Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #DreamTherapy

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    The Bridge = DISCIPLINE “Lovewings”

    “How to keep moving forward?”

    Sometimes we are stuck. Can we even envision the place where we would rather be? There is a yawning chasm between there and here. What we need is a Bridge but nothing is visible. Looks like we might have to build one, but what tools and materials do we have?

    Are there any similarities between where we are now and where we want to be? We want to approach from the closest possible point. Maybe the distance is illusory, maybe the place we plan to get to doesn’t exist at all. The Bridge, on the other hand is ours. We built it and we can own it. The Bridge itself may become the place where we want to be.

    Discipline is our resource. Discipline means doing something we’re committed to do even when we don’t want to do it. We’re forming new skin to become the person we want, need to be. It’s sore and tender at first. We’re charting a new path to finding our soulmate, but we lose confidence fast.

    The psychic rebellion starts early; right when we open one wakeful eye. Do I really have to get up? No one cares but me. I could make a new rule, a new plan…But we know the truth – this is just our devil messing with us. Trying to see how much it can get away with.

    The saving grace here is to fall in love with discipline. With path making as an art. Discipline is order. It’s building, like music. It’s the Beautiful Thing That Comes Next. If everything’s chaos then life is purposeless and nothing matters. Naturally we can change our plan – any time. Our real self always has the chance to make and change informed decisions. But is our Real Self, this niggling, seductive saboteur? No.

    We are on a journey to our real self, the self embodied by the Other (which is tantra) and the self we create together (Tantric Attachment.) We’re committed. And we’re excited! We’ll never get there if we sit by the side of the road in a bundle of sobbing bones and blubber. Here’s the kicker – it feels better the more you do it. You will come to the understanding that it’s all inside you. And you love it!

    LOVEWINGS

    My aunt’s a dancer
    She said “Feel my thighs
    Ain’t they hard
    They’re my love-wings
    Hard as heartwood
    I’m flying on ‘em half the time.
    Practice making perfect I’m
    Tightening up my style in case a valve
    On this here pressure cooker blows
    And splatters darkness like a
    Damsel in a murder case we might
    Solve someday.”
    She laughed and did an arabesque.
    My aunt is thirty-five. I said
    What beautiful thighs you’ve got

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Youth = RESILIENCE: “A Bruise, A Cut, A Fever”

    Snap back!

    Youth is hungry long before dinner is ready. We recall youth as a rollercoaster of highs and lows, a mix of aspiration, beauty and joy keen as a knife’s edge. Let us never forget that sense of Spring when all things were possible and we were the linchpins holding up the universe.

    Youth’s sense of power is so disproportionate to reality it almost seems as if wisdom prohibits action rather than informing it. Like the smarter you are, the less you can accomplish! Youth rushes in places Wisdom fears to even think about. Yet the sense of possibility and the delight in discovery are so heady nothing balks Youth for long. It’s all over far too fast.

    We have discussed the fact that if you want a soulmate, you will have to kill dragons – both yours and theirs. There is trauma potential, to say the least. Every one of us have experienced trauma, many of us have forgotten it, most of us deny it. How we represent the scars of life to ourselves has everything to do with how we represent ourselves to others.

    Today’s meditation is about “snapping back,” not just “recovery” but Plan B. We may need a Plan C, D, and E. The fact that the dragon got the best of us on one or two occasions is no surprise. Remember learning to drive?

    We are really about learning to learn, learning what to fear and not to fear, learning how to react to constantly new sets of circumstances. We are resilient, we are flexible. We are cagey, we are wily.

    By the time we meet our soulmate we will have our own dragons under control, and we will have many stories to share about The Ways of Dragons.

    A BRUISE A CUT A FEVER

    Dragons exist.
    From my tree perch I watched them
    Uncaring of rules and bored by
    Their games, I wrote down
    Statistics
    In gold crested diaries.
    Fairy-tale beginnings
    Augur sour endings.
    Pole-axed by Europe.
    “This stuff matters frightfully”
    And I was affrighted.

    Culture-mad-Mother
    Forced us to look
    Then forced us to blink;
    Her timing was off.
    Dad sought his oceans
    In history, in pictures, in
    The madness of Nature;
    Encapsulates daughters in
    Unsinkable Fiberglas;
    That captain lied when he said
    We were all going home.

    Loathed masculine privilege
    I disliked you on sight
    Teased your editorials
    Insulted your proctoring
    Reviled, you prevailed.
    Kindling a clove-scented ecstasy;
    Inflaming my fevers at the same time as
    Quenching them.

    Sweeping West you
    Pulled the Atlantic behind you, smothering
    Both of us; I fought back with
    Monogrammed luggage.

    Swimming nude in your rapture we
    Posed for Swedish love manuals
    Under the falls.
    I thought I knew everything till
    I met your parents;
    Your father’s impressionist:
    Your mother convinced me
    That monsters can flourish.

    I dust you with my glitter as
    you peel my shock-pants;
    Our children wait impatiently
    To get their lives started.
    “Ask him to marry you Mommy!
    Ask him! Ask him!”

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars -Seeking Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Symbiosis = INTERDEPENDENCE “Impure Women”

    “I need you because you need me”

    Symbiosis is interdependence: far from being exploitation, most species require another’s contribution in order to flourish. Sometimes symbiosis is unacknowledged, especially if one of the partners is using “win/lose” reasoning and agonizes about who’s getting “more” out of the relationship.


    Turning a mutually beneficial relationship into a struggle for dominance marks the end of what could have been a thriving partnership.

    You can have rapturous sex with anybody. You can have devoted friendships with lots of entertaining, interesting people. Soulmating is deeper than that.

    You need each other. You can’t live without each other. Yes, you can bail out now if this sounds scary. Otherwise, that’s what you’re in for. You’re going to have to reveal – often discovering it for the first time yourself – what your needs are, and you’re going to have to be willing to put your shoulder to the other person’s wheel. You nourish each other.

    You’re going to slay each other’s dragons and set each other free FOREVER. This is NOT for the faint of heart. Better leave now if you were just hoping for a nice date, delicious sex, or someone to take home to Mom. Because the dragons WILL show themselves.

    Haiku: I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

    Only soulmates can
    Slay each other’s dragons
    Says Tibetan Master

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

    Mourning = DETACHMENT “Hide & Seek in the Museum of Modern Art”

    “Perfect is Enemy of Good”

    After a loss, Mourning is required. Don’t recoil. Mourning is a growth process which, because it hurts so much, feels like retrenchment. But in the Garden, pruning IS growth.

    Artists try to convince us that spaces – which may seem blank or even empty to us, are part of the design. But what is the design? It makes us hurt – it makes hearts and brains hurt – even to attempt understanding of all this emptiness. All this change.

    Physicists remind us matter transforms; it doesn’t “vanish.” As we contemplate the empty spaces with a sore heart and a buzzing brain, we will need peace and compassion to appreciate the majesty of the whole design.

    We expect sore muscles after exercise, but, oddly, we don’t expect a “sore heart” or “sore mind” as we struggle along our Soulmate path. Sometimes it’s a “sore spirit.” We’re not doing anything “wrong”; life is a rhythm. The “perfection” in our imagination is actually STASIS – the opposite of “life”. The nature of the Other is to break our immature expectations of Perfection with the Wildness of their Mystery.

    If we are to create a New World together, the old world has to go! For a long time – possibly our whole life – we will be honoring our Loss. We may search for ways to reframe it (sometimes it is a blessed release) sometimes it was the shedding of a constricted skin.

    Mourning means this is not an effortless adjustment. Even joining lives triggers a loss. It is scary and new, the loss of our proud loneliness. It can feel like sadness and there is sadness that our privacy will be invaded. There is terror: we will be exposed.

    Mourning is Detachment – you can see the Lost Past drifting away from you like a child’s balloon. It is not just “OK” to mourn, it is necessary and there is no substitute. The fact that you had a worthy self, a worthy past, a dignified life and were “fine on your own” is part of what makes you Beloved.

    Your Soulmate is feeling this too. This is another thing you can share, and there are all sorts of ways to honor it. Some Soulmates need at the beginning of a relationship to keep to their own schedule. You will always need your own room, or private and alone times for retreat. It is necessary to establish boundaries such as private journals, private phones, private work. We are developing trust, as well as changing at the same time.

    Honor those sore muscles of honest effort. Just as sore muscles will slowly improve, so will this sore heart/mind/spirit. We must rub it with the liniment of love, trust, sharing, hope and self-regard. We are brave, and no mistake! Remember the promise “those who mourn will be comforted.”

    HIDE & SEEK IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

    Life class;
    It’s my game but you started it.
    Here we are, lost
    This place resembles me, a
    Swollen storehouse where
    Nothing can be explained,
    Everything’s left
    Open to interpretation.

    Outside a single tree flowers in
    Smug delusion; all this whiteness
    Weights the soul. Mastery bites
    Like teeth on lip; my
    Throbbing inner elbow
    Where the blood lies gathered.
    Lies gathered.
    Let’s admit it. Take
    Responsibility

    For once, leave no work
    Unfinished. Anonymous
    Entries win no prize.
    Pan-flash –

    Recoil.
    Powder burn –
    Person
    Less

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Seeking a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Chrysalis = Potential

    “Hot Prowl”

    The Chrysalis looks dead; that is its disguise. A simple, broken leaf, soon to be swept away by wind or rain. But in fact, it’s a puzzle box that holds the whole universe inside itself; an unbroken chain of DNA, an augury of “becoming” dating from the dawn of Life itself. So is each of us a Chrysalis…of what? For what?

    We are powerhouses seeking ignition. We can feel the slow-gathering strength within, but we are still mysteries to ourselves. We need the Other to become a Full Being. Plato posited that man/woman are separated angels endlessly seeking their other half. Your duty is to protect the chrysalis so that it can unfold in its own good time. Be patient, your day of flight and connection comes ever closer.

    HOT PROWL

    Don’t wake up.
    Surveilled by night
    Your chiseled torso
    Slackened with exhaustion.
    Touching things that once
    You touched,
    Listening to your apnea;
    I turn away before you turn.
    Making peace with all my choices.
    It’s been worth everything –
    Winning in divorce a
    Hard-won superpower:
    Invisibility

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Seeking a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Marriage = PARTNERSHIP ; “Marriage License”

    “The light in me honors the light in you”

    Marriage can be a spiritual partnership of equals, a conscientious joining of two lives seeking to shape a common purpose animated by love. If either partner is looking for a mule, hostage, trick mirror or foot soldier, the partnership will fail. The fact that our higher purpose can only be discovered after we have sealed the deal makes marriage the riskiest enterprise any of us can expect to tackle in a lifetime, but if we succeed, the payoff is tremendous and all effort, achievement and joy will be raised to the greatest power.

    Alliances: Very little in life is accomplished alone. We long to double and triple our efforts, to see 360 degrees at once , and to work while sleeping, like some double-headed god! We spend years fantasizing about the perfect partner who will provide the invisible cloak, the seven league boots, who will take over from us in the relay race while we are fainting or shivering with fever psychological or physical.

    And then there’s the love that give us x-ray vision; loving the person we learn from, seek comfort from, who gives us strength. Marriage is a blending; our partner bringing out gifts we didn’t know we had.

    Who can we partner with for today’s challenges? What does our soulmate seek in us? What can we do to be worthy of their faith? Marriage Card is a multiplicitous maximizer of power and potential as well as risk.

    Alliances are critical in life. None of us can survive, much less flourish, without some kind of team. The size of the team often determines our success, sometimes called “social capital.” This presents a special challenge to introverts, like me, who not only like but actually need to be alone, just to recharge, work and hear our own thoughts. The Fully Committed Other therefore has even more importance in our lives.

    Marriage is the ultimate commitment, publicly forswearing all others unless you specifically rewrite your vows differently (or take no vows at all.) Is marriage too great a step for you? Unimaginable, in fact? Or is this the future towards which you have been working? If so, you need a Beloved who truthfully companions, instead of pretending to agree.

    Marriage License

    This policy does not insure against
    disfigurement
    (controlled or uncontrolled)


    delirium; anguish approximate or anguish remote;
    dismembering scars
    that fever-chart a graph of life immutable to prayer


    intransigent of purpose;
    does not insure against
    my someday knowing you


    forcing pores to open where once
    you had no skin
    dining on your heart while you


    dine out on mine.
    When I forget this I know
    You will remind me


    As we are destined to
    Remind each other.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Seeking a Soulmate with Alysse Aallyn

    Solitude = SELF-SUFFICIENCY

    “What’s your experience of being alone?”

    Solitude is required for reflection, and reflection is required for growth. Growth is required for choosing a soulmate, because the choice cannot be haphazard but the result of self-knowledge.

    Solitude is not loneliness; it is the Art of Being Alone. Wise Ones have told us that ultimately each of us is only alone; we are born alone and we die alone. Plainly, this cannot be true. We are as social a species as the ants and termites. But just as one could argue that every worthwhile achievement has been a collaboration, one could also argue that every worthwhile idea was conceived in solitude.

    I prefer to think of our “mental, emotional and spiritual pores” having both an “on” and “off” position. There is outflow, there is in-flow and there is no flow. All are necessary to the health of the human being and all are necessary to the maximization of human potential. Depth psychology merely systematizes the layers of human consciousness and sub-consciousness whose existence dreams have always demonstrated.

    Meditation and mindfulness seek to capture the exact moment when the soul experiences itself. This is not possible without regular periods of scheduled and enforced solitude. In-breath must equal outbreath until suddenly the lips of the psyche part and, as in a “magic eye” painting; the familiar world dramatically shifts to reveal under-worlds and over-worlds of multiple meanings and intense possibilities.

    Self-Sufficiency: How panicked are we by the idea of being “alone”? Even those of us who are introverts are sustained by a complex net of relationships, any adjustment to which could drive us back to infancy. Are we alone even within our relationships? Are we alone on our planet? In the universe? It is surprising how much this fear can be seen lurking behind our consciously assumed states of mental “good cheer”.

    Most of us work in collaborative ventures; nothing we do would be worthwhile without, at the very least, someone to assess or appreciate. It is time to take stock of our internal personal resources; those that owe nothing to the support of others.

    Opportunity; Much of what we think during the day is in fact a dialogue. It is salutary to ask ourselves: who are we talking to? Is this person imaginary, dead, alive? Are they helpful – or cruel? It’s common knowledge that we speak more insultingly to ourselves than we might to anyone we know! Time for a “voices” upgrade. These are part of ourselves talking to each other; possibly parts of ourselves we could do without.

    And is that the best way to accomplish our set goals? Now’s the time to understand that, given education and culture, we can never be “alone” in the sense of bereft of help. We have countless models we’ve been choosing from childhood up. Who are they? Do we need upgrade them, or just name them and learn to deploy them more effectively? Some of us are surrounded by a mix of celebrities (Humphrey Bogart in “Play it Again, Sam”) some of us by the loving dead (Granma and Grandpa) others by cultural icons (for me Shelley, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson) some of us by imaginary friends or even angels.

    What’s working for us and what isn’t? After all, we furnish our own brains. Let’s decorate by design.

    Danger! An important component of the confidence we desire to cultivate is freedom and self-determination. We all know how unsettling a date’s visible desperation can be. We instinctively back away as from a sinking ship whose whirlpool threatens to suck us in. In other words, the best way to gain a soulmate is to be able – visibly! -to live without one. This sounds nonsensical; but look at it this way, you ARE living without one. Is your desire to change your life based on the indisputable fact that your life is a mess? If so, we have to turn our attention to THAT first thing, otherwise we are the sinking ship no one wants to get near, much less, on.

    Challenge! To increase our chances of finding the best person who is right for us right now AND in our future, we have to GIVE ourselves a future. No other person can be our “future.” We need to have a vision of a future we are working towards. That is what we want to hear about our date, and that is what they will want to hear about us. It’s time to become your own best friend, the one who really cares about you and gives such good advice

    HEDGEHOG CROSSING ROAD

    Spines erect as swords
    She waits
    To tilt the windmills rushing by
    Machined from hell to trap
    Her tiny weight of soul and fur.


    She fears not.
    He who protects the sparrows
    Comforts her.
    The air is sharp
    With winter not
    With false regret –


    She lifts her head to gauge
    The moment ripe for flight
    Unaltered in her captaincy of self.
    She’ll reach eternity or the pond


    No matter
    Each complete her
    Equally.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – walking the path of attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    Recovery = REBIRTH “In the Hour of Our Death”

    “If you don’t have a loving relationship with yourself, no one else will.”

    Several times on your path you will feel the need to “re-boot” and start over. “Rebirth” is available to us any time, following a period of reflection, retreat and re-centering.

    “Recovery” begins to happen we manage to repel a demonic force that kept us in thrall – addiction, illusion, corruption, compulsive behavior; even a poisonous culture. Sometimes, we were hostage to another human being who didn’t have our best interests at heart.

    What ARE our best interests? As our brains begin to clear we begin to understand. Ernest Hemingway used to say we are “stronger at the broken places” and Nietzsche expressed it as “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” but obviously these maxims only hold true if a complete healing has taken place.

    Complete healing provides peace as well as joy. We give thanks that we have started on the journey.


    Second Chances – Expect to stumble. Watching toddlers try to “rise and walk” we must consider what a good thing it is that they don’t mind being laughed at. (In fact, they love it.) It takes them quite awhile to figure out this new challenge. Like beginning skiers, they cling to objects, sway exaggeratedly back and forth, slam into others, and plop down SPLAT; not just once or twice but over and over. In fact the toddler hasn’t been born who suddenly vaults up suavely and starts swanning around in a sophisticated manner.

    And those are the ones with no impediment to walking – watched hungrily by the less fortunate who only wish they could be blessed with this magical opportunity to make public fools of themselves.

    Once we take in the meaning of these facts we embrace the last step of Recovery: “Expect to go splat.” Of course we don’t WANT to – fingers crossed – it’s dangerous and bruising. We’d better arrange to have someone around – just in case. But you don’t fail unless you refuse to rise again. Don’t even bother counting the times you were “brave”. It’s only the “getting back up” that counts. As long as you’re doing that, you’re a true winner.

    As we study ourselves with a desire to put our best foot forward we are increasingly overwhelmed with despair. This old self won’t do. We are the club no one wants to join; us included.

    We have to ask ourselves if part of our desire for the Other is a longing to be rid of Self. But how is this to be accomplished, when we know that any relationship built on fakery must surely fail. How can a New Self be the Real One?

    Fortunately, there is a model for this in the recovery movement – legions of people giving up self-destructive habits and birthing a fresh new self. They say the relief is glorious, everything is more meaningful as their confidence grows. We want some of that. We must abjure all the behavior that have caused us suffering in the past. What are they, exactly? Let’s identify and enhance the wonderful things about us, the self we want to keep.

    And in the Hour of Our Death

    I am wind sucked
    The tempest starts without me
    Scuttled like a leaf


    I loose your hand
    My words come fire
    My blood blasts forth


    And vomits out
    This darkness
    Some god commands


    I push
    I flee – I won’t be born –
    I push


    And then relax.
    It can’t happen all at once.
    The corpses dance


    The trees devour their own roots
    I’m spat like pulp
    I push –


    I’ve gone too far
    To get back now.
    I’ve lost your cord


    Threaded in the frenzy
    That is life.
    My lips are ceremonies


    My hips are burial grounds.
    Silence rushes in to bear me up and I explode
    To atoms.


    What is this new lightness?
    Into this furnace of stars
    I collapse my burdens like


    A house of cards, I soar, I flirt
    My strength
    Is limitless


    My soul, my life
    An infinite caress.

  • Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – walking the path of attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    Memory = THE PAST – “Practice Cuts”

    “Where did you come from?”

    In Memory lies our Identity. There are probably no sadder words than “I don’t remember you.” We are born with wild, unexplored ambitions and we spend our lives trying to live up to them by learning & acquiring partnership, discipline & practice. And sometimes, trying to forget negative conditioning and poor patterning.

    Memory is the foundation of art, science and law as we try to reflect back what we have learned. Memory gives us the words to say to build and express our emotions & intent. Luckily our bodies have memories, too. Memory resides in hearing, touch, taste, sight and muscle; long after words have gone.

    Past Patterns – Sometimes we recognize a pattern coming around again, but more often, we don’t. We’re accustomed to treating each new crisis as if it blew in out of nowhere. This is where journaling can really pay off for us as we ask a series of questions: have I been here before? And what did it look like that time? Is there anything different – really new – about now?

    Negative Conditioning is when we learned unhelpful or destructive practices. If we grew up with parents who couldn’t forge strong intimate connections there is a danger we will re-experience all their trouble. We also learn from patterns experienced through art or viewed from a distance. And then there are “cultural ideals” – some of which are downright unhealthy and must be discarded.

    Sometimes we only see a situation clearly when it’s happening to someone else! What advice does our past self have to give us – our cockier, more youthful self? How about our wiser self – the mature self who can see the whole picture — the one who’s “arrived”?

    Memory is not just who we are, memory is where we live. Our Soulmate is not a mind-reader, so communication is constant and evolving. Memories change, as we change. Different aspects of our own story emerge into importance as we evolve. Previously, we might not have even noticed aspects of our own story that we now see as key. This has important implications for the presentation of self that is critical to our connection with another person.

    Are prepared for this “other” to dramatically transform the way we see ourselves; to change our story’s “meaning” as well as altering our past and empowering our future? There is an Official Version of our past we like to tell others as we introduce ourselves; now is the time to ponder the Secret Version. The version we only tell our most significant other.

    Is it secret because it is shameful? Soulmate Love is not an opportunity to escape our past but to heal it. That toxic shame may be the exact lens through which you and the Soulmate first “see” each other. Your connection will start as a series of conversations, which may be physical, verbal, or non-verbal.

    In literature, the tale of Cupid & Psyche embodies these processes, as Psyche (“The Soul”) first thinks she is married to a monster with whom she can only mate in darkness. She “steals a glance” at him when he is sleeping but, when he catches her, he is furious and flees. The plot twist: he was actually a beautiful young man, but he didn’t know it so was not ready to reveal himself. The “monster” was his toxic shame. How does the story end? You and your Soulmate will find out.

    PRACTICE CUTS

    The dead gush cruelly after dying.
    High time to make some changes;
    Get religion, have visions
    See god, become a nun


    Some self worth knowing.
    Time is gunning for me
    Arthritic fingers
    Scrabbling at my dreams


    Playing old tunes
    Scratchy now, less sensitive.

    I’m a body in search of a car wreck
    That old deus ex machina
    Disaster; blood is so good


    At erasing uncertainty &
    Bringing back a taste for life.
    Reduce me, silence: fortify
    Some other ego, mine’s too tired.


    Ebb out along the tide,
    Cauterize this woof-warp of a pattern
    So plain even I can see it.

    Reduce me to unbending bones of
    My essential self: sweet sister; she;
    The soul I was before I became me.

  • The Language of Butterflies – walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    The Moon = SUBTLE INFLUENCE : “Botticelli’s Simonetta”

    “Secret crushing”

    The Moon and the Sun have nothing in common. The Moon is a planet, the Sun is a star. The Moon doesn’t give light; it reflects light; it must be tired of being compared to the Sun. What an unfair fight!

    The Moon is our hostage, circling us slowly. Balefully. Oh, it has its worshippers. I mean, which would you rather be, Moonstruck or Sun-struck? You can recover from The Moon. The Moon seems manageable; Earth has visited it many times. The Moon is symbolic; vital for poets; unavoidable for lovers. The Moon is the Planet for people who like to sneak around. The Moon manages our tides, but subtly. Cruelly. She is the Queen of passive aggression.

    There are two ways to accomplish anything: full-frontal or “sneak attack.” This knowledge, so dear to military strategists, is one of the first things we discovered as children. You rarely get what you want simply by asking for it. Instead, you must study “the target” and determine likely responses. As children, we usually realized it helped if “target” was in a good mood! Bad mood targets say “no” to everything!

    But this simple reality has important ramifications for us adult planners: there is also “weather” in the world of human desire and accomplishment. It’s much more difficult to “take off” in a storm. The Moon is visible entirely by borrowed light, but that’s the least important thing about her. Her power may be invisible, but we can feel it in our blood, in our bodies!

    There could be no more useful introduction to the potency of Subtle Power. Sometimes in order to achieve our desire we must prepare our target to even hear us. Jesus illustrated this brilliantly in a series of parables anyone would understand. When he was asked a question, he’d tell a story whose moral was obvious. He allowed seekers to answer their own questions by first determining what “paradigm” matched their circumstance.

    Plotting the “weather” and analyzing the “players” tells us much of what we need to know when planning to move forward. It can be admirable to lay all our cards on the table, or it can be foolhardy; as men discover who propose on the first date. We’ve been given complex brains. Let’s use them to think strategically.

    Do you have a secret crush? Do you know why — or is not knowing an important part of its power over you? What’s influencing you? Where is this pull coming from?

    The moon exemplifies subtle power; entrancing its quarry like a sidewinder. That means it’s time to “think outside the box” and take a deep dive into the “hard” wiring of your motives and desires. Just how “hard” is that wiring? Just because it’s “factory-installed” doesn’t mean it can‘t be improved upon.

    “Customization” according to your unique requirements is far superior to accepting whatever your biology throws at you. Let’s study our own blueprints with a view to a possible re-design if we don’t like what we see. We all have nonsensical fears, triggers and prejudices; keeping them in darkness allows them to proliferate, even assume command. The Moon is one of the Imposture archetypes (Fireflies is the other) but the moon is more about you posing to fool yourself. 

    We who seek our Perfect Other Half wish to be free of all that. We want to know what we actually want, what benefits and what harms us and all we want is the ability to speak it honestly. Let’s compare your real self, your desired self and your social self to your desirable self – and learn.

    Can you change? This is the most important question, because you’ll have to change to blend smoothly with your other. Resistance to change – to experimentation, to re-design – is the biggest red flag there is. It’s a deal-breaker.

    SIMONETTA:
    Botticelli’s Muse

    Ah Simonetta!
    You were always
    All the faces; how we

    Pity the griffon backed toad
    Who dreams of you
    And you alone;

    Excepting your fatality –
    Eyes flint deep, pebble shallow,
    Thunder lines coiled on
    Lips pursed tight

    A tantrummy child
    Punishing parents by
    Refusing to breathe.

    As this world is not
    Perfection you can’t be;
    Yet somehow you embody

    Everything we yearn for; your
    Pear-hard belly
    Anticipating ravages;

    Unto that scar that splits you twice
    Equator-wise, spilling out
    the thistle-tailed phoenix

    Who perpetuates your face, spinning
    Ropes of rubied veins and
    Clouds of gilded hair –

    Arching you back to
    Burst you, husk and all
    Against the sun.