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The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
Synchronicity = What We Need to Learn: “Synching up”
How do couples get “in synch”? How much of it is conscious? Synchronicity is more than symbiosis, more than coincidence. Like all true serendipity it contains an element of magic. If the bubbling primordial stew hadn’t brought the right ingredients together at the right time, life as we know I simply couldn’t have begun.
There’s always a strong element of synchronicity in teamwork, as in all collaborative enterprises. We become sensitive to the rhythms of the other. Feel the rise and fall of the others’ energy and must exactly time our moment to chime in.
It’s the Trust Game writ large across the heavens; the magic of need producing the miracle of response creates the synchronicity of Life.
Think about your interpersonal relationships as a series of concentric circles. There are people on the outmost rings whom we recognize but exchange no words with and know nothing about, down to the closest, tightest ring, where we maybe know too much about those people, possibly feel stifled, even a bit unchallenged by their presence in our lives. And our closest relationships may actually merge into our own space, until we can’t tell where we end and the other person begins.Remember what it takes to achieve friendship – Are there once-close people whom we have banished to the outer distance? How did that happen? Any people we long to bring closer who seem stubbornly resistant to our charms? Do we notice any pattern in the way we relate to others? A favorite game therapists play is “Find the Father/Mother”. In other words, are we recreating any original family dynamics with other people we may know? (Critic, sugar daddy, permission giver, etc.)
This game can be extended to “Find the Sibling” as we study ways to become competitive by conspiring against a “common enemy” with fellow workers or even friends. Let’s make the effort to become more conscious, less rigid. We’re going to “work” this circle. It is not going to “work” us!
Being “in synch” requires understanding where the other person is coming from and feeling confident that they understand where you’re coming from. (And going to.) Do you enjoy learning? You’d better, because we have a lot of it ahead of us. Horribly, some people decide to settle down because THEY’RE TIRED OF LEARNING. They yearn for unchanging, static conditions! Yet your soulmate represents an entirely new world, and between the two of you, you will be creating another one. So there will be lots of learning going on.
If you are really phobic about “learning” new things, now’s your time to figure out why. It may be that you hate “tests”, (a perfectly acceptable human reaction to stress conditions) but you love gaming. In other words, YOU REALLY LOVE TO LEARN, aren’t afraid of challenges and relish the acquisition of new skills and worldviews, but you had BAD SCHOOLING EXPERIENCES.
You can see that’s entirely different, but it’s still helpful to know. The more your partnership resembles “school’ (with one of you as teacher/judge) the more unpleasant it’s going to be.
So prepare to match your quest to the type of exploration you LIKE to do and most importantly, talk about it. Your partner can’t read your mind and people are often shy and can’t find the words to quantify their emotion. But between the two of you will FIGURE IT OUT. “I don’t know what I’m feeling – maybe panic with a dash of dread?” you can help each other to analyze and assess. You’ll be talking not just about your relationship, but every relationship either of you has ever had. “I’m afraid to look back/talk or even think about this,” is an acceptable opening bid. And throughout this process, you’ll get closer.
Leaving the Coven
A craven of cronies stood
Between us & God
God hated short skirts, God
Demands clones.A damnation of judges
Stood between us &
Knowledge; truth exists
Only in service to others.A clowder of cretins
Stood between us &
Art: “Don’t be disturbing”
“Never trust instincts.”From the depths of
This oubliette
You drank the koolaid
Guaranteeing your survivalCherishing passion
Rescuing me –
As I rescued you
So I could grow up
And write this poem. -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
The Rainbow = “SERENDIPITY”
Rainbows have vast cultural, religious, and psychological implications. They announce that the storm is past and offer a gateway to somewhere obviously special, right up there in the sky, a glittering gateway offering us every color in the spectrum. “There’s a land that I dream of,” sang Judy Garland yearningly and we sang and yearned right along with her.
Rainbows have their head in the heavens and their feet lost somewhere on earth; sheltering a “pot of gold” or so they say. But if you soar through their beckoning gates obviously you will have to leave the gold behind. Rainbows are clearly magic, yet everyone, even skeptics, even the unimaginative, can see them. This Rainbow is a gateway to whatever we desire, if we just could figure out what it is. There’s nothing earthly about the transcendence that it promises. We’re even a little afraid of it. We’re not ready for it YET. But we’re so, so glad it’s there. Just like Serendipity itself.
What role does luck and chance play in our lives? We are all familiar with the phrase, “The harder I work the luckier I get.” But how about chance? Chance seems to determine who will be our mate, for one thing! True, we often strategize about putting ourselves in the “right place at the right time” and we want the same thing for our kids, otherwise there wouldn’t be this deadly serious skirmishing over “the right pre-school.” We are very aware of “unlucky accidents” and try to prevent those as best with can with a seatbelt and a multi-vitamin; even those of us who smoke and gamble know that much.
But sometimes we don’t value “good luck”, especially if it’s completely unexpected. Do we feel it’s “undeserved?” If we have children who sleep easily or get good grades do we just take that for granted while focusing on “what’s wrong?” How about our own health and good looks – not to mention the love we feel around us — are those things only “treasured” when they’re gone? I think of the woman who said she doesn’t focus on whether a glass is half empty or half full but instead on who’s going to drink it and whether she will get any?We need more than beauty, more than strategy, more than alliances. We need Good Luck. Serendipity is Chance. What are the odds you would walk into that grocery store, check a disused social media account, return an item, misdial a call? Our whole lives seem to be comprised of Lucky Accidents and Near Misses.
Yes, we try to learn from them, but we are spooked as well. It’s enough to make a person superstitious, because, How can you engineer happy fortune? This way: “The harder you work the luckier you get.”
Be there. In the right place at the right time. When you’re looking for a soulmate it’s like looking for a job – it helps if everybody knows about it. Let’s widen our opportunity to Get Lucky.
Serendipity
All art’s
“Controlled Accident” –
Maybe Love is also –
You plus God plus
Fate:
Equals serendipity –
Give up power steering
Float – Dream – Surrender
Unto the skid -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
Peace=SERENITY “Everything Will Work Out”
What does it mean to have confidence in the future? We know the most attractive thing about others is “confidence.” Unfortunately, confidence can be faked, so there are a lot of people who believe that’s all it is: a shiny shop window. But if the goods don’t match the advertising, frustration and anger sets in.We’re looking for the long-term – immortality in fact – which can be achieved by two souls in perfect synch. We want to exude not just confidence but serenity. We want to be the person it’s peaceful and re-charging to be around because THAT person is VERY attractive.
That kind of serenity and confidence comes from communing with the eternal. Yes, you’re going to have to “iron out” your philosophy BEFORE you find your soulmate. Christians satisfy themselves by getting to know God. Buddhists bathe in eternity itself. Karma is the “vibe” you send – if it is a peaceful one, it will come back to you.
Peace is the absence of strife; a sense of repletion and comfort. It is less active than joy, and people are actually afraid of it, the way they’re afraid of heaven. If everything’s already achieved, then isn’t hope dead? That’s why they stir things up by taking pokes at people. Develop a concept of “peace”. A related concept is “plenty” and another is “enough.”
When you are not actively looking for attachment, when you are feeling “enough”, people flock to you. It is because of that very sense of being “at peace” with yourself. Others want that sense for themselves, they are intensely attracted to a peaceful aura, which comes across as confidence, even if you haven’t got a single accomplishment to brag about. People like that are a relief…a relaxation…a vacation to be around.Can a sense of peace be “faked”? Obviously not. Time – and it doesn’t take much time – will fast reveal the truth. Much less trouble to cultivate ACTUAL peace. How do we do that? Through the calming disciplines of mindfulness, yoga and gratitude cultivation. If we can demonstrate that we are open to joy, people inevitably desire what we have.
We are creatures of hope. If we sharpen ourselves against others as if they were cuttle bones, isn’t the absence of effort an absence of self-definition? We would just sink back into the undifferentiated mass of persons as into a heavenly cloud, all light, without defining shadow. Stop worrying! This is just “semantics” because Peace makes no sense without love and love is active. Harmony is desirable; disharmony is not. Listening to a cacophony is wearisome after the first few seconds, while harmonics, however subtle and complex, produce feelings of rightness, joy and Peace.
What if we lose confidence and serenity?
Doubt is human. Uncertainty is human. We armor ourselves with our belief in the promises of the eternal.But isn’t doubt disabling? At what point can we just relax? Most Americans think confidence comes from a track record of rewarded accomplishments. In pursuit of a soulmate, let’s imagine you in conversation with a stranger. As you’re wondering about them and trying to get to know them, you rapidly realize that spouting your resume and listening while they brag is NOT, actually, informative communication. What you really want to do is get a “feel for the other person’s “essence.”
Are they “itchy? Restless? Or are they yearning for peace? If so, you can work with that! Experiment by “relaxing together.”Soulstice
In this the Purgatory of the year
the crystal cracks the future clear
The fire maple stands unleaved
And stalks the bony breast of earth bereaved;
The sap within the corpse unseen
Boils up a ready dynamo of green;
The fetal fish child stirs and yawns
An equinoctial birthday dawns.
This is the zero hour when
Our future dances with its end
This winter music, echoless
Raised up the chalice that is Us
He gives, we are the offerings
Unto the center and the focus of all things. -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
The Lovers = ALLIANCES: “Best Friends”
Becoming a lover forges an alliance for the future. We’re not talking of two raindrops crashing into each other for sex, but a mutual declaration of interest and benefit. Spend today thinking about past alliances; not just love relationships but all alliances dreamed of, suggested, made and broken.
What hopes, plans and fears did we enter (and exit) with? What mistakes were made? The first thing that jumps out to us is that power differentials create more problems than they solve. An alliance needs to be a two-way street; any hint of “exploitation” turns it into a different kind of relationship entirely.Alliances must be freely chosen, with consequences fully appreciated and maturely understood. How often in life is this even possible for us? Sometimes we are limited by the power of our imaginations as well as the resilience of our hearts. Alliances should also be freely exited but how often does THAT happen? How often do our passions (and perceived needs) fall short of our principles and how much shame does this knowledge engender? And then there are issues of temperament: to what extent can introverts/extroverts hope to change their stripes?
Think about your deepest and most rewarding friendships. You’re looking for a special kind of Best Friend, after all, so it only makes sense that most of the components appearing in your friendships will be found in your soulmate as well. Will you appreciate some of the same things? Speak the same language? Have the same values? Laugh at the same jokes? Share fears and dreams? Expose your worst/best? You still want all that! Because you need an Ally. An ally reliably comes to your defense, as you fearlessly come to theirs.An ally is someone you can rely on. It means you must be honest with that person, and we all know how hard that is, especially when you can’t figure out the truth, yourself. You’re feeling your way and you need a sympathetic ear. You know you will have to be their sympathetic ear as well because otherwise what you have isn’t a partnership, it’s an autocracy. Autocrats are lied to and cheated on and they die alone. That’s not what gratifies the soul. You are looking for someone who holds the key to You and by astonishing coincidence, you will hold the key to them, as well.
The DuelEurope without you
Was a funeral feast.
I recall the procession of your letters
Far better than
The stream of luckless suitors
Trying to distract me.
Virgins aren’t distractible.
Your seductive missives stalked me.
Your fatal ploy was that nude picture
Adam lonely in his garden.
I came right home.
I well recall the ceremonies
Of that night!
Your shyness
My perfume
Our ignorance
Your penis
Soft as a
Messenger dove that folds
To a familiar hand –
Then wild and hard as
A riderless horse.
I did cry out as the candles burned.
I swear there were some moments when
We actually saw each other.
But if this magic sword cuts both ways
Why was I the only bleeder?
They peeled me off
Dropping me down miles
Of antiseptic hallway –
A princess in a bucket.
It could have ended there
But at your school I haunted you
A chilly-breasted demon.
My daytime incarnation seemed mature:
I fooled you;
We chatted as you prepared the skin.
I bit down hard and
Tasted only
Suture wire.
You wrote and broke off
Our association.
The years groaned by
Like convicts chained
We served our terms with no time off
For bad behavior.
Lust had luster,
Excrement had ecstasy.
The castaways the whirlwind
Flung upon the sand
Were calm, polite –
We knew our way around.
That look you gave me!
Our unborn children shivered
In their sausage skins
Suddenly aware
Their time had come.
The tale was done
The frog-mask
Shivered off
We saw:
The you of you
The me of me –
Masks
Unmirrored –
Scars
Unscored
Virgins not but
Innocence
Restored. -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
Inspiration=INTUITION “Shock Pool”
We are trying to choose, that means cultivating discernment. What is “discernment”? It really means just any
old soulmate won’t do. But how do we cultivate
the skills of discernment? Well, a major one is intuition. It is intuition that leads to “inspiration” ; that sudden “knowing” – ‘I feel like I’ve known him all my life.
Science says we subconsciously collect subliminal signals.The danger comes from a cultural problem
that women have been encouraged to bond with men they’re not chemically attracted to but might be seen as a “good fit” for social reasons, and discouraged from developing their sexual intuition. Guess what? You won’t find your soulmate that way!Men, however, make too many life decisions based on status or surface impressions – they don’t wait
around to perceive “the beauty within.” The moral of this conundrum is: Pay attention to your gut, but don’t allow your gut to boss you! Question it. Think about it. Think of the love you have received in your life and where it came from. Sometimes love potential reveals itself slowly.The magic of the Garden comes from Inspiration. Inspiration is the breath the Life Force moves through us – we can’t summon it and we can’t control it. When lost, we greatly mourn its absence. But when we feel its power we are elevated above ourselves. We feel we can do anything we choose. Afterwards we wake feverish, as if from a dream. As every artist and designer knows, work is more than Inspiration, but without its occasional visits work is nothing; tasteless, lifeless and void.
Artists always have a strong sense that inspiration comes from the “outside”, not from anything “within”. It uses the component of our minds and lives and forces us to “reach outwards” into the universe of resources to answer its call. Art without inspiration is just plain hard work. Unfortunately, there will be many times Inspiration sketches out a plan and then moves on. We know the plan is Inspired but now we must implement it! Late nights & elbow grease! Inspiration can be compared to Love. Both unaccountably come and go. Just because one isn’t feeling momentarily loving about a soulmate doesn’t mean that Love has Fled – in fact it usually just means we’re facing an onslaught of effort. Life is an uphill battle – 90% Hard Slog, alas. If we’re Ten Percent Inspired we’re in the high numbers! Love (and inspiration) will return. In the meantime we’ll have to treasure the memory and blueprint a Future Plan. Discuss.
Shock Pool
Bored by their game
From my perch I watched them,
Dismantling rules, I
Wrote down their patterns
In gold-crested diaries. I was
Weary of history andPole-axed by Europe –
I was affrighted
By what mattered frightfully.
Culture-Mad-Mother
Forced us to look
Then forced us to blink;Her timing was off.
Father dreamed oceans –
Encapsulating daughters
In unsinkable Fiberglas
Against the madness of Nature
Loathing masculine privilege; IDisliked you on sight
Insulted by proctoring
You must be divested of
Corduroys, wingtips, tweed
& leather; we posed under waterfalls
For Swedish love bibles.Clove-scented ecstasies
Kindled my fevers at
The moment of quenching them;
Sweeping West – you pulled the Atlantic –
Drowning us both in the riptide you created.
The captain lied when he saidWe’d go home. Lubricated by champagne, you
Peeled off my shock-pants
and asked me to marry you.
Since then illusion scorched into reality
Providing the universe
With plenty to write. -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
CONFLICT – “The Storm”- “Triggers & Pushback”
How good are we at facing bad news? Do we even want to know what it is? It’s impossible to plan for the future if we don’t intelligently strategize the things that COULD go wrong. We must weigh up our assets and debits – some of which are certainly emotional.Are we self-sabotagers? Do we quit right before the final push? Do we make alliances with untrustworthy people? Do we make ourselves vulnerable to dangerous people? Are we secretly hoping for “rescue” – that someone all-powerful and all-competent will sweep in and take our “mess” away? Remember back to our inner power principle, the person we want to be. Maybe we get discouraged far too easily by the negative voices in our heads. The path of lifetime self-improvement after all, started with our neither being able to talk or even stand up! Practice, practice, practice: forming “muscle” – even spiritual muscle – takes a lot of time.
Then we must face up to fearful destruction we had no part in; perhaps caused only by the principles of waste, loss and entropy to which the entire universe is subject. We need a philosophy to carry us through these times that helps us strategize thrifty methods of maximizing and healing what resources we have left. We need to know the difference between “value” and “price”. We need to recognize the outright gifts we have been given – such as the courage and determination that brings us to this place – and give thanks for them.
Conflict is an inevitability. No heat without friction, no forward movement without energy expenditure, no flight without first shedding our comfort carapace. When we want change, we are inviting conflict.
The question is how much in control we feel. Triggers “set us off”; i.e. trigger any chain of events we may feel helpless over. But are we? Can the chain be arrested at any point? Let’s bring our mind to focus on the problem. Human history is created by human intelligence; let’s problem-solve. “I will arrest and re-direct this change.”Whore De Combat
My sutures hurt; I’m
Completely unavailable,
Unsheathing your ambition you
Laced up my body like a jerkin
Cut my breakfast with your corkscrew
Swiss Army
Doubled up and put away.I’m fasting now
Bracing for the worst
I can’t eat anything that won’t
Look right at me
And want to know the truth;
Who’s for real?
What’s the state of play? -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
Creativity : “Harness your Uniqueness”
When searching for your soulmate this is no time to “blend with the crowd.” You need to discover exactly who you are so you can seek your complementary and missing elements. If you are uncertain or mistaken about your essential self, you won’t even recognize The One. You will be guaranteed to choose a partner based on false considerations of status or appearance. This requires you stop hiding your true self and allow it to emerge. Easier said than done! Turns out we all have been babying the shyly unique aspects of ourselves that don’t win instant recognition from the crowd. Well, we are going to have to experiment with taking Baby out for daily strolls and develop a bit of muscle. Don’t worry if the “likes” fall away – you are not trying to appeal to everyone. The creativity card means you will need to become imaginative in how you present yourself. You want someone accepting? Be accepting. You want someone brave? Be brave. You want someone who looks deeper? Look deeper.
Fire In the Dust
In photographs
The ladies scream or laugh
It’s hard to tell
Heads back they bare their
Grief or joy or
Agonized relief
It’s hard to tell.
All that remains of them
Tattered icons growing ever dim.The fountains of our fear
Leap high at first, like dancers
Frozen at first burst
Of freedom
Paralyzed abreast
The arc
We cannot see
What tortuous sign these fossils
Meant to be.In that first winter
We thought the earth was dead
Statues mated
Trees erupted dragonflies
The angry lonely
Sang and cried.
Somewhere some fetus twists and jerks
Convergence of dynastic quirksSo drop the toxic cloak of bitter spite that
Melts the flesh and terrorizes night –
Waiting out a cycle’s sum
Spinning down to kingdom come.
For nothing vain, came nothing plain
This world was born
To live again. -
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
REGRET feeds DOUBT
As soon as we begin refining our list in search of The One, we are filled with doubt. Fear of Missing Out dictates that even as we are talking to a Possible Soulmate our eyes search out the door to see what new person is coming in. There is a glorious book, essential to artists, called The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) which is actually about self-sabotage. In the very moments when we are trying to build something critically important to our emotional, psychic and spiritual health, a demonic voice comes out of Who Knows Where, whispering, “It’s the wrong thing and you’re doing it wrong.” According to Steven Pressfield, if you listen to this voice you will never accomplish anything, because Honest, Committed Effort is required to get your project off the ground, even if it ultimately fails. And if it ultimately fails, it will turn out to be the very project that helps you see what is Really Important, and understand What to Do Next. Choose wisely; searching for a relationship that is restorative, not exploitative, a partner who is complementary and complimentary, and push doubt aside.
Cloverleaf
Some roads lead nowhere;
They’re my favorites.
I held my breath while
You drew my face in
Blinding strokes
Creamed my mouth with curling lines
Destroyed one picture; then another
Never let me see. You
Left at dawn while I
Ran in circles, calling
Raging, spending blackened
Nights without you,
No blue thigh to guard
My trusting heart while yours looks out
To gauge the coming storm.
Trapped in cloverleaves,
Sentenced to school by
Streams of angry judges –
Balked by
The enervating past
Of unlived lives
Every face I paint is yours.
Open up the chilly ruffles
Of my breasts
One more time –
To beauty; yours and mine
Electrify your
Eldritch spine –
Your body so much lighter
Than the mountain that you loved
Better than you loved me –
The course you learned
Better than you learned me – so
Overconfident that
you’ll come back
I float across the powdered snow
In bird-winged silence
All-enveloping
Unless I’m
Lost?Lost and frozen like your heart?
-
The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn
MELT into the space your desire creates: “You Got This”
You’ve realize the immensity of your need and the enormity of the challenge. You’ve looked into your capacities and they just don’t seem to match your expectations. Now you’re scared and feeling hopeless. I’m here to remind you to “relax.” Melt into the space your desire has created. Untense those muscles because fear and hysteria, rage and feelings of worthlessness all work against us.Realize somewhere out there your Soulmate is feeling all these things also. This is a process you need to go through, in order to recognize the vastness of the challenge ahead. This is your time in the desert, where you will be tested. This guarantees that when your and your Beloved melt together your success will be all the sweeter. Of necessity to valuing the Other is the realization that, although there may be plenty of fish in the sea, you need a very particular fish.
HAUNTED WEDDING
The pregnant car disgorges
Only us. It’s winter.
Drunk as silver fish
We beat our gills as light
As hummingbirds.
In an amethyst ring
Of drypoint trees
The half-built house
Gapes and swells
Its timbers stink of sap.
Windrill fields occlude
Our crossing, so you carry me
High above the thorny osiers.
We sleep aloft for safety
Locked and levitating
In this space of air
One season only,
Unseen by angry outriders;
Bloodless in our wedding robes
Like the doubled membranes
Of the frozen flowers.
Alysse Aallyn 