Alysse Aallyn

Category: #History

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

    Torpor – Addiction

      If This Archetype Chooses You – Uh oh. Something’s preventing you from launching on your quest. Time to wake your Sleeping Orchid, but…It’s hard to even formulate goals with this monkey on your back, chattering in your ear. What is it?

      You’ve Become Too Attached. To … what? Investigate. Something’s controlling your mind, controlling your actions. Take it slow as you consider. Is this attachment harming your principles? Values? Relationships?

      The Creative’s Fiercest Battle – Do you dream of imprisonment? Blank walls? Chains? Our neurocircuitry mandates habit-making behavior, but our intelligence recognizes entrapment, and our dreams send out distress signals. If you’re human, there is no way to avoid addiction. Welcome to the unpleasant Club!

      We Are Wired for Addiction – If there’s no escaping it – that means you will have to fight this battle. But the good news is, this is exactly how you become Free. Anyone who hasn’t done it is still a slave to their hormones, instincts, patterning – just as animals are. Here’s the very thing you become a Creative for – your best chance to develop a free will and a free soul.

      Study Your Opponent – Turns out we have tremendous choice over what we become addicted to. Some addictions are less corrupting than others. Visit an AA meeting and the consumption of sugar and tobacco is outright alarming. Are you addicted to gambling? Do you work in sales? Were you raised in a ritualistic faith? We easily become dependent on praise, on safety, on gratification, and our brains (and our general health) show our dependency. They threaten and panic when the “treat” is withdrawn.

      Creative Challenge – This parasite doesn’t care if it kills its host. If you fear you are approaching a cliff-edge, you probably are. One test is to go on a “retreat” where your customary gratifications are not available, and attempt to form new gratifications. See what happens! Does your personality threaten to disintegrate? Great time to ask yourself: who am I really? This is such a good idea, we should build it into our lives, periodically. Just to keep us recognizing that cliff-edge where Soul and Self become separated and Free Will is lost.

      Creative Danger – We always live with the possibility that we will lose our autonomy. We want to evolve, we know we SHOULD change, but we CAN’T. There’s no shame in needing outside help. This is the purpose of interventions, to demonstrate to our eyes and ears that we are harming ourselves and our relationships. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, especially when we think we’ve finally found a substance/process that “magically” allows us to live on our particular cliff-edge – a dangerous job, risky sexual behaviors, risky recreational behaviors.

      Worst-Case Scenario – is that our addiction becomes our identity. We always have the choice of refusing to listen to our interveners – giving up on our relationships just to keep up our self-abuse. Some hardened wretches tell anyone who listen that life itself isn’t worth it without their life-threatening self-abuse. They choose to die as slaves.

      Creative Opportunity – You not only CAN free yourself, you MUST to deserve and preserve your Creative Power. It is your spiritual obligation to live this territorial existence as an enlightenment opportunity. Familiar with the saying, “Live simply so that others may simply live” ? That mandates sharing. That means ALWAYS studying your consumption, NEVER allowing yourself to turn into a greedy pig and scheduling time to be alone with the universe and with God. To check on the hardiness of your Soul.

      Models & Mentors – “You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside you” – Seth Adam Smith

      “All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings”
      – Ellen Burstyn

      “Sometimes you can only find heaven by backing slowly away from hell”
      – Carrie Fisher

      “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”. – Robert Collier

      “The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker

      #Haiku: – Addiction

      Brain cells beggared;
      Lovelorn
      Oxytocin receptors misfire:
      “Feed me!”

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

      Duality – Ambivalence

        If This Archetype Chooses You – How many people are you? It’s a subject for deep study as you try to decide. Twinning is Entwining. Sometimes we dream disturbingly about things we don’t want and people we aren’t. Feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting. It’s unsettling. What gives?

        Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality manifests all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious river. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of other peoples – dead, alive, even fictional. Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a label.

        Creative Challenge – Facing this ambivalence might seem the toughest part, but it isn’t for artists, who routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Art is the best way to express this, an enormous relief, since it’s essentially non-committal. We are “playing”. Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your work becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised to be related to those people who claim they are our family.

        Creative Danger – Society seeks to label, limit and stigmatize. Everyone is afraid of becoming our fear but Creatives need to explore every fear we have. A simple safe word can’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so fundamentally untrustworthy. That is why our identification of ourselves as Brave Creatives is so vital. The vastness of our potential cannot be controlled by language. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

        Creative Opportunity – Appreciate your Self. Don’t slam the door on your potentialities too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is Us. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to get home safe. But Creatives carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell, if we are the captains of our souls we can be the masters of our fates. (Henley.) We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence.

        Creatives Tolerate Uncertainty – Being a creative is all about balance. The experience of balance-seeking is indescribable linguistically – it must be felt experientially. Creatives learn to live in a world beyond language where we can savor uncertainty and foretaste eternity.

        Creatives Relish Paradox – Two contraries not only exist together but empower each other – that creative tension is the lifeblood of emotion, imagination and personality.

        Creatives Coast on the Knife-Edge of Ambivalence – The desired is undesirable, the only possibility is impossible and the act of wanting forbids getting. Creatives become comfortable with the pleasures of this dance: “My future dissolves in beads of sweat, my present is my mirror, my past’s a shape-shifting whirligig.” (Aallyn)

        Leaders Must Surrender – Physics is magic and dreams embody history. This quantum world of “spooky entanglements” is one in which we creatives become expert. We accept not only that the cave we fear holds the treasure we desire, but that we are both cave and treasure, indeed, fear itself.

        Models & Mentors – “It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It is this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.” – John Scott

        “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.”
        – Erica Jong

        “The Simpsons is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but drives you crazy”
        – Matt Groening

        “Poetry is the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.” – Billy Collins

        #Haiku: Yin/yang

        Inclined to spring forward
        Fade back; yin;
        Urge to return?
        Float forward;
        Yang.

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

        Synchronicity – Education

          If This Archetype Chooses You – Time to Educate Yourself so that you can manage risk intelligently and get what you want out of life!

          Never Quit Learning. Synchronicity makes the magic of daily life, but you can’t see it without Education. Do you dream of longed-for events and fulfillment? Glorious parties of blissful happiness where life finally seems to be unfolding exactly the way it should? Synchronous events are harmonious, as if the universe is a vast perfectly working clockwork machine.

          Understanding machines, systems, attribution and calibration are the subject of the educational process. This is the reason we spend the first twenty plus years of our lives in instructive settings.

          Creatives Learn for a Lifetime – You are a fierce absorber of knowledge. Advertisers know this, as do the designers of games and entertainment generally. We adore self-educating mazes. The complex dance between our skills, our bodily manifestation and the physics of reality is never-ending. Creatives determinedly master the synchrony of Right Thought, Right Instruction & Right Action.

          Creatives Have Young Brains but Old Souls – We have seen, known, learned and struggled so much. We have much knowledge to pass on to the brash beginners. But we ourselves confront each day with Gratitude Practice – re-experiencing the thrill of being alive and relishing the challenge of bending the universe toward light.

          As We Fill Our Souls with Light We Confront the Darkness – Remember – always get the oxygen mask over your own face before you try to help others. We need to design a life-long learning plan that benefits US, not one that puts our hard-earned money in someone else’s pocket.

          Beware the Quicksand – The culture seeks to bog us down in titles, degrees, honors, acquisitions and pro forma protocols. Don’t succumb. Our motion is always upward, our benchmark always health. Are we becoming stronger, smarter and more peaceful? Can we pass this flexible, constructive protocol along? Danger: we are seducible. We get tired, we long for reinforcements and approval. We just want to put our feet up.

          You Chose the Synchronicity Archetype – You have something to learn today to calibrate your balance in this uncertain world. Write it out in your training journal before you go to sleep – what new thing have I learned today? Where will it fit along my map? But we are smart! Our self-designed goal system must contain refreshment and renewal breaks. Most importantly, we will be needing a buddy as we go through the system, and a spiritual guru who provably has our best interests at heart. You can recognize them by the fact that they don’t trap you into a dominance/submission matrix.

          Models & Mentors – “Education is the key to unlocking the world. It is the passport to freedom.” – Oprah Winfrey

          “Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci

          “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela

          “Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today” – Malcolm X

          #Haiku: Superstition

          Treasure Learning
          Compassion &
          Trust
          Bastion against
          These Dark Ages

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

          Danger – Risk

            If This Archetype Chooses You – Look out. Are you a worrier? Anxiety driven? Haunted by nightmares and worst-case scenarios? Do you wake up gasping and trying to forget what you’ve just experienced?

            You are Alert – Nightmares mean you’re paying attention. Life is scary, but we need to grow, and growth requires we learn to cultivate risk if we are ever to expand and venture outside our comfort zone.

            The Number One Complaint About the Freedom of Becoming a Creative? – Fear management. The only way to manage fear? Become a Creative.

            Study Risk Intelligently. No point being afraid of dragons if dragons are only symbolic. No point being “afraid” of “foreigners” if the man telling us to be afraid has a reputation for befriending people and then fleecing them.

            Managing Fear:

            1. Don’t rely on rumor and innuendo
            2. Dangers must be proven Real
            3. Dangers Need to be Historically verified by data: “How likely is injury?”
            4. Assemble likely risk-avoidance strategies that have performed well for others in your situation.
            5. What exactly is your situation? Quantify.
            6. Know who your friends are
            7. Be prepared to alter strategy to maximize success and to learn from mistakes

            Creatives Train – Creatives accept, identify and study the challenges. They learn to make sophisticated risk assessments and pick their battles cleverly. To do that, creatives need a Purpose. You get to find out who your friends are. Friends want the best for you, but the relationship must be reciprocal. You have each other’s backs. Know the difference between a Team and a Gang. Gangs work to suck power from individual members and concentrate it in one individual. Teams work for the success of all. Coach can’t win if the team doesn’t win.

            Creatives Test – their and mental physical abilities constantly against life’s games & mazes

            Creatives Transform – The physical pleasure of meeting the moment cannot be overstated. Soon the training itself becomes a rush of joy. You are making love to the universe and the universe loves you back

            What About Defeat? – There are no defeats, there are only lessons. Everything is practice for The Greater Contest.

            Won’t You Ultimately Lose? Truly, we all die, some sooner, some less dignified. This is where your purpose upholds you. Study your models. What allowed Nelson Mandela to be “captain of his soul” after more than 20 years in brutal captivity? Are we just bodies? Or are we also souls? Are our souls so easily defeated? Can we also train, test and transform our souls?

            Remember – a caterpillar’s “defeat” is a butterfly.

            Models & Mentors – “Extreme Fear can neither fight nor fly.”
            – William Shakespeare

            “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear” – Mark Twain

            “If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will return stronger” – Deepak Chopra

            “We’re more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” – Seneca

            #haiku: Everything

            Everything you’ve
            Ever wanted
            Is on the other side
            Of fear

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

            MEMORY – THE PAST

            If This Archetype Chooses You – Check your conscious/subconscious/
            unconscious/collective consciousness levels. How comfortable are you with the very existence, not to mention the depth, of all these levels?

            You Are Multiple People Blending Their Lives With Yours – Do you ruminate about past events? Are you haunted by what was done & left undone? Do you feel nostalgia for a past that never was? Do you have a favorite period in history or a fantasy universe that you wish you lived in, instead of this one?

            You are the Hero of Your Creative Saga – Accept your centrality in your own myth. It doesn’t matter what other people think – they are the bit players. Think of your past as a Quest Saga. What did you want? How did it change? What blocked you? What tools have you got at your command? Where do you go from here?

            Rewrite the Past – You absolutely CAN, but first you first must face its full horror and that effect on you. Generally, because we were immature, we didn’t understand what was going on, were co-opted by our persecutors and prevented from fighting back. Things are different now! The hardest thing to accept is that beloved caregivers didn’t want the best for us – they only wanted us to be just like them.

            “I Don’t Believe in Ghosts but I Never Met a Person who Wasn’t Haunted” is a very wise saying. What haunts you exactly? Or who? Ghosts are malignant – if they weren’t they would be power spirits, fairy godmothers or guardian angels. What malignancies from your past are out to get you and how do they make themselves known? One of Freud’s contributions was to point out that people prefer their neurosis – ie imprisonment – to liberation. Why? What’s in it for you?

            You Define YOU. Yes, you have scars – these are bragging rights! You have been through the wars! ‘Rewriting” the past means understanding what really happened, the limitations of those who surrounded you, and exploring your chances and choices today. Just because parents, teachers or “society” sentenced you to play a role, you can step out of it at any time. Buddhist thought is very helpful here.

            Buddha teaches that life itself is an illusion – a dream. It changes depending on how we think about it. In the present, inside your mind, you hold all the keys to your own liberation. Re-visit Pema Chodron’s Noble Heart and Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now to explore how you can assume immediate control of your life and your mind and turn your past into fuel to power your growth.

            Creatives Know Who They Are – Remember, you’ve got a purpose. You’ve got a future. You’ve thought about your past and worked out conflicts with a mentor and in your Training Journal.

            Creatives Develop A Sense of History – You understand that history is a spiral, not a circle – the same things do keep coming around but in a different form. You see all around you the operation of karma.

            Choosing Evil is Choosing Chaos – and condemning yourself to death. It can’t work out for anyone except temporarily. You understand the battle between darkness and light and you have committed yourself firmly to The Light.

            Creatives Are Storytellers – You pass the message on with your life, with your words, with your body, with your very presence. You have become one link in the unbreakable chain of Eternal Perfection and you will have your reward.

            Models & Mentors – “You never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory” – Dr Seuss

            “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things” – Cicero

            “In the end, we’ll all become stories.” – Margaret Atwood

            “Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining a task or actually doing it”- Yo Yo Ma

            #Haiku: No-Fault Apology

            Atone?
            Conspire:
            Delete:
            Rewire
            My memory and
            Yours; potent
            Fire.

          2. 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

          3. 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.

          4. 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