Category: spirituality

  • Purrsiflage – Daily Zen for Cat People with Alysse Aallyn

    Feb 3

    Today the Universe Delivers the Secret – At the same time you are Lonely for Light; the Light is Lonely for You. Do you dream of other-worldly events? Parapsychological and out of body experiences? Flying and underwater breathing? 

    Freedom dreams of otherworldly mastery tell us much about who we are. In the Purrson Horoscope, the sunflower represents our spirituality – a natural inborn turning toward Light, a reaching out for connection with something others might insist is not there. But we feel – very strongly – that it is. Who’s right?

    Sunflowers Need Light and So Do Purrsons – Hundreds of years ago Blaise Pascal argued that we have so much to gain if the supernatural is true, and nothing to gain if it isn’t, so that the calculus is simple. When you act as if the universe was richly designed by a Carer who promotes Goodness and rewards Love, you create the ideal conditions for human flourishing, whereas, as we all know, and has been conclusively proven scientifically, pessimism about outcomes dramatically lowers future benefits. Certainly, one could argue that our communications with each other are fraught with mistake and misapprehension, but that’s an argument for increased effort and insight and hardly a quitter’s mandate.

    Cats & Purrsons Cultivate their Sixth Sense – Some people are born color blind – others are tone deaf – so it’s perfectly possible some are unable to access the extra dimensions. But the lucky few that identify as Purrsons know that there is a universal resource to be tapped into when we can maneuver ourselves to the “right wavelength.”

    Purrsons Follow the Sunflower Path – What IS our mandate? Focus on increasing your ability to tell health and growth potential from sickness and disease enhancement. This will help you find the right path and the right people. Goodness never seeks your diminishment and constriction – the ruthless pursuit of human power does that. 

    Test all wavelengths for generosity, balance and liveliness before venturing out upon them, just as a cat would; this sensitivity is your Cat Whiskers.

     Contemplate what is beneficial in the universe. Bask in the flow of reassurance, resilience and recovery that intense spirituality provides.

    Purrson Challenge – Fully explore your fears with a view to answering Immanuel Kant’s timeless question, “What can we hope?”  Jesus focused his ministry on healing and met virulent rule-focused pushback. He found himself in a world of frenzied status-seeking, abject power submission and denigration of minorities, women life-givers and the poor. His life as well as his words teach us that the “Letter” kills, but the “spirit” gives Life. 

    It is up to us to find and nourish the spirit that shares unafraid, realizing that commitment causes our resources to double and triple stratospherically. Once you can feel the “angels” – i.e. virtues – around you – (I picture them as nosing deer!) your fear subsides.

    Purrsons Never Surrender Their Ability to Scent Danger – No journey can be free of risk. Trust requires us to follow where we cannot see the path, and so sometimes we lose the path. Sometimes we realize our “guide” is REALLY looking to capture & constrain, not enhance & liberate. We must maintain our ability and reserve our right to recognize this so that we can  reverse course before the cliff edge,  telling malignant spirits “You no longer represent me” and to seek out a healthier program of progress.

    Purrsons Enhance Opportunity for Everyone – We are never alone.  All around us are pilgrims struggling with the same things we’re struggling with. Sharing and caring knits us together. The American two party political system benefits from stirring up hatreds to protect itself from change. Don’t accept it. We are not each other’s enemies. The possibilities for friendship and connection are huge, but hatred and anger lead in only one direction.

    Models & Mentors – “The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper”- W.B. Yeats

    “You need not work to become spiritual – you are spiritual. You need only to recognize that fact” – Julia Cameron

    “The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love” – Marianne Williamson

    “Happy people build their inner world – unhappy people blame their outer world” – Dalai Lama

    “The power of God is with you at all times, through the activities of mind, sense, breathing, the emotions , doing all the work, using you as mere instrument”  – Bhagavad Gita

  • Purrsiflage – Cat Zen for Your Inner Artist’s Soul with Alysse Aallyn

    Feb 2

    In An Unfeeling Universe Your Soul Cries Out for Definition –

    Birds gotta sing. It’s who they are. And it’s who YOU are, as well. Some inchoate thing within you longs for expression.

    Do you dream of artistic products – paintings, sculpture, film – or artistic endeavors such as performance and construction? Do you get ideas for fresh pieces and experience exciting nonconformist thinking that seem to evaporate upon waking?

    Some of Us Are Purrsons Because of Art – Art is the judge of our poetic confrontation with the world, the cure and the cause.  It is also our prime avenue for non-verbal healing. Only non-verbal healing can address the pain that can’t be quantified.

    Learn A New Language Or Develop Your Own – Your inner self is signaling to you that it is time for you to explore other languages – art expression – mastering its terms, and to start inventing terms of your own. Only art can establish the secure connection with others required to nourish you now.

    Purrsons are Artists Whether They Like It Or Not – Every single one of us chooses modes and objects of expression, consciously or unconsciously, every single day. We buy one object over another because it gives us pleasure; we arrange our living spaces to express some intangible quality about ourselves – a self-definition that signals to others who we are and where we are on our journey.

    Purrsons Yearn for Freedom and Artists Are Free – Art demands individuality. We begin by copying but we must move on to expressing our uniqueness or our soul can’t evolve. If we are happy being part of an unthinking mass we are truly “unborn.”  This exploration will grant you a deep peace about being alone with yourself, a strong confidence in who you really are and a feeling of spiritual value.

    New Battles to Fight – This journey is awkward at first, and in other people’s eyes it may remain awkward forever. Why wouldn’t you just copy whatever is popular? Why not mimic the uncontroversially successful? The problem is, while you are doing that the core of your self-hood is dying like an unwatered plant. And if your soul is dying, you are dying. Also, being bullied by the “art enforcers” is not what Purrsons are about.

    Sometimes We Bully Ourselves Worse – Perfection is not the answer – it is the enemy. Remember – we flee stagnation. Our soul’s “perfecting never reaches an end” – that’s our definition of immortality. Constantly shaming yourself as a no-talent, pretending poseur is horrifyingly destructive to your precious infant specialness struggling for expression.

    Make a Resolution to Start Supporting Yourself. The fact that a work is unsuccessful, even a horrific mess, doesn’t mean it isn’t an advance for your vision, insight and style. These are the building blocks of creation. Don’t get hung up on approval. You need teachers, not fans. Read the brilliant War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

    Models & Mentors – “Creativity takes courage” – Henri Matisse

    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” – Henry David Thoreau

    “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight without vision” – Helen Keller

    “You were born an original, don’t die a copy” – Jon Mason

    “Life beats down and crushes the art in your soul to remind you that you have one” – Stella Adler

    “There are no rules, only confidence, aplomb, style & joy” – Neil Gaiman

  • Purrsiflage – Today’s Kitty Horoscope with Alysse Aallyn

    Jan 20

    The Universe Know That You are searching for your “other”.  Today you will know either who it is, or where to look.

    Do you look in the mirror and see another face behind yours? Do you dream of a lost twin? Do you imagine “the other” across a crowded room, and think when you touch their hand, you will feel a strange galvanic charge?  Do you think soulmates are even possible?  Is there only one or are many soulmates potentially developed over a lifetime? 

    Have you been disenchanted with sex? Does it seem like more trouble than it is worth? Do you have sex dreams that feel more like night terrors? Does sex make you feel increasingly worthless and untouchable?

    Soulmates Are Real and You Have One – It’s never too late. You are never so “lost” you can’t find your soulmate. The problem is, your soulmate feels just the way you do and both of you are frightened of those feelings, isolating you further in an invisible, impenetrable membrane. You want your soulmate to rescue you, but Purrsons rescue each other. This takes a lot of bravery, a lot of humility, much insight and a little magic.

    Desire Can Be Slaked – Temporarily. Purrson must stay alert. We don’t pursue numbness – or even satiety. It’s good to get acquainted with hunger. Pro tip – hunger keeps you young. Hunger is a condition of youth.

    When Purrsons Bond There is No Going Back. – The potential magic of sexual connection ignites the search for a SoulMate. Purrsons believe that once found, a Soul Pair becomes capable of Time Travel, TransSubstantiation, and Immortality.  Genders merge; either one can be feminine, masculine or androgyne at will. One wing searches for another to form a bird and fly. The question we must ask ourselves is: are we willing to undergo the pain of having the boundaries of our borders breached to fully merge with another?

    Purrsons Lift Each Other’s Souls – The power of a doubled pair is raised to the nth power by their knowledge, commitment and shared purpose.

    Purrsons Release Each Other – There are so many permissions, forgivenesses, and skills we cannot give ourselves. Love literally gives you eyes in the back of your head. There is no hiding from your soulmate.

    Doubled Purrsons Power the Universe – The constant clash of mating, sharing, satisfying and negotiating is the music of the spheres. It keeps us all spinning in an ecstasy of selfless selfhood.

    Purrson Challenge – There are plenty of frogs out there and some vipers, and you will kiss each. Possibly more than once. It’s also possible that we have “rewired” our system – through porn, games, and casual sex – so that it actually prevents us from recognizing a soulmate and forging a life bond. This is why starting as friends is so critical. It gets your defenses down to the point where you can talk about fears, desires and problematic reactions. Go slowly, welcome mistakes and be prepared to learn.

    Purrson Danger – Sometimes – let’s face it – most times, you and your soulmate are “sick.”  You have “caught” infection from a society that says “screw you” to eternal, mystical, mutual sexual union. That makes things hard. You don’t recover overnight. You must commit to good mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and sexual hygiene and you will both have to figure out what it is. You need to make a plan – yes, a map – out of each other’s minds and bodies. If the other person refuses to accept health you will have to detach for your own sanity and safety. Vampires create other vampires, and bliss will elude them. The most important part of soulmating is the mutual pledge for health and growth – for both of you.

    Purrson Opportunity – My book, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead – is about the supernatural powers of soulmates. It’s about what to do when you dislike and distrust your soulmate at first. It’s about what to do when you and your soulmate both have horrific pasts and are pursued by actual demons.  I can’t say it clearer than that. Don’t be frightened. Your bond is eternal, across time, geography and multiverses.  Take it slow. You have all the time in the multiverse.

    Bereavement Is Never the End – As life itself is not the end, bereavement cannot be. The glory of bliss still awaits, and detached Soulmates have been known to find each other and form new spiritual and physical connections.

    Models & Mentors – “A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life and then introduce you to your spiritual master” – Elizabeth Gilbert

    “A soulmate is the one person whose love is powerful enough to motivate you to meet your soul to do the emotional work of self-discovery and awakening”

    – Kenny Loggins

    “They fought all the time and challenged each other every day. They were crazy about each other” – Nicholas Sparks

    “I know what love is, because of you.” – Herman Hesse

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: The Sunflower

    Petaled abandon

    Squanders

    Heaven’s glory:

    Feeding all our

    Hungers

  • 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 Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

    Sunflowers – Spirituality

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are Thirsting for Light and the Light is Thirsting for You. Do you dream of other-worldly events? Parapsychological and out of body experiences? Flying and underwater breathing? These freedom dreams of otherworldly mastery tell us much about who we are. In the Creative Oracle, the sunflower represents our spirituality – a reaching out for connection with something others might insist is not there. But we feel – very strongly – that it is. Who’s right?

    Sunflowers Turn to The Light and So Do Creatives. Hundreds of years ago Blaise Pascal argued that we have so much to gain if the supernatural is true, and nothing to gain if it isn’t, so that the calculus is simple. When you act as if the universe was richly designed by a Carer who promotes Goodness and rewards Love, you create the ideal conditions for human flourishing, whereas, as we all know, and has been conclusively proven scientifically, pessimism about outcomes dramatically lowers future benefits. Certainly, one could argue that our communications with each other are fraught with mistake and misapprehension, but that’s an argument for increased effort and insight and hardly a quitter’s mandate.

    Creatives Cultivate Sixth Sense – Some people are born color blind – others are tone deaf – so it’s perfectly possible some are unable to access the extra dimensions. But the lucky creative few – know that there is a universal resource to be tapped into when we can maneuver ourselves to the “right wavelength.”

    Creatives Follow The Sunflower Path – What IS our mandate? Focus on increasing your ability to tell health and growth potential from sickness and disease enhancement. This will help you find the right path and the right people. Goodness never seeks your diminishment and constriction – the ruthless pursuit of human power does that. Test all wavelengths for generosity, balance and liveliness and contemplate what is beneficial in the universe. Bask in the flow of reassurance, resilience and recovery that intense spirituality provides.

    Creative Challenge – Fully explore your fears with a view to answering Immanuel Kant’s timeless question, “What can we hope?” Jesus focused his ministry on healing and met virulent rule-focused pushback. He found himself in a frenzy of status-seeking coupled with denigration. His life as well as his words teach us that the “Letter” kills, but the “spirit” gives Life. It is up to us to find and nourish that spirit. Once you can feel the “angels” – i.e. virtues – around you – (I picture them as nosing deer!) your fear subsides.

    Creatives Never Surrender Their Ability to Scent Danger – No journey can be free of risk. Trust requires us to follow where we cannot see the path, and so sometimes we lose the path. Sometimes we realize our “guide” REALLY looks to capture & constrain, not enhance & liberate. We must maintain our ability and reserve our right to recognize this so that we can reverse course before the cliff edge, telling malignant spirits “You no longer represent me” and to seek out a healthier program of progress.

    Creatives Enhance Opportunity for Everyone – We are never alone. All around us are pilgrims struggling with the same things we’re struggling with. Sharing and caring knits us together. The American two party political system benefits from stirring up hatreds to protect itself from change. Don’t accept it. We are not each other’s enemies. The possibilities for friendship and connection are huge, but hatred and anger lead in only one direction.

    Models & Mentors – “The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper”- W.B. Yeats

    “You need not work to become spiritual – you are spiritual. You need only to recognize that fact” – Julia Cameron

    “The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love” – Marianne Williamson

    “Happy people build their inner world – unhappy people blame their outer world” – Dalai Lama

    “The power of God is with you at all times, through the activities of mind, sense, breathing, the emotions , doing all the work, using you as mere instrument” – Bhagavad Gita

    #Haiku: Hegira

    Fleeing outward
    Questing
    Fresh feathers
    Enabling
    Spirit’s
    Aching wings

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

    Night – Balance

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Something in you is out of whack. Balance is a key law of nature to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that we experience as a kind of living death. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams begin to balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively in the light of day, as a warning story with curative potency and significance.

    Creatives Seek Balance – Unfortunately our contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical and sensual gifts, falling in love, listening to music, sharing with children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched by thinking about it! That’s why we are called “homo sapiens.”

    Balance is a Law of Nature – The pursuit of competitive highs without the thinking and enshrining stages always leads to excess and grief. Highs for their own sake inevitably disappoint, leading to a pursuit of more and more dangerous highs, which, if we are not thinking about them, sharing them with others and incorporating them into our personal history and philosophy, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to future joys.

    Creatives Live on All Levels At Once – Creatives learn to give thanks for and pay tribute to the Past, to enjoy and understand the Present, to anticipate and strategize for the Future and to revel in and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.

    Balancing the Levels – Joy that is held in the mind is joy endlessly re-experienced. It will be yours forever, and you will be able to share it with all the people you love for the rest of your life. Each of us briefly experiences heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.

    Creative Challenge – We need to personally set up our brain’s “reward system” to handle pleasure and suffering or we will be prescribed drugs in an attempt to achieve the same effect chemically. Drugs can be useful as training wheels; ideally we want to teach our systems to achieve the same effect naturally. Calm is the first step to balance, so we must learn to calm ourselves. Meditation, sleep and yoga offer the best methods for reliable self-soothing. First, we assert calm over our breath, then our bodies, lastly our thoughts. It’s not that difficult! Reminder: this occurred naturally every night of our lives before we started stressing about it!

    Night Is the Leveler – Our species needs sleep to connect to the Universal Mind, and to the minds of all Dreamers, human and animal. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides a trusted avenue to filter daily discoveries down to your subconscious level. Always have a joy to think about just as you are going to sleep, and another for when you are waking up. This will sharpen your connection with emotional ecstasy and deepen your life. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.

    Models & Mentors – “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey

    “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” – Dolly Parton

    1.“For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate.
    9.A time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3

    “Moderation in All Things” – Hesiod

    #Haiku: Stability

    Assert balance;
    Employ wealth of eternity
    Universal mind

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

    Loss – Suffering

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are hurting. If you can no longer feel pain, you are numb. Every religion and philosophical system must account for the misery we see around us – storms, flood, volcanos, disease, human frustration and animal predation.

    Creatives Get Used to Loss – Do your dream explore inner and outer pain? How much is fear, how much is anxiety, how much is collective unconscious and shared human history? We fear there is no possible paradise where everyone can be happy all at once. How do we educate ourselves to surf this intolerable dilemma?

    Pain is Joy’s Shadow – Joy is an excess of feeling and so is suffering. When we long to “numb out”, we numb everything. If we live our lives in fear, we avoid the potential excitement of holding our breath on the edge of discovery.

    Creatives Dare to Feel it All. Bravely we take on the feelings of the entire planet to show that we can’t be destroyed by them. Creatives explore and expand the edges of perception and assessment. Philosophical coping mechanisms can be Buddhist – “It’s all illusion”;“ Practice taming the wild mind”; or religious – “Suffering brings us closer to God in developing compassion for all creation” and “Birth pangs are necessary to bring new life.” Any way we can keep our mind and soul responsive and deepening benefits the whole planet.

    Don’t Surrender to Learned Helplessness – Too much suffering breeds inertia. We stop even trying to better our human situation while attracting predators to such easy prey. Even worse, we become predators ourselves, bragging to the godless that we are the new potentates. Cruelty breeds endless cruelty. There must be a way to step off this treadmill – there’s enough suffering going around without manufacturing more.

    Creative Daring Frees the Universe – Imagination itself comes from discomfort, even misery. We see a need to expand our mental repertoire, to magically increase the very dimensions of thought that seem to imprison us. As a species we have broken through this many times. Further epiphanies await.

    Models & Mentors – “You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered”
    Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

    “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard”
    A.A. Milne

    “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can suffer such deep sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them”
    Leo Tolstoy

    “What we once loved we can never lose for it becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live” – Norman Cousins

    #Haiku: Profit/Loss Analysis

    Does autumn lose summer
    Warmth or
    Gain snow-blanket?
    Peonies decide.