Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #DreamTherapy

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

    Fruit – Fruition

    If This Archetype Chooses You – A project of yours nears completion. Harvest approaches. Do you dream of fruit, perfectly ripe? Do you love to cook and entertain? Are you attracted by movies with long family dinner scenes, everyone celebrating outdoors beneath an arbor? Is touring wine country a popular fantasy of yours? You are a person who is propelled forward by imagining smiles on the faces of others as the work of community and you believe that family harmony is to be celebrated and enjoyed. This vision can keep us going through bitter hardships.

    Harvest Comes Because Creatives Prepare – You became a creative because you resisted others’ negativity, hopelessness and learned helplessness. Instead you turned your eyes to the inevitable rituals of seed care, the healthy promotion of living things, and now you are granted a front-row seat at the celebration of flourishing.

    Creative Challenge – Keeping these visions alive during the training phase is hard, because the growth cycle is long and can be boring and uneventful. That’s why planting occurs in stages, so all your psychic eggs aren’t resting in the same basket. Learn to enjoy all the seasons, without hungering for a single season. This is a good time to contrast group versus individual gratifications and ask ourselves, “What’s that about?”

    Creative Danger – Even Creatives can become thirsty for gratification until it takes more and more to satisfy us. “Winning” is a shallow goal if that’s all there is. Creatives seek harmony, blending community resources to make the whole family stronger. The worst outcome is to be locked in an addiction cycle and spiraling downwards; no longer part of the growth process, benefitting from training and spiritual renewal.

    Creatives Rest by Dreaming Forward – Sitting around the fire telling stories, modeling “success” as peaceful sharing rather than as an endless party. Luckily sleep and dreams are the best model of fruitful dormancy. We require those periods and we need to look forward to their relief and imaginative nourishment.

    Creative Opportunity – Every group celebration of the success and nourishment cycle is different. Are there leftover behaviors that no longer serve you? What fresh, exciting new ideas might you add? Is everyone in the family/community being well-served or are there grumpy holdouts? It’s fruitful to listen to the grumpy holdouts occasionally. How might they do things differently? If all they want is to harsh everyone else’s buzz, maybe they should no longer expect an automatic invitation to the feast.

    Models & Mentors – “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you will get but by the seeds you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

    “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter, enjoy” – William Blake

    “Every deed sows a seed, though the harvest you may not see”
    – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

    “We are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond” – Gwendolyn Brooks

    #Haiku: Return on Investment

    Summer pledges sweat
    Ecstatic harvest romp
    Inevitable cleanse.

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

    Hummingbird – The Soul

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Do you ever dream of hummingbirds? Of the ‘impossible” flight of the bumblebee? Your soul is speaking. Listen. According to C.S. Lewis, we are not a Body with a Soul, we are a Soul with a Body. Our bodies may be all too mutable, but our souls can be eternal. Do you dream of past lives? See yourself in historical contexts? Do you have dreams of utter bodilessness in which you are totally free, seeming to travel invisibly through the power of your mind?

    What Are Creatives Fighting For? Immortality is not a given, but an achievement. Souls are under threat. What is the Sin Against the Holy Spirit that the Bible talks about, the one sin that cannot be forgiven? It is any attempt to slaughter the soul, the stifle your inborne, God-given ability to detect the numinous and to access the sphere of eternality. Creatives therefore fight the greatest battle there is, to protect the power of their own Souls’ immortality and those of everyone else.

    Accept Your Immortality – Can we destroy our own immortality through abuse and disbelief? Sadly, yes, and some of us act like we want to! If “heaven” represents eternal bliss and “hell” eternal pain who would ever choose the latter? Those who find life itself such a stacked deck they turn away from the gamble. It’s soul suicide. This is as tragic as battling against one of our talents (“I’m never going near that guitar.”) Who exactly are you trying to harm? The direction we need to travel is in uncovering who we really are and freeing ourselves. To become a Self worth being.

    Everyone Has Experienced the “Flow “of Bliss– We have knowledge of eternality in our daily life – actual accessible ecstasy in which Time and Impossibility vanish while we experience full connectedness with the universe. We become Creatives just to master this ability – and to transfer it to others. This skill alone makes merely being ourselves a reliable, eternal pleasure.

    Creative Challenge – Obviously, our minds change the same way our bodies do. We grow up! Think about the differences between you now, and you at say, three years old. Imagine the joyous understanding with which you will eventually “get” what seems now incomprehensible. If you just accept that possibility, you can enjoy the Now.

    Creative Danger – What Christians call “sin”, Buddhists call “clinging”. We grab on to any passing thing in fear, to halt the frightening mystery of our flight but of course it doesn’t work! The G forces build up as space revolves around us, meanwhile we are clinging to some crappy object, or some person who is experiencing a different trajectory. Let those things go. Don’t be frightened by your feelings, just study them, turn them into huge iridescent bubbles, and spin them away. Learn to enjoy this flight, no matter how wild it gets.

    Creative Opportunity – Think about the Biblical parable in which everyone is invited to a glorious feast. These “guests” are so threatened by this invitation, they not only don’t go, they murder the messenger. Watch the glorious film, Groundhog Day. Poor weather forecaster Bill Murray is sentenced to living the same reality over and over and over again, trying everything he can think of to escape, including suicide. Finally he decides to learn how to just enjoy the life he has been granted, and to be as nice as possible to the other frightened, enraged, confused souls around him. Only then is he able to move on to the next level which turns out to be the rewarding love of his dreams. That is the Progress of the Soul which we defend.

    Models & Mentors – “the living soul, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled” – Horace Mann

    “The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” – Carolyne Myss

    “Without applied awareness of the soul, happiness can’t arise” – Dada Bhagwan

    “The desire to know your own soul ends all other desires” – Rumi

    #Haiku: Last Minute

    Bone grows
    Mind crashed
    Soul merge
    Skin graft
    Intervention –
    Light shaft
    Angel…?
    Laughed.

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

    Wildflowers – Beauty

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Some shy, unpretentious glory awaits your consideration. It could be your own Self. Are your dreams so beautiful you regret waking up? Do you imagine possessing great beauty yourself, or do you dream of caressing another’s gorgeous flesh, the dream lover turning those diamond eyes on you? Do you dream of beautiful places, caverns, waterfalls, chapels –spectacular in their other-worldly glamor? We are all visual learners, attracted to beauty, hypnotized by color. Our relationship to the universe is naturally worshipful.

    Creatives Don’t Take Time to Appreciate Their Own Beauty – We’re here to preserve and exalt – in our own way – the beauty of our natural world. We alert when the planet slips into disharmony, but our love of beauty provides a guide suggesting how it can be restored.

    Beauty Is a Guide to Order and an Education in Symmetry. Wildflowers’ magnificence is numinous. It stands in contrast to the managed world which is constantly attempting to freeze & fetishize the ephemeral, even the eternal. Wildflowers’ mysterious evanescence suggests what true beauty is. To become a servant of the seasons is to fill our lives to overflowing with constant pleasure.

    Train Your Creative Eye – Take joy in your surroundings. Japanese samurai practice flower arranging, for the purpose not only of relaxation, but discernment. As there is “forest bathing”, so there is “flower bathing.” But nature is wide and we are part of it. The Creative Mandate is vast and all encompassing. Puppies doing anything, kittens doing everything, a dance class of toddlers (all doing the wrong thing), flowers coming up through cement, a piece of brilliant stained glass on a battered utility truck, a book of cave paintings, the swirl in our coffee, old photographs, our beloved’s sleepy morning face – once you start “collecting”, you realize beauty is all around you.

    Look in the Mirror – That is what beauty is – those lines, those scars, each one a history. That light behind the eyes is a directing soul, in tune with its guardian angel. Accept yourself. It is necessary for the creative to love Self, in order to truly See, much less Love – others.

    Unclutter Your Soul – Clutter is frustrating for the brain. We all love sharing beautiful pictures, but aggressively, officiously “beautiful” people have been hogging the space. Be discriminating in the cherished mind-pictures that you gather. Think of the brave wildflower, flourishing and free. Is fakery the path to joy or depression?

    Creative Danger – We find ourselves caught in a frenzy of “likes”. A “like” button can have a plethora of meanings, but if we don’t take care, we will begin to “need” likes the way a drunk needs booze. Without them we fear nothingness. Specious approval from strangers – or at least attention – can never fill your heart. The quiet joy of certain pleasure inside your own head as you follow your bliss –– that’s lasting pleasure. Relax, refresh, renew.

    Models & Mentors – “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it” – Confucius

    “Beauty is a light in the heart” – Khalil Gibran

    “Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself” – Coco Chanel

    “Don’t think of all the misery but the beauty that remains” – Anne Frank

    “Beauty is reality seen with the eyes of love” – Rabindranath Tagore

    #Haiku: Hold Still Forever

    Beauty
    Herded toward capture –
    Resist!
    Reserve your right to
    Disappoint

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

    Sunflowers – Spirituality

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are Thirsting for Light and the Light is Thirsting for You. Do you dream of other-worldly events? Parapsychological and out of body experiences? Flying and underwater breathing? These freedom dreams of otherworldly mastery tell us much about who we are. In the Creative Oracle, the sunflower represents our spirituality – a reaching out for connection with something others might insist is not there. But we feel – very strongly – that it is. Who’s right?

    Sunflowers Turn to The Light and So Do Creatives. Hundreds of years ago Blaise Pascal argued that we have so much to gain if the supernatural is true, and nothing to gain if it isn’t, so that the calculus is simple. When you act as if the universe was richly designed by a Carer who promotes Goodness and rewards Love, you create the ideal conditions for human flourishing, whereas, as we all know, and has been conclusively proven scientifically, pessimism about outcomes dramatically lowers future benefits. Certainly, one could argue that our communications with each other are fraught with mistake and misapprehension, but that’s an argument for increased effort and insight and hardly a quitter’s mandate.

    Creatives Cultivate Sixth Sense – Some people are born color blind – others are tone deaf – so it’s perfectly possible some are unable to access the extra dimensions. But the lucky creative few – know that there is a universal resource to be tapped into when we can maneuver ourselves to the “right wavelength.”

    Creatives Follow The Sunflower Path – What IS our mandate? Focus on increasing your ability to tell health and growth potential from sickness and disease enhancement. This will help you find the right path and the right people. Goodness never seeks your diminishment and constriction – the ruthless pursuit of human power does that. Test all wavelengths for generosity, balance and liveliness and contemplate what is beneficial in the universe. Bask in the flow of reassurance, resilience and recovery that intense spirituality provides.

    Creative Challenge – Fully explore your fears with a view to answering Immanuel Kant’s timeless question, “What can we hope?” Jesus focused his ministry on healing and met virulent rule-focused pushback. He found himself in a frenzy of status-seeking coupled with denigration. His life as well as his words teach us that the “Letter” kills, but the “spirit” gives Life. It is up to us to find and nourish that spirit. Once you can feel the “angels” – i.e. virtues – around you – (I picture them as nosing deer!) your fear subsides.

    Creatives Never Surrender Their Ability to Scent Danger – No journey can be free of risk. Trust requires us to follow where we cannot see the path, and so sometimes we lose the path. Sometimes we realize our “guide” REALLY looks to capture & constrain, not enhance & liberate. We must maintain our ability and reserve our right to recognize this so that we can reverse course before the cliff edge, telling malignant spirits “You no longer represent me” and to seek out a healthier program of progress.

    Creatives Enhance Opportunity for Everyone – We are never alone. All around us are pilgrims struggling with the same things we’re struggling with. Sharing and caring knits us together. The American two party political system benefits from stirring up hatreds to protect itself from change. Don’t accept it. We are not each other’s enemies. The possibilities for friendship and connection are huge, but hatred and anger lead in only one direction.

    Models & Mentors – “The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper”- W.B. Yeats

    “You need not work to become spiritual – you are spiritual. You need only to recognize that fact” – Julia Cameron

    “The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love” – Marianne Williamson

    “Happy people build their inner world – unhappy people blame their outer world” – Dalai Lama

    “The power of God is with you at all times, through the activities of mind, sense, breathing, the emotions , doing all the work, using you as mere instrument” – Bhagavad Gita

    #Haiku: Hegira

    Fleeing outward
    Questing
    Fresh feathers
    Enabling
    Spirit’s
    Aching wings

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

    Art

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Your Soul Cries Out for Definition


    Birds gotta sing. It’s who they are. Do you dream of artistic products – paintings, sculpture, film – or artistic endeavors such as performance and construction? Do you get ideas for fresh pieces and experience exciting nonconformist thinking that seem to evaporate upon waking?

    Some of Us Are Creatives for Art – Art is the judge of our poetic confrontation with the world, the cure and the cause. It is also our prime avenue for non-verbal healing. Only non-verbal healing can address pain that can’t be quantified.

    Learn A New Language Or Develop Your Own – Your inner self is signaling to you that it is time for you to explore other languages – art expression – mastering its terms, and to start inventing terms of your own. Only art can establish the secure connection with others required to nourish you now.

    You Are an Artist Whether You Like It Or Not – Every single one of us chooses modes and objects of expression, consciously or unconsciously, every single day. We buy one object over another because it gives us pleasure; we arrange our living spaces to express some intangible quality about ourselves – a self-definition that signals to others who we are and where we are on our journey.

    Artists Are Free – Art demands individuality. We begin by copying but we must move on to expressing our uniqueness or our soul can’t evolve. If we are happy being part of an unthinking mass we are truly “unborn.” This exploration will grant you a deep peace about being alone with yourself, a strong confidence in who you really are and a feeling of spiritual value.

    New Battles to Fight – This journey is awkward at first, and in other people’s eyes it may remain awkward forever. Why wouldn’t you copy what’s popular? Why not mimic the uncontroversially successful? The problem is, while you are doing that the core of your self-hood is dying like an unwatered plant. And if your soul is dying, you are dying. Also, being bullied by the “art enforcers” is not what creatives are about.

    Sometimes We Bully Ourselves Worse – Perfection is not the answer – it is the enemy. Remember – we flee stagnation. Our soul’s “perfecting never reaches an end – that’s the definition of immortality. Constantly shaming yourself as a no-talent, pretending poseur is horrifyingly destructive to your precious infant specialness struggling for life.

    Make a Resolution to Start Supporting Yourself. The fact that a work is unsuccessful, even a horrific mess, doesn’t mean it isn’t an advance for your vision, insight and style. These are the building blocks of creation. Don’t get hung up on approval. You need teachers, not fans. Read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

    Models & Mentors – “Creativity takes courage” – Henri Matisse

    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” – Henry David Thoreau

    “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight without vision” – Helen Keller

    “You were born an original, don’t die a copy” – Jon Mason

    “Life beats down and crushes the art in your soul to remind you that you have one” – Stella Adler

    “There are no rules, only confidence, aplomb, style & joy” – Neil Gaiman

    #Haiku: Disclaimer

    I don’t write haiku
    They write me
    Jaw slack
    Eyes closed
    Ego playing
    Dead

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

    The Field – Fate

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are about to go through some things. Do you dream of costume drama? Historical characters? Ancient books? Do you consult tea leaves? Are you superstitious? We are all caught in the mesh of history. The field is too large for us to see it clearly. We can feel the pull of forces too vast to resist or even rise above and visualize. Those caught in wars, in genocides, in natural disasters, are brutally unlucky. But the techniques of the Creative can substantially save, improve, even alter their fates. Naturally we yearn for a trustworthy clue to extract us from this maze.

    Creatives Are Caught and Called – by History. Sometimes we are crushed by the gears of chaos. According to the philosopher Hegel, “Heroes are singular figures whose vocation it was to be the agents of the World-Spirit.” Such heroes interfere in and remake the world; their deeds produce “a complex of historical relations which appear to be only their interest, and their work.”

    Remember, the Creatives’ Code is “Never Surrender”. Never consent to the misuse of human dignity.

    Creatives’ Challenge – Always try to comprehend the bigger picture by comparing it to several other proven scenarios. Were those who fled Germany before Hitler shut it down, France before the Terror or Indonesia before the tsunami just “lucky” or had they learned to read the signs? Rulers by whim are even more dangerous than the weather, for their brains inevitably become echo chambers rotting from within. The larger the council of power the better – true democracy is best, but even then there are those self-destructive ones among us desiring to “shake things up”; loving chaos for its own sake. They may dream of riding a whirlwind but no one can ever truly tame a whirlwind. As the Chinese say, you can ride the tiger but you can’t get off. The challenge is to see the whirlwind – and the tiger – coming.

    Creatives Inhabit Danger – Is the danger learned helplessness, our old enemy? Or is it comfort – we’ve created a berth for ourselves that’s just too cushy to leave? Sometimes the danger is an inability to imagine evil: “it CAN’T get that bad” or “These people are my friends.” Famous last words. Or is panic the enemy? Don’t risk becoming too terrified to think.

    Creatives Seize Opportunity – Have you noticed, yet, that it’s always the same opportunity we must accept? To grow up. To embrace maturity. To become more like God, or as the Gnostic gospels call the Creator, “Good”. To regard each other with the wise generosity of compassion. Study all input intelligently. Learn to recognize and repudiate garbage. Don’t be lured by fantasy thinking of effortless achievements. In order to claim our opportunity we must seek out and create safe spaces to grow, think and learn.

    Models & Mentors – “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone” – William James

    “No matter how dirty your past, your future is spotless” – Drake

    “Our destiny is not written for us, but by us” – Barack Obama

    “If you can influence, direct or control your environment , you can make your life what you want it to be” – Napoleon Hill

    “Life is choice, not chance,” – Jean Nidetch

    “Winners fail until they succeed” – Robert T. Kiyosaki

    #Haiku: Controlled Accidents

    All art’s
    “Controlled Accident”
    You plus God plus
    Fate:
    Steer into the skid

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

    The Ladyslipper – Singularity

    If This Archetype Chooses You – What kind of orchid are you? Are you the rarest kind, that hides in the woods and can never be transplanted? Maybe you have been running with the crowd too much – people who don’t appreciate you. Feeling depleted, even exhausted? Are you waiting for someone to celebrate You? Maybe it’s time to celebrate yourself.

    Creatives Are Always Alone in the Crowd – The wild orchid cannot be propagated. It is always found alone, in deepest woodland. Do you frequently find yourself walking in a different direction from everyone else? Do you often feel ganged up on, bullied? The Ladyslipper archetype represents all that Uniqueness out there, and because there are so many of us, that’s a lot of singularity! If you doubt that so much uniqueness could possibly exist, consider the humble snowflake.

    Each Creative is Unique – We may be civilized into groups, but society only advances because of its singletons. Becoming a creative means insisting on the right to make your own special contribution. Recognize how much the world needs you, and congratulate yourself for it.

    Creative Danger – The powerful are only powerful because they have an army. They want you fighting for them, not for yourself. Consider your best interests. Armies PLAN to “use you up.”

    Creatives Will Not Be “Used” – Creatives train themselves to out-think people and situations. Confronting Narcissism is a real danger in our society. People are encouraged to perform, push themselves forward and try to harvest “likes” from absolute strangers by sheer outrageousness, rather than by developing their real, immortal Selves. Honoring your uniqueness begins in absolute privacy as you face your soul, contemplate your real self and consider pathways to strengthening these assets.

    Creative Pride – Humility sharpens our edge and keeps us light on our feet. It’s never too late to change direction, especially when you find out you’ve been traveling the wrong way. Consult your maps and Training Journal. Time for a redesign?

    Creative Opportunity – The creative path is independent of criticism from those not making your journey. Critics wrestling for control won’t like that. We all need to consult different perspectives & check our placement and effectiveness but much criticism is sharpened to spike & derail. Recognize that the following techniques are attempts to harvest YOU and feed off your power and are designed to re-direct your effort to the critic’s own ends: undermining your thoughts, bullying your actions, devaluing your worth as a person.

    Creative Freedom – Much human interaction is a subtle or unsubtle jockeying to divide people into camps and to enlist you to carry someone else’s banner. But creatives own their own souls and battle for abstract principles of fairness and goodness, health and growth.

    Models & Mentors – “What sets you apart can feel like a burden, but it’s what makes you great” – Emma Stone

    “If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be” – Maya Angelou

    “Always remember you are absolutely unique, just like everyone else”
    – Margaret Mead

    “Be yourself – everyone else is already taken” – Oscar Wilde

    #Haiku: Conceptual Art Project

    Your life’s
    Hard-fought how-to guide:
    Unique –
    Personal;
    Willed:
    Transformative

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

    Dawn – Relief

    If This Archetype Chooses You – All suffering comes to an end. Your depression will lift. The future awaits.

    Creatives Know “This too shall pass” – We serve the future. Every dream is followed by an awakening which is followed by another dream. In the moment of relief from the fear and the tension that preceded it we are still shaking from the experience we went through. We are in no condition to make decisions. We are just so grateful that it is over. What is required of us, however, is appreciation of the cycle. We are surfing, whether we like it or not. Another wave will come. Creatives learn how to ride it.

    Creative Challenge – To rise above the cycle, take an honest look at it. This is hard to do when we are quivering and feeling victimized but it is necessary. What pattern do you see? The surfing analogy is a good one because the tides are not rhythmic nor perfectly predictable, and they are CERTAINLY not “personal” plus we know another wave will be coming along soon.

    Creative Strategy – Sometimes there’s a way out; we can change jobs, switch professions, get a divorce. Figure out where the pressure is coming from. Assess your abilities. What parts are you good at? Where do you suck? Can you enjoy any of this? How can your performance be improved? Most of us take pleasure in things we are good at. Can your enjoyment be deepened?

    We’re Never Helpless – Learned helplessness is real. People give up, stop trying to game or even understand the system. They lie down under the shocks, no longer even trying to escape, waiting for death. Never believe “Resistance is futile.” Don’t succumb.

    Creatives Win –This game is bigger than our mortal understanding. Nevertheless, you can comprehend the majesty of what we are up against and appreciate it as a knife appreciates the whetstone. We learn through analogy, we remember through stories.

    Creatives Are Free – Creatives can always improve, becoming graceful, competent athletes of this mortal existence until we graduate into the next sphere.

    Creatives Roll with the Punches – You can change and affect your fate. But you must roll with the punches. When Jesus says, “Resist not evil” he means, allow evil to roll over you and smash itself against your non-resistance. Studying martial arts increases our knowledge of how to manage, subvert and overcome Superior Force.

    Buddy Power – Friends, allies, buddies, sensei, even dead or fictional characters can be summoned to your aid. People choose such different characters as St. Francis, Sherlock Holmes, Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Mulan, Buddha and Jesus to be their “Dream buddies.” Some are more comfortable with an animal – your personal power creature; the jaguar, wolf, eagle or wolverine.

    Change Dream Buddies based on the problem confronting you. Ask their help before you go to sleep, solicit them to come to you in dreams to shed light upon your difficulty. Then the next morning, start writing and remembering the moment you wake up. Some key dreams take a lifetime to decipher.

    Models & Mentors – “Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but you never get anywhere”
    – Erma Bombeck

    “For fast acting relief, try slowing down” – Lily Tomlin

    “Happiness is the relief after extreme tension”
    – F. Scott Fitzgerald

    “Laughter is the tonic, the release, the surcease of pain” – Charlie Chaplin

    #Haiku: Blameless

    What could you accomplish
    If you blamed no one
    Ever – Self included

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

    Night – Balance

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Something in you is out of whack. Balance is a key law of nature to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that we experience as a kind of living death. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams begin to balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively in the light of day, as a warning story with curative potency and significance.

    Creatives Seek Balance – Unfortunately our contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical and sensual gifts, falling in love, listening to music, sharing with children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched by thinking about it! That’s why we are called “homo sapiens.”

    Balance is a Law of Nature – The pursuit of competitive highs without the thinking 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 personal history and philosophy, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to future joys.

    Creatives Live on All Levels At Once – Creatives learn to give thanks for and pay tribute to the Past, to enjoy and understand the Present, to anticipate and strategize for the Future and to revel in and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.

    Balancing the Levels – Joy that is held in the mind 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. Each of us briefly experiences heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.

    Creative Challenge – We need to personally 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, sleep 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: this occurred naturally every night of our lives before we started stressing about it!

    Night Is the Leveler – Our species needs sleep to connect to the Universal Mind, and to the minds of all Dreamers, human and animal. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides a trusted avenue to filter daily discoveries 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 connection with emotional ecstasy and deepen your life. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.

    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

    1.“For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate.
    9.A time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3

    “Moderation in All Things” – Hesiod

    #Haiku: Stability

    Assert balance;
    Employ wealth of eternity
    Universal mind

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

    Day – Focus

    If This Archetype Chooses You – Time to make up your mind – will this be a good morning – or bad? Do you wake up fearful, fretful and exhausted? You’re too much of a worrier. 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.

    Creatives Build Routines – Then Explode Them
    We construct lists and calendars in our Training Journals that are very much Works In Progress. Every effort’s an experiment. If you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, so we have to build good systems. As Zig Ziglar reminds us, there’s no elevator to success. We have to take the stairs, one step at a time. We will build ourselves so strong that ultimately we can trust our subconscious, even our unconscious, to do the work for us. Creatives create independent selves to transcend their selves.

    Taming Wild Mind to Focus Productively – 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. You will have to “forgive” yourself over and over – “I suck at this.” Learning to enjoy the process is key. Meditation teaches us how to live in the present moment. You are your own toddler, so mother yourself. 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.

    Your Toddler Self is Frightened by Everything. As we meditate and the fears boil up, we talk to ourselves 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.

    How Strong is Your Negative Voice? This is the first enemy we must defeat. We all have at least one – some of us have many. Banish them firmly. 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.

    Creative 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

    #Haiku: Focus

    Energy
    Resurgent
    Depowers dread
    Repowers health-
    Dare –
    Aim –
    Fire