Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #DreamGroup

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Night – Balance – We are different people in our dreams. We wake up amazed, even ashamed, of the things we wanted, said, did. Who are we, really? Are we the wishes and fears that rush through our subconscious or are we our daytime selves?


    The answer is – we are both. We must balance between the flood of desires and objectives that sleep flushes out.

    For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.

    
A time to be born and a time to die.
    

    A time to plant and a time to harvest.


    A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.


     A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.


     A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.


     A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.

    
A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.


     A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3

    Balance is a key law of nature to avoid the dreaded death-like stagnancy. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. In dreams we try on many lives. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.

    Moderation in All Things – said Hesiod, the Roman poet 750 BC and its still good advice. We use balance as a whetstone to sweeten our pleasures and soften our griefs; torrents that are otherwise unsurvivable.

    Challenge – We need to 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 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: we do it every night as we fall asleep.

    Danger – Unfortunately our contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a sport, falling in love, listening to music, having children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched by thinking and planning! That’s why we are called the species “homo sapiens.” Therein lies the benefit of Dream Journal.

    The pursuit of highs without the thinking, planning, consolidating 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, damage our core ability to experience joy.

    Opportunity – Joy that is held in the mind and considered 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. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides the best avenue to filter these experiences 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 apprehension of ecstasy and deepen your life.

    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

    Mantra – “I balance”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Stability

    To assert balance;
    Employ wealth of
    Eternal universal mind

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Day – Focus – Good morning! Do you wake up fearful, fretful and exhausted? Why do the terms “woke” and “wakened” have such a bad rap, when all they mean is being fully aware?

    Being “Awake” Is Not Just Desirable but Necessary. We need awareness to achieve balance between the negative and positive forces that block or enhance us. If we refuse to wake up we are prey to indescribable fears.

    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.

    Learning to Self-Soothe so you can Focus productively – The 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, and you will have to “forgive” yourself over and over – “I suck at this.” Learning to enjoy the process is key. You are your own toddler. 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.

    Challenge – Regard your mind as a “wild horse” in need of soothing and training. It is scared of everything it sees. Talk to it 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.

    Danger – How strong is your negative voice? We all have at least one – some of us have many. List them in your Dream Journal. We need to recognize them to firmly push these destructive forces away. 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.

    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

    Mantra – “I wake”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: From Within

    Glowing eyes:
    Focused feet
    Heart worn on the outside
    Motive’s brainchild.

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Mourning – Detachment – What if, in your dreams you hurt? You can’t put your finger on it, yet when you wake up you feel such shuddering emptiness and loss it’s a physical relief to find your dream wasn’t real. Lots of people fear such sadness as some kind of prophecy. In your sleep, you are mourning something – but what? It’s enough to make a person fear sleep.

    We Need to Mourn – 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 DO.
    They’re just better at covering it up than we seem to be. (And some people, admittedly are just plain shallower.)

    Are we mourning past lives? Are we mourning lives unlived? This inevitably means we have a lot of mourning to catch up on. We don’t recall our process of bargaining and acceptance so all that’s left is denial and depression. Not only that, the “causes” of your lost mourning seem so 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!” Time to accept the power and significance of your own feelings and the place of mourning in your life.

    Challenge – Time to feel compassion for yourself. Open your Dream Journal and ask the question, why are you dreaming these things now? Sometimes something going on in our lives reminds of that past unhealed hurt. Sometimes our collective unconscious is feeling other people’s suffering. 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. Celebrate the fact that you are able to feel so deeply in a world where others are forced to punish themselves, take risks and drugs in order to “feel something.”

    Danger – Cultivate detachment. Learn to say goodbye. Take a breath. Let go of the toxic elements in your life. Go “no-contact” on toxic people. Read up on sadism, the better to understand the people out there who feed off and enjoy your suffering. Buddhists recommend surveying your thoughts and feelings from a distance, as in hypnotherapy, then setting them free. This is not dissociation. Dissociation is more like floating through life with all our systems repressed, feeling numb. Dissociation is not good. It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you can use that pool of tears to respond more intensely to life, to art, to music, and to each other.

    Opportunity – Resilience is our most powerful survival trait. This means that 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. In your Dream Journal, imagine explaining your hero’s journey to someone else. Feel free to use pictures, symbols and 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

    Mantra – “I release”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Detachment

    In the last phase of grief
    bless your wrestling angel –
    grow scar tissue wings

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Planets & Stars – Eternity –Do you dream of astronomical events? Are you circling the stars in dreamland? Do you find yourself studying vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams. 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 if nothing is “alive”?

    You Are Training to be Immortal – Immortality is neither desirable nor guaranteed. If you feel a desire to live “forever” – what is the “you” in that sentence? Matter is already immortal – Your body is composed of exploded stars. Are you afraid of the “next phase”; or do you want a certain period of your existence to continue “indefinitely’? But you know that’s impossible and ultimately very undesirable. Change is life – changelessness is stagnation. Without human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must be outside time. Perhaps what you desire is a continuation of your personal memories and consciousness. Would you ever want to know the terrible things God knows, or do you yearn for a safe return to infancy secure inside the arms of a most loving mother? Open your Dream Journal and spend some time considering your own desires. Which are evanescent, and which are everlasting?

    Challenge – Some people feel so angry and violated by life that they want to harm the future itself. They don’t want anyone to be happy, 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 hell; they themselves have sent themselves there. You could wish to eternalize your finest moments, when you brimmed over with love, when generosity and joy poured out of you.

    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. We are forced to make snap judgments on the ground, battlefield decisions an 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 the planet itself.

    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. How can we recognize growth sand proceed in that direction? Growth manifests health, while harm plunges everyone into darkness. We can feel compassion without knowledge. 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. Take every opportunity to meaningfully connect with others. Your spirit will automatically 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

    Mantra – “I progress”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Age

    Occlude self –
    Elide “forever” –
    Include all:
    Blue print eternity

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Paradise – Bliss – What is your definition of paradise? Do you find yourself dreaming of a tropical getaway? If you wanted to find your bliss, where would you look? You’ve become your own Dream Journal. Define heaven; raise 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 be happy if you know there is suffering anywhere?

    We create our own Heaven every day. As we mature, we 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 You 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 understands and accepts everyone’s struggle, everyone’s challenge.

    Challenge – Bliss is a 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. This is such a happy condition we long to cultivate and re-experience it, which we can do by immersing ourselves in art, meditation, love, sexual/emotional union, or deep thought.

    Danger – We 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. Balance – sometimes called moderation – is the key. We are in the group, but we are not “the group”. We can elevate the group with the power of our Soul or we can drag it down through thoughtless mirroring. Some people choose to never develop a self. They pass from group to group, trying to “fit in” and quell the inner voice that says. “this isn’t right.” This is a violation of our basic human mandate: to develop a soul that is worthy of God.

    Opportunity – 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; we clearly 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. 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.

    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

    Mantra – “I flow”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Limitless Joy

    Rejoice in group fortune;
    Cherish,
    Cultivate
    Broadcast
    Generous bliss

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Mystery – Faith – 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? You have a profound need for faith in your life.

    The Faithful Are Rewarded – Untrusting people are untrusted. Everyone knows this, 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?

    Challenge – “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 of 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? Open your Dream Journal and remember.

    Love always makes the difference. It is the magic lubricant 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 hope for a good day, but we have faith that the sun will come up.

    Danger – 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? Often 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. Any secrecy serves the purposes of darkness. Demand transparency. Demand accountability. Outline your beliefs and act on them. Some mystery is endemic to existence but why people sharply change direction usually is not. We need less smoke and mirrors and more visible step by step upgrades we can all agree upon.

    Opportunity – We are continually deepening the level of mystery in our lives – just for fun. 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 in the process of being mapped. We are content no more with a ready-made label “here be dragons” placed across the unknown as a barrier to our quest. We no longer believe God resents and punishes exploration, science and development. A vaccine was developed against a mystery illness in just one year. Insoluble mysteries often center around human motivations.

    The greatest mystery of all is: Why do we make ourselves miserable? Artists teach us that even the most difficult questions can be “solved” by just posing them differently. “Re-framing.” Depth psychologists tell us that the shallow reasoning of our surface mind is far less important to long-term workable solutions than the deep memories and drives we can uncover through emotional and analytic spelunking.


    Sometimes we feel a force outside ourselves encouraging us and revealing mysterious solutions through sudden insights and analogous thinking.

    Story thinking reveals purposes to us in dreams as we puzzle out their meaning. Read Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment to uncover the basis of ancient communication through folktales. These form the collective unconscious on which meaning itself relies. Love mysteries. Allow your faith to develop. 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

    Mantra – “I believe”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Mystery – Faith

    Our brains
    Fill patterns
    See design
    Request
    Completion
    Dream
    Intention

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Spring – Hope – Do you dream of undiscovered worlds? Are your dreams so delicious you don’t want to wake up? Do you think about your dreams during the day? When you go to sleep at night do you eagerly summon up that sense of childhood ecstasy? Ask your Dream Journal.

    Hope springs anew with every flush of oxygen and blood through our systems. Is Spring your favorite season? Do you dream of unfolding buds and exploding flowers? Spring is a season of the heart, of the will. Hope is the fuel we run on. Hope is eternal. Do you feel you are on a quest? Do you dream of uncovering buried truths? Do you lose yourself in detection, or treasure-hunting dreams? Is “the mustard seed” your favorite parable?

    You are A Discoverer – Hope is not about “resolution” but about envisioning a future you had a hand in promoting. You have a sense of awe, but also ownership and a little pride. This is YOUR discovery. Now you want to share it with the whole world.

    Challenge – Don’t waste your imagination on too many games. Games can be a training ground but all too often our society seeks to harness and entrap your energies onto a treadmill that benefits only the few. Your dreams, your aspirations, your thirst for knowledge, is wider than this. You know the complexities of the universe are even more amazing than anyone has guessed and you want to call attention to them. You need to learn how.

    Dangers – are tunnel vision, paranoia and megalomania. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Obsession becomes obvious when harms become visible. You don’t “give up” just because you can’t seem to impose your vision on the world. Are you eating and sleeping? Maintaining your relationships? You can’t achieve bigtime without a team and you need to keep your team happy. Conflating the majesty of the discovery with your own personal majesty – needing that majesty – separates you from human kind and that can’t go well. It blinds you. Paranoia then comes into play. You ask yourself, are others stealing from you, riding on the coattails of your majesty, tarnishing your legacy? But if you surrender to the process of discovery you find out that every discovery leads to more understanding, more possibility. The discoveries – and hopefully the discoverers – never stop! Practice humility and gratitude. Aren’t you lucky to be a part of this? Isn’t it wonderful?

    Opportunity – Assembling a “team” is critical. TEAM isn’t a formal concept and it doesn’t mean maintaining a payroll. It requires finding the energy to keep your hope alive while keeping it realistic. It implies explaining yourself over and over, developing your idea. Allowing others to offer the energy of their perspectives. Even when you see them as wrong-headed, they operate as a whetstone, sharpening your vision. Most important are supporters who catch a “contact high” from the joy of your insights. This happiness creates a nourishing environment that powers us forward. Move confidently in the direction of growth and away from diminishment, remembering that it is not about you – it is about a world of treasure waiting to be discovered.

    Models & Mentors – “Hope is being able to see there is light in spite of the darkness” – Desmond Tutu

    “What I try to cultivate is not blind optimism but radical hope” – Junot Diaz

    “Be astonished. Tell about it”. – Mary Oliver

    “Everything that is done in this world is done by hope” – Martin Luther

    “Only in darkness can you see the stars” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Mantra – “I discover”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Spring Is a State of Mind

    Vaulting
    Out of bed
    New projects:
    Fresh thinking: I’m
    My hero –
    Progress

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Breakthrough – Epiphany – Are you battering against barriers in your dreams? Do you grind your teeth and clench your jaw while unconscious? Are you breasting tape, cresting mountaintops, intent on shedding light on the darkness? You are seeking, or experiencing an epiphany.

    Eureka! – It’s possible to have that 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 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. In the meantime, your dreams are attempting to heal the jagged edges of your fear, your incomprehension and your daring. Do not fear them. Open your Dream Journal.

    Challenge – Let’s consider the pieces of your psyche/life that don’t quite add up. Are you a highly accomplished, well-trained professional who acts like a supplicant around a certain somebody? Are you a group member whose leaders make decreasing sense and more self-serving decisions they refuse to acknowledge? Have you been struggling with a knotty historical, mathematic or scientific problem nobody can solve but now you think you’re seeing edges of light?

    Danger – Everybody quits too early. The status quo is just SO attractive. Let somebody else be the adventurer, let somebody else put into words what nobody can say, let some other poor sucker stick their neck out. Let’s look at those fears rationally. It’s OK to protect yourself – in fact, it’s mandatory – remember getting that oxygen mask working on you, first? But that doesn’t stop you from looking at reality, which also contains suspicions, insights, ideas and yes, dreams.

    Opportunity – 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 an escaping tide until they’re no longer perceptible. That’s OK. They’re still right on the tip of your psychic tongue, just waiting for a little more encouragement. We are all already familiar with the “sleep on it” suggestion, but anything that takes your mind temporarily off an obsessive 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 your growth and development. Keep dreaming. Keep using your fears as stepping stones to climb higher. Never give up. Be clever – like the serpent, as Jesus suggested.

    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

    Mantra – “I see”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Breakthrough

    Working sleepless
    In my cell
    I revel in goddesses’ sharp
    Applause

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    The Path – Goals – 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?

    If You Have No Goal, Any Path Will Take You There – But you won’t like where you end up. Besides, you DO have a goal, (at least one). Sometimes it’s something as simple as “stopping the pain” or “staying healthy.” As you become more adept at change, you realize dividing effort into “steps” to achieve a goal is critical.

    The Doctor Says Change – Most of us are familiar with being confronted at the doctor’s office with the undeniable fact that he American diet has not been good for our bodies. It’s not kind to our brains or our joints, and if we are going to preserve such things we are going to have to make some changes. Example: the intimidating goal of losing 50 pounds. Yes you can take expensive medication that will make you sick, or you, personally, can change. That 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. Studying the history of human weight loss attempts we see that if you are not ready for the psychic pushback your body will actually double down and accelerate its weight gain. The same thing happens with alcoholism and drug addiction – trying to “control “ it often drives the supplicant deeper into their disease in a panicked reaction to the “loss” of supply.

    Challenge – But you can be ready. Open your Dream Journal. This is nothing more than the sore-muscled athlete, 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 GETH THROUGH THIS. The challenge is to apply such a map to yourself, and then TAILOR and CUSTOMIZE it to your goals.

    Danger – Don’t go it alone. A side effect of “lessening supply” is “crazy thinking.” You will hear yourself say things like, “Nobody cares about me so I’ll just drink myself to death”; or “I WANT TO DISAPPEAR INTO THIS VAT OF ICE CREAM.” 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. So, don’t try making it through this crisis without a buddy AND a coach. AA has an acronym – HALT representing:
    Hungry
    Angry
    Lonely
    Tired
    These are the emotion states in which you make Bad Decisions. So when you see this condition developing – Halt. Call your hostage negotiator immediately.

    Opportunity – You will change! That’s the guarantee! You can’t go back to your old self. We can’t dip our fingers in the same river twice, and it turns out all addictions are an attempt to honor a past golden moment that can never, by definition, return. But you know what’s more interesting? Figuring out what that golden moment was, how it was caused, what it represents, and where the emotion you treasured is in your present life. And if it’ not there, how to get it. Trust me, there’s a world of love out there. If in doubt, see the movie UP. Now watch it again.

    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

    Mantra – “I Plan”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Goals

    Courage is
    Constant map redesign:
    Looking backward
    Planning forward

  • #DreamTherapy – Dream Journaling with Alysse Aallyn

    Transformation – Metamorphosis – 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 serve 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?

    You Contain Multitudes – 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 eating the flesh of creatures might confer their powers. We‘ve also heard the legend that when a human husk breathes its last, the soul escapes and may reincarnate in heaven or another life as something different, without blemish, wholly beautiful for once and for all.

    Challenge – Who’s your power animal? What supernatural gifts do you desire? Give yourself the freedom to think about the gifts 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? Open your Dream Journal and spend some time considering. Don’t these dreams make you a bigger, more important person, even if nobody knows? What if they did know? How might you tell them and who would you tell?

    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.

    Opportunity – These metaphors are a great way to connect with others on a psychic level. It’s not just fun finding people to share our dreams and games, it’ a bonding experience. We are the Tiger people! We are the Mastodons! We are the Raptors! Every member of the team adds skills to create a Group Being who is stronger than all of us, and who could become our family and community.

    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

    Mantra – “I become”

    Meditation –

    #Haiku: Transformation – Metamorphosis

    Cells
    Seed change;
    Unwilled at birth;
    Conscious in adulthood:
    What
    Will you be?