Alysse Aallyn

Category: #History

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

    The Path – Goals

    If This Archetype Chooses You – There Will Be Paperwork! – Do you dream of paths diverging in a yellow wood? Checklists? Maps? Are you talking to yourself as you follow your routine? What IS your routine? How has your routine evolved? What efforts have you made to change it to newly perceived needs and discoveries? Or is your routine formed outside your will, strictly for the benefit of others?

    Creatives Dream of Maps. If you talking to yourself throughout your routine that self-talk needs to be positive. Become an encouraging coach. Don’t hold yourself hostage or you can’t complete your steps.

    If You Have No Goal, Any Path Will Take You There – But you won’t like where you end up. Creatives are Goal-oriented. As you become more adept at change, you realize that dividing effort into “steps” to achieve a goal is critical. It won’t happen fast. Your conscious, subconscious, unconscious and collective unconscious (not to mention your pre-conscious!) are going to kick up a helluva fuss. But that’s the interesting part! Change is guaranteed.

    Creatives Are Sore-Muscled Athletes – Day 2 is typically spent thinking, I CAN’T DO THIS. Guess what? EVERYBODY THINKS THAT! Even the non-sensitive thinks it. Expect it! You treat yourself with loving compassion and cold compresses, hot baths and massage. In other words, there is an established map, a way to GET THROUGH THIS. The challenge is to CUSTOMIZE your map to suit you, exactly.

    Being is Movement. As we shape the Path, it shapes us. Even the most anti-social creatures are constantly making paths for others to follow. Such delight when we uncover a ready-made Path because path-making is exhausting! A ready-made path is a mysterious invitation. All paths lead Somewhere. Every Path, Visible or not, speaks of the existence of The Other.

    Paths Speak of Destination, Intention, Design, History. Paths are our Robinson Crusoe footprint. They represent Hope: this Path worked not just once, but many times. We are proud of being Path-makers, Ice-piercers in our turn, Long-distance voyagers. We lead the weary, frightened traveler of the future toward confidence and reliability.

    Creatives Use Models. We need a constantly evolving & revolving pit crew of helpers. A side effect of routine remodeling is “crazy thinking.” We all need somebody to talk us off the ledge, somebody who is familiar with not just our goals but what we are going through. Your id is holding the rest of you hostage, and you need an experienced hostage negotiator.

    Waves of “Fear” Surfacing from your Collective Unconscious require symbolic release and expression in art, dance, love-making, sport or theatre.

    Disowned Longings from Your Subconscious threaten your secure sense of self and may require therapeutic intervention.

    Unconscious Drives from Depths no one’s ever plumbed can’t be faced without the courage of a Friend or Soulmate. So, don’t try making it through this crisis without a buddy AND a coach.

    Halt! AA has a useful acronym – HALT – representing:

    Hungry
    Angry
    Lonely
    Tired

    These are the Emotion States of Bad Decision-Making. So, when you see these conditions developing – Halt. Call your hostage negotiator immediately.

    Models & Mentors – “Setting goals is the first step into turning the invisible into the visible” – Tony Robbins

    “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not people or things”
    – Albert Einstein

    “A goal without a plan is just a wish” – Antoine St. Exupery

    “Always remember your focus determines your reality” – George Lucas

    #Haiku: Facing the Boogeyman

    Mimics dread
    Mocks goals
    Derails
    Ambition;
    Seize him and
    Laugh
    In his face

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

    Winter – Dormancy

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are torpid. What’s happening when nothing’s happening? Your dreams remain lively. Do you thirst for endless sleep? Deep snows? Hibernation? Do you identify with the drowsy bear and the sleepy sloth?

    Now’s the Time – This is the sacred moment before a burst of Creativity. You are gathering your forces. Compare it to a pregnancy. Things are happening, but so slowly and deeply you are not aware of them, with the result that you may feel confused and frustrated. Instead, revel in this burgeoning becoming in the midst of sleepy peace.

    Creatives Need To Hibernate
    Sometimes a plan isn’t ready. Sometimes you’re not ready. Timing is everything.

    It’s a Long Wait Sometimes, as anyone who’s ever been through eighteen years of schooling or a seemingly endless winter can tell you. But it comes faster if you turn your attention to other things.

    Waiting for Peak –– We cultivate our dreams without pushing or extracting them. We curate our sensations without monitoring and forcing them. Spin through pictures of animals – what jumps out? Who is speaking to you? What are they saying? What are you afraid of and why? Make notes and collect images. A collage creates a deeper, more resonant picture. Sometimes it’s all in the eyes.

    Creative Danger – In sleep we are entirely vulnerable and we have cultural and historic reason to fear that state. Guard yourself with supportive beings, with sleep music, with healing rituals. The triple-locked doors, the blackout-curtained windows, the silenced devices protect us in our chosen nest. Don a bracelet of “worry beads”, summon your happiest memories and tell them by touch, eyes closed, one by one. Send every ounce of your remembered love and joy out into the universe with a command to come back to you a hundred times. A thousand times so that your love can spill over and be shared with all you touch, near and far.

    Creative Opportunity – You are creating yourself. The fetus of this pregnancy is YOU. In every dreamy hibernation second you are rebuilding yourself, adding visions, promoting fresh understandings and positive interpretations. Life offers us the chances of joy and misery – use your conscious awareness to accept these tools and allow dream-time and prep-time to penetrate ever deeper into your subconscious, (sometimes called the “preconscious”) to the unconscious, and down down down, deepest of all, to the collective unconscious where we recall in our bones and teeth and cells everything that has ever happened to every living thing as if it happened to us. This is the source of all imagination and creativity, accessible to you in the dream state.

    Be Patient. A Watched Pot Never Boils. The mouse is a whole lot likelier to come out of the mouse-hole if the cat isn’t waiting on the other side. Free your mind to imagine what it feels like to be everyone, anyone, in your constructed scenarios.

    Over-thinking is Bad for your Brain – Ever heard the expression “Sleep on it!” The only time you shouldn’t sleep on it is in the heat of battle, and the clever creative AVOIDS battles to protect their birthing self-hood. ALWAYS sleep on it! Ask your dreams to send insight, bubbling up from the pre-conscious. Participate in artistic pursuits, allowing metaphor and symbol to work it’s magic in your subconscious. Do something completely different. Refresh yourself.

    Models & Mentors – “To lose patience is to lose the battle.”
    – Mahatma Gandhi

    “Grow in patience when you meet great wrongs and they will be powerless to vex your mind” – Leonardo da Vinci

    “Patience is not simply the ability to wait but how we behave when we are waiting” – Joyce Meyer

    “Patience and Time do more than strength and passion”
    – Jean de la Fontaine

    Haiku: Ghosts

    Ghosts
    Enable, unmask
    All our
    Dormant selves
    We could not
    Would not
    Be.

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

    The Storm – Conflict

      When This Archetype Chooses You – Something’s coming. Are you having bad dreams? Maybe about natural disasters like storms, volcanoes and flooding? Do you fear war, robbery, violation, home invasion? Or do you dream about your loved one’s face turning bitter and their words cutting sharply? Conflict is inevitable. It is even necessary – birth pangs seem objectively terrifying. In dreams, we rehearse our fears until some of us fear to dream.

      It Always Comes Before You’re Ready – Here it is – the reason you became a creative. To figure out, even if only metaphorically, what is going on. You will have to seize control of yourself to seize control of your tools. It’s battle or go under. The force against you is superior – no question about that – you must be wily and assess when to expend energy and when to conserve your strength.

      You are a Force Field. By virtue of your temperament as a creative you are a magnet for desire, change, for evolution itself. Others may tell you to stand back, take your place in line or wait your turn but your appearance into this chaotic universe triggered no such guarantee. We are here to learn to use our power.

      Conflict Makes a Creative – Force stirs up resistance. Actions create re-action as we swing back and forth in our determination and direction. We clash and crash. Sometimes we regret it bitterly, “why did I do that?” Sometimes we fear loss or harm so much we become immobilized. The challenge is to assume your stride, elucidate your goals and plan a direction.

      Creative Danger – It’s all too easy to make others fear you. The one with the biggest weapon THINKS he wins every fight. But what looks like compliance to you could be revolution – you will be toppled and lose your heart’s desire.

      Creative Opportunity – Learning to use conflict constructively and creatively is a Superpower. Other people are force fields, too. If there is any way to blend these powers and head in the same direction, we become invincible. Welcome the knowledge provided by the Storm archetype in your Creative Oracle deck.

      Study Your Opponent – Some clever scholar has separated these opponents into groups & classes. Read up! Some opponents – physical contests, weather conditions – don’t even have a brain. So who – or what – are you playing against?

      You Are Playing Against Yourself – your own fear, incapacity, beginner status. Seek mentoring so you have advice along the journey. Who is the sensei who will guide you? Someone who desires both your safety and your growth.

      Reward Yourself – The best place to do this is your Training Journal. Think hard about every contest and how you performed. Assess your challenges and accomplishments. Way to go!

      Models & Mentors – “I used to tell myself, boy, if you can survive this, you can survive anything” – Tom Lichtenberg

      “Laughter is the proof that our tragedies don’t define us. Laughter is the survivor’s language” – Josh James

      “Cancer didn’t bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet”
      – Michael Douglas

      “If you want to awaken humanity, awaken yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering, eliminate what is negative in yourself. Your gift to the world is our self-transformation.” –Lao Tzu

      Haiku: Sleuth

      Named is
      Tamed.
      Brainstorm:
      Exceed
      Outstrip
      Surpass
      Unveil
      Lay bare
      Prevail

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

      Doubt – Regret

        Stop Second-Guessing – Something’s bothering you. Do you lie awake at night recalling bad moments from the past? Doubt – Regret sabotages you from moving forward. From experimenting. This archetype says you need tackle the problem of “change” NOW. What moods flood in when you close your eyes? What would you change NOW? How do you WANT to change?

        Why are People So Afraid of Looking Inside their Psyches? Because of Regret, that’s why. The things we’ve already done or that we already are that can never be changed. Sorrow floods in – now we feel helpless, we hate ourselves and we can’t fix anything. We fear we are in for a bad, cold, frigid winter of discontent.

        Lighten Your Load – No one can do this but you. You are serving as prosecutor against your own life and guess what? – that’s not fair. Fundamental Attribution Error means people blaming individuals for actions that were the result of mass decisions or life circumstances over which they had 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. Creativity won’t be stymied.

        Creative Challenge – First, forgive yourself. You were held hostage by fortune (we all were) and inevitably you went full-on Stockholm Syndrome and identified with your attackers and tried to please them. (We all did. It’s called Society.) Now you’re madder at yourself than you are at them. Forgive yourself.

        Creative Danger – The moment you drop that burden, you’re in another part of the forest. Surprise! This wasn’t the plan but here you are. The Danger is – you’ll give up. Don’t. NEVER GIVING UP IS THE CREATIVE’S SUPERPOWER. We CREATE paths where none existed. You can easily see from every fairy tale and hero’s journey you’ve ever studied that now we’re getting to the Good Part. By testing your muscle you get to grow your muscle. If your muscle is never tested, it withers. So get ready.

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

        YOUR Superpower: You feel too deeply, that’s how you got into this snarl, but guess what? It’s a super power. Our brains are constructed in a way that allows us to move backward and forward through time, watching and judging ourselves from the outside, always considering multiple possibilities, outcomes and problems. We have a tendency to regard this power as a burden and envy those whose lack of questioning seems to make them more carefree. But it is this exact superpower that designates us as Creatives.

        Even When We Enjoy We Regret: There’s always something we could have done differently. And that unknown outcome is bound to seem preferable to the reality in which we find ourselves. Don’t waste time on regret. You drew the “Regret” archetype to remind you that time – even pleasurable time – is always limited. Restrict the amount of time you spend on regret! Congratulate yourself on your ability to play a multi-level game, forward and backward through time, peopled by a panoply of characters. Open up your Training Journal and take a God’s eye view of your world. See anything different? Fresh? Exciting? New?

        There’s Lots to Enjoy About Beginning! You’re going to surprise yourself. It’s never – ending! The world is freshening up and so can you.

        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 Creative” –Glennon Doyle

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

        Haiku: Regret

        Coulda
        Woulda
        Shoulda
        Didn’t. Now you
        Wish
        Things
        Different.
        Clean slate.
        Write.

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

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

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

                    Biblically defined as:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        #Haiku: Love Waves

        Sound travels forever

        Like love;

        Stars’ boundless dance

        Launched

        By mortal hearts

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

        The Gazing Ball = PROPHECY “You Are Not Lost”

        “Who can foretell the future?”

        If you could, would you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

        YOU ARE NOT LOST

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

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

        The labyrinth = COMPLEXITY

        “What’s the ultimate secret?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        She

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

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

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

        Thorns = The thief = DISPOSSESSED “On Being Disinherited”

        “Could you steal? Have you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        ON BEING DISINHERITED

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

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

        Version 1.0.0

        Thistle = RESISTANCE = “The thistle”

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

        The thistle threatens, “Touch me Not.”

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

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

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

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

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

        #HAIKU: The Thistle

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

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

        LAW = “The Statue”

        “Vows”

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

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

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

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

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

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

        #HAIKU: The Statue

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