Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Warrior

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Night – Balance:

    If This Card Chooses You – Something in you is out of whack. Balance is a key law of nature to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that is experienced as a 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 story with potency and significance.

    Warriors Seek Balance – Unfortunately contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical 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 beings, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to joy.

    Warriors Live On Four Levels At Once – Warriors 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 and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.

    Balancing the Four 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 experience heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.

    Warrior 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

    “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.
    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

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Day – Focus:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    – Malcolm Gladwell

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

    #Haiku: Focus

    Energy
    Resurgent
    Depowers dread
    Repowers health-
    Dare –
    Aim –
    Fire

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Mourning – Detachment:

      If This Card Chooses You – You are depressed or facing depression. In your dreams you hurt. You feel such shuddering emptiness and loss it’s a physical relief to wake up and find your dream wasn’t real. Lots of people fear such sadness is some kind of prophecy. It’s enough to make a person fear going to sleep.

      The Detachment Card – warns you are too “involved.” Check out life’s professional warriors – such as cops, firemen, paramedics – all will tell you to “forget’ the personal just to get the job done. Focus on the “healable” crisis– even though all that suffering reminds you of your Special People and the dangers they face unwittingly, every day.

      People Die. People Even Lose Their Personalities BEFORE They Die – Think your worldview through BEFORE the crisis happens. If death ends everything, surely you will fear it. But remember, what a caterpillar calls “the end”, Nature calls ”a butterfly.”

      We All Need to Mourn – Warriors mourn, too. Warriors’ powerful forward drive sometimes fools them into thinking that moving backward in the dance is a sign of weakness, when ebb and flow are laws of life.

      Sadness is not allowed in a society where perfect strangers feel comfortable demanding you “smile.” Look at all these Instagram feeds with everybody grinning away because they’re having so much FUN and their lives are so PERFECT they never wake up shuddering with sadness. Except they are human too, so we know that they risk their very humanity by trying to pretend ”everything’s fine” when the red lights are flashing.

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

      First, we have to sort out “real” from “transferred” suffering. Whose misery has been foisted on you? If you’re in that position you are literally a “scapegoat” and will need all your warrior skills to get out of it. Do not accept transferred suffering. Pain is inevitable but suffering is voluntary. We feel compassion for some, we pity others their willful darkness but we do not accept their world scheme of punishment and torment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      #Haiku: Detachment

      last phase of grief
      blesses wrestling angel –
      flourishes scar tissue wings

    1. Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

      The Path – Goals:

      If This Card Chooses You – There Will Be Paperwork! – Do you dream of paths diverging in a yellow wood? Checklists? Maps? Are you talking to yourself as you follow your routine? What IS your routine? How has your routine evolved? What efforts have you made to change it to newly perceived needs and discoveries? Or is your routine formed outside you, for the benefit of others?

      Warriors Dream of Maps. If you talking to yourself throughout your routine that self-talk needs to be positive. Become an encouraging coach. Don’t hold yourself hostage or you can’t complete your steps.

      If You Have No Goal, Any Path Will Take You There – But you won’t like where you end up. Warriors are Goal-oriented. As you become more adept at change, you realize that dividing effort into “steps” to achieve a goal is critical. It won’t happen fast. Your conscious, subconscious, unconscious and collective unconscious (not to mention your pre-conscious!) are going to kick up a helluva fuss. But that’s the interesting part! Change is guaranteed.

      Warriors Are Sore-muscled Athletes. Day 2, thinking, I CAN’T DO THIS. Guess what? EVERYBODY THINKS THAT! Expect it! You treat yourself with loving compassion and cold compresses, hot baths and massage. In other words, there is an established map, a way to GET THROUGH THIS. The challenge is to CUSTOMIZE your map.

      Being is Movement. As we shape the Path, it shapes us. Even the most anti-social creatures are constantly making paths for others to follow. Such delight when we uncover a ready-made Path because path-making is exhausting! A ready-made path is a mysterious invitation. All paths lead Somewhere. Every Path, Visible or not, speaks of the existence of The Other.

      Paths speak of Destination, Intention, Design, History. Paths are our Robinson Crusoe footprint. They represent Hope: this Path worked not just once, but many times. We are proud of being Pathmakers in our turn, leading the weary, frightened traveler of the future toward confidence and reliability.

      Warriors Use Models. We need a constantly evolving pit crew of helpers. A side effect of routine remodeling is “crazy thinking.” We all need somebody to talk us off the ledge, somebody who is familiar with not just our goals but what we are going through. Your id is holding the rest of you hostage, and you need an experienced hostage negotiator.

      Waves of “fears” from your collective unconscious require symbolic release and expression in art, dance, love-making, sport or theatre.


      Disowned longings from your subconscious threaten your secure sense of self and may require therapeutic intervention.

      Unconscious drives from depths you’ve never plumbed can’t be faced without the courage of a Friend or Soulmate. So, don’t try making it through this crisis without a buddy AND a coach. AA has a useful acronym – HALT – representing:
      Hungry
      Angry
      Lonely
      Tired

      These are the Emotion States of Bad Decisions. So, when you see these conditions developing – Halt. Call your hostage negotiator immediately.

      Models & Mentors – “Setting goals is the first step into turning the invisible into the visible” – Tony Robbins

      “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not people or things” – Albert Einstein

      “A goal without a plan is just a wish” – Antoine St. Exupery

      “Always remember your focus determines your reality” – George Lucas

      #Haiku: Facing the Boogeyman

      Mimics dread
      Mocks goals
      Derails
      Ambition;
      Seize him and
      Laugh
      In his face

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

      Breakthrough – Epiphany:

      If This Card Chooses You – Let the Knowledge Pour In – You didn’t even know there was a wall there! And suddenly, you’re through it and the world looks completely different on the other side.

      Are you battering against barriers in your dreams? Are you breasting tape, cresting mountaintops, shedding light on darkness? You are seeking, or experiencing an epiphany. Let’s consider the pieces of your psyche/life that don’t add up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      – James Joyce

      “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” – Isaiah 60: 1-3

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

      #Haiku: Epiphany

      Dominos crash:
      Picture resolves:
      Insight –
      Upside down is
      Right side up

    3. Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

      Planets & Stars – Eternity:

      If This Card Chooses You – Eternity requires your constantly evolving self. Do you dream of astronomy? Vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams, where change has slowed or stopped. You are struggling not with questions of death or afterlife, but the “ongoing everythingness” of reality itself. What is “time”? How long can “time” continue when nothing is “alive”?

      Warriors Train to be Immortal – Immortality is never guaranteed. When you imagine “life forever” – what is the “you” in that context? Matter is already transmutably immortal – Your body is currently composed from the atoms of exploded stars. We all tremble at transitions; but do we really want certain phases of our existence to continue “indefinitely’? Seems not only impossible but repugnant. Change is life – changelessness is stagnation. Without any human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must exist outside of time. Fiercely we insist on the continuation of consciousness. But do we want to know the terrible things God knows, or do you really desire a return to an infancy safe inside the arms of a most loving mother?

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

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

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

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

      “Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment” – Henry David Thoreau

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

      ‘Love is the emblem of eternity, effacing memory of its beginning and all fear of its end”

      – Mme. De Stael

      #Haiku: Beginners’ Mind

      I never
      Graduate;
      Freshened by
      Eternally
      Discovering.

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

      Paradise – Bliss:

        If This Card Chooses You – Suffering isn’t eternal. Your ecstasy is guaranteed. But what is your definition of paradise? Some people want to see their enemies suffer. That’s what the view looks like – in hell. If you wanted to find your bliss, where would you look? Find yourself dreaming of a tropical getaway? Is your definition of heaven raised consciousness or lack of consciousness? Would you want to know what is happening in the world or would you want to be removed from the world? Can you really be happy if you know there is suffering anywhere?

        If There Is a Hell, Multiverse Declares Its Opposite Must Exist – As we mature, we can choose to either elevate or denigrate our consciousness. We are creating “heaven”, or “hell” – our choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?

        Are Warriors Heaven Material? When we are young, we obsess about whether we are really liked or loved, whether we are really “popular.” As we get older we slowly realize that people like/love to the extent of their spiritual and emotional ability/depth. Shallow people offer very shallow love – nothing can take root there. It can flip in an instant. If the whole purpose of life on this planet – a struggle by any standard – is for humans to become more like God then we are being challenged to create the kind of emotional and psychic depth that sees ”inside’ – understands and accepts everyone’s struggle, everyone’s challenge.

        Warrior Challenge – Bliss is a scientifically provable psychic state of timeless ecstasy mapped by “alpha waves” which can be seen in the brain. This state is called “flow”. We drift outside ourselves and belong to the universe. It is the condition called “mastery.” This is such a happy state we long to cultivate and re-experience it, which we can do from immersing ourselves in art, meditation, love, sexual/emotional union, or thought.

        Warrior Soul – Non-Warriors bounce between self-obsession and living entirely in and through other people. Neither condition is optimal, although there are times in our lives when these states are necessary or unavoidable. Balance – sometimes called moderation – is the warriors’ secret. Warriors are IN the group, but we are not “the group”. We do not subjugate our brain to the “group mind” but contribute our educated brain-power to it. Warriors elevate the group with the our Soul power even when others try to drag it down through thoughtless replication of idiotic non-ideas.

        Self-Lessness is A Terrible Fate – Some people choose to never develop an individuated self. They pass from group to group, trying to “fit in” and quell the inner voice that says. “this isn’t right.” Warriors call attention to violations of our basic human mandate: to develop a soul that is worthy of God.

        Warriors are Individuals Who Become More and More Unique – You are on a hero’s quest: you are the hero and the quest is for your Soul. This is both an inner and an outer quest. We have responsibilities from birth onwards; when we come to consciousness we can clearly see we are our brother’s/sister’s keeper. We are our own keeper, too. Mistakes – sometimes devastating ones – are expected. It’s a dangerous world and we will meet more than one predator looking to make a meal of us.

        Warriors Know Where They are Going – Elevate, denigrate or disintegrate. Your choice: every minute of every day. consciousness. “Heaven”, or “hell” – your choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?

        Warriors Know Bliss – Bliss is the haze that comes after successful efforts. Bliss is the warriors’ prize. It comes not only from doing well, but from intending to do well and shaping your soul and purpose and ideation toward Wellness.

        Warriors Choose Heaven – We must be wily as the snake and tender as the dove. Because in the end, it’s all about Love. The more you give, the more you feel. The more you give, the larger your capacity for ecstasy.

        Models & Mentors – “Follow your bliss and walls turn into doors” – Joseph Campbell

        “In a state of bliss – everything is love” – Deepak Chopra

        “Joy is a connection to what matters – a sustained sense of well-being and inner peace”

        – Oprah Winfrey

        “I need not sell my soul to buy bliss” – Charlotte Bronte

        #Haiku: Bliss

        You and
        I
        Merge;
        Evanesce;
        Solids
        Deliquesce:
        Fire,
        Air
        Acquiesce.

      1. Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

        Loss – Suffering:

        If This Card 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.

        Warriors 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.

        Warriors 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. Warriors 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.

        Warrior 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 snowblanket?
        Peonies decide.

      2. Becoming a Warrior -the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

        Transformation – Metamorphosis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

        “Perfection is constant transformation” – Nia Peeples

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

        #Haiku: Being Is Relationship

        Electric seeks
        Charge;
        Transformer –
        You’re my lock on
        Immortality

      3. Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

        Mystery – Faith:

        If This Card Chooses You – You long to uncover the solution. Do you have faith that there IS a solution? What is your tolerance for the mysterious? Given how the universe works, you may need to crank it up a notch. Do you dream of apocalypses? Religious iconography? Are you a mystery fan but irritated and underwhelmed by most “solutions”? How much uncertainty can you tolerate? Are you afraid of the dark? Chronically underslept? Fear being alone? The Mystery card warns, you have a profound need for faith in your life.

        The Faithful Are Rewarded – Untrusting people are untrusted. George Bernard Shaw said it best: liars can’t believe anybody. Everyone knows this, but even so we often rush to trust where it isn’t warranted, then enter a cycle of disappointment, yearning and ill-placed hope that drives our mood still lower. We need somebody and something to rely on. How can we find them?

        “People don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel.” Recall your childhood – the people you loved and trusted and the people you were scared by and nervous about. You were developing a “gut instinct.” Who were the friends that stayed with you in the face of adversity and who were the ones who dropped away?

        Love always makes the difference. It is the magic salve that soothes and heals life’s inevitable bumps and scrapes. People who offer real love you can have faith in, people who offer something else – status, belonging, self-serving rationales – disappoint us. Faith gets stronger the more it is proved. We may hope for a good day, but we have faith that the sun will come up.

        Faith Is Trust & Belief in the Worthy -– Sometimes the mysteries of life are deliberate confusions to keep us confused. Why can’t our politicians ever inaugurate the policies that are the reason we elected them in the first place? They try to convince us that “secret cabals” and “unknown enemies” are at fault. They want us angry and befuddled so we won’t place the blame where it belongs and demand accountability. Secrecy serves the purposes of darkness. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

        Warriors demand transparency & accountability. Outline your beliefs and begin to act on them. Some mystery is endemic to existence but when people sharply change direction we can still track their path. Less smoke and mirrors and more step by step upgrades are something we can all agree on.

        Warriors grow in the level of mystery we can absorb. Algebra has logical answers, quantum theory does not. We solve the puzzles that mystified us as children and keep solving until we come to the puzzles no one can solve. But we keep trying! The limits and un-limits of physics and space are constantly being mapped. We are not content with the label “here be dragons” placed across the unknown. We no longer believe God resents and punishes exploration, science and development. A vaccine was developed against a mystery illness in just one year.

        No Hope Without Faith – Insoluble mysteries often have to do with motivation – the spring-work of the soul. Why do we make ourselves miserable? Artists teach us that these questions can be “solved” by posing them differently. Depth psychologists tell us that the shallow reasoning of our surface mind is far less important than deep memories and drives we can uncover through emotional and analytic spelunking. Warriors love mysteries. Develop faith. Never give up.

        Models & Mentors – “Faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase” – Martin Luther King Jr.

        “Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong.” – 1 Corinthians 16:13

        “Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there till some light returns” – Anne LaMott

        “If we fight with faith, we are twice armed” – Plato

        #Haiku: Mystery

        Can’t
        “Get to the bottom of”
        World, thought, faith, time or Love; it’s
        Bottom-
        Less