#Haiku: Youth
Freshets gush:
Youth leaps!
Born dancing
Before
Their music’s even
Written
Category: #Lucky
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The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn
#Haiku: Flight
Doubt molts aloft
Fresh freedoms
Foreseen; fear
Energized –
Wings flexed –
Jump off
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The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn
#Haiku: Cooperation
Fliers
Gatherers
Coaxers
Feeders
Breeders
Layers
Eaters:
Honey.
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Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn
Party Castle – Mon 9 July 79 – 7:50 PM
26 hours without T. Spoke to him last night and
again this afternoon. His acceptance of me is total, but it comes from a position of strength and I have fears of being annihilated.
Last nightI experienced hallucinatory states – drove home the wrong way – felt something was happening to the car – re-experienced my swallowing problem. Resolved my panic by starting a poem.
Sat night Toss and I read the diary passages where we lost our “divinity” (his word) together. He cried and told me what he’d felt like from his “side”, wanting to be male & in control, feeling helpless & immature. Agreed if we had married then we’d be divorced now.
11:05PM Trying to read Oneness & Separateness. Not well suited to me right now! Much as I want to be a mother the thought of a demanding infant between me & T now is truly horrifying. Insane fears of rejection and abandonment – why on earth should I trust this man? Called T at work!
Complete craziness. He reassured me we will have private alone time –
-a real vacation in the Berkshires. He said champagne arrived.
Called A & we discussed Mom & Dad – how they rewarded “self-sufficiency” and responded to neediness coldly. Makes it hard to be honest now but
I hate this weirdly formal relationship with my own parents.
Avril says there is no retraining them.
Sat 14 July 79 – StormFall Farm – 11:15 PM
Oh, my God who would believe it – here I am 11
years later! Told T about my uncle last night as we made sexual
“confessions”. He was completely calm about it so it’s no longer a
Big Secret. He insisted I read his ex-girlfriend’s letters. She was a
Piper Cub to his Concorde, believe me. He kept carbons of his letters to her!!!! Not very loving letters – but downright fatherly. In a bad way.
T’s actual father and he smoked cigars last night
after dinner leaning against the mantel – they were so beautiful together I felt stunned. Wrote a poem:
MY HUSBAND SMOKES CIGARS WITH HIS FATHER
BY CANDLELIGHT
Your profiles cut my heart like glass.
Go ahead. I’m a bleeder, I’ll
Still be here when you look back.
Your father is a silver-headed
Walking-stick; his elongation glows with far less heat.
You’re his nemesis; and he’s used to it.
The wooden floors are washed cornelian
Perhaps by sunset
Perhaps by jealousy of girls who
Lost you; judged too soon the temper of your eyes
Wrote too many letters or
Not enough; the wrong kind
Addressed to the pale law student with
The cinderblock heart;
Traveling commentator with the hundred
Dollar bill rolled inside his shoe,
The long-haired Pinkerton guard.
You learned to suck the cherries
Scarless from the tree; it’s no mean art
Broke a few at first; we all did.
By what right am I the winner?
You chose me in thirty seconds leaving
enough time to smoke another cigar.
Everyone wants us to marry before May. But I feel I need some time in Kentucky first. Toss told me last night that on paper he is a millionaire. Here’s luck, because if I keep on keeping on, I’m a pauper!
Tom’s grandmother’s response was “I am not surprised.”
She committed herself to reading my published “thriller”.
At dinner he announced I’m the only woman he’s ever wanted to marry. Tom’s dad said he thought his son would be a bachelor forever.
Privately we affirmed absolute sexual fidelity forever. Will we be able to keep it?
Plush Palace – Wed 18 July 79 – 4:55 PM
Boring day but good tips. Magnificent party at
The Third Edition last night for Avril’s birthday. (I didn’t care for Avril’s latest “honey” Vigo but was secretly furious at myself – she should date as widely as possible.
Maybe I was affected by T who is a snob and a purist.) Drinks, fruit & cheese – then dinner at The Old Angler & Frank Langella in Dracula. (Not a good version.)
“Finances” discussion with T. He talked me out of selling my car. I worry about being dependent on him but he says it will be fine.
Sounds to me like he is living on a knife’s edge – working part time, going to law school, selling stock when he needs money (which he is loathe to do being naturally frugal.) Too tired to make love last night but we started up in the middle of the night – both asleep. Unknown doors keep opening – then there’s another one.
Castle – 1 PM – Thurs 19 July 79
So happy I can’t take it all in. Feel like someone
recovering from a long illness. Read Cheever’s Goodbye My Brother – as satisfying as a novel. Last night we made love for hours and hours but –
I just couldn’t come – kept holding his face saying, “Is it really you”? Dancing with Barbara the Kikuyu and blonde Joyce of the day-glo costumes that light up in the dark.
3 PM Party Castle – 24 July 79
First real friction last night – very predictably, about my job. I’m irritated over the assumption that its sordid and brutalizing. It is totally NOT the same as the dancers in DC!!! LIFE certainly CAN be sordid and brutalizing – but I like this club because it ISN’T and I’ve tried others. We discussed HIS job of muckraker/professional advocate which also has its sordid and corrupting aspects.
Duh. His last girlfriend gave him shit about it (and refused to read his newspaper!)
So it’s a sore point. He should really understand. There was a horrible moment when he felt foreign and alien – but I expected it – too much intimacy always causes a backlash. Trying to read Sisters & Strangers. The Victorian novel is not yet dead.
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Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn
Miracles – Love
If This Archetype Chooses You – You are surrounded by magical possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Love the boundaries of the other disappear, all is forgiveness. Merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.
We Are Creatives for Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans. Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for growth and change – uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that creatives protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.
Our Yearning Defines and Connects Us – As children we thought we knew about miracles but it seems we have forgotten. As creatives we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes a dead universe come alive.
Love Is Our Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the creatives who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic by creating our own miracles.
Creative Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions of what ‘can’t” happen, what “won’t” work. Creatives explode restrictions all the time. Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero-sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own narrow gratification, Love dies.
Creative Opportunity – Love Is always a Miracle – It can restore the dead to life. It can open minds, it can awaken hearts. The possibilities of a creative are endless because we have chosen, with our flexibility and our sympathetic understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds and the limits of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.
Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides”
– David Viscott“Miracles don’t happen to you, they happen through you.” – Mary Davis
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn
“Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso
“You’ve got to see the miracle to be the miracle.” – Jandy Nelson
“Love is the gift of oneself” – Jean Anouilh
“I love you for who I am when I’m with you”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning#Haiku: Love Transfer
The secret of breaking
Any bad habit
Is to love
Something more -
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn
Homing – Forgiveness
If This Archetype Chooses You – Do you need to forgive… or be forgiven? Most of us require both! Ask your dreams. Do you dream of home? Sometimes we dream of a home that no longer exists, or never existed. “Home” represents the state of psychic absolution where all mistakes are forgiven and forgotten.
Creatives Create the Future – We commit to the ultimate compassion that we are all in this together. Jesus suggests that understanding doesn’t arrive until we learn to be the “forgivers”. Obviously, this means we must learn – somehow – to forgive ourselves.
Creatives Create Heaven – Such forgiveness helps us achieve the state of spiritual lightness that allows a creative to float through time, history, even the universe.
Creatives Are at Home in the World – What’s your “dream home”? A creative’s training emphasizes understanding and managing the fragility of the human body and the objective world, and accepting our healing and unifying mandate. Once we have scoped out the terrain and the inhabitants, Creatives are at “home” anywhere.
Creatives are About Justice – But not the kind that leaves more brokenness behind. Creatives achievements and physical selves display the triumph of thought, will and love.
What Does It Mean to “Start Over”? – We don’t wish to be free of “consequences”. We want to learn and grow from our mistakes but not be humiliated and punished for them. Pretending they didn’t happen doesn’t free us. Seeing our mistakes as moves in a dance we are all contributing to frees us from painful rumination and helps escape and explain the prison of blame. “I did this because you …” Human interactions are a tar-pit in which we trap and tar ourselves. We realize we need to forgive every chain in the event pattern if we are ever to have any peace.
It’s All About You – Robert Frost defines “home” as a place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. Defining “they” defines your group, your original home. Philosophy may provide an answer. Buddhists see history as a circle, Christians as a spiral. The question for Christians is, which direction is the spiral headed and do we have time to learn what we need to know before there’s a cataclysm? Can you define the mess we’re in and intuit your behavioral contribution? Is it possible to detach from the mess? In what group – or even in what “moment” can you detach from the mess?
Creatives’ Danger – We can’t afford to get mixed up about right and wrong. “By their fruits shall you know them.” Think it through. One avenue leads to health, dignity and growth; the other leads in the opposite direction. Don’t make the mistake of “fundamental attribution error”. The threat is NOT coming from inside the house. Martin Luther King Jr. made the wise comment that our specific brand of capitalism tends toward is “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the rest of us.” It certainly suits corporations to lecture their employees on building a better world without incorporating any of those ideas into the bigger picture, where we have no control and they demand absolute freedom to do whatever whimsy directs.
What Is the Bigger Picture? Health and safety for all living things to achieve their growth potential as part of a harmonious, non-exploitative whole. It is key that our resistance – which is necessary and life-giving – not embitter us.
Forgiveness Is Our Armor – Forgiveness doesn’t require ignoring the past or accepting bad behavior. It’s part of an interaction where forgiveness is a request, not a demand. Usually there is a recognition of fault or an expression of remorse: “I’ll never do that again!” When the requesting party instead seeks permission for the suffering to continue, “I can’t change – that’s the way I am” — that’ a different request. “Home” is not re-created that way. Hell is. Your opportunity is to point this out – if necessary, (because of safety) only to yourself. “If I’m not willing to try giving up my participation in this suffering because I think I’m not able to, then this pattern will continually get worse.” Time to construct a better – more intelligent map.
Models & Mentors – “It’s not an easy journey to get to a place where you forgive people. But it’s a powerful place, because it frees you” – Tyler Perry
“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world”
– Marianne Williamson“The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong” – Mahatma Gandhi
“To forgive one another, we must understand one another” – Emma Goldman
“Forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. It liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself” – T.D. Jakes
#Haiku: Forgiveness
Returning home with
Newborn eyes
Strong hands
Fresh translations
Future’s past -
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn
The Gazing Ball – Prophecy
If This Archetype Chooses You – The future weighs on you. Will you be found wanting?
Ask Your Dreams. The Number One question people have about dreams is, Are they prophetic? And the answer is of course YES. We KNOW the “truth’. We fear the truth. We don’t want to face the truth. We fear the continuing “losses” of age because the accretions are so hard to see. But our dreams – and the collective unconscious – KNOW what is going on. But they are also Art, and art – especially good art – is as forcefully mysterious, meaningful and evocative as any living thing. It changes as you change. It changes depending on how you look at it.
Creatives Need Truth. Creatives Accept Revelation – Dreams tell us when to be afraid. Dreams warn when something is missing. Dreams uncover all the secrets you have been keeping from yourself. The first obligation creatives accept is that the truth will set you free. The second, is that although terrifying, the truth is necessary. Creatives spurn the hiding, lying, misrepresentation, that substitutes for truth.
Creatives Can Handle The Truth – We are human, we are imperfect, and we need each other. The truth is that humans need governance and law to regulate our natural blindness and selfishness (which some would call original sin) into peaceful accord. The truth is also that humans who lust only for power will eternally angle to get themselves into positions of control, exclusion and punishment. These impulses must be identified and weeded out and it is courageous, difficult, and really unwelcome work, because we creative, loving, generous creatives also have our own lives to live.
Creative Danger – Our dreams notify us when one of these lethal persons is in our midst. Our maps & models offer a variety of plans for confrontation and escape, and a recipe for courage. At the present time, the Lethal Persons are banding together and hoarding weapons to give themselves even more guarantees for power and opportunities to welcome our despair.
Creative Promise – Jesus said evil will not win. The challenge is to explore what ELSE he said, indeed, what is the message of all the great teachers? People who tell you to hate one another and go to war with one another are agents of evil. The first challenge is to create peace in our own hearts, peace in our own lives, peace in our own homes, and then start developing compassion for those who are not so lucky.
When Brutal Tactics and Empty Promises are Exposed as family destroyers, peace destroyers and community destroyers, we see clearly that efforts to spread and share despair come from an innate desire to surmount despair, but also that this has never worked and is not working. It allows the torturer (and the tortured) only the briefest respites. Only when the goal of increasing world suffering is finally given up can we welcome penitents back into the community of Sharing.
Models & Mentors – “We write the future moment to moment” – Pema Chodron
“The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and leave you to peer through for yourself” – Frank Herbert
“The greatest thing a human soul can accomplish in this world is to see that poetry, prophecy & religion all are one”
– John Ruskin“The best way to predict the future is to create it”
– Abraham Lincoln“Yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not come, let us begin” – Mother Teresa
#Haiku: Prophecy
Inward
Resonates outward;
Creatives
Blossom
Inevitably -
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Empaths & Sensitives with Alysse Aallyn
The Labyrinth – Respect Complexity
If This Archetype Chooses You – Is our brain’s labyrinth powerful enough to solve the universe’s complexity? Each of us experiences slow-growing learning difficulties as we heave from infancy into psychic awareness. How are we going to figure out the space-time continuum? In order to tackle these vast problems we have to get some sense of their dimensions.
Are You Dreaming of the Impossible? Last night I dreamed of being at a resort where people were able to run across the top of the ocean playing a curling game – but they had to move fast. I couldn’t figure out what kept their feet above the waves. Later it was my job to provide lunch but the food at the little store was appalling. Very little bread, all stale – some weird canned vegetables, no protein other than some very suspect cheese. I was so relieved to wake up!
Don’t Try This Alone – Life is very complex. We are bombarded with daily reminders that many of its problems are too big for our tiny brains to tackle alone. We need help deconstructing and deciphering the maze – we require the assistance of legions of engineers, mathematicians, philosophers and artists – living and dead. Our mythic history is nothing but re-runs of: Tiny Human Confronts Huge Universe.
Is Your God Too Small? – We have a regrettable tendency to try to solve problems by reducing them to the size of our individual brains. Don’t. There’s no shame in admitting the problem is of awe-inspiring size; there’s no shame in requesting help. But any concept of God must be of something mightier than our own understanding, our problems, bigger even than space and time.
Creatives Are Puzzle Solvers – There is a way out of this labyrinth. You can follow string, leave breadcrumbs, mark walls, climb higher to get a birds’ eye view. You can call in a favor, study history, learn a skill, consult experts, request advice, find out what’s worked in the past. My favorite cartoon shows a goat calmly eating his way through maze walls. The key, problem solvers tell you, is not to panic. Whole years of primary education are devoted to getting you to sit down, breathe calmly and focus on the problem. Remember what you have been taught. Recall your goals.
Creative Challenge – It is not necessary to solve the entire problem to solve a problem. Even a blind rat can get through a maze one step at a time. Algebra came into being to manipulate unknowns. Guessing at the existence of x using the behavior of surrounding particles allows us to see without eyes. Many “hacks” are clever, and certain innovators have a gift for adaptation and reconfiguration. We can always use help. We can always form teams. Repeat after me: “All my problems have some solution.” Often the solution is viewing the “problem” differently. Maybe it isn’t a problem. Maybe it’s an opportunity.
Creative Danger – Primary dangers consist of Panic (inability to think) and Defeatist Thinking (lack of imagination). The lovely movie The Martian shows a scientist literally conquering the impossible. If you ”give up”, you’ll never get there, but retreat, reconstitution, changing training regimens and getting help are NOT giving up. Promoting your physical health and “Sleeping on it” are always good advice, as is viewing the difficulty from some other angle or changing the definitions of the entities considered.
Creative Opportunity – Key to success is fostering excitement about challenges. Our high school used to dump couples in the countryside at night and give a prize to the first couple who found their way home! (Following roads and train tracks always a good idea.) Scavenger hunts and orienteering cover much the same territory. The fact that a problem is difficult only makes it more fun. Ask chess players.
Models & Mentors – “The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity”
– Douglas Horton“The labyrinth combines walking and thinking to open your power of imaginative perception” – Lauren Artress
“Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate” – Noam Chomsky
“In a maze, find the center, in a labyrinth, find yourself” – Alysse Aallyn
“Life is a puzzle, missing pieces guaranteed and you can’t cheat and look at the box” – Anonymous
# Haiku: Every Book is a Zen Book
Puzzle
Words –
Assume
Solution –
Labyrinths
Demand
Escape;
Look
Up -
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn
The Thief – Dispossessed
If This Archetype Chooses You – you’re boiling inside. You’re so mad you can’t think straight. You had something and now it’s gone – you have less. It was stolen from you by some trickster. The fact that you stole it originally and you’re a thief too isn’t making you any happier. You were supposed to get this thing, you were in line for it, and now all bets are off.
Broken Dreams – Do you dream of plunder? Strong rooms? Treasure palaces? Security systems?
If Property Is Theft, then We’re all Thieves – Don’t covet, says the Bible. Don’t envy. But we are born with a sense of loss we spend lifetimes trying to remedy. Something has been taken from us, but what? This “politics of grievance” has always waged a peculiar power, seemingly breeding the anger and revenge that come so naturally to the human genome. “If something has been taken from me I will take something from you.” Yet our loss remains amorphous. We cling to the concept that we were “entitled” to something we no longer have. Philosophers and psychologists speculate; is it the mother’s womb? The family nest? What exactly is this lost paradise?
Only Creatives Are Truly Free – Creatives own nothing. We are not interested in acquiring burdens but in freeing the human psyche of its pinions. To do that, we must first free ourselves.
Don’t Chain Yourself to a Nightmare – There is much talk nowadays that “the American Dream” is no longer possible. Very relevant to our study of The Creative Oracle! Dreams & visions are our specialty! But what was that “dream”, exactly? It was a mystical concept of “wholeness” – family, life, work, rewards – that always shifted according to who you are and from where you are looking.
Once You are Part of a “Team” – even if just a team of two – the look can change dramatically. Is that a loss or a gain? Depends on what you see as value, and what as “hoarding”? We know if we eat more than our cells can burn we get fat, and that if we eat too much too fast we will choke. How can we slip psychically through this physically demanding life, light as a feather, bright as sunlight, strong as fire, without acquiring the very accretions – the barnacles – that slow us down, encumber and defeat us?
By Becoming Creatives, That’s How! We no longer fill our tombs with the junk of real life for use in the Great Beyond, “terra cotta servants” who will “wake” to wait on us hand and foot. We are always required to satisfy ourselves with strictly “mental” pictures. Is the detachment of elder-hood a triumph of success or a long wail of departure?
You Can’t Take It With You and You Don’t Want To – Not if you expect to fly! The “de-cluttering” movement did us all an enormous favor. Marie Kondo asked us to rid ourselves of every object that does not “spark joy”. That’s a high standard! We soon discover that daily life stirs up a lot of “necessary” detritus sparking joy in literally no one but is a hardship and a misery to live without. Probably the best way to free ourselves is to challenge the entitlement mystique with a philosophy of sharing.
Creative Danger – The whole principle of capitalism is to benefit from the work of others. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the grievances THAT can stir up. And yet “state” ownership churns up grievances of its own. Ownership itself is always fraught with exclusion, hostility, and danger. The nature of the Creative is to “Be” rather than to “own”. Can we still enjoy the world if it doesn’t belong to us and we don’t belong to it? Creatives say Yes!
Creative Challenge – Do we still possess objects when we are not physically present? Can we ever possess people? Do we WANT to take responsibility for another’s entire existence? How do our dreams of freedom comport with our dreams of possession? Who – or what – is held captive? Creatives deliberately loosen the bonds – mentally and spiritually – but this is a way of life that must be refreshed daily due to the temporal demands of our physical existence. That means creatives forgive ourselves daily.
Being a Creative Means Acknowledging That Wounds are a condition of our physical existence. Creatives come to terms with their wounds, evaluating them, celebrating them (often giving thanks for them), creating conceptual art projects about them and strategizing around them.
Many Wounds come from happenstance, birth order, parental crises, national dilemmas, international catastrophes. We’re all pushed out of the nest before we’re ready.
Models & Mentors – “The more stuff I donated the more I was able to breathe, the more trash I threw away, the more weight I felt was lifted, the more I was able to see a new life, the more joy I found” – Zina Harrington
“Clutter is postponed decisions” – Barbara Hemphill
“Life is your masterpiece. Edit frequently and ruthlessly” – Nathan W. Morris
“To the spoils belong the victor” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul” – Moshe Dayan
#Haiku: The Thief
If
Property’s theft:
My greed’s your crime
I consume –
Disperse –
Your evidence. -
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn
Age – Wisdom
If This Archetype Chooses You –Because you require an experienced hostage negotiator to help free you it is time to make peace with your elders. Have you been dreaming of old people? Funerals? Aging in general? Dreaming of gurus atop mountains? Buddhas, caves, palaces of wisdom? Or are you fixating on a specific elder who had an influence – bad or good – on your young life?
Creatives’ Effort Is Sacred – Failure is when you don’t try. Experience is the great teacher. Bad Judgment leads to Experience which leads to Wisdom which leads to Good Judgment.
You Are Wiser Than You Know –– Contrast elders you admire with those you avoid. Aren’t the latter complainers who stress to everyone they meet what a bad hand life has dealt them? They complain about their health, politics, the weather, other people – whatever crosses the windscreen of their increasingly tightening minds. In their world children never call, doctors don’t help, media is lying, weather’s getting worse, food is adulterated and we are all going to hell. This person is clamoring ever more loudly for ego strokes without apparently noticing the discomfort and distaste of those around them. Rather than trying a new strategy, they step up their whingeing.
Read the Room! Is what you want to scream at them but you realize they can no longer “learn.” This is the opposite of wisdom. This is senility. A brain is shutting down, a personality is beggared and no one wants to be around it.
Think of an Elder you Admire. Nelson Mandela, Joe Biden, St. Joan, Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, Pema Chodron, the Pope? These persons are Ego-Less. Someone who talks about others, not themselves. They authentically care for others. They discuss ideas rather than gossip and have a long memory of problems, solutions, trial and error. They keep themselves “young” in all the ways that matter. People flock to them.
There’s an Old Cherokee Story about how each of us is born with a good wolf and a bad wolf inside of us. The one that gets stronger and takes control is the one you feed. Your challenge is to figure out how to practice your increasing wisdom every day. Accepting your dreams and encouraging their deepening understanding is the beginning of wisdom.
The Pursuit of Gurus is Inherently Dangerous because there are a lot of con artists out there seeking hostages and slaves. Avoid dominance/submission games and people who use any of the following interpersonal techniques:
- They’re never “wrong.” Nothing is ever their fault. Only they know what is fashionable, appropriate and right. You are always wrong.
- Circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gaslighting – They are the gate-keepers of reason and you the thirsty aspirant who will never succeed without their help.
- People only capable of hierarchical – vertical, not horizontal relationships. Someone needs to be “on top.” It will never be “your turn.” You will always be dragooned into doing their bidding.
- Blanket statements and generalizations – Thick layers of protective blather will keep you from getting through to discuss any task at hand.
- Misrepresenting your thoughts and feelings to the point of absurdity – You are a poorly educated simplistic thinker and a deficient reasoner and they are in on all the secrets and are the source of all wisdom. There’s no “cooperating” with these people.
- Nitpicking and moving the goal posts – Different rules for everyone and every day.
- Changing the subject to evade accountability – “This is your fault – You shouldn’t have given me that job to begin with.”
- Covert and overt threats –“If people know what you REALLY are, say, do, no one would be your friend.”
- Name-calling , stigmatizing, limiting– “Identity politics.” “You are a _” Fill in the blank. And that’s all you’ll ever be in this guy’s eyes.
- Destructive conditioning – Abuse, frustration and disrespect are this person’s calling archetypes but it’s never their fault that they live in a cloud of toxicity. They want you in there, too. Decline.
- Smear campaigns and stalking – Endless power struggles. “Office politics.” Need I say more?
- Playing the Martyr – “Everyone’s lying about me. I have so many enemies!”
- Demands Immediate Unthinking Fealty – When someone stresses the fact that they are a “nice guy” or girl, that you should “trust them” right away or emphasizes their credibility without any provocation from you whatsoever, WALK AWAY.
- Baits and badgers you – testing your limits. Can you be made to lose control?
- Boundary testing – “You owe me” – “You’re committed” – “Everyone does it” to drag you into unethical enterprise
- Aggressive jabs disguised as jokes – “Can’t you laugh about yourself? Everyone else is laughing.”
- Condescending sarcasm and patronizing tone – Know-It-Alls
No One Using the Above Techniques has your best interests at heart.
Our Scars Define Beauty – You can see this is all about Control. Avoid those who seek to control or dominate you. Revered Elders such as those mentioned above would not do that. Treat others with respect and expect respect yourself.
Creatives Know Their Allies – Creatives don’t fear becoming experienced. We seek it. People come and go, but the right ones stay. Time shows you the difference between the strength and honor of another’s heart. Creatives share their knowledge.
Creatives Can Read the Signs – If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Train yourself to trust yourself. You can read and write maps, you can interpret Nature, you see Red Flags before they wave for others.
Creatives Earn Peace – Random acts of kindness make everyone feel better. Creatives’ “can do” attitude spreads peace. Creatives welcome other peaceful spirits. We challenge the troubled to take their drama elsewhere.
Models & Mentors – “You can’t control the wind but you can learn to adjust your sails.” – Jimmy Dean
“It always seems impossible till it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
“Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens” – Jimi Hendrix
“I am thankful to those who said No. Because of them, I did it myself.”
– Albert Einstein“Experience is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley
“It is never too late to be who you might have been” – George Eliot
‘Wisdom is the journey no one can take for us” – Marcel Proust
#Haiku: Noble Heart
Sit
In peace
Regift
The rubble of your life:
Wreckage
Belongs to All.
Alysse Aallyn 