Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #DreamJournal

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Cherry Blossoms = Paradise=BLISS “Love the Magician”

    Finding your bliss: Cherry blossoms promise: “Good things to come.”

    Everyone’s Paradise is different. For some it will be just like church, for others it’s the eternal “fish-fry” described in Green Pastures.

    Some people say it will be a place without animals, enemies, insects or unbelievers, others say it will be just like Earth. Some think it’s an endless loving embrace, others say a “roll in the hay” with “70 virgins.” (Imagine that being appealing!)

    These ideas are understandably small and based on limited and very individual human knowledge. This makes Paradise a mental construct; some kind of an existence of all joy and no pain. We can almost barely imagine that. What we can’t seem to imagine is a Paradise where all participate; in other words, how can we feel joy if “wrong thoughts”, “impure behaviors” and “bad people” are rewarded?

    Jesus was asked this question and his answer sounds suspiciously like “get over it.” He told a long story about toilers in the vineyards paid the same amount no matter how late they showed up, just because the owner was so full of generosity and joy.

    Something to think about. I personally treasure the idea that Paradise is a place where “every tear will be wiped away.”(Revelation)

    Once we have faced up to our personal inadequacies, admitted the power of our global longing and contemplated the possibility of severance, are we ready to surrender to bliss? Cherry Blossoms guarantee that ecstasy is coming. But what is ecstasy – how uncomfortable will it be and how will we recognize it?

    Ecstasy is the blurring of our boundaries into the beloved. Time vanishes, there is only the ecstatic present. You have experienced this before. Disappearing in to the safety of a loving parent’s arms you felt connected to them in a galvanic way – you and they were part of each other’s being. This is the connection Jesus offered when he called God “Daddy.”

    A mature connection with the Beloved is even more powerful, because we get to be both parent and child, recipient and giver, all at once and in the same moment. What joy!

    Meditation: Long live the weeds and the wildness – Gerard Manley Hopkins

    LOVE THE MAGICIAN

    The Magician is a Capricorn
    Bleeding cock’s milk from nipples
    Pale like mine but
    Maler.
    Illusion, he says is memory
    Of things that should have been.
    Doves and rabbits he entices
    From sacred groves between my legs
    Placed by ruse, and freed by art.
    When he dies, passion turns his eyes
    To quarters.
    He hears the world but faintly
    Through his one good ear.
    The other turns to me,
    Safecracker’s daughter.
    Trust the magician, voices tell me
    He knows when to drop the dice.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The labyrinth = COMPLEXITY

    “What’s the ultimate secret?”

    The Labyrinth draws us in, yet we are fearful. In the garden lies this ultimate puzzle – that for which there is no solution, because the Labyrinth keeps adding corridors toward – where?

    We don’t recognize that our longing for stasis is really a longing for death, so that if we wish to live, we must commit ourselves to the constant flow of fresh experiences, discoveries that train our eyes in new ways of seeing.

    The Labyrinth changes us at the same time as we demand – and sometimes succeed in forcing – changes from it. We have pledged to leave our mark upon it. Nothing shakes our certainty that this puzzle pines for us every bit as much as we yearn for it. Is your soulmate waiting in the center of the labyrinth? What if the labyrinth has no center?

    Soulmates have an edge; we have eyes in the back of our heads. Our sixth sense seeks the others out and once we join hands, we become a four-eyed dragon. Not only can our eyes see forward in time and backwards in history – but now we have the benefit of two Third Eyes – two seats of wisdom.

    Why does the Labyrinth keep separating us? Because labyrinths are a series of puzzles without answers – designed to educate us to embrace the next problem.

    You were just around that corner – now suddenly your essence has departed. The aura I counted on with certainty has evanesced.

    What happens if one day you look at me with a different face and I realize your brain – that Seat of Self – has been affected and You and no Longer You?

    And then there’s Bad Magic – the lies that draw us – or one of us – in – to live – however momentarily – in Crazy World. The defining feature of Crazy World is sickness. Sickness, death and hopelessness are cultivated as if they were precious plants. You know you must get out as fast as you can. Yes, you should try to save each other but you will both be lost if you can’t get the oxygen mask over your own face first and return the trustworthy flow of life-giving reality.

    Our brain, the thinking organ with which we confront and negotiate the Labyrinth – is a labyrinth itself – possibly the model for all the labyrinths to come, but to comprehend the vastness of the universe all we have is this tiny human brain. Even as Soulmates touch Third Eyes together to join through Literature, Science, History and Art with all the human brains there have ever existed, can we gauge the immensities of inner and outer space? We can, if we are unafraid of complexity.

    The further we journey, the more we see. Every “solution” posits yet more problems. Hold hands and don’t be frightened. Our simplified language will inhibit our understanding until we invent placeholder terms to represent the “unknown” – just as in math – so we can begin to imagine a way to place them into our calculations. Luckily you don’t need to know everything there is to know about the ocean just to ride its waves; but you do need to appreciate the majesty, the mystery and the danger keeping you afloat.

    Heraclitus said you can never dip your hand in the “same river” twice. Even if you dip for the second time just moments later, the water itself is completely different. We are all rushing forward and there is no going back. Soulmates rush on together.

    She

    At the heart of the labyrinth
    She sits
    Repairing
    Sores of everyday
    Occurrence
    Insults, slights, poor
    Choice of Words &
    Turns of phrase.

    From the heart of the pond she
    Heals the otter’s sorrow
    The bobcat’s grief
    Orchestrating cries of loons
    Into family symphony
    Forever exploring but
    Having home to come
    Back to.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Thorns = The thief = DISPOSSESSED “On Being Disinherited”

    “Could you steal? Have you?”

    The rose attacks; you are cut, pierced. Thorns signify “Don’t mess with me or you’ll be sorry.” The Garden itself has the capacity to cut you to the quick.

    What if the garden itself is under attack? Ravaged? Despoiled? Extinct?

    Dispossession is much more complicated than mere loss. It means something we thought was ours isn’t. “Thorns” remind us of hidden dangers. Ownership may be quietly transferred behind the scenes, or they may convince you it never existed at all. What is “ownership”, anyway? Are we entitled to the Soulmate’s love?

    Entitlement of some kind is at risk. Property? Dignity? Expectations? It can be very modest; a chair, a single room, a blanket. Not yours anymore. Nothing you can rely on. We must ask ourselves; are those we trust to act for us are fundamentally untrustworthy? Who or what do they represent?

    Contracts dissolve. In a class based society we suddenly find ourselves divested, plummeting down, down to the despised and the ignored. This is frightening and disorienting.

    The rules have shifted; the law has changed. We are looked on as an interloper at someone else’s party. Now we are viewed as dishonorable supplicants in danger of capture and incarceration.

    Thorns remind us of a wider meaning; a warning that ultimately we can “own” nothing: everything we use is shared. Even our own body, this ship we use to forage through the seas of life, can turn against us, behaving in completely unpermitted and unfamiliar ways.

    Feeling dispossessed is a shock to the system. Hustle culture places pressure on us to take, take, take, grab or “lose out.” When ‘Thorns” appear in your daily meditation it means it is time to have some serious thoughts about the nature of “ownership”; what you want versus what you can have; what you can control versus what you can’t and ultimately, who you can trust. Who’s feathering their private nest instead of honoring a contract?

    How can you gain through losing? Does real freedom lurk behind these dispossessions? The hermit crab carries his house on his back. When he outgrows it is when he shops for another house. It clearly wouldn’t benefit him to be dragging two houses around; he wouldn’t be able to move.

    But some of us are so burdened with junk we’re completely immobilized. Yet being robbed not only isn’t any kind of relief, the sense of violation lasts for years. The only person who can rid us of our stuff is Us. We just must set to it and figure out what’s baby and what’s bathwater. It’s a lifelong process. But being light and free can be intoxicating and addictive. Maybe a contract needs renegotiation, or shouldn’t exist in the first place.

    Sometimes a Soulmate fails the test or sharing, caring and giving. Or we fail. Maybe it is just once, and after a recovery period we will be better communicators. But maybe, like the hermit crab, we have outgrown this particular shell.

    After all, we’re planning to end up with wings. Maybe once we’ve soared we won’t want to live any other way.

    ON BEING DISINHERITED

    These are the tasks
    Performed without feeling;
    The snipping the
    Slashing
    The shredding
    Bundling into bunches
    You are the remote ogre
    And I the crying child.
    Why do partitioned pieces
    Melt before they touch?
    You fear to give;
    I am helpless to receive.
    Imagine we change places.
    Would that explain
    Your fear of me?

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    LAW = “The Statue”

    “Vows”

    In the garden stone figures mock us and memorialize us. They can be reassuring or uncanny as if secretly intuiting our states of mind. We put them there to remind us – of what?

    Lovers make promises to each other. We do it spontaneously, offering ourselves on the altar of our own desire. We solidify our vows publicly in paper, legal filings, photographs, video, topiary, marble, even stone.

    What promises can we make and what promises can we keep? Do these promises allow space to evolve over time? At least we can answer that last question with a heartening “yes.” Our promises are not set in stone. We are not our statues.

    Soulmates are in tune with each other. We can feel each other’s evolving spirit, sometimes before the other even can. We know when the petals lose their glisten, when the wings droop.

    Did we make a promise to be “perfect”? We know this is not possible or even desirable. The only real promises we can make are to be present, to be honest, and to treat the desires of the Beloved Other as Sacred. But we all have boundaries and we must be honest about uncovering and examining those.

    Some can be broken and re-set, some can’t. Does that mean a Soulmate can be temporary? We are temporal beings, but someday we will meet on the eternal plain.

    #HAIKU: The Statue

    Rose-choked;
    Tagged;
    Sentenced by time
    I stand Mute.
    Freeze! I see you!
    Who has won?

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Snake = ADDICTION “The Columbine”

    “Just when things are going so well -”

    Because we’re afraid of snakes, we attract the deadly columbine. We can’t recognize danger and we don’t know how to summon real assistance.

    In the language of flowers the Columbine means “Anxious Folly. Resolved to win.” Our folly prevents our winning.

    As for snakes, there are many of snakes we depend on in the garden. But every now and then a poisonous one wanders by. How do we tell the difference?


    How can we win when we poison ourselves? It’s to lessen that anxiety, to get back to what we assume is “baseline.” But it isn’t. We just haven’t found our baseline yet, and by mimicking the baseline of others we get farther and father from ourselves.

    This is why recovery from addiction involves finding ourselves. We can’t find a soulmate when we don’t know who we are.

    Our toy-box of pleasures is quite pathetic, but that’s not our fault. We are wired for addictions, with a biological view to turning such basic pursuits for food, mating and recreation subconscious so we can use the front of our mind to think about other things.

    You can tell addictions are destructive (and not all of them are!) if they crowd out human flourishing and ruin sharing and our ability to share. “I want to feel pleasure with you” becomes, “Let’s cycle through my tragic past of suffering before I found you.”

    Not good. To get out of this mess we cultivate the gift of change, of evolution. We will share and learn to tolerate discomfort. Hold tight. Often the addictions gained their grip over us because we were seeking to escape change or discomfort! The good news it, it’s never too late.

    The better news is, this re-discovery and re-creation of the self is one of the life-transforming experiences to share with a soulmate and if you have no soulmate yet, here’s a crucial step to getting yourself ready to present to the world as the Real, the Essential, the True You.

    Always look for help. Set up a program and a feedback system for accountability and efficiency and spiritual support for the inevitable withdrawal that’s coming. It’s only giving birth to your stronger, better, best self. You know it’s time.

    HAIKU: The Columbine

    Gambler’s inferno
    Dissolves will
    Slavery
    Wrecks pleasure-
    Luck? Loss?
    Choose.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Poppy = SUCCESS “The Lovers”
    “Successful in your eyes”

    The Poppy signifies oblivion and eternal sleep in the Language of Flowers. This source of heroin and morphine will definitely obliterate your personality, despite protecting you from pain. Does that sound like success to you?

    The greatest pleasure of Soulmates is creating a world all our own, with its own rules and reality. If our Soul Unit is a success, we are a Success. The harsh judgments of the outside world, operating as it does casino-like with few winners and a vast “majority” of losers, fade in impact.

    All that is required for joy is that we must be a success to each other, and we must be a success together. This mandates constant soul-searching as we step through life’s landmines, both singly and alone. There is no more restful peace than ultimate confidence that someone’s got your back.

    Haiku: The Lovers

    Falling upwards
    Into you
    My other wing, my second
    Clapping hand

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Tree = ENLIGHTENMENT “My Beautiful Twin Sister”

    “You can if you think you can”

    Trees knit a garden together. Thy hover over us the way we remember helpful adults from childhood. They are the elders of our loving garden family.

    To be “awakened” is to experience life as it really is. Lots of people are repelled by this notion. Why bother to wake up when the news is so bad? Remain in the happy dream state brought to you by the Sackler family or some other pharmaceutical conglomerate, or by your favorite source of baseless propaganda.

    That lasts as long as you can afford their product. As every rube discovers, Happy Dreamland’s price keeps getting steeper until one day, you can’t pay it at all. Then you are awake and desperately uncomfortable, whether you like it or not, and the life around you has gone to shit. And not the helpful, fertilizing kind.

    A common approach to Soulmate-seeking is to try to find someone to join you in Dreamland, or to aggressively shop for a Dreamland you want to join. What these people don’t know is that Soulmates create their own world together; and this is a process that can’t be rushed. Seeing yourself and life as it really is begins by being very uncomfortable, but enlightenment comes eventually, and it promises real peace.

    The first improvement is to stop complaining about other people and all the things you can’t fix. Look at and into each other. And then it hits you – that simple thing we always “knew” because we’ve been told over and over: Love is the answer. (“Why Live?” is the question.) Take a walk… together. Look at the stars…together.

    Stroll through an art gallery…together. Every joy is multiplied and magnified and now the question is, Aren’t we lucky? Well, aren’t you? And the gratitude for the chance to live for even a moment in this spectacular universe comes pouring out.

    MY BEAUTIFUL TWIN SISTER

    Twenty months
    Made you the boss
    But my twin just the same
    I gazed adoringly
    Into your dark power.
    You braved everything
    Always being first;
    Parting airspace with your muscle
    To improve my flight – you
    Schooled boyfriends
    Husbands, children
    Teachers
    Bent whole administrations to your will.
    For my benefit you
    Deconstructed history,
    Logic, told me
    Who to read and what to think;
    Volunteering for a better world.
    Protester, Marcher, you
    Learned Amslan
    Just to empathize;
    Conquered mountains
    Just for fun;
    Shifting derailleurs, snowshoeing
    Surefooted through so many
    Frosty seasons. Inside
    You were just like me;
    Scared, hesitant, fragile
    Pushing yourself out there;
    A revelation of
    Impossible courage
    Giving me a lifelong template
    To admire.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The tulip = ILLUSION “Gothic Novel”

    “Seeing what isn’t there”

    Illusions are VERY attractive. We WANT them to be true. In my childhood Superman leapt tall buildings in a single bound – all us kids could recognize the fun, the power, the joy in that.

    Limitations are unpleasant. We can work to expand them, or…we can dream. Every culture warns the dreamer against getting lost in fantasy. The Tulip is a historic emblem of delusion – impoverishing generations of otherwise intelligent Dutch merchants in a fruitless gamble. Now the Tulip warns that you may be counting on something – or someone – that is false.

    Our society has been fueled by misinformation ever since Edward Bernays, founder of modern advertising, wrote his book Propaganda in the 1920’s. Since then legal beagles have defended the right to “puffery” and “spin”, even to saying something manifestly untrue; “miracle pills!”

    Advertisers are very honest about manipulating us through wish and fear. We are eager to buy the illusions that seem to promise a warm social life, a happy home or radiating beauty. Lately misinformation has taken a distinctly evil turn as billionaires base their fortunes on convincing us that pollution isn’t dangerous, the climate is fine, science is untrustworthy, the election was stolen and oligarchic rule is what we really want.

    The question to consider is, what is our benefit in believing and propagating obviously harmful facts? The rifle-toting man who broke into a Washington DC pizza parlor thought he was a heroic savior of children. He’s now serving a prison term.

    Why is violence such an attractive answer? Forget stockpiling bear mace and bullets to abuse your fellow citizens. We need some other way to soothe our raggedy self-esteem apart from clinging to grifters and liars.

    On the other side of illusion lies reality. We need to take a look at it, savor it. Often it’s a kid tugging at our clothes begging us to stay, focus, share; not lose ourselves in a fantasy world.

    The need for illusion prevents us from finding, seeing and keeping a Soulmate. We must work to make reality less terrible, so that we don’t become dependent on illusion as a pleasure source. Illusion rushes in when life seems meaningless. Joining groups of honest seekers directing their paths with love can save us. When we are surrounded by love we will attract love. Check the philosophy of the group you hang out with. Is it “Let’s you and him fight?” or “Let’s seek joy for all.”

    GOTHIC NOVEL

    A woman alone is open – gaping,
    Button hole without a button hook.
    She carries her muff held stiffly
    Out before her like an offering
    Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers
    Slit the pause like razors.
    This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur.
    “I prefer the window up, thank you”
    “I prefer it down”.
    She lights a Sobranie to remind her
    Of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen
    Lean forward, reading the initials
    On her morocco case.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Birdsong = ART “Birdsong”

    “Express your emotions the better to understand them”


    We are not the only Creators in the Garden. We are surrounded by nest-makers and musical artists without whose Birdsong we would be tragically impoverished. Birds sing for the same reasons we do; to celebrate, to warn, to differentiate. To bond, and for the sheer joy of being alive in the Garden. Birdsong represents the artistic collaboration and complexity without which our lives would be meaningless.


    Art is our rescuer. Art forges connections at the deepest levels; preconscious & collective conscious. Art finds us when we are lost, can even locate love itself when we misplace it. Art sums up the mystery of what it’s like to be alive, questioning, yearning, negotiating, refusing, demanding.

    Back when we were mute children, longing to communicate and participate in the thrilling adult world surrounding us, we figured it was just a question of acquiring the tools of language.

    Education disabused us of that easy sentimentality. There will always be something within us that is wordless, a secret unknown to ourselves that we long to share. But what does it mean? Who can understand it? We artists devote our lives to fathoming these vast problems. Each question brings a new forest of questions. Each answer produces an ocean of answers.

    As our life crests its rise and heads for the downslope we are forced to conclude that we wish to express nothing more than our uniqueness, our exquisite irreplaceability – just like everyone else.

    The depth of the Tantric connection provides relief from the echo chamber – together we create a whole new force, immortal in feeling, universal in its application. We sing to each other in courtship, in despair, in longing, and the Soulmate sings our song back, in a different form, inviting collaborative collusion that will buttress our hopes and re-make our world.

    HAIKU: Birdsong

    Without your chord
    Duets are soulless;
    speechless
    without your
    harmony

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Night = BALANCE “Resurrectionist”

    “Going to sleep in one world we awaken in another”

    Night offers a frightening universe of the invisible and the unfamiliar. How many of us have lain in our comfortable bedrooms and imagined tossed clothes as threatening monsters and scratchy tree-branches as iniquitous invaders?

    Night is the domain of nocturnal creatures we imagine are up to no good; otherwise, why seek darkness? Night is the land of dreams when all worries and anxieties bubble up from the deepest depths of our own brains and terrify us with startling and vivid visions. Childhood is largely spent trying to get used to this strange rhythm of sleep and wake, of brooding and action, of quiet and frenzy and attempting to master the suspicions and fears it rouses.

    Isn’t sleep like death and isn’t night like Hell? Where is the sun? What has happened to our loved and loving world? It helps to fall in love with Night and uncover its beauties as well as its secrets.

    Waking in the middle of the night for some exciting enterprise like Christmas, meeting a beloved, for some family ritual or religious vigil, can be a time of awe-inspiring discovery. In the Planetarium they deliberately create a mockery of Night to show us the majesty of stars and planets.

    Lovers wait for night like thieves. This is when most children are conceived, most children are born and the most powerful dreams – the ones that reveal the future – are dreamed.

    The night is a mysterious, unsettling boundary. Sages say we go to sleep in one world and wake in another. I say we go to sleep as one person and wake up as someone else. Both are true. But, quite possibly, we don’t like it. We fear the meanings, the realities, the potential behind all of this.

    Desires come to us unbidden. Do dreams separate or unite? Sleep is the land of the subconscious, the unconscious, the preconscious and the collective conscious. These are worlds we need to integrate into our Being. “Balance” is a skill that allows us to make the best of all these worlds.

    The Subconscious is just beneath the surface. We glimpse it frequently during the day through our reactions to art, music, jokes, accidents and friendly interactions. ‘Freudian slips” are meaning to say one thing and “accidentally” stating the opposite. Our Subconscious is our Mastermind. It can be relied on to recognize the Beloved.

    The Unconscious is deeper. We cannot access it except through dreams. Hypnosis will not take you deep enough. The Unconscious is a huge repository of fear and dread. It manifests in our daytime self as anxiety, panic attacks and psychosomatic illness. “Dream therapy” teaches lucid dreaming, when we begin to recall, learn from, even manage our dreams.

    The Preconscious is our Unborn Self. These are our Multiverse selves who chose another path, past incarnations and possible selves. It manifests itself in our daily life through mysterious attractions to styles of art, episodes of history or pattern re-enactments. Our Preconscious might recognize the Beloved because you were together in another life/world. Sometimes forging of this bond will be the most advanced stage of your souls’ journey. In both cases, recognizing and blending with the Other is a vital step in your Becoming.

    The Preconscious and the Collective Unconscious alike are activated through study, research and learning to accept and enjoy art and history. The Collective Unconscious is our group dream on this planet. It is positively expressed through Art, Shamanism and acting. It is negatively expressed by addictions, circumstances when you know you are acting outside your own control (and against the best interests of your life, health and safety) or when you are “channeling” the soul of another – acting like someone you aren’t but you can’t seem to stop.

    These patterns are broken by Rehabilitation Therapy that seeks to connect you to your True Soul, which is always waiting for you to claim it.

    Sometimes in our quest for the other we are assaulted by demonic forces masquerading as love. This is easily recognized by the question: does your Beloved improve or worsen your psychic health? If Your spiritual integrity is under threat, you will need help escaping this demon. Don’t hesitate to ask for it.


    RESURRECTIONIST

    Unearth me, lover
    I’m a jewel now
    Melted
    In that crevice you once loved so
    Well; it’s an ingot now,
    a socket
    For our mingled liquid
    Essence
    Suck it up with
    Dust-lathered lips
    Strip
    The flesh as you once did
    The clothes; I’m burning
    Cinder-hot –
    Let me astound you with
    My time-perfected skill