Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Creative #BootCamp

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

    The Bridge – Discipline

      If This Archetype Chooses You – Confusing discipline with punishment, you tried living without any and now feel too debilitated to escape the mess you’re in. Uh oh!

      From our Subconscious We Must Summon a Rescuer. That rescuer is OUR ESSENTIAL SELF. In dreams sometimes it presents as a hero, a fictional or historic figure or a spirit animal. Try reading folk or fairy tales right before bed. Fall asleep imagining strengthening muscles – physical, spiritual, emotional – growing inside you.

      You Must Reject the Substitute Self – To please others (and save yourself from harm) you have created a Social Self, a substitute self others will accept. But now it’s time to find out who you REALLY are.

      The Substitute Self Will Fight You for Survival – A battle you must win. Be firm banishing this monster who pretends to be you. Make a list of all the attributes that attract you, excite you, that you want to have, and turn them into a list of affirmations; “I am brave, I am creative, I am kind. I treat myself well and structure my time to maximize my flourishing.” Even the laziest, cruelest corner of your false, social self will ultimately collapse to reveal a Tiny Child yearning for effective mothering. Time to mother yourself.

      You are Jack AND the Beanstalk! No giant can stand against you. What kind of mother did you have? Was she supportive or carping? Kind or critical? Is she a happy person? Did HER life let her down? Make a list of IDEAL Mother Attributes, and turn them into affirmations. “I am generous, thoughtful and imaginative. I give endlessly from my fountain of blessings.”

      Discipline is the Only Path to Achieving What We Want. Nothing is achieved (or appreciated!) without discipline, which only means conforming your behavior to a previously conceived pattern. What ideas spring up when you think about this? Do you see “discipline” as always cruel? Painful? Is it one of your fears? Or the map to the orderly life you long for?

      You Are Your Best Friend and Best Parent – Nothing works in your life until you learn delayed gratification and stick-to-itiveness. But first you must experiment with other patterns – some of which –depending on your upbringing – can be hellish. So you have THAT to get past. You will definitely need to harness all your dream power to get yourself over the finish line.

      Adapt Discipline to Enhance Thriving. But who’s doing the adapting – the Cruel Taskmaster, the Disgusted Lover, the Generous Parent or the Permissive Saint? You contain all these (and they live in your dreams) so which will you listen to? Who will you empower? Which do you feed?

      The Choice You Make Controls your Future. Consult appealing patterns that have worked for others and blend to taste. Realize it’s a process; a series of moments. Develop a sophisticated discernment you can trust to guide you.

      Creatives Set Marks and Hit Them – Forming habits is easier than breaking them apart, so creatives know that preventing bad habits is the core of discipline. But bad habits sneak up on us, they will form anyway, so part of your discipline will always be turning away from something that was formerly pleasurable. Enjoy the peace that comes with each small step.

      Creatives Know How to Keep Going – Discipline is the bridge that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Always use a “spotter” – a professional who’s “been there” and who can keep you from going over the edge.

      Creatives Celebrate Their Discipline – Self-acceptance comes from experiencing our humanity to the fullest. We are “parenting” our much-loved and respected self, the one who starts out as a toddler with no self-control whom we’re trying to keep out of the fire. Forgive yourself. And keep going.

      Make Discipline Visual – Charts, maps, graphs and lists that hearten & cheer are key to purposeful pathways. Figure out a way to picture your values. Checking off boxes and cherishing the “proof” of a successful day becomes your joy.

      Models & Mentors – “Through self-discipline comes freedom” – Aristotle

      “Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you going” – John C. Maxwell

      “All success begins with self-discipline. It starts with you.” – Dwayne Johnson

      ‘Day by day – what you choose, what you think, what you do, is who you become” – Heraclitus

      #Haiku: Discipline

      Discipline is
      Choosing
      Between what you want now
      And what you want
      Most

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

      Torpor – Addiction

        If This Archetype Chooses You – Uh oh. Something’s preventing you from launching on your quest. Time to wake your Sleeping Orchid, but…It’s hard to even formulate goals with this monkey on your back, chattering in your ear. What is it?

        You’ve Become Too Attached. To … what? Investigate. Something’s controlling your mind, controlling your actions. Take it slow as you consider. Is this attachment harming your principles? Values? Relationships?

        The Creative’s Fiercest Battle – Do you dream of imprisonment? Blank walls? Chains? Our neurocircuitry mandates habit-making behavior, but our intelligence recognizes entrapment, and our dreams send out distress signals. If you’re human, there is no way to avoid addiction. Welcome to the unpleasant Club!

        We Are Wired for Addiction – If there’s no escaping it – that means you will have to fight this battle. But the good news is, this is exactly how you become Free. Anyone who hasn’t done it is still a slave to their hormones, instincts, patterning – just as animals are. Here’s the very thing you become a Creative for – your best chance to develop a free will and a free soul.

        Study Your Opponent – Turns out we have tremendous choice over what we become addicted to. Some addictions are less corrupting than others. Visit an AA meeting and the consumption of sugar and tobacco is outright alarming. Are you addicted to gambling? Do you work in sales? Were you raised in a ritualistic faith? We easily become dependent on praise, on safety, on gratification, and our brains (and our general health) show our dependency. They threaten and panic when the “treat” is withdrawn.

        Creative Challenge – This parasite doesn’t care if it kills its host. If you fear you are approaching a cliff-edge, you probably are. One test is to go on a “retreat” where your customary gratifications are not available, and attempt to form new gratifications. See what happens! Does your personality threaten to disintegrate? Great time to ask yourself: who am I really? This is such a good idea, we should build it into our lives, periodically. Just to keep us recognizing that cliff-edge where Soul and Self become separated and Free Will is lost.

        Creative Danger – We always live with the possibility that we will lose our autonomy. We want to evolve, we know we SHOULD change, but we CAN’T. There’s no shame in needing outside help. This is the purpose of interventions, to demonstrate to our eyes and ears that we are harming ourselves and our relationships. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, especially when we think we’ve finally found a substance/process that “magically” allows us to live on our particular cliff-edge – a dangerous job, risky sexual behaviors, risky recreational behaviors.

        Worst-Case Scenario – is that our addiction becomes our identity. We always have the choice of refusing to listen to our interveners – giving up on our relationships just to keep up our self-abuse. Some hardened wretches tell anyone who listen that life itself isn’t worth it without their life-threatening self-abuse. They choose to die as slaves.

        Creative Opportunity – You not only CAN free yourself, you MUST to deserve and preserve your Creative Power. It is your spiritual obligation to live this territorial existence as an enlightenment opportunity. Familiar with the saying, “Live simply so that others may simply live” ? That mandates sharing. That means ALWAYS studying your consumption, NEVER allowing yourself to turn into a greedy pig and scheduling time to be alone with the universe and with God. To check on the hardiness of your Soul.

        Models & Mentors – “You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside you” – Seth Adam Smith

        “All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings”
        – Ellen Burstyn

        “Sometimes you can only find heaven by backing slowly away from hell”
        – Carrie Fisher

        “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”. – Robert Collier

        “The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker

        #Haiku: – Addiction

        Brain cells beggared;
        Lovelorn
        Oxytocin receptors misfire:
        “Feed me!”

      1. Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

        Duality – Ambivalence

          If This Archetype Chooses You – How many people are you? It’s a subject for deep study as you try to decide. Twinning is Entwining. Sometimes we dream disturbingly about things we don’t want and people we aren’t. Feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting. It’s unsettling. What gives?

          Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality manifests all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious river. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of other peoples – dead, alive, even fictional. Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a label.

          Creative Challenge – Facing this ambivalence might seem the toughest part, but it isn’t for artists, who routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Art is the best way to express this, an enormous relief, since it’s essentially non-committal. We are “playing”. Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your work becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised to be related to those people who claim they are our family.

          Creative Danger – Society seeks to label, limit and stigmatize. Everyone is afraid of becoming our fear but Creatives need to explore every fear we have. A simple safe word can’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so fundamentally untrustworthy. That is why our identification of ourselves as Brave Creatives is so vital. The vastness of our potential cannot be controlled by language. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

          Creative Opportunity – Appreciate your Self. Don’t slam the door on your potentialities too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is Us. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to get home safe. But Creatives carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell, if we are the captains of our souls we can be the masters of our fates. (Henley.) We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence.

          Creatives Tolerate Uncertainty – Being a creative is all about balance. The experience of balance-seeking is indescribable linguistically – it must be felt experientially. Creatives learn to live in a world beyond language where we can savor uncertainty and foretaste eternity.

          Creatives Relish Paradox – Two contraries not only exist together but empower each other – that creative tension is the lifeblood of emotion, imagination and personality.

          Creatives Coast on the Knife-Edge of Ambivalence – The desired is undesirable, the only possibility is impossible and the act of wanting forbids getting. Creatives become comfortable with the pleasures of this dance: “My future dissolves in beads of sweat, my present is my mirror, my past’s a shape-shifting whirligig.” (Aallyn)

          Leaders Must Surrender – Physics is magic and dreams embody history. This quantum world of “spooky entanglements” is one in which we creatives become expert. We accept not only that the cave we fear holds the treasure we desire, but that we are both cave and treasure, indeed, fear itself.

          Models & Mentors – “It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It is this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.” – John Scott

          “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.”
          – Erica Jong

          “The Simpsons is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but drives you crazy”
          – Matt Groening

          “Poetry is the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.” – Billy Collins

          #Haiku: Yin/yang

          Inclined to spring forward
          Fade back; yin;
          Urge to return?
          Float forward;
          Yang.

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

          Rainbow – Serendipity

            If This Archetype Chooses You – You Were Born Lucky! What is the greatest piece of good luck you’ve ever had? Your parentage? Talents? Home town? Best friend? A piece of advice? A special teacher? Think about it. Have you ever been offered a piece of good luck you couldn’t take advantage of, but wish you had?

            How Lucky Do You Need to Be? Ever seen the faces of gamblers seated hour by hour at the slot machines, wearing special gloves so their skin doesn’t fall off? Seriously, who would want to be them? Is it luck itself that we give thanks for, or our ability to recognize good fortune? Perhaps it’s really just our ability to take advantage of a piece of good luck when we’re offered it. These memories have one thing in common- i.e. “ability”, which is not luck, which is YOU. Give thanks for these abilities. Let’s learn to develop “gratitude thinking”.

            Creative Challenge – A different way of thinking about fortune is not all the wonderful things that didn’t happen, but the terrible things that COULD have happened – and didn’t. In other words, let’s try adopting a “glass half full” perspective and see how far that gets us.

            Creative Danger – Now that you’re committed to the creative path, the danger is always the same – recognizing your power but giving control of it over to some other entity that almost certainly doesn’t have your best interests at heart. We’re usually not even aware we’re doing this. But when you want to “be lucky” what does that mean? In whose eyes? Let’s put ourselves firmly in the driver’s seat and take a look at the path ahead of us. Do we want to go there? Do we really trust these people? Or are we the dog throwing away a real bone to reach the illusory bone we see pictured in the watery reflection of Aesop’s Fable?

            Creative Opportunity – As we negotiate our mortal existence we have a unique chance to take advantage of serendipitous appearances and encounters. If we recognize it. Compare your path to the immortal framework of eternity and ask, How am I doing?

            How Did We Get Here? Turns out your map was only a suggestion.


            We are mapping as we go along. However, life is even more interesting, it turns out, than our imaginations.

            After the Storm – Comes the Rainbow! Every visible color – carefully separated out – forming an arch to give us a glimpse of heaven! If it didn’t provably exist, would we still believe in it?

            List Your Rainbows – Clouds may or may not have silver linings. Rainbows are a complete surprise – unconnected to the storms that spawned them. Write about the surprises in your life in your Training Journal. How many were nasty? How many joyous?

            The Universe Conspired – To bring you to this moment. You zigged, you zagged, you wound up here. Give thanks!

            Models & Mentors – “Serendipity is when you find things that you weren’t looking for because what you are looking for is so damned difficult”
            – Erin McKean

            “Steer Into the skid” – Alysse Aallyn

            “Here you are moving ahead bravely in spite of everything going wrong” – Rithvik Singh

            “Take advantage of happy accidents” – Vincent van Gogh

            “There are no coincidences” – Sigmund Freud

            #Haiku: Rainbow – Serendipity

            Happenstance –
            Fortuitous
            Chance; we’re
            Born lucky
            We just don’t know it.

          1. Sleeping Orchid – Creative Bootcamp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

            The Storm – Conflict

              When This Archetype Chooses You – Something’s coming. Are you having bad dreams? Maybe about natural disasters like storms, volcanoes and flooding? Do you fear war, robbery, violation, home invasion? Or do you dream about your loved one’s face turning bitter and their words cutting sharply? Conflict is inevitable. It is even necessary – birth pangs seem objectively terrifying. In dreams, we rehearse our fears until some of us fear to dream.

              It Always Comes Before You’re Ready – Here it is – the reason you became a creative. To figure out, even if only metaphorically, what is going on. You will have to seize control of yourself to seize control of your tools. It’s battle or go under. The force against you is superior – no question about that – you must be wily and assess when to expend energy and when to conserve your strength.

              You are a Force Field. By virtue of your temperament as a creative you are a magnet for desire, change, for evolution itself. Others may tell you to stand back, take your place in line or wait your turn but your appearance into this chaotic universe triggered no such guarantee. We are here to learn to use our power.

              Conflict Makes a Creative – Force stirs up resistance. Actions create re-action as we swing back and forth in our determination and direction. We clash and crash. Sometimes we regret it bitterly, “why did I do that?” Sometimes we fear loss or harm so much we become immobilized. The challenge is to assume your stride, elucidate your goals and plan a direction.

              Creative Danger – It’s all too easy to make others fear you. The one with the biggest weapon THINKS he wins every fight. But what looks like compliance to you could be revolution – you will be toppled and lose your heart’s desire.

              Creative Opportunity – Learning to use conflict constructively and creatively is a Superpower. Other people are force fields, too. If there is any way to blend these powers and head in the same direction, we become invincible. Welcome the knowledge provided by the Storm archetype in your Creative Oracle deck.

              Study Your Opponent – Some clever scholar has separated these opponents into groups & classes. Read up! Some opponents – physical contests, weather conditions – don’t even have a brain. So who – or what – are you playing against?

              You Are Playing Against Yourself – your own fear, incapacity, beginner status. Seek mentoring so you have advice along the journey. Who is the sensei who will guide you? Someone who desires both your safety and your growth.

              Reward Yourself – The best place to do this is your Training Journal. Think hard about every contest and how you performed. Assess your challenges and accomplishments. Way to go!

              Models & Mentors – “I used to tell myself, boy, if you can survive this, you can survive anything” – Tom Lichtenberg

              “Laughter is the proof that our tragedies don’t define us. Laughter is the survivor’s language” – Josh James

              “Cancer didn’t bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet”
              – Michael Douglas

              “If you want to awaken humanity, awaken yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering, eliminate what is negative in yourself. Your gift to the world is our self-transformation.” –Lao Tzu

              Haiku: Sleuth

              Named is
              Tamed.
              Brainstorm:
              Exceed
              Outstrip
              Surpass
              Unveil
              Lay bare
              Prevail