rebirth.

    You’re the Pilot – “The bad news is time flies – the good news is, you’re the pilot.”  What do memories in general – these memories in particular – symbolize for you? 

    “Recovery begins to happen we repel a demonic force that kept us in thrall” – could beaddiction, illusion, corruption, compulsive behavior; even a poisonous culture.   Were we hostage to another human being who didn’t have our best interests at heart?  This requires deep thought about our best interests. As our brains clear we get ideas. Ernest Hemingway used to say we are “stronger at the broken places”; Nietzsche expressed it as “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. Healing provides peace as well as joy.  We give thanks that wehave begun the journey.

    Challenge: Expect to stumble.  Watching toddlers try to “rise and walk” we consider it lucky thatthey don’t mind being laughed at. (In fact, they love it.)  It takes them time to figure out this new modality.  Like beginning skiers, they cling to objects, sway exaggeratedly back and forth, slam into others, and plop down SPLAT; not just once or twice but over and over.  In fact the toddler hasn’t been born who suddenly vaults up suavely and starts swanning around in a sophisticated manner.

    Embrace the First step of Recovery: “Expect to go splat.”  Of course we don’t WANT to –fingers crossed –  it’s dangerous and bruising.  We’d better arrange to have a friend around – just in case. But you don’t fail unless you refuse to rise again. Don’t even bother counting the times you were “brave”.  It’s only the “getting back up” that counts. As long as you’re doing that,you’re a true winner.

    Danger – Life never goes the way we planned.  There’s the excitement of finding a plan,investigating goals, making them ours, and committing to the plan – and then there’s living the plan.Suddenly we don’t know how to get through the next ten minutes –worse, we make a “big mistakes”unconsciously. The rational self we’ve planned for fails to show up and instead we turn into someirrational monster who threatens to kill when momentarily frustrated. 

    This is like sport-learning. Allow each new behavior to penetrate every fiber of your whole body. Rehearse over and over. (10,000 times?)  It’s ALL mistakes at first. Our mental concepts of “perfection” and “purity” arecompletely misplaced here; this is more like forming calluses over tender new skin. It feels funny atfirst, sore. It might actually “hurt.” We’re on the early steps of a long journey to a wonderful place;and we won’t get there unless we forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up and keep going.

    Opportunity –  We wish happiness was “automatic’ but it requires planning. Pledge to contrastplanned empowerment with benumbed abandon. Think about what this means. Who envies loss of consciousness?  Wouldn’t it be better to remove the source of the pain, the shame we are escaping from? Is this nostalgic fantasy really some faint memory of union, with an equally desperate hordestanding in for the lost, beloved Other? What would it mean to give up these blind yearnings, thiscultivated pain and these unbearable memories to lead a fresh, released and intentional life? It means accepting and becoming a new self in all our exquisitely uniqueness, exploring everything that implies. It doesn’t mean we’ll never have another recurring dream. Dreams become a conversation we are having with our deepest selves, by the light of the universe. Recovery is “self-forgiveness”;going forward with a clear-eyed, honest appraisal of ourselves, resources and desires. “I am free”

    Models & Mentors – “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life” – J.K. Rowling

    “The airplane takes off against the wind, not with it” – Henry Ford

    “Believe you can and you’re halfway there” – Theodore Roosevelt

    “The best way to predict your future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Recovery = Rebirth

    Mulligan –

    Rare gift;

    A “do-over”

    ‘Cause you DO know

    What you know now

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    The Lovers – Alliances –

    Do you dream of love, sex, connection? Hand-holding, hugging, family celebrations? You are searchingfor Alliances. An alliance is symbiotic, good for both sides of the equation. To reach out, you must firstdecide motive (“I Could Use a Friend” vs “I’m Looking For Romantic Connection”) and that you areWORTHY of connection. This last one is tricky because we are all looking to others for validation.  Thisis the source of many “imposter” dreams where we find ourselves naked in front of the entire class,unprepared on Test Day.

    Open Your Dream Journal – Make a list of what you want in a friend/lover, then make a list of what you are prepared to give. The lists shouldn’t be unbalanced! Are you a “giver” or a “taker”? Neither can ever be satisfied, because the music of the spheres is all about rhythm and balance.

    Learn the Steps – There is much talk of “love languages”. The man who comes and digs an unsightly hole in your front yard may be awkwardly tendering a gift. The woman who doesn’t mention you’ve been talking all night with spinach in your teeth is also trying to do “something nice.”  But in each case, the ultimate effect may feel “hostile” to the recipient.

    There’s No Substitute for Communication – If you are hoping to communicate interest without revealing yourself you are bound for confusion and disappointment. But relax; it turns out the process of communication – trying to figure out and express who you are – is satisfyingly absorbing. It always makes you feel better, even when you meet a person who “weaponizes” honesty.

    How Can That Be? – Learning to recognize Exploiters is Two-Thirds of the Game. Exploiters probe for weakness, searching for hostages. We don’t want to end up as someone else’s meal.

    We can’t get through this alone, and we don’t want to. Luckily, we are surrounded by other humans,struggling, just like us.  If we pledge to help each other, we can dispatch terror and celebrate joy! Comforting! But how can we tell the difference between Builders and Exploiters?

    Danger  – When someone is trying to destroy your self-esteem, recognize this. Even if it comes in theguise of “friendship” this person is an enemy. This is not what  friends are for. When someone is tryingto “capture” you, i.e. limit and control your possibilities and behavior, that person is a hostage-takerlooking for slaves. NOT a friend.

    Challenge – what are friends for? Friends are honest: “I just don’t like that dress but maybe it’s me.”Friends are forgiving, ‘I’m sorry, I was having a bad day. I know you’re sorry, too.”  Friends  are fun,“Let’s cheer ourselves up.” Friends are helpful: “Let’s figure a way out of this.” Are you honest,forgiving,  fun-loving and helpful? You’re ready to be a friend.

    Opportunity – Friends are a mirror in which we see ourselves. We can experiment with possibilities, wecan expand our reach.  Our intelligence is doubled, as well as our efforts.  Our sorrows are halved andour ideas are increased exponentially.  Reach out! You’re getting better at the game every time you try.

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

    – e.e. cummings

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

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

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

    II Corinthians

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

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: The Lovers – Alliances

    Entangled

    Pair;

    Four winged

    Angel flying

    Back to back:

    Unbeatable

  • Dream Group Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Loss & Suffering – Sometimes dreams are an escape from the unbelievable horror of existence. In that case, they are our art form, and we must curate them to prepare a bearable future.

    Ugly World – every religion and philosophical system has to account for the misery we see around us -storms, flood, volcanos, disease, human frustration an animal predation. Do your dream explore inner and outer pain? How much is fear, how much is anxiety, how much is collective unconscious and shared human history? We fear everyone CAN’T be happy at once. How do we educate ourselves to surf this intolerable dilemma? Let’s get out our Dream Journals.

    What’s the happiest dream you’ve ever had? Why? – How could it even more satisfyingly responsive to your present crisis?

    Lucid Dreaming –  Is dreaming when you’re aware of it. it’s trying to guide the dream and use it to replenish your spirit. Your psyche is accessible in dreams to those you choose to include. What spirits do you invite?

    Pain is Joy’s Shadow – Joy is an excess of feeling and so is suffering. When we long to “numb out”, we numb everything. If we live our lives in fear, we avoid the potential excitement of holding breath on the edge of discovery.

    Challenge – What would become of us if we allowed ourselves to feel it all? Poets feel they must indulge – artist of all kinds explore and expand the edges of perception and assessment. Possible philosophical coping mechanisms can be Buddhist – “It’s all illusion” “Practice taming the wild mind” or religious –  “Suffering brings us closer to God in developing compassion for all creation” and “Birth pangs are necessary to bring new life.” Any way we can keep our mind and soul responsive and deepening benefits the whole planet. Cultivate Dream Partners. Share your dreams with them.

    Danger – Too much suffering breeds helplessness. Our angel needs to recover from her burns and acquire some new feathers. If we stop even trying to better our human situation we attract predators to such easy prey.  Even worse, we become predators ourselves, bragging to the godless that we are the new potentates. Cruelty breeds endless cruelty. There must be a way to step off this treadmill – there’s enough suffering going around without manufacturing more.

    Opportunity – Imagination itself comes from discomfort, even misery. We see a need to expand our mental repertoire, to magically increase the very dimensions of thought that seem to imprison us. As a species we have broken through this many times. There must be further epiphanies awaiting. How does this apply to you? Ask your dreams. Open and relax your mind.  Keep track of your dreams in your journal – not just actual dreams, but your thought possibilities in reflection. What if you could not fail? Turn to your dream partners for ideas. Who are we really? Who could we become?

    Models & Mentors – “You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered”

    – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

    “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard”

    – A.A. Milne

    “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can suffer such deep sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them”

    – Leo Tolstoy

    “What we once loved we can never lose for it becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live”  – Norman Cousins

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Acceptance without Exception

    Join us!

    Compassion

    Greets

    Suffering;

    Blends;

    Evaporates

    Tears

    Gently.

  • Dream Group – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    CREATIVITY – If your dreams are particularly imaginative and enjoyable, you are probably an artist. You have launched yourself already on the absorbing quest of reinventing the confusing realities that buffet us.

    We keep trapping ourselves in the maze but there is always a way out. Close your eyes. Breathe. Don’t we all possess inherently the goddess’ power of making Something out of Nothing? Think. Feel. Give yourself permission to explore. Look at the tactile world around you and reach out yourhands. You are the pilot of your own life. Create your own dream.

    Artists are immortalized by their own thought and effort. If their productions are intriguingly beautifulthe rest of us are drawn in and our critical senses – our rejection and our fear – are tranquillized whilewe allow the artist to work their magic upon us. Artists aspire to be magicians of the mind and soul.

    CHALLENGE  –      If you create something unforgettable you will never be forgotten. You have thepower to open hearts, minds and brains as yours were first opened, when you looked upon this amazingworld for the first time  and tried to understand what you saw.

    DANGER – There is possibility here for such overweening pride that you place your own psyche aboveCreation in importance.   If you seek worship your own soul will be hardened unto death.

    OPPORTUNITY – You will join the gods in creating something really new that the world cannotlive without. The joy of sharing, the rapture of being known, the ecstasy of expression, of beingunderstood, will be yours.

    Models & Mentors – “Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” – Albert Einstein

    “Creativity can’t get used up. The more you use the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

    “Creativity is just connecting things.” – Steve Jobs

    “There is no innovation, no creativity, without failure.” – Brené Brown

    “What’s so fascinating about life is the constant creativity of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra

    MEDITATION –

    #Haiku: Creativity

    You: Immortalized;

    Fireborne

    Force majeure

    Create

    Become –

    Exalt

    You.

  • Dream Group – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    REGRET – Many anxiety dreams are about regret.  When we try to impartially study our dream content, the moods flood in, rocking our precarious stability.  Why are people so afraid of lookinginside? Because of Regret, that’s why. The things we’ve already done that we can never change. Seemingly hopeless sorrow builds – now we are helpless, we hate ourselves and we can’t fix anything. We are in for a bad, cold, frigid winter of discontent.

      YOU CAN LIGHTEN YOUR OWN LOAD – No one can do it but you. When you serve as prosecutorin your own life – guess what? – that’s not fair. Fundamental Attribution Error is people blamingindividuals for actions that were the result of systems; mass decisions or circumstances over which theyhad no actual control. Look into it, if you want to. (Sometimes we need to.) Or you can just forgive yourself and move on. After all, we’ve got the future to think of.

      CHALLENGE – Let’s get out our Dream Journal. What would you change NOW? How doyou WANT to change? Forgive yourself. You were held hostage by fortune (we all were)and you went full-on Stockholm Syndrome and identified with your attackers and tried toplease them. (We all did. It’s called Society.) Now you’re madder at yourself than you areat them. Forgive yourself. We’re starting a new life. One where it’s US who’s in charge.

      DANGER – You’re in another part of the forest. Surprise! This wasn’t the plan but here you are. TheDanger is always that you’ll give up. Surrender. Don’t. You can easily see from every fairy tale andhero’s journey you’ve ever studied that now we’re getting to the Good Part. By testing your muscle, youGROW your muscle. If your muscle is never tested, it withers. So let’s go!

      OPPORTUNITY – We don’t know everything. Even Jesus demonstrated surprise about the way thingsturned out. Be gentle as a dove, he advised, but wily as a serpent. Serpents can get out of anything. (Aska herpetologist.) And so can you. It’s just a bigger world than we knew – both inner and outer – so getmapping. I guarantee you – IT GETS BETTER.

      Models & Mentors –  “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than the things I haven’t done.”

      – Lucille Ball

      “There are no regrets in life, only lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston

      “We have only one life, and the second life begins the moment we realize that fact” – Confucius

      “I was designed by my Creator to not only feel pain and love but to become whole inside it. I am a Warrior” –Glennon Doyle

      “Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile” – William Cullen Bryant

      MEDITATION –

      #Haiku: Regret

      Coulda

      Woulda

      Shoulda

      Didn’t. Now you

      Wish

      Things

      Different.

      Clean slate.

      Write.

    1. Dream Group – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

      THE GODDESS – POWER

        DO YOU DREAM OF MAGIC?  Magical people, animals, happenings? It is the purview of dreams to manifest supernatural happenings. The Goddess represents the power – the force – to get things doneand to bend unfriendly circumstances to your desire and will. If dreams are wishes, this is understandable, because isn’t that what we all want – a little magic?

        BEHIND THE WISH, LIES THE FEAR – Do we long to be the 8-ball, to control the 8-ball or to be under the 8-ball? Don’t we fear all these at the same time?

        RECOGNIZE YOUR POWER – You are iconic. The Goddess suggests your yearning to discover theinherent magic that is especially, irreplaceably You. You have a power no one else has, incorporated inyour being, your possibilities, your desires and your memories.  This takes a lifetime to accept becausewe all fantasize being Someone Else and experiencing existence through the armor of Having only an Outside instead of just the very vulnerable Inside in which we all feel imprisoned. Your dreams bring allthese passions together as psychic poetry, elucidating what you think you want, what you hope you wantand what you are afraid you want. The ultimate magic is to seize conscious control of this potent powersource. Invite the Dream.

        CHALLENGE OF THE DREAM – The challenge is to truly connect with others, reveal our worldInside, and avoid blasting their apparently impenetrable Outside with our terror, our longing and ourfear.

        DREAM DANGERS – We must never take hostages and we must never become a hostage. Freedom is afine line to walk. If we wish to reach out, we must treat others with respect and claim like respect forourselves. Accept your dreams as “experiments”; do not fear them but learn to look at them, impartially, as messages from the Other World. Allow them to take you where you need to go.

        DREAM OPPORTUNITIES – There will be stumbles and terrors aplenty, also successes that LOOKlike stumbles and terrors, but which we only realize on reflection were real leaps forward. This is whywe must carefully assess our daily efforts without being harsh with ourselves. You are your own MostBeloved Child. Speak gently to yourself as you would to a most treasured child.. It is not selfish tocommit to this belief, it is simply placing the oxygen mask over your own face FIRST so that you canadminister this life-saving force to others. Find someone with whom you can share your dream journey,without fear or judgment. This connection will teach us everything we need to know about how toconnect with others. Explore Models and Mentors – this is how we learn.

        “I awoke to find the rest of the world still asleep” – Leonardo Da Vinci

        “Marvelous the dream and great the terror: we must treasure the dream no matter the terror.” – Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh

        “In dreams we betray ourselves

        In betrayal we discover ourselves

        In self-discovery we lose our innocence

        In loss of innocence we gain knowledge

        In knowledge we gain wisdom

        In wisdom we recover innocence.”

        -Brother Antoninus 

        MEDITATION –

        #Haiku: The Goddess

        Manifest your

        Brave,

        Burnished; brutalized

        Carapace.

        Gaze.  Accept.

        Love.

      1. Dream Group – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

        FOREST DREAMS = THE LIFE FORCE, ENERGY

          ARE YOU LOST?  Do you dream of nature, forests, trees, overgrowth? As you you’re your eyes and fall into the moss, does the forest speak to you, become your friend?

          DEFEATING NIGHTMARES – In your terror, the forest is a hostile place, determined to punish you for invading its magnificence. Fear is a reaction, but courage is a choice. Speak to the forest, apologize for the cruelties of the past, and promise to listen to its song in future.

          JOURNALING –  You need to find yourself. Your own map is the only way through. These dreamspulse with an energy that is gathering within you as you ready yourself for some great task.

          YOU ARE A POWER – You struggle to find your force. You feel the power and strength of undefinedwishes and the longing to create your place in the world. No guide exists to this wilderness, you willhave to map this forest yourself. Be brave.

          CHALLENGE – There are plenty of traps ahead. Do not become discouraged. Accept that the flow ofenergy pulses with your every heartbeat, with your sleep/rest cycle, with the obligations you willinglyseek to smooth your path.

          DANGERS – Some of these obligations become too heavy, others seek to deter you from your setcourse. Still others offer false maps that seem to promise the ease of “I don’t have to do this alone.” Weare all alone inside our heads and you – and only you – must be satisfied with the map you create. If youaren’t there’s no fellowship or wealth that can compensate you for that loss. When the forest loves you, you must love it back.

          OPPORTUNITIES – We revel in and with our fellow travelers. There could be a soulmate among them– for a time or for a life. Accept the wisdom of others, the wisdom of the path, consult other maps indesigning your own. Be prepared to alter your map – joyously – with each new and fresh discovery. There will be many. Open your Dream Journal. Close your eyes. And draw your future. Salut!

          MEDITATION –

          #Haiku: The Life Force

          Energy

          Resurge

          Depower dread

          Repower health

          Refocus

          Aim

        1. Welcome to Dream Group – a Dream Journal by Alysse Aallyn

          Welcome to Dream Group

          Where we explore our dream together, uncovering meaning and enhancing psychic   and spiritual growth.

          YOU ARE A SEEKER – You are self-defining. You are on a quest. You wish to experience to the fullthe nature of having a self. You are becoming alert to the possibilities inherent in your particularmomentary incarnation and you wish to explore them.

          DANGERS – The danger of self-regard is that in turning our eyes inward we miss important signalscoming from other people and the world around us. Yet “retreating inward” is a vital path to self-knowledge and growth.

          CHALLENGE -The solution to this challenge is to set a Spirituality Schedule to reflect our needs andinterests. Appoint time to be absolutely alone, for meditation and reflection. If you cannot find a room toyourself, a closet will do. You can sit in the meditation position or assume any position that allows youto be comfortable enough to become physically forgetful.  Concentrate first on building a life that allowsboth inner and outer growth. Surround yourself with people who respect this decision.

          OPPORTUNITIES – This is a journey. Accept it. Begin a journal with 1. “I” and write down yourmeditation thoughts and desires. Tis can be a poem, a fantasy, a checklist – whatever pattern occurs toyou as supportive of your desires. Make a list of goals. Push shame away. This is about YOU. Of courseas you evolve, your goals will evolve, and your journal will reflect that. When you have completed yourTime Alone – ten minutes to an hour – whatever works for you – pat yourself on the back. What anachievement! You are started on a path of making changing Nightmares into Dreams and making dreamscome true.

          Get a notebook. We are starting our Dream Journal.

          Jung tells us that in your dream, you are everyone. You have dreamed of an Eye. The Eye is You. YourEgo is under threat. What does this mean?

          STUDY YOUR SURROUNDINGS  – Who? What? When? Where? And Why? We will begin mapping the people around you to determine whether you are in a growth or destructive environment, and building better patterns. Open your Dream Journal.

          WHO?  List the people around you and try to capture their chatter, their effect on you. It isn’t necessarily what they say directly to you, it is how they feel entitled to speak, it is what you are forced to hear. Sometimes we “correct” these oppressive effects with the conversation of dramatic personae in screen, literature & song. We flee into art to protect ourselves from the cruelties of existence. List these characters also – your heroes and villains – and what you like and need about them. We are going to assemble a ragbag team of defenders and collaborators for Dream Group.

          WHAT?   When you list what they say, note how that makes you feel. We are going to assume control over these emotions.

          WHEN?  At what time of day or night do these characters attempt to assume power over you? What is your state or rest or readiness?

          WHERE?  Where are you when this is going on? Work? Home? Friends’ place? Café? Bed? Inside your locked heart? Where do you feel safe? Where are you most yourself?

          WHY? How did you get here?  What was the plan? How has that changed? What’s the plan now?

          CLOSE YOUR BOOK – Close your eyes. Let’s end with a meditation.

          MEDITATION –

          #Haiku: Ego

          Pry:

          Beneath Eye:

          Compare

          My Shy

          Inside

          To your

          Wry outside. Cry.

          Why?

        2. Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

          Creator Goddess –  Generosity –

          Creator Goddesses Are Surrounded by Magical Possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Creation the boundaries of the other disappear in growth perfection. Obeying the call to flourish is the only commandment. Goddesses merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.

          Creation Goddesses Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans.  Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for human enhancement –  uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that goddesses protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.

          Our Yearning Defines and Connects Us – As children we thought we knew the meaning of life but it seems we have forgotten. As goddesses we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes the dead universe come alive.

          Love Is The Creator’s Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the goddess who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic.

          Goddess Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions. Answering the mandate of Creation, Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero-sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own gratification, Love dies.

          Goddess Opportunity – The possibilities of a goddess are endless because we have chosen, in our flexibility and understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.

          Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides”

          – David Viscott

          “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn

          “Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso

          “Love is the gift of oneself” – Jean Anouilh

          “I love you for who I am when I’m with you”

          – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

          #Haiku: Love Transfer

          The secret of breaking

          Any bad habit

          Is to love

          Something more

        3. Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

          Fire Goddess– Forgiveness –

          The Fire Goddess Forgives – But it hurts. Because true forgiveness transforms. 

          What Is Forgiveness? There are two kinds – dismissal (i.e. handing over to God) and actual forgiveness. Actual forgiveness is a re-birthing process, where a relationship starts again, building and growing, just like a person. And that hurts, not just because of all the little cuts and scrapes that come with growth but because it risks recurrence of the disaster that required forgiveness in the first place.

          Dismissal is an acknowledgement that no relationship is possible. The offender is handed over to God, and never thought of again. The wounded work on processing the harm with disaster specialists.

          Forgiveness Hurts the Forgiven and Forgiver – It hurts to forgive and it hurts to be forgiven. But God requires us to forgive so that we can be forgiven. This is a serious charge, we need to work on it as long as possible. 

          Do you need to forgive? Or be forgiven? Most of us require both! Ask your dreams. Sometimes we dream of a home that no longer exists, or never existed. “Home” represents “unconditional love”, the state of psychic absolution where all mistakes are forgiven and forgotten.

          Goddesses Create the Future – We commit to the ultimate compassion that we are all in this together. Jesus suggests that understanding doesn’t arrive until we learn to be “forgivers”. Obviously, this means we must learn – somehow – to forgive ourselves.

          Goddesses Create Heaven – Such forgiveness helps us achieve the state of spiritual lightness that allows a goddess to float through time, history, even the universe.

          Goddesses Are at Home In the World – What’s your “dream home”? A goddess’s training emphasizes understanding and managing the fragility of the human body and the objective world, and accepting our healing and unifying mandate. Once we have scoped out the terrain and the inhabitants, Goddesses are at “home” anywhere.

          Goddesses are About Justice – But not the kind that leaves more brokenness behind. Goddess achievements and physical selves display the triumph of thought, will and love.

          What Does It Mean to “Start Over”? – We don’t wish to be free of “consequences”. We want to learn and grow from our mistakes but not be humiliated and punished for them. Pretending they didn’t happen doesn’t free us. Seeing our mistakes as moves in a dance we are all contributing to frees us from painful rumination and helps escape and explain the prison of blame. “I did this because you …”  Human interactions are a tar-pit in which we trap and tar ourselves. We realize we need to forgive every chain in the event pattern if we are ever to have any peace.

          It’s All About You – Robert Frost defines “home” as a place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. Defining “they” defines your group, your original home. Philosophy may provide an answer. Buddhists see history as a circle, Christians as a spiral. The question for Christians is, which direction is the spiral headed and do we have time to learn what we need to know before there’s a cataclysm?  Can you define the mess we’re in and intuit your behavioral contribution? Is it possible to detach from the mess? In what group – or even in what “moment” can you detach from the mess?

          Goddess Danger – We can’t afford to get mixed up about right and wrong. “By their fruits shall you know them.” Think it through. One avenue leads to health, dignity and growth; the other leads in the opposite direction.  Don’t make the mistake of “fundamental attribution error”. The threat is NOT coming from inside the house. Martin Luther King Jr. made the wise comment that our specific brand of capitalism tends toward is “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the rest of us.” It certainly suits corporations to lecture their employees on building a better world without incorporating any of those ideas into the bigger picture, where we have no control and they demand absolute freedom.

          What Is the Bigger Picture? Health and safety for all living things to achieve their growth potential as part of a harmonious, non-exploitative whole. It is key that our resistance – which is necessary and life-giving – not embitter us.

          Forgiveness Is Our Armor – Forgiveness doesn’t require ignoring the past or accepting bad behavior. It’s part of an interaction where forgiveness is a request, not a demand. Usually there is a recognition of fault or an expression of remorse: “I’ll never do that again!” When the requesting party instead seeks permission for the suffering to continue, “I can’t change – that’s the way I am” — that’s toxic – a recipe for dismissal. “Home” is not re-created that way. Hell is. Your opportunity is to point this out – if necessary, (because of safety) only to yourself. “If I’m not willing to try giving up my participation in this suffering because I think I’m not able to, then this pattern will continually get worse.” Time to construct a better – more intelligent map.

          Models & Mentors – “It’s not an easy journey to get to a place where you forgive people. But it’s a powerful place, because it frees you” – Tyler Perry

          “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world”

          – Marianne Williamson

          “The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong” – Mahatma Gandhi

          “To forgive one another, we must understand one another” – Emma Goldman

          “Forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. It liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself” – T.D. Jakes

          #Haiku: Forgiveness

          Returning home with

          Newborn eyes

          Strong hands

          Fresh translations

          Future’s past