Category: #InnerLife

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

    The Shadow – Dissonance

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You must consider the unseen. Are you dreaming of reversals? Sudden surprises or a creeping sense of unease? Upsets? Do you wake with a sense of having forgotten something important you almost understood?

    Something’s Not Quite Right – Ever have that sneaking sense you’ve wandered into a masquerade? We are trying to learn the rules, but the rules keep changing. Someone’s moving the goalposts. By the time you’ve arrived, the “promise” has “expired.”

    Impostor Syndrome – Are we the fake, or is it everyone around us who’s faking it? “Fake it till you make it” is definitely a rule. But is the game worth playing? Your Training Journal reflects the Creative Reality. Meditation will reveal your wholeness to you.

    Activate Your Spidey Senses – First, have a self. This ought to be the easy part! Everyone has a self – right? If only! From our earliest memory not only was “love” conditional but ALL rewards were. We wanted to find out who we really were and what we were capable of but it never seemed the right time. Let’s start by taking our suspicions seriously – you’re not paranoid if they’re REALLY out to get you.

    Creatives Are Sensitive Instruments registering seismic shifts and deep tectonic disturbances below the threshold of consciousness. Something always IS “going on” and you have studied long enough to be alert to the many warning signals! This can be exhausting. We long for relaxation, peace and quiet, a clear blue sky without a single cloud.

    Creative Challenge –The key to intelligent management of dissonance is to think of the world as an orchestra playing a symphony. The more able we become to distinguish the varied instruments and musical lines the more we will appreciate and enjoy the experience. Balance is key. We schedule regular periods of rest and renewal.

    Creative Danger – Avoid a “bunker mentality.” The universe has many bunkers, but it is bigger than any single one. We must cultivate a hierarchy of response. We get out of bed in the middle of the night for a fire alarm, not a phone notification. Don’t allow yourself to become dismissive and numb but seek out advice and encouragement from others who understand a healthy growth process. All of us live in groups, curate your group to promote intelligent awareness in an atmosphere of hope. Dissonance and dormancy are not doom.

    Resistance Is Never Futile – We each will be given a chance to spend our night on the watchtower, but you don’t need to spend every night there. Consider dissonance and discord invitations to accept maturity. We are putting away childish things. The sky is NOT falling, but the climate is under legitimate scientific threat. Strategize ways to band together with like-minded members of your community to take useful action. This is an opportunity to show self-love, as well as love for the group, the environment, the world and the future. The attitude, “I care about you so I’m going to take care of you”, keeps us sensitive to the message of Universal Love that is always waiting breathlessly to embrace us.

    Suit Up for the Long Haul – There’s a reason you are attracted to the ‘dissonance” archetype. You can sense something moving just out of your peripheral vision. Someone in your closest circle is lying to you. Do you know how to check for honesty? Test for reality? Check their pasts. Interview their friends AND their enemies. Are they pushing too hard? Trying to “sign you up?” How do they treat wait-staff? Do they speak disrespectfully of others? What’s their philosophy of life?

    When It’s Too Good to Be True – That often means the trap is just about to be sprung. Creatives must learn to think for themselves.

    Models & Mentors – “When you light a candle, you cast a shadow.” – Ursula K. LeGuin

    Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to fads, trends and popular opinion”
    – Jack Kerouac

    “Better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation”
    Herman Melville

    “If you don’t fit in, you’re probably doing the right thing” – Henry David Thoreau

    “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth” – John F. Kennedy

    #Haiku: Depth Psychology

    Substrata
    Dissonance?
    Game on!
    Unearth yourself –
    Transect core
    Meanings

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

    Solitude – Self-Sufficiency

      If This Archetype Chooses You – You’ve been mothering yourself, now make friends with yourself. Are you good company? Have you been fearing time alone? It is vital that we carve out time to reflect on all that is happening to us and the part we play and want to play. Our dreams alone could fill a shelf of books – plus we have to cultivate, curate and care for our daytime creative. Sometimes we have other people to care for and relationships to manage. We need to learn how to be our own best friend.

      Your Mind Is Your Most Important Tool – Sun Tzu reminds us that all battles are won and lost in the brain. Your mind determines your experience which controls your mind which develops your experience in a perfect feedback loop. In a culture based on “likes” from strangers we are all too ready to hand the reins of our brain over to some algorithm. Advertisers, influencers and partisans do NOT have your best interests at heart. We must learn how to turn that feedback loop into an upward trending spiral.

      After the Party Comes Cleanup – We have been taking control of our routine, our trajectory, our dreams and our thoughts. Now we need to develop self-confidence. Frustrated Creatives devour themselves. We need to trust, not fear, our responsive reactions. This takes practice – “reps” in the words of the physical trainers. There is no need for two weeks alone on the Appalachian Trail (nice as that would be) because we are already alone inside our heads. Check your voices: what are you saying to yourself? “Good effort” or “Idiot”? It matters! Many of us treat ourselves worse than we would treat any other human (or animal.) That must change today.

      Creative Danger – We are not proposing a life without feedback or a divorce from reality. If you really were your own best friend, you would protect, not exalt yourself. You would strategize towards health and having something worthwhile to share, not secrecy and isolation.

      Do You Hate Your Thoughts? – A recent poll discovered that most people would rather experience electric shocks than spend time alone with their thoughts, doing nothing but thinking. Just as mapping your future is a Creative’s job, so is mapping your brain. Make yourself a person it’s a pleasure to spend time with. You are not lonely when you enjoy your own company.

      Your Training Journal Is Your Mirror – It anchors you with its reflection. It is not necessary to write long pieces – lists or single words are adequate. Visual thinkers may want to sketch out or paste in pictures. Your Training Journal answers the following questions: Where Have I Been? Where Am I Going? Who Am I? Meditate 20 minutes a day on these issues.

      Creative Opportunity – find a voice you respect and admire on which to model your new internal voice. Can you check with this person that you are on the right path? We all need a life coach or a cheerleader in our corner. Learn to enjoy time alone by building in rewards – indulging in nourishing hobbies as simple as walking and reading. You don’t need rocket science, you need a healthful day to day peaceful retreat inside your own head.

      Ask Yourself What You Take For Granted – This is the part of the picture that’s hardest to see. Because we take it for granted! Here is where your study of models can be helpful because you will be surprised by other people’s automatic assumptions. For example, some people assume being a creative means putting yourself at the mercy of fickle public taste, whipsawing between hedonism and rejection in an atmosphere of deprivation and hardship, but to me, Creativity is the peace of totally owning oneself, exploring one’s ideas and being responsible for oneself. It is serfdom to the malignant or shallow minds of others that spells suffering and hardship.

      Gratitude Practice – Gratitude must be part of your everyday practice. Give thanks for this wonderful body, with its aches and cuts and bruises, as it eagerly shapes itself according to your efforts. Give thanks for the freedom of your mind. Give daily thanks for the honor of being a Creative.

      Models & Mentors – “Loneliness is the poverty of self – Solitude is the richness of self.” – May Sarton

      “The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude” – Voltaire

      “Solitude is necessary for creativity” – Picasso

      “The best thinking is done in solitude” – Thomas Edison

      #Haiku: Selfish Armor

      Imagination untrammeled –
      My alone time’s
      For your protection

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

      The Bridge – Discipline

        If This Archetype Chooses You – Confusing discipline with punishment, you tried living without any and now feel too debilitated to escape the mess you’re in. Uh oh!

        From our Subconscious We Must Summon a Rescuer. That rescuer is OUR ESSENTIAL SELF. In dreams sometimes it presents as a hero, a fictional or historic figure or a spirit animal. Try reading folk or fairy tales right before bed. Fall asleep imagining strengthening muscles – physical, spiritual, emotional – growing inside you.

        You Must Reject the Substitute Self – To please others (and save yourself from harm) you have created a Social Self, a substitute self others will accept. But now it’s time to find out who you REALLY are.

        The Substitute Self Will Fight You for Survival – A battle you must win. Be firm banishing this monster who pretends to be you. Make a list of all the attributes that attract you, excite you, that you want to have, and turn them into a list of affirmations; “I am brave, I am creative, I am kind. I treat myself well and structure my time to maximize my flourishing.” Even the laziest, cruelest corner of your false, social self will ultimately collapse to reveal a Tiny Child yearning for effective mothering. Time to mother yourself.

        You are Jack AND the Beanstalk! No giant can stand against you. What kind of mother did you have? Was she supportive or carping? Kind or critical? Is she a happy person? Did HER life let her down? Make a list of IDEAL Mother Attributes, and turn them into affirmations. “I am generous, thoughtful and imaginative. I give endlessly from my fountain of blessings.”

        Discipline is the Only Path to Achieving What We Want. Nothing is achieved (or appreciated!) without discipline, which only means conforming your behavior to a previously conceived pattern. What ideas spring up when you think about this? Do you see “discipline” as always cruel? Painful? Is it one of your fears? Or the map to the orderly life you long for?

        You Are Your Best Friend and Best Parent – Nothing works in your life until you learn delayed gratification and stick-to-itiveness. But first you must experiment with other patterns – some of which –depending on your upbringing – can be hellish. So you have THAT to get past. You will definitely need to harness all your dream power to get yourself over the finish line.

        Adapt Discipline to Enhance Thriving. But who’s doing the adapting – the Cruel Taskmaster, the Disgusted Lover, the Generous Parent or the Permissive Saint? You contain all these (and they live in your dreams) so which will you listen to? Who will you empower? Which do you feed?

        The Choice You Make Controls your Future. Consult appealing patterns that have worked for others and blend to taste. Realize it’s a process; a series of moments. Develop a sophisticated discernment you can trust to guide you.

        Creatives Set Marks and Hit Them – Forming habits is easier than breaking them apart, so creatives know that preventing bad habits is the core of discipline. But bad habits sneak up on us, they will form anyway, so part of your discipline will always be turning away from something that was formerly pleasurable. Enjoy the peace that comes with each small step.

        Creatives Know How to Keep Going – Discipline is the bridge that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Always use a “spotter” – a professional who’s “been there” and who can keep you from going over the edge.

        Creatives Celebrate Their Discipline – Self-acceptance comes from experiencing our humanity to the fullest. We are “parenting” our much-loved and respected self, the one who starts out as a toddler with no self-control whom we’re trying to keep out of the fire. Forgive yourself. And keep going.

        Make Discipline Visual – Charts, maps, graphs and lists that hearten & cheer are key to purposeful pathways. Figure out a way to picture your values. Checking off boxes and cherishing the “proof” of a successful day becomes your joy.

        Models & Mentors – “Through self-discipline comes freedom” – Aristotle

        “Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you going” – John C. Maxwell

        “All success begins with self-discipline. It starts with you.” – Dwayne Johnson

        ‘Day by day – what you choose, what you think, what you do, is who you become” – Heraclitus

        #Haiku: Discipline

        Discipline is
        Choosing
        Between what you want now
        And what you want
        Most

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

        Rainbow – Serendipity

          If This Archetype Chooses You – You Were Born Lucky! What is the greatest piece of good luck you’ve ever had? Your parentage? Talents? Home town? Best friend? A piece of advice? A special teacher? Think about it. Have you ever been offered a piece of good luck you couldn’t take advantage of, but wish you had?

          How Lucky Do You Need to Be? Ever seen the faces of gamblers seated hour by hour at the slot machines, wearing special gloves so their skin doesn’t fall off? Seriously, who would want to be them? Is it luck itself that we give thanks for, or our ability to recognize good fortune? Perhaps it’s really just our ability to take advantage of a piece of good luck when we’re offered it. These memories have one thing in common- i.e. “ability”, which is not luck, which is YOU. Give thanks for these abilities. Let’s learn to develop “gratitude thinking”.

          Creative Challenge – A different way of thinking about fortune is not all the wonderful things that didn’t happen, but the terrible things that COULD have happened – and didn’t. In other words, let’s try adopting a “glass half full” perspective and see how far that gets us.

          Creative Danger – Now that you’re committed to the creative path, the danger is always the same – recognizing your power but giving control of it over to some other entity that almost certainly doesn’t have your best interests at heart. We’re usually not even aware we’re doing this. But when you want to “be lucky” what does that mean? In whose eyes? Let’s put ourselves firmly in the driver’s seat and take a look at the path ahead of us. Do we want to go there? Do we really trust these people? Or are we the dog throwing away a real bone to reach the illusory bone we see pictured in the watery reflection of Aesop’s Fable?

          Creative Opportunity – As we negotiate our mortal existence we have a unique chance to take advantage of serendipitous appearances and encounters. If we recognize it. Compare your path to the immortal framework of eternity and ask, How am I doing?

          How Did We Get Here? Turns out your map was only a suggestion.


          We are mapping as we go along. However, life is even more interesting, it turns out, than our imaginations.

          After the Storm – Comes the Rainbow! Every visible color – carefully separated out – forming an arch to give us a glimpse of heaven! If it didn’t provably exist, would we still believe in it?

          List Your Rainbows – Clouds may or may not have silver linings. Rainbows are a complete surprise – unconnected to the storms that spawned them. Write about the surprises in your life in your Training Journal. How many were nasty? How many joyous?

          The Universe Conspired – To bring you to this moment. You zigged, you zagged, you wound up here. Give thanks!

          Models & Mentors – “Serendipity is when you find things that you weren’t looking for because what you are looking for is so damned difficult”
          Erin McKean

          “Steer Into the skid” – Alysse Aallyn

          “Here you are moving ahead bravely in spite of everything going wrong” – Rithvik Singh

          “Take advantage of happy accidents” – Vincent van Gogh

          “There are no coincidences” – Sigmund Freud

          #Haiku: Rainbow – Serendipity

          Happenstance –
          Fortuitous
          Chance; we’re
          Born lucky
          We just don’t know it.

        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

              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

            2. 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.

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

              Dreams – Imagination

              If This Archetype Chooses You – It’s Time to Wake up! Do you look forward to dreaming? I like waking up in the early dawn because when I go back to sleep I can set an intention for dreaming – all the best dreams (and the most memorable ones) happen at the very end of sleep while you are coming up through the layers of sub- to semi-consciousness.

              Creatives Are in Tune With Their Inner Voice – Jung tells us that in your dreams, you are everyone. Every life you have ever lived and every life you will ever live comes to you through your dreams.

              Remember – As Creative, You’re the Pilot – Do you long for caretaking? Are you eager to give over the reins of your life to someone else? If so, your dreams are likely to become scary, unmanageable and unsatisfying. It is time for you to take charge of your power – to admit that you are in control of your own brain.

              Creatives Are Seekers – We are self-defining. Self-validating. We are on a quest. Creatives experience to the fullest the nature of having a self. Become alert to the possibilities inherent in this particular incarnation and explore. Feel free to release your imagination.

              Dream Journal – Start a dream journal. Date it, and write, “I want to dream about…” Fill in the blank. Be as detailed and specific as you can manage. It is OK to allow your waking mind to construct desirable dreams – great works of art got their start in just this way! You may hear a voice… someone from the past who discouraged your “day-dreaming” and wanted you to focus on your work, on the present and on them. Explore this memory fearlessly. It is not rejecting or “hating on” that person to disagree with them – there are certainly times when the priority is to focus on other things – but right now you are exploring your own brain and testing out its powers. Clearly that’s an important and necessary project. Gently take control from this Remembered Forbidder and say, “This is my time now. I am in charge.”

              Creative Danger – We all know the cautionary tale of Scary Guy Who Lives for Video Games and Doesn’t Have a Life. Do you secretly fear that the power of dreams and the pleasures of daydreaming will suck you away from Real World Competence? They won’t – so long as you are reality centered. Some people only dream of different outcomes, futures that are impossible – instead of finding workable avenues of growth and advancement.

              Positive Dreaming Deepens and Enhances, doesn’t evade reality. It’s just that reality is so much wilder – and we are so much more powerful than we can credit!

              Dream Group – Form a Dream Group with others to share the content of your dreams and listen to their fresh interpretations. You can even try Group Dreaming. Lie on the floor holding hands in semi-darkness playing drowsy music. Share whatever comes up. These are models for your future. Some of us believe this growth goes on forever – even after death.

              Models & Mentors – “I dream things that never were and I say, “Why Not?” – George Bernard Shaw

              “A dreamer finds his way by moonlight…sees dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde

              ‘You have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world”
              Harriet Tubman

              “I’ve had dreams, and I’ve had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.” – Jonas Salk

              #Haiku: Human Clay Sculpts Angel Wings

              We’re all
              Dirt:
              Humble beginnings launch
              Celestial imaginings

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

              The Lovers – Alliances

                When This Archetype Chooses You – You Don’t Have to Go Through This Alone (and you don’t want to!) Check your friend list. Do you dream of love, sex, connection? Hand-holding, hugging, family celebrations? You were born to search for Alliances. An alliance is symbiotic, good for both sides of the equation. To reach out, you must each decide your motive (“I Could Use a Friend”) and approach with the CERTAINTY that you are WORTHY of friendship. This last one is tricky because we are ALL looking for validation. This is the source of many “imposter” dreams where we find ourselves naked in front of the entire class, unprepared on Test Day!

                Love Begins With Friendship: You Are a Giver and Worthy of Help – We can’t see everything because we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads. Luckily, we are surrounded by other humans, struggling, just like us. If we pledge to help each other, we can dispatch terror and celebrate joy! Comforting! But how can we tell the difference between Builders and Exploiters? We don’t want to end up devoured; someone else’s temporary “meal”.

                Creative Danger – When someone is trying to mangle your self-esteem, recognize that fact. Many women purposely diminish themselves to attract mates: Bad Idea. Even if it comes in the guise of “friendship” any person who takes you up on that offer is an enemy. This is not what friends, and certainly not lovers, are for. When someone is trying to “capture” you, i.e. limit and control your possibilities and behavior, that person is a hostage-taker looking for slaves. NOT a friend.

                Creative Challenge – How to recognize friends? Friends are honest: “I just don’t like that dress but maybe it’s me.” Friends are forgiving, ‘I’m sorry, I was having a bad day. I know you’re sorry, too.” Friends are fun, “Let’s cheer ourselves up.” Friends are helpful: “Let’s figure a way out of this.” Are you honest, forgiving, fun-loving and helpful? You’re ready to be a friend. Friendship is a good place to start. Be the friend you want to have – warm, funny, loyal, truthful.

                Love Enriches – It Does Not Deplete – – Friends are a mirror in which we see ourselves. We can experiment with possibilities, we can expand our reach. Our intelligence is doubled, as well as our efforts. Our sorrows are halved and our ideas are increased exponentially. Reach out! You never know until you try. And there’s always the possibility of Love and a deepening sexual connection.

                Love Transforms the way Creativity Transforms – Things you thought you could not do seem possible now because someone believes in you. Believe in yourself because they do, and honor them by believing in them, in return.

                Locked Back to Back the Creative Pair Sees Everything – Gaze turns outward at the world, not inward on each other. Are you chewing or strengthening? Learn the steps of your tango. Add new steps of your own.

                As You Change, the Couple Changes – Compare Training Journals. Are you evolving? Can you evolve together? Is it safe to speak the truth? Does one partner try to dominate? Does one partner use infantile behaviors to get “their way”? There is no “one way.” As joint creatives, the couple has goals also. Compare. Allow differences. The truth will be revealed.

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

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

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

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

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

                #Haiku: The Lovers

                Falling upwards
                Into you
                My other wing, my second
                Clapping hand