Alysse Aallyn

Tag: inspiration

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Dawn – Relief:

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

    Warriors Know “ This too must 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. Warriors learn how to ride it.

    Warrior 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.

    Warrior 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.

    Warriors 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. Warriors can always improve, becoming a graceful, competent athletes of this mortal existence until we graduate into the next sphere.

    Warriors 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. 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. You can 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

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    1. Spring – Hope:

    If This Card Chooses You – You Have Reason to Hope. You Cannot Be Too Hopeful. Is Spring your favorite season? Do you dream of unfolding buds and exploding flowers? Is “the mustard seed” your favorite parable? Spring Always Follows Winter – after dormancy, now arrives the season best calculated to provide ideal conditions for growth. Spring is beginning, freshness, newness. It starts small – barely recognizable – the tiniest frond of green among the blackness, calling forth an answering shiver from somewhere deep inside us. We are told that very cell in our body replaces itself in seven years, so springtime is a constant within us. Hope courses through your body with every flush of oxygen and blood empowering our systems.

    Hope is Warriors’ fuel. Hope is eternal. Do you dream of uncovering buried truths? What is your quest? Will it ever be over? Hope is not about “resolution” but about envisioning a future you have a hand in promoting. You feel a sense of awe, but also ownership and some pride. This is YOUR discovery. Now you want to share it with the whole world.

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

    Hope Is a Sacred Obligation – Life persists in spite of entropy, In spite of darkness, in spite of destruction. Life is a perpetual motion machine fueled by hope, and warriors are the priests of life.

    Warriors Nurture Hope and Pass It On – Hope is the condition of believing better things are possible. It is mandated by the fact that all growing things need nurturing if they are to flourish. Warriors are the mothers of the universe.

    Warrior Dangers – include tunnel vision, paranoia and megalomania. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Obsession becomes obvious when harms become visible. Don’t “give up” because you can’t seem to impose your vision on the world. Are you eating and sleeping? Maintaining your relationships? You can’t achieve bigtime without a team and you need to keep your team happy & nourished. Conflating the majesty of discovery with your own personal majesty – needing that majesty – separates you from human kind and that can’t go well. It blinds you. Paranoia seeds fears that others are stealing from you, riding on your coattails, tarnishing your legacy. But each patch of fresh ground leads to more discoveries. The astonishment – and the astonishers – never stop! Practice humility and gratitude. Aren’t you lucky to be a part of all this? Isn’t it wonderful?

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

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

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

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

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

    #Haiku: Altruism

    Crows call “Come Eat!”
    Across trees in hope
    Someday strangers
    Feed baby
    Crows.

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Youth – Resilience:

    If This Card Chooses You – You’re ready to bounce back. Dreaming a lot about your childhood? Your conscious mind is “mining” your subconscious for guides to the way you feel now. Did you pick the wrong path, and if so, why? Can you summon the effort to go back and fix it?

    “You’re as young as you feel” is a true saying! Ever met a “young” seeming old person? They are interested in everything. They are not frightened by new ideas. They don’t talk endlessly about their illnesses, complaints, how the world has gone to hell. They look forward to the future. The nature of “resilience” is that you “spring back”. You can actually use mistakes as energy, to improve your map-making. Surely you’re familiar with ”resistance training.” You get better muscles that way!

    Warriors Are Battle Tested – How to feel “young” when life keeps beating you down? The way to improve your resilience is to improve your philosophy. Do you believe people get old, they can no longer participate in the rat race, are shoveled under and it’s over? There’s an inspiring pep talk for the locker room!

    Warriors are Resilient – They are young forever. Combine that with the far-seeing wisdom of planning and experience and you have a Superpower.

    Love and intelligence REQUIRE wisdom – Adopt a philosophy that gives you hope. This is easier to do around young people. Grandparents cling to grandchildren. It’s good for both of them.

    Don’t get stuck in a “feedback loop.” Don’t hang around depressing, toxic people who mouth depressing, toxic notions. In our society old people are shunted off onto sidings, gathered together in communities that focus on “nursing”. Depressed yet? Re-orient your mind to focus on “health.” Resilience is a requirement for wounds of all types to heal.

    Warriors Preserve the Hope of Youth – Hope is the warrior’s religion. Life will always win out, will grow even against despair.

    Warriors Preserve the Joy of Youth – Fighting difficult battles (even with oneself) means the relaxation afterwards feels extra delicious. Warriors can play with anyone because they are still their child-like selves. That is part of what we are fighting for.

    Warrior Opportunity – In a famous letter to Ann Landers, someone who wanted to go to medical school bewailed that they would forty years old when they got out! Forty! Landers asked, “How old will you be if you DON’T go?” “Wise” people are those who realize HOW YOUNG THE REST OF YOU really are, who are complaining about being “too old” to do what you want to do. You have plenty of time, because ALL time is NOW. Your new mantra? “Spring back.”

    Warriors Never Give Up – Surrendering can be a strategy. It is not giving up. There may be snow on the roof but there is plenty of fire in the fireplace. Sometimes, however, it is good to keep our fires to ourselves. We know how to bide our time.

    Models & Mentors – “Reasons for hope – our clever brains, the indomitable human spirit and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action”

    – Jane Goodall

    “We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward” – Isabel Allende

    “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts’

    – Winston Churchill

    “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny” – C. S. Lewis

    .#Haiku: Reincarnation through Books

    Multiple lives –
    Rising youth –
    Thriving age –
    Released death; re
    Peat; re
    Learn

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Dreams – Imagination:

    If This Card Chooses You – Wake up! Do you look forward to dreaming? I like waking up in the early dawn because when I go back to sleep I can set an intention for dreaming – all the best dreams (and the most memorable ones) happen at the very end of sleep while you are coming up through the layers of sub- to semi-consciousness.

    Warriors Are In Tune With Their Inner Voice – Jung tells us that in your dreams, you are everyone. Every life you have ever lived and every life you will ever live comes to you through your dreams.

    Remember – As Warrior, You’re the Pilot – Do you long for caretaking? Are you eager to give over the reins of your life to someone else? If so, your dreams are likely to become scary, unmanageable and unsatisfying. It is time for you to take charge of your power – to admit that you are in control of your own brain.

    Warriors Are Seekers – We are self-defining. We are on a quest. Warriors experience to the fullest the nature of having a self. Become alert to the possibilities inherent in this particular incarnation and explore. Feel free to release your imagination.

    Dream Journal – Start a dream journal. Date it, and write, “I want to dream about…” Fill in the blank. Be as detailed and specific as you can manage. It is perfectly OK to allow your waking mind to construct desirable dreams – great works of art got their start in just this way! You may hear a voice… someone from the past who discouraged your “day-dreaming” and wanted you to focus on your work, on the present and on them. Explore this memory fearlessly. It is not rejecting or “hating on” that person to disagree with them – there are certainly times when the priority is to focus on other things – but right now you are exploring your own brain and testing out its powers. Clearly that’s an important and necessary project. Gently take control from this Remembered Forbidder and say, “This is my time now. I am in charge.”

    Warrior Danger – We all know the cautionary tale of Scary Guy Who Lives for Video Games and Doesn’t Have a Life. Do you secretly fear that the power of dreams and the pleasures of daydreaming will suck you away from Real World Competence? They won’t – so long as you are reality centered. Some people dream of different outcomes, things that are impossible – instead of finding workable avenues of growth and advancement. Positive dreaming deepens and enhances, doesn’t evade reality. It’s just that reality is so much wilder – and we are so much more powerful than we can credit!

    DREAM GROUP – Form a Dream Group with others to share the content of your dreams and listen to their fresh interpretations. You can even try Group Dreaming. Lie on the floor holding hands in semi-darkness playing drowsy music. Share whatever comes up. These are models for your future. Some of us believe this growth goes on forever – even after death.

    Models & Mentors – “I dream things that never were and I say, “Why Not?”

    – George Bernard Shaw

    “A dreamer finds his way by moonlight…sees dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde

    ‘You have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world” – Harriet Tubman

    “I’ve had dreams, and I’ve had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.”

    – Jonas Salk

    #Haiku: Human Clay Sculpts Angel Wings

    We’re all
    Dirt:
    Humble beginnings launch
    Celestial imaginings