Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #DreamTherapy

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

    Let Go of the Past – Don’t Worry.

      Can Creatives afford to relax? Seems counterintuitive right before a big project, doesn’t it? Well, First Lesson of Creative Boot Camp is that creativity is Counterintuitive. Other people rush away from the burning building – planning on being EVEN MORE SCARED the next time. Well, we are going to master our fear. We are going in.

      Consider the “Letting Go” archetype – swimming, flying, dreaming. Does it speak to you? You’ve summoned up your power – now you’re overwhelmed with fear – are we challenging the goddess? Insulting the universe? This is an age-old dread felt by every human that intended to accomplish anything since the beginning of time. You’re declaring your place in the world. Your past memories are of others firmly trying to “place” you and keep you there. Dismiss them from your thoughts. You’re alone now, with your own potential – and it’s the most exciting place to be in the world.

      Everybody Panics – I had my first panic attack at age 5 (I got lost outside a movie theatre) and another at age 11 when I descended deep, deep, deep into a cave. (I think the guide was deliberately trying to scare us.) I didn’t know at the time what these episodes were – my parents and sisters saw them as embarrassing annoyances – but looking back it’s clear what was happening to me physically was as a result of what was happening to me mentally.

      Relaxation In the Face of Panic – Learning to tolerate psychic dissonance, to be interested in it and challenged by it is what we’re all about. It’s a sign that we’re in the presence of the Deep Stuff – the things that galvanize our deep subconscious and if we can just seize control of that, we’ll access our true power.

      Learn Relaxation Techniques – There are so many and you should experiment with all of them! Learn what works for you and – key – what you enjoy. You will find yourselves using these techniques all the time. To get to sleep, to get through difficult experiences or just to access your subconscious when you have a question.

      Breathe Deeply – The very first thing is mastering control of the breath. Pregnant women learn all kinds of helpful breathing techniques in Lamaze; panting, counting; deliberately slowing down and speeding up your breathing. In yoga you will learn Lion Breaths to make you feel powerful. They are very similar to the gasps and shouts in martial arts and will affect your opponents. Watch the Maori war dance on YouTube.

      Get Out Your Training Journal – write down the techniques and your reactions. Appoint a time to practice these every day. Your breath connects you to the universe and all living things.

      Models & Mentors: “The first thing to learn is the breath.” – Confucius

      ‘Breathe In. Let Go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure, and give thanks for that.”
      – Oprah Winfrey

      ‘Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor” –
      Thich Nhat Hanh

      “While we breathe, we hope” – Barack Obama

      #Haiku: Every Breath You Take

      Life isn’t numbered
      By breaths you take but
      Moments
      That take breath
      Away

    1. 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.

    2. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

      The Calla Lilly = FORGIVENESS “My Grandmother’s Ghost”

      “Is forgiveness possible?”

      In the language of flowers, the Calla Lily is forgiveness. Forgiveness is like coming home. It hypothesizes a place where the past doesn’t matter, mistakes are healed, and love conquers all. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?

      Soulmates create heaven for each other, but we can taste and enjoy it, now. Nothing is held back.

      Love requires that each desire the other’s “good.” There is no tiny part of us hoping for the other’s denigration so that we can rise. This means forswearing the Scarcity Mentality. We must believe there is enough love for us both.

      Love without status, without competition. Just closeness, forgiveness and togetherness. If a Soulmate keeps pushing his Beloved into position of Enforcer, Critic, Teacher or Detective, the relationship is under such threat its future is imperiled. One can hardly be forgiven until one stops being a danger to the soul of the Beloved and the soul of the relationship. We must commit to desiring the other’s good, and to demanding health and life for ourselves.

      When the Calla lily arrives at your door, not just forgiveness but absolution is in the offing. We know there can be no forgiveness for us unless we have learned to forgive others, but perhaps the hardest thing is to learn to forgive ourselves.

      We must even forgive God for the pulse of history and the electricity of circumstance, for the physical web in which we are all caught. Give up trying to assess who did what to who and why; letting it all go as your eyes turn to the future.

      There is no resolution in simply showing wounds or admitting wrongdoing; but there is healing available when we hold each other up in the light. But we have to want it. We must want to come home.

      How many times do we have to forgive ourselves? When asked how many times we need to forgive others Jesus made the quick calculation of “seventy times seven” meaning, “a lot.” If you think about it, you’ll realize we are going to have to forgive each other and ourselves a lot more times than that! Possibly multiple times per day for the rest of our lives. Don’t we have to forgive ourselves for constantly underestimating ourselves, for saying “I can’t do this” without even trying, for insulting ourselves and verbally (and for all I know physically!) Be a loving partner to yourself so that your Beloved knows how to love you.

      Meditation: We’re branches of the same tree – W.B. Yeats

      My Grandmother’s Ghost

      My grandmother never cried
      Emmie you’re a stoic
      Everyone admired her. That’s why
      She haunts us; pressing her face accusingly
      Against the glass beneath the stairs.
      On windy nights she
      Threatens God, maligns
      His angels; for the little boy who died
      Of scarlet fever; without once
      Calling her name; and the collie dog run over
      And the storm that forever uprooted
      Her wedding tulips.
      Mother shakes her head, says, “Poor Gran
      Will never be done; she’s got
      Too much grief to catch up on.”

    3. 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.

    4. 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?

    5. Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

      Version 1.0.0

      Thistle = RESISTANCE = “The thistle”

      “Do we really want love? Can we tolerate togetherness?”

      The thistle threatens, “Touch me Not.”

      It is inevitable that we experience Merging on some level as Identity Loss. This is the source of the power struggle which plagues, and should plague, all relationships: who’s going to drive this bus? (The answer is Each/Both/Neither. Power flows in, out and between, like the tide.)

      If “who will drive” doesn’t emerge into consciousness then the problem lies very deep and must be urgently addressed. It’s always important to keep in mind that one soul isn’t “absorbed” while the other “inflates”! That’s not how it works at all!

      For example, those who study the contemporary meanings of the word ”fuck” will be justifiably alarmed. If you are “fucked” you’ve been “taken.” You’ve been “had,” emptied, eviscerated, exploited. You are left worse off.

      One person is diminished, the other is a conqueror in this scenario. Soulmating cannot and will not happen under such conditions – both souls will be erased. Considering that sex is the glue that fuses souls, exploitational thinking is profoundly destructive. “Mated” is a much better term, but even that fails to encompass the transfer of self into a central Us that is so much desired, feared, dreaded and resisted.

      You desperately need each other’s pollen to ignite true fertility in the soul. Relax. Experiment. Allow the Other to instruct you in their Wildness. Offer up your own exotic difference. Join.

      #HAIKU: The Thistle

      Pry me out
      I fly back hard
      Invigorate world
      With wilder honey

    6. 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?

    7. 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.

    8. 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

    9. 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.