Alysse Aallyn

Category: #InnerLife

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Winter – Dormancy

      Even Goddesses Grow Torpid.  We accept the necessity of sleep, to clean the brain, connect with the Multi-Soul and refresh the spirit. But what about hibernation? What’s happening when nothing’s happening?

      When We’re in Too Big a Hurry to Slow Down We Need to Slow Down – The Multi-Soul is calling you. You have need of dreams. Do you dream of 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 Goddess 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.

      Goddesses Can Surrender

      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. 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.

      Goddess 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.

      Goddess 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 goddess AVOIDS battles. 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.

    1. Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle

      Day – Focus –

      Becoming a Goddess One Step at a Time – Make up your mind – Good morning – or bad? If you wake up fearful, fretful and exhausted, you’re a worrier. Worry borrows trouble and erases pleasure. It’s OK to plan but it’s destructive to worry. “Rumination” is endlessly thinking over a problem in a circular way – it isn’t going anywhere. If you dream only about your problems, you are at risk of wasting your valuable dreaming time.

      Goddesses Build Routines – Then Explode Them

      We construct lists and calendars in our Goddess Training  Journals that are very much Works In Progress. Every effort’s an experiment. If you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, we have to build good systems. As Zig Ziglar reminds us, there’s no elevator to success. We all have to take the stairs, one step at a time. We build ourselves so strong that ultimately we can trust our subconscious, even our unconscious, to do the work for us. Goddess create independent selves to transcend their selves.

      Taming Wild Mind to Focus Productively – Buddhists are fabulous at training the brain to calmness. This is a physical discipline and it does take practice. But as in any practice, we start out needing both effort and commitment. Even Goddesses have to “forgive” themselves over and over – “I suck at this.” Learning to enjoy the process is key. Meditation teaches us how to live in the present moment. You are your own adorable toddler, so mother yourself.  Be delighted by the effort and moved by the commitment. You don’t yell at a toddler for falling down. Study the work of Pema Chodron (libraries everywhere) for assistance.

      Your Toddler Self is Frightened by Everything.  As we meditate and the fears boil up, we talk to ourselves calmingly. Focus on small, pleasurable things, the green grass, the blue sky. Give thanks for the green grass and the blue sky. Focus on the breath – out with the worry, in with the fresh day of joy and discovery. Now close your eyes. Are you still seeing the green grass and the blue sky? Isn’t that wonderful? Now they are yours forever. Tonight you will dream about them. Cherish them in your heart.

      How Strong is Your Negative Voice?  This is the first enemy Goddesses must defeat. We all have at least one – some of us have many. Banish them firmly. Your negative voice is belittling, angry and demeaning. It doesn’t think you can accomplish anything. It is not a helper, in fact it is toxic and we are going to tell it goodbye. Read Viktor Frankl’s wonderful Man’s Search for Meaning and Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves for advice on how to pluck the lotus of joy from the mud of despair.

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

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

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

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

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

      #Haiku: Focus

      Energy

      Resurgent

      Depowers dread

      Repowers health-

      Dare –

      Aim –

      Fire

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

      Detachment – Mourning –

      Goddesses Must Detach to Rise Above – Goddess-Vision sees the big picture. Is there loss? Yes, and it has a necessary place in the universe o birth freshness. Is there suffering? Yes – no one “rises above” without it. No one grows empathy and compassion without it. The generous Goddess feels your feelings with you, then she suggests you Get Over It. You still have a body on this planet; you will use your brain to Rise Above and Study the Multiverse.

      Do Goddesses Face Depression?  As we have discussed, goddesses feel all feelings, including lack of feeling. Discouragement is common. We must accept that the Universal Brain is bigger even than the goddess brain. Sometimes even our dreams hurt.  We experience such shuddering emptiness it’s a physical relief to wake up and find that dream wasn’t real. It’s enough to make a person fear going to sleep.

      The Cure is Detachment – Buddhism warns against  “clinging” as the source of all suffering. Life’s professional warriors – such as cops, firemen, paramedics – all will tell you to “forget’ the personal just to get the job done. Focus on the “healable” crisis– learn to enjoy the exercise of your gifts.

      Learn to Mourn. Mourning is the process of “letting it go” – releasing whatever it is – personality, idea, memory – into the multiverse. Goddesses know it will ultimately be cared for because in Jesus’ own words, those who mourn “will be comforted.”

      Remember there Is a Worse Loss than Death: People Can Lose Their Personalities BEFORE They Die. Be sure to think your worldview through BEFORE the crisis happens. Remember, what a caterpillar calls “the end”, Nature calls ”a butterfly.”

      We All Need to Mourn – Goddesses mourn, too. Goddesses’ powerful forward drive never fools them into thinking that moving backward in the dance is a sign of weakness, when ebb and flow are laws of life.

      Sadness is Stigmatized in a society where perfect strangers feel comfortable demanding that you “smile.” Look at all these Instagram feeds with everybody grinning away because they’re having so much FUN and their lives are so PERFECT they never wake up shuddering with sadness. Except they are human too, so we know that they risk their very humanity by trying to pretend ”everything’s fine” when the red lights are flashing.

      Maybe They’re Just Better at Covering It Up than we seem to be. And some people, admittedly are just plain shallower. They’ve worked hard to feel less deeply!  And narcissists convince themselves that they can transfer their pain to others and “free” themselves by enjoying the suffering they’ve created. This inevitably means we all have lots of work to do.

      First, We Sort Out “Real” from “Transferred” Suffering. Whose misery has been foisted on you? If you’re in that position you are literally a “scapegoat” and will need all your goddess skills to get out of it.

      DO NOT ACCEPT TRANSFERRED SUFFERING! – Pain is inevitable but suffering is voluntary. We feel compassion for some, we pity others their willful darkness but goddesses do not accept their world scheme of punishment and torment.

      We’ve All Got Plenty of Legitimate, Necessary Mourning to catch up on. If you skate over “bargaining” and “acceptance”  all that’s left to you is denial and depression. Sometimes, the “causes” of your lost mourning seem inconsequential to our “adult” selves. “So your pet died when you were five,” everybody says. “Your parents got a divorce. You moved five times. Get over it, already!” But we say, Now is always the perfect time to accept the power and significance of your own feelings.

      Goddesses Feel Compassion for Everyone – Themselves Included. Begin with yourself. Why feel these things now, right before you set off on your next great, consequential adventure? Sometimes it is joy that brings to the surface those past unhealed hurts. That’s necessary, part of the ebb and flow. Because we are strong enough to feel it now.

      Goddesses Are the Heroes of the Collective Unconscious – Goddess do battle for and honor centuries of collective suffering. (Inter-generational trauma.) It’s OK to think about that sadness, especially if it makes us feel closer to other people. Everyone has these lost, wrecked treasures submerged in their lives.

      Goddesses Feel Deeply – Your power frees the greatness of your emotion even as it protects your feelings and other people’s. Celebrate the fact that you are able to feel so deeply in a world where others feel forced to abuse themselves, taking risks and drugs in order to “feel something.”

      The Art of Detachment  allows the goddess to rise above the fray, strategize, plan. Even on the eve of battle they enjoy their lives.  Let go – finally –  of the toxic elements in your life. Time to go “no-contact” on the toxic people who waste your energy. Read up on sadism, the better to understand the people out there who are revel in your suffering. Buddhists recommend surveying your thoughts and feelings from a distance, as in hypnotherapy, then setting them free.

      Detachment is Not Dissociation – Dissociation is more like floating through life with all our systems repressed, feeling numb. Dissociation is not good. You can use that quivering pool of tears to respond more intensely to life, to art, to music, and to each other.

      Resilience is the Goddess’s Most Powerful Survival Trait. This means that even after blight, we can flourish more strongly, just the way pruned plants will. It’s not necessary to explore all the caverns of your being, but it will make you stronger. Once again, choose a buddy and a guide. Think about the “hero’s journey” story you respond to most deeply. How would you explain your hero’s journey to someone else? Feel free to use metaphors, after all, when we were children we did feel our world to be populated by monsters and the supernatural.

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

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

      – Teal Swan

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

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

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

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

      – Karen Casey

      #Haiku: Detachment

      last phase of grief

      blesses wrestling angel –

      flourishes scar tissue wings

    3. Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle

       Breakthrough – Epiphany –

      Goddesses Let the Knowledge Pour In – You didn’t even know there was a wall there! And suddenly, you’re through it and the world looks completely different on the other side. Maturity turns the universe into a “magic picture” – goddesses can see it several ways – each way perfectly invisible to the other. It requires a brain switch. It also requires…

      Dissolving Barriers that prevent you from re-envisioning your world. In your dreams are you breasting tape, cresting mountaintops, shedding light on darkness? You are seeking, or experiencing an epiphany. It’s time for the Goddess Maneuver of Magic Vision. Let’s consider the shreds of your psyche/life that don’t add up.

      Goddess Aspirations Conflict with Humdrum Reality – At some point we have to face the fact that we see differently from other people. Goddessing is NOT a group endeavor and this is GOOD.  But it can be lonely. Others will not understand you. You will have to be content with shedding light and moving on.

      Eureka! – Goddesses Learn from Epiphanies – It’s possible to have sudden enlightenment and NOT FULLY REALIZE it. Could it be that this fresh new vision is just too threatening? Could be that you lack the language to explain the new connection you have made. Could be that your “discovery” started down so deep in your consciousness that it’s taking its time to percolate through to the surface.  YOU ARE “MOLTING”! Shed what no longer serves you. In the meantime, pay attention to your dreams and track them in your Goddess Journal.  Dreams have the power to heal the jagged edges of our fear, our incomprehension and our daring.

      Goddess Danger – Don’t quit too early. Status quo can be SO attractive. Let somebody else be the adventurer, let somebody else put into words what nobody else can say, let some other poor sucker stick their neck out and mention that the emperor has no clothes. Study your fears rationally. It’s OK to protect yourself – in fact, it’s mandatory – remember making sure that oxygen mask works on YOU, first? But that doesn’t stop us from evaluating the full “reality”, which also, I remind you,  contains suspicions, insights, ideas and yes, dreams. Whispers of the multiverse.

      Grow New Skin – Goddess are highly accomplished, well-trained professionals who sometimes find themselves at the bottom of a pecking order.  Are you in a group whose leader is making decreasing sense and ever more self-serving decisions? If you’ve been struggling with a knotty historical, mathematic or scientific problem nobody else can solve, why not try seeking the edges of light?

      Transform Your Thinking – how often have you had that experience of waking up from a dream whose conclusions were so real they were right in front of you, only to see them melt in the sand like the escaping tide until they’re no longer perceptible. That’s OK. They’re on the tip of your psychic tongue, just waiting for a little more encouragement.

      Learn New Things -We are all familiar with the “sleep on it” suggestion, but anything that takes your mind off the problem can be helpful. Sports, prayer, meditation, reading, a massage, a night out, but please – not too much liquor. Hold it at two if you can, if you can’t, don’t start. Liquor affects the brain, killing brain cells.  That might keep overlords seeking compliance happy but it’s not good for goddess’ growth and development. Develop a gratitude practice. Keep dreaming. Keep seeking those epiphanies. Keep using your fears as stepping stones to climb higher. Never give up. Be clever – like the fox, wily as the snake, gentle as the dove.

      Models & Mentors – “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” – John Milton

      “Record these epiphanies with care as the most delicate and evanescent of moments” – James Joyce

      “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising”

      – Isaiah 60: 1-3

      “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing” – Henry Miller

      #Haiku:  Epiphany

      Dominos crash:

      Picture resolves:

      Insight –

      Upside down is

      Right side up

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

      Planets & Stars – Eternity –

      Eternity Requires the Goddess’ Perfecting Self. Do you dream of astronomy? Vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams, where change has slowed or stopped. You are struggling not with questions of death or afterlife, but the “ongoing everythingness” of reality itself. What is “time”? How long can “time” continue when nothing is “alive”?

      Goddesses Train to be Immortal –When you imagine “life forever” – where is the “you” in that context? Matter is already transmutably immortal – Your body is currently composed from the atoms of exploded stars. We all tremble at transitions; but do we really want certain phases of our existence to continue “indefinitely’? Seems not only impossible but repugnant. It is our Souls that are Immortal.

      Change is Life – Changelessness is Stagnation. We are “perfecting”, never perfected. Without any human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must exist outside of time. Fiercely we insist on the continuation of personal consciousness. But do we really want to know the terrible things God knows, or do you really desire a return to an infancy safe inside the arms of a most loving mother?

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

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

      Goddess Opportunity – We are offered repeated opportunities for growth, for humility, for insight. We need to take advantage of these, all the while admitting that since life is a see-saw process, it is usually two steps forward and one step back. Goddesses recognize and enhance growth; ideal growth conditions lead to health, while harm plunges everyone into darkness. Mentally we can wish others to avoid suffering and the roots of suffering even when we don’t understand what those are even for ourselves. When Goddesses connect meaningfully with others all spirits lighten.

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

      “Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment”

      – Henry David Thoreau

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

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

      #Haiku: Beginners’ Mind

      I never

      Graduate;

      Freshened by

      Eternally

      Discovering.

    5. Becoming a Goddess -the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

      Loss – Suffering –

      Do Goddesses Suffer? – Lesser mortals are under the impression that Goddessing is about permanent smug satiety. The opposite is true. All Goddess emotions are magnified. You are hurting. If you can no longer feel pain, you are numb.

      Even Goddesses Hurt – We see the magnitude of the suffering around us. Every religion and philosophical system must account for this misery; storms, flood, volcanos, disease, human frustration as well as animal (and human) predation.

      Goddesses Get Used to Loss – Goddess dreams are magnified as they explore inner and outer pain.  All fear, anxiety, terrible memories erupt out of the collective unconscious – our shared human history – and are laid at our feet. There is no universe where all these tears can be dried at once, there is only Eternity where we have been assured that “Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” How do Goddesses educate ourselves to surf this intolerable dilemma?

      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 our breath on the edge of discovery. Compassion elevates those we love to eternity.

      Goddesses Dare to Feel it All.  Bravely we take on the feelings of the entire planet to show that we can’t be destroyed by them. Goddesses explore and expand the edges of perception and assessment. 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.

      Don’t Surrender to Learned Helplessness – Too much suffering breeds inertia. There is danger in giving up even trying to better our human situation – predators will be attracted to such easy prey.  The worst outcome would be to surrender enlightenment by becoming predators ourselves, bragging to the godless that we are the new potentates. Cruelty breeds endless cruelty and our claim on immortality is cancelled. There must be a way to step off this treadmill – there’s enough suffering going around without  manufacturing more.

      Goddesses Dare to Frees the Universe – 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 karmic debt many times. Further epiphanies await.

      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

      #Haiku: Profit/Loss Analysis

      Does autumn lose summer

      Warmth or

      Gain snow-blanket?

      Peonies decide.

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

      Transformation – Metamorphosis –

      Goddesses Transform Themselves – Goddess-hood is chosen, but you must be worthy of immortalization. You are about to undergo a major transition. Are you a SciFi fan? Do you dream of bionic humans? Robots? Cryogenics? How about caterpillars becoming moths and butterflies? Acorns don’t look like oak trees, pollywogs don’t resemble frogs. It is quite common in nature to evolve into some unexpected form. As Ovid’s Metamorphoses postulated centuries ago, we speculate about humans becoming invisible, disguising ourselves as bats or wolves; Greek gods “became” swans and bulls to further their purposes. Our imagination is rich with all these possibilities, as is our literature, theatre and film. At a funeral, we look at a bird invading the church is a whole new light. Is it a message? An incarnation?

      Your Possibilities are Infinite – Every time you buy a bottle with an animal on the label you are calling on the powers of that creature just as your ancestors did. We suspect consuming even the “idea” of a creature might confer their powers. We also heard the legend that when a human husk breathes its last, the soul escapes and may reincarnate in heaven or even in another life as something entirely different, perhaps without blemish, wholly beautiful for once and for all.

      Goddess Power – Who’s your power animal? What supernatural gifts do you desire? Give yourself the freedom to think about the talents you yearn for and the purposes you’d put them to. If these are the growth mandates of the universe, you could become a Goddess. Experiment and play. You might not wish to be a dragon every day of the week, but once in a while it could be fun. How can you cultivate these gifts, desires and yearnings in your present-day life? Don’t these dreams make you a bigger, more important goddess, even if nobody knows? What if they did know? How might you tell them and who would you tell?

      Goddess Danger – We don’t want to jump off buildings pretending we can fly. We’re expanding our psychic repertoire, not trying to escape into fantasy. The most commonly yearned for gift is omnipotence. But think how terrible life would be – not just for others but for YOU if your whims and fantasies were never checked? Often our wish is that we be spared the pain of growing up. But who wants to remain a toddler forever? As we get older we are REALLY coming into our own and knowing and sharing our true self. A joy not to be missed. Pity the toddler who prays to fly through the air so he doesn’t have to learn to walk and risk falling down.

      Models & Mentors – “Nothing gets transformed in your life until your mind is transformed” – Ifeanyl Enoch Onuoha

      “Every success story is a tale or adaptation, constant revision, and change”

      – Richard Branson

      “Perfection is constant transformation” – Nia Peeples

      “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not fighting the old but building the new” – Socrates

      #Haiku: Being Is Relationship

      Electric seeks

      Charge;

      Transformer –

      You’re my lock on

      Immortality

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

      Spring – Hope

      Even in the Darkest Season, Goddesses Cherish Hope. Once you have accepted Eternity and the creation of a Soul beautiful enough to deserve it and support it, you understand that the upward spiral supports you. Evil will not win and morning will always come.  Perfect love casts out fear.

      Spring Always Follows Winter – after dormancy, now arrives the season best calculated to provide ideal conditions for growth. Spring is beginning, freshness, newness.  It starts small – barely recognizable – the tiniest frond of green among the blackness, calling forth an answering shiver from somewhere deep inside us. We are told that very cell in our body replaces itself in seven years, so springtime is a constant within us. Hope courses through your body with every flush of oxygen and blood empowering our systems.

      Hope is Goddess’ Fuel. Hope, like Justice and Love, is eternal. Do you dream of uncovering buried truths?  Can you define your quest? Will it ever be over? Hope is not about “resolution” but about the process of envisioning a future you have the faith to promote. You feel a sense of awe, but also ownership and some pride. This is YOUR discovery. Now you want to share it with the whole world.

      Goddess Challenge – Don’t waste your imagination on games. Games can be a training ground but all too often our society seeks to harness and entrap your energies onto a treadmill that benefits only the few. Your dreams, your aspirations, your thirst for knowledge, are wider than this. You know the complexities of the universe are even more amazing than anyone has guessed and you want to call attention to them. You need to learn how.

      Hope Is a Sacred Obligation – Life persists in spite of visible entropy, In spite of darkness, in spite of destruction. Life is a perpetual motion machine fueled by hope, and Goddesses are the priestesses of life.

      Goddesses Nurture Hope and Pass It On – Hope is the condition of believing better things are possible. It is mandated by the fact that all growing things need nurturing if they are to flourish. Goddesses are the mothers of the universe.

      Goddess Dangers – include tunnel vision, paranoia and megalomania. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Obsession becomes obvious when harms become visible. Don’t “give up” because you can’t seem to impose your vision on the world. Are you eating and sleeping? Maintaining your relationships? You can’t achieve without a team and you need to keep your team happy & nourished. Conflating the majesty of discovery with your own personal majesty – needing that majesty – separates you from human kind and that can’t go well. It blinds you.

      Paranoia Seeds Fears that others are stealing from you, riding on your coattails, tarnishing your legacy.  But each patch of fresh ground you conquer leads to more discoveries. The astonishment – and the astonishers – never stop!  Practice humility and gratitude. Aren’t you lucky to be a part of all this? Isn’t it wonderful?

      Goddess Opportunity – Assembling a “team” is critical. TEAM isn’t a formal concept and it doesn’t mean maintaining a payroll.  It requires finding the energy to keep your hope alive while keeping it realistic in the community.  This implies explaining yourself over and over, developing your idea. Allow others to offer the energy of their perspectives. Even when you see them as wrong-headed, they can operate as whetstones, sharpening our vision. Most important are supporters who catch a “contact high” from the joy of your insights. This happiness creates a nourishing environment that powers us forward. Move confidently in the direction of growth and away from diminishment.

      Models & Mentors – “Hope is being able to see there is light in spite of the darkness” – Desmond Tutu

      “What I try to cultivate is not blind optimism but radical hope” – Junot Diaz

      Be astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver

      “Everything that is done in this world is done by hope” – Martin Luther

      “Only in darkness can you see the stars” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

      #Haiku: Altruism

      Crows call “Come Eat!”

      Across trees in hope

      Someday strangers

      Feed baby

      Crows.

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

      Aspiration – The Future –

      Existence Is A Spiral – Time to Make a Plan. Goddess power comes from focused desire as much as personal strength. Do you dream about the future? We know the future is real – it keeps arriving every second! But how often does it match our aspirations? Does that even matter?

      Goddesses Aspire – To aspire means to yearn for something better, to be able to imagine something better and to begin to mentally create a pathway to improvement. To eternally yearn for improvement means the ultimate can never be reached, and it is the process itself – the devotion to that process – that becomes the religion of the Goddess.

      Goddesses Plan – Nothing comes to reality without a Plan.  This is a main argument for the existence of God – a Planner of bluebells and quasars seems so real to us and the scope of the universe, its chemistry, math & physics, so orderly. Even the people who see only “chaos” don’t actually want chaos in their own lives. Is our mind greater than the universe? Clearly not. No single brain has been able to encompass the universal design – not even Einstein’s.  “Wishing” breeds helplessness and works out so seldom it usually leaves us worse off. But plans evolve, along with us, and even when plans fail, WE succeed. Edison said he hadn’t failed at anything, he simply found “ten thousand ways things don’t work.” That’s the “empiric method.” It’s called knowledge!

      Goddesses Take an Active Role – Don’t bother investing pride and honor in being “right” – with a universe this complex, NOBODY’S right. Invest instead in having a good, flexible plan that evolves along with you. Plans are adaptable – they must borrow from all disciplines.  Plans can be Art – art is what this universe IS – including the people in it. Give your Plan room to grow.

      Goddesses Create a Future Worth Having – Without this effort all our futures would fade into entropy, a constant winding down into muck, inertia and dissolution. Understanding the Goddess’s commitment to betterment means accepting our obligation to advance the lives not only of ourselves and our loved ones, but unmet and even unborn others.

      Goddess Danger –  Never forget Fundamental Attribution Error. There’s a lot of coincidence and happenstance, which is what the phrase “Being in the wrong place at the wrong time” expresses. So our plan must always be modified to deal with tragedy –the ongoing and universal tragedy of illness, war and disaster. Goddess try to avert these things, will continue learning how better to avert them -but everything isn’t up to us. There are perverse, dark forces at work that enjoy harm and destruction.  We can’t become over invested in “winning” because we can’t see or know everything.

      Goddess Faith – This is where Faith comes in. Jesus said evil will not win, and that’s good enough for me. Find your own mantra to help you stay strong and to keep working on a healthier you by designing a healthy plan and promoting people around you who can make your plan better. You will also be contributing to their plans – and that’s gratitude. And love. Win-win!

      Self-Definition is a Joy – Even though the Ultimate can never be reached by in this lifetime and is always just ahead, it gives us a concept of Paradise we can work for. This work provides the deepest pleasure and connection between persons that is achievable on this planet.

      Models & Mentors – “The future is completely open and we are writing it moment to moment” – Pema Chodron

      “The future starts today, not tomorrow” – Pope John Paul II

      “A good education is the foundation of a better tomorrow” – Elizabeth Warren

      “An uncertain future is not oppressive when Hope guides us” – Charlotte Bronte

      #Haiku: Freshness

      Each nonpareil moment

      Liquefies,

      Cascades into

      Flowing future

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

      Persistence – Commitment

      Goddesses Dominate Follow-Through – No map is useful unless it is verified and experienced. Ideas are dreams until they are sketched and tested.  Every effort is a time commitment, but if the idea is worthy, the time must be committed. There is no failure, only learning, on the eternal time scheme.

      Consult Your Dreams – Do you dream of rings? Tokens? Trophies? Collecting and collectibles? Antiques, graduations, pawn shops, art museums? Ceremonies? Awards? Rewards? You are longing for the symbols that consolidate desire. But desire is nothing without will. What is your conscious will? Subconscious? Unconscious? Collective conscious will? What ignites you? You are a creature of Now, a chip on the whirlwind, but you will soon manifest power over yourself and the future.

      Goddesses Are Athletes  – Nobody’s skills are very good at first. We know there’s nothing “magical’ about becoming a pro! Who said it takes 10,000  hours of practice to be good at something? Isn’t that, like 27 years? In other words, when you really want something, you’re going to have to make a major life commitment to make this possibility a part of yourself.

      Goddesses Hang In There – Being committed means you already know it will be difficult and you will have to push through. Goddesses do their best to inform themselves of the challenges ahead and to brush up all their skills, but nothing substitutes for dogged day to day stick-to-it-iveness.

      Goddess Challenge – Are you up for sacrifice? Not many people are!  You’re going to have to skip the easy, tempting treats – physical, spiritual, emotional – to satisfy the demands of your training. There’s really only one way to do this. You’re going to have to change into a person who LIKES and PREFERS the goal-driven lifestyle. It’s easier if the lifestyle’s not TOO restrictive. By that logic, you can see that it makes sense to start off slow and build – just like you would in the gym. No sense overwhelming tender muscles with weight they can’t handle!

      Goddesses Never Surrender – Retreat is only a re-framing. You wait to see a better way to reach your goal. And sometimes new information makes for a goal change. No shame, there! This is the sign of lifelong learning. Goddess are life-long learners.

      Goddess Danger  – There’s the risk that our self-control will be sabotaged.  Addiction. Getting obsessed by something that may have started off healthy, even noble. Suddenly you’re in a downward spiral.

      Admit When You Need Help. Is your obsession interfering with work? Relationships? Health?  Are friends and family intervening, starting to talk? When a commitment turns deadly – and we know even romantic relationships can do so – reach out to someone with a balanced perspective. Likely there’s a plan already developed to get you back on track without losing the gains you’ve already made.

      Goddess Opportunity – Persistence in a healthy commitment is the best path to transformation there is. You truly can become a different person, the person you always wanted to be, over time and in tiny steps. When I wanted to give up sugar, I consumed a lot of fake sugar at first, then less and less over time, until now I can’t believe I ever liked or was satisfied by that stuff – real or fake. My palate has changed, so has my health and so have I.  That doesn’t mean I don’t eat the occasional wedding cake! I enjoy my new-made self, and so can you.

      Find a Buddy on the Journey – a tried and true pathway. Use mindfulness to examine cravings, release them and calmly set yourself free. Track everything in your Goddess Journal.

      Goddesses Honor Their Contracts – Goddess make alliances and promises. Some promises conflict with each other. Some contracts we end up not wanting to fulfill but there is just no way out but through. Goddesses know how to concentrate on the future and keep trying to negotiate win-win modifications to ease everybody’s ride.

      Models & Mentors – “Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent”

      – Steve Martin

      “Failure is a requisite for success. If you want to succeed, double your rate of failure” – Brian Tracey

      “Success is the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes on something others would give up on after thirty seconds” – Malcolm Gladwell

      “Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism” – Albert Einstein

      #Haiku: Commitment –

      Means you don’t give up

      Just because you want to

      Grit teeth

      Point jaw

      Plunge

      On