Alysse Aallyn

Category: #SoulTravel

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: The Sunflower

    Petaled abandon

    Squanders

    Heaven’s glory:

    Feeding all our

    Hungers

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Planets & Stars

    Floating

    Glass Balloons

    De-fracking

    Sacred Future

    From our

    Hellish Past

  • The Book of You – haiku diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Metamorphosis

    Patterns fortify

    Inchoate beings

    Pollinize, spread

    Light-filled

    Tales

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku:  Flight

    Doubt molts aloft

    Fresh freedoms

    Foreseen;  fear

    Energized –

    Wings flexed –

    Jump off

  • Diary of a Spiritual Journey – Haiku by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Dear Jane Austen

    Formalized play

    Plumbs nature’s

    Riot;

    Edit

    Emote:

    Judge

    Love

    Rewrite

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

    Peace – Serenity

      If This Archetype Chooses You – You need to learn to enjoy yourself. Enjoy your time off. Do you find your reveries organized around beaches, vacations, relaxation, memories of happy times when you had nothing to do but bliss out; feeling only the moment?

      Peace is Possible. Serenity is an Idea. Most of us are familiar with the “serenity prayer” written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

      “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right.“

      The Serenity Prayer works as an inoculation against pointless worry, which is seen as “borrowing trouble.”

      Creative Challenge – Like meditation, serenity is a mental state that takes practice. Make a list of your most pressing concerns. Can you do anything about any of them today? If so, appoint a time when you will take a step towards resolving this concern. If you can’t do anything about it, put it forcefully out of your mind. Imagine your worries as a bunch of balloons. Now let them go, one by one. Put each useless worry on a piece of paper and burn them slowly, one by one.

      Creative Mantra – Give yourself a “serenity mantra” a word or phrase you find comforting and centering, and repeat it out loud to yourself. St. Julian of Norwich recommended: ”All will be well”, Coué offered, “Every day, in every way I am getting better and better”, some yoga enthusiasts chant a simple “Om.” You can use a phrase from your own past said to you by a Beloved Person – “now you’ll be fine” “You’re safe” “You’re perfect” “Everything’s all right” or the tried and true: “I love you.” My favorite is from the Book of Revelation: “Every tear is wiped away.”

      Creative Danger – Don’t be tempted to become a mentor while you’re still learning. Creatives want to be helpful but this is a snare. Mentoring is an end-of-life honor, but you are still placing the oxygen mask on your own face so that you can stay on your plan. Show friends the basics but don’t walk them through it. You’re busy.

      FOMO – We are all worried about “missing” something. Often that “centering person”, that reassuring person from our past is not just the one who gave us the relaxation code, but is also the same one who told us what to worry about: ie. ”Make sure all the locks are locked” “Have you done your homework?” There certainly are things to be concerned about (“Are you registered to vote?”) but there are plenty of worries we CAN’T address. Return to the serenity prayer and start weeding out – on paper – your Justifiable Concerns. One of the best things about Anxiety – and I mean this – is that it offers an opportunity to ask for help. Yes, I say “opportunity”! Because life is all about RELATIONSHIPS.

      Worries can be Chances to Forge Meaningful, Worthwhile Relationships. Get ready to experiment. As with any other relationship in your life, your requirements, tolerance, communication goals are unique. Many people yearn to speak to a “professional” – therapist or life coach – and plenty of professionals out there are auditioning for a little – or a lot – of your hard-earned cash. An excellent place to start is with Proven Gurus like Tolle Eckhart or Pema Chodron who can be accessed for free from any library. See what you think. Evaluate their assistance. Inquire further.

      Creatives Know What They Must Do – Others are envious that we have laid out a plan for our lives, that it is flexible, that it is life-enhancing and that it gives us permission to Enjoy. Be humble about this jealousy, but don’t get dragged into making others “feel better” about being stymied. They may be seeking fellowship in their tarpit.

      You’re Entitled – Others also could find peace if they began to take control of the drama that rages within them. Point them in a hopeful direction but don’t agree to sit idly with them in their misery. Don’t get sucked in.

      Meditation Looks Like Dreaming – The secret is, there is enormous pleasure in being a creative. You finally feel your strength, and when you know the value of your time, you feel your own value. This is what others yearn for. They can learn it, too. But in the mean time you are enjoying your hard-fought serenity.

      We Need So Little to Be Happy – This is the great realization. One bowl, one mat, one dawn. The comfort of another’s presence or the pleasure of your own thoughts. The joy of another morning, another night’s rest. The confidence of a clear head. Welcome to the Universe.

      Models & Mentors – “Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” – The Dalai Lama

      “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

      “Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action make up the sum of life”
      – Vita Sackville-West

      “Enjoy the peace of nature and declutter your inner world” – Amit Ray

      #Haiku: Peace – Serenity

      Melting heart;
      Compassion
      Purges
      Life’s shudders
      Restores
      Unruffled Depth

    1. 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

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

      Chamomile – Healing Rituals

      If This Archetype Chooses You – Let’s access the gifts of the Creative. Let the healing begin. Are you a believer in magic? Do you dream of restoration, of nostalgia, of lost youth?

      Creatives Believe in Magic – Bravely, we put ourselves in the way of harm, and harm is done to us. But we believe in the magic of restoration through transformation. These scars, these wounds, these experiences make us smarter, harder, brighter and more beautiful.

      Understand the Meaning of Your Scars – These are life’s tattoos, which have ennobled you. It is your honor to embody the story of the universe with your blood and your bone. But it is the Creative’s Brain that brings us closest to God. The mystery of suffering is that it educates us into the greatest mystery of all – that God is willing to suffer with us because Love means holding each other through pain and infusing our strength into another’s sadness.

      Bow To Each Other – Show Respect – We are each other’s masters, we are each other’s pupils, we are each other’s lovers, siblings and rescuers. Drinking ginger tea from translucent porcelain cups, we lift our cups to each other. We bathe together in steaming pools. I release you as you release me. When darkness falls, we touch one another’s hands before departing. If we can bear it, we touch bodies.

      Creatives Recognize That We Cannot Diagnose Ourselves – We offer ourselves for the universe’s good and so it takes a world to cure us. Healing and diagnosis alike will come from the welcome lips of another. It has been scientifically proven that even plants respond to kind words. We yearn for the laying on of hands, for the gentle rituals that pass us from one stage of life to another.

      Creative Challenge – Paradoxically, no “medicine” can succeed unless we “accept” our healing spiritually. We must feel “worthy” of restoration. What are we fighting for? Think deeply. We are not self-punishing but stating as clearly as we can that life is valuable in all its forms. If you are only as “young” as you feel, are we only as “healthy” as we allow ourselves to be? Forgive yourself. Accept change. Contrary to our fears, it is change that keeps us young.

      Creative Danger – Healing cannot occur in an atmosphere of self-hatred and self-blame, but many of us are STILL “blaming” ourselves for twists of fate, for unlucky genetic, social and medical outcomes. “Fundamental attribution error” consists of blaming individuals for group effects. We are all caught up in the machinery of temporality. Never forget that we are souls who happen to have bodies, not bodies who happen to have souls.

      Creative Opportunity – “Restoration” is such a glorious promise that early Christians found themselves ensnared in decades of argument about PHYSICAL resurrection. How would it work in cases of burning and dismemberment, exactly? It is easy to laugh at these painfully ridiculous theological conflicts. One is reminded of St. Joan of Arc’s response to interrogators at her trial who asked if angels appeared to her naked – “Do you think God cannot afford to clothe his angels?” Accept the power accorded to you by the universe. Accept the strength of your own mind, the control given by your chosen attitude. Healing is not just possible, it is a life-force in which we can all participate. Jesus came to us as a healer.

      Models & Mentors – “Healing yourself is connected with healing others”
      – Yoko Ono

      “What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.”
      – Haruki Murakami

      Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.” ~ Catherine Rippinger Fenwick

      “We are healed of suffering only if we experience it to the full – Marcel Proust

      “Maybe the dragons in our lives are princesses”
      – Rainer Maria Rilke

      #Haiku: I Don’t Know

      Admit ignorance
      No shame –
      It’s healthy –
      Empty glass
      Asks for water

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

      Hummingbird – The Soul

      If This Archetype Chooses You – Do you ever dream of hummingbirds? Of the ‘impossible” flight of the bumblebee? Your soul is speaking. Listen. According to C.S. Lewis, we are not a Body with a Soul, we are a Soul with a Body. Our bodies may be all too mutable, but our souls can be eternal. Do you dream of past lives? See yourself in historical contexts? Do you have dreams of utter bodilessness in which you are totally free, seeming to travel invisibly through the power of your mind?

      What Are Creatives Fighting For? Immortality is not a given, but an achievement. Souls are under threat. What is the Sin Against the Holy Spirit that the Bible talks about, the one sin that cannot be forgiven? It is any attempt to slaughter the soul, the stifle your inborne, God-given ability to detect the numinous and to access the sphere of eternality. Creatives therefore fight the greatest battle there is, to protect the power of their own Souls’ immortality and those of everyone else.

      Accept Your Immortality – Can we destroy our own immortality through abuse and disbelief? Sadly, yes, and some of us act like we want to! If “heaven” represents eternal bliss and “hell” eternal pain who would ever choose the latter? Those who find life itself such a stacked deck they turn away from the gamble. It’s soul suicide. This is as tragic as battling against one of our talents (“I’m never going near that guitar.”) Who exactly are you trying to harm? The direction we need to travel is in uncovering who we really are and freeing ourselves. To become a Self worth being.

      Everyone Has Experienced the “Flow “of Bliss– We have knowledge of eternality in our daily life – actual accessible ecstasy in which Time and Impossibility vanish while we experience full connectedness with the universe. We become Creatives just to master this ability – and to transfer it to others. This skill alone makes merely being ourselves a reliable, eternal pleasure.

      Creative Challenge – Obviously, our minds change the same way our bodies do. We grow up! Think about the differences between you now, and you at say, three years old. Imagine the joyous understanding with which you will eventually “get” what seems now incomprehensible. If you just accept that possibility, you can enjoy the Now.

      Creative Danger – What Christians call “sin”, Buddhists call “clinging”. We grab on to any passing thing in fear, to halt the frightening mystery of our flight but of course it doesn’t work! The G forces build up as space revolves around us, meanwhile we are clinging to some crappy object, or some person who is experiencing a different trajectory. Let those things go. Don’t be frightened by your feelings, just study them, turn them into huge iridescent bubbles, and spin them away. Learn to enjoy this flight, no matter how wild it gets.

      Creative Opportunity – Think about the Biblical parable in which everyone is invited to a glorious feast. These “guests” are so threatened by this invitation, they not only don’t go, they murder the messenger. Watch the glorious film, Groundhog Day. Poor weather forecaster Bill Murray is sentenced to living the same reality over and over and over again, trying everything he can think of to escape, including suicide. Finally he decides to learn how to just enjoy the life he has been granted, and to be as nice as possible to the other frightened, enraged, confused souls around him. Only then is he able to move on to the next level which turns out to be the rewarding love of his dreams. That is the Progress of the Soul which we defend.

      Models & Mentors – “the living soul, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled” – Horace Mann

      “The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” – Carolyne Myss

      “Without applied awareness of the soul, happiness can’t arise” – Dada Bhagwan

      “The desire to know your own soul ends all other desires” – Rumi

      #Haiku: Last Minute

      Bone grows
      Mind crashed
      Soul merge
      Skin graft
      Intervention –
      Light shaft
      Angel…?
      Laughed.

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

      Dawn – Relief

      If This Archetype Chooses You – All suffering comes to an end. Your depression will lift. The future awaits.

      Creatives Know “This too shall pass” – We serve the future. Every dream is followed by an awakening which is followed by another dream. In the moment of relief from the fear and the tension that preceded it we are still shaking from the experience we went through. We are in no condition to make decisions. We are just so grateful that it is over. What is required of us, however, is appreciation of the cycle. We are surfing, whether we like it or not. Another wave will come. Creatives learn how to ride it.

      Creative Challenge – To rise above the cycle, take an honest look at it. This is hard to do when we are quivering and feeling victimized but it is necessary. What pattern do you see? The surfing analogy is a good one because the tides are not rhythmic nor perfectly predictable, and they are CERTAINLY not “personal” plus we know another wave will be coming along soon.

      Creative Strategy – Sometimes there’s a way out; we can change jobs, switch professions, get a divorce. Figure out where the pressure is coming from. Assess your abilities. What parts are you good at? Where do you suck? Can you enjoy any of this? How can your performance be improved? Most of us take pleasure in things we are good at. Can your enjoyment be deepened?

      We’re Never Helpless – Learned helplessness is real. People give up, stop trying to game or even understand the system. They lie down under the shocks, no longer even trying to escape, waiting for death. Never believe “Resistance is futile.” Don’t succumb.

      Creatives Win –This game is bigger than our mortal understanding. Nevertheless, you can comprehend the majesty of what we are up against and appreciate it as a knife appreciates the whetstone. We learn through analogy, we remember through stories.

      Creatives Are Free – Creatives can always improve, becoming graceful, competent athletes of this mortal existence until we graduate into the next sphere.

      Creatives Roll with the Punches – You can change and affect your fate. But you must roll with the punches. When Jesus says, “Resist not evil” he means, allow evil to roll over you and smash itself against your non-resistance. Studying martial arts increases our knowledge of how to manage, subvert and overcome Superior Force.

      Buddy Power – Friends, allies, buddies, sensei, even dead or fictional characters can be summoned to your aid. People choose such different characters as St. Francis, Sherlock Holmes, Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Mulan, Buddha and Jesus to be their “Dream buddies.” Some are more comfortable with an animal – your personal power creature; the jaguar, wolf, eagle or wolverine.

      Change Dream Buddies based on the problem confronting you. Ask their help before you go to sleep, solicit them to come to you in dreams to shed light upon your difficulty. Then the next morning, start writing and remembering the moment you wake up. Some key dreams take a lifetime to decipher.

      Models & Mentors – “Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but you never get anywhere”
      – Erma Bombeck

      “For fast acting relief, try slowing down” – Lily Tomlin

      “Happiness is the relief after extreme tension”
      – F. Scott Fitzgerald

      “Laughter is the tonic, the release, the surcease of pain” – Charlie Chaplin

      #Haiku: Blameless

      What could you accomplish
      If you blamed no one
      Ever – Self included