Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Soulmates

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

    Sex – Soulmates

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are searching for your “other”. Do you look in the mirror and see another face? Do you dream of a lost twin? Do you imagine “the other” across a crowded room, and think when you touch their hand, you will feel a strange galvanic charge? Do you think soulmates are even possible? Is there only one or are many soulmates potentially developed over a lifetime? Are you disenchanted with sex? Does it seem like more trouble than it is worth? Do you have sex dreams that feel more like night terrors? Does sex make you feel increasingly worthless and untouchable?

    Soulmates Are Real and You Have One – It’s never too late. You are never so “lost” you can’t find your soulmate. The problem is, your soulmate feels just the way you do and both of you are frightened of those feelings, isolating you further in an invisible, impenetrable membrane. You want your soulmate to rescue you, but creatives rescue each other. This takes a lot of bravery, a lot of humility, much insight and a little magic.

    Desire Can Be Slaked – Temporarily. Creative must stay alert. We don’t pursue numbness – or even satiety. It’s good to get acquainted with hunger. Pro tip – hunger keeps you young. Hunger is a condition of youth.

    When Creatives Bond There is No Going Back. – The potential magic of sexual connection ignites the search for a SoulMate. Creatives believe that once found, a Soul Pair becomes capable of Time Travel, TransSubstantiation, and Immortality. Genders merge; either one can be feminine, masculine or androgyne at will. One wing searches for another to form a bird and fly. The question we must ask ourselves is: are we willing to undergo the pain of having the boundaries of our borders breached to fully merge with another?

    Creatives Lift Each Other’s Souls – The power of a doubled pair is raised to the nth power by their knowledge, commitment and shared purpose.

    Creatives Release Each Other – There are so many permissions, forgivenesses, and skills we cannot give ourselves. Love literally gives you eyes in the back of your head. There is no hiding from your soulmate.

    Doubled Creatives Power the Universe – The constant clash of mating, sharing, satisfying and negotiating is the music of the spheres. It keeps us all spinning in an ecstasy of selfless selfhood.

    Creative Challenge – There are plenty of frogs out there and some vipers, and you will kiss each. Possibly more than once. It’s also possible that we have “rewired” our system – through porn, games, and casual sex – so that it actually prevents us from recognizing a soulmate and forging a life bond. This is why starting as friends is so critical. It gets your defenses down to the point where you can talk about fears, desires and problematic reactions. Go slowly, welcome mistakes and be prepared to learn.

    Creative Danger – Sometimes – let’s face it – most times, you and your soulmate are “sick.” You have “caught” infection from a society that says “fuck you” to eternal, mystical, mutual sexual union. That makes things hard. You don’t recover overnight. You must commit to good mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and sexual hygiene and you will both have to figure out what it is. You need to make a plan – yes, a map – out of each other’s minds and bodies. If the other person refuses to accept health you will have to detach for your own sanity and safety. Vampires make other vampires, and bliss will elude them. The most important part of soulmating is the mutual pledge for health and growth – for both of you.

    Creative Opportunity – My book, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead – is about the supernatural powers of soulmates. It’s about what to do when you dislike and distrust your soulmate at first. It’s about what to do when you and your soulmate both have horrific pasts and are pursued by actual demons. I can’t say it clearer than that. Don’t be frightened. Your bond is eternal, across time, geography and multiverses. Take it slow. You have all the time in the multiverse.

    Bereavement Is Never the End – As life itself is not the end, bereavement cannot be. The glory of bliss still awaits, and detached Soulmates have been known to find each other and form new spiritual and physical connections.

    Models & Mentors – “A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life and then introduce you to your spiritual master” – Elizabeth Gilbert

    “A soulmate is the one person whose love is powerful enough to motivate you to meet your soul to do the emotional work of self-discovery and awakening”
    – Kenny Loggins

    “They fought all the time and challenged each other every day. They were crazy about each other” – Nicholas Sparks

    “I know what love is, because of you.” – Herman Hesse

    #Haiku: I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

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

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

    Marriage – Partnership

    Time to consider your ideal partnership contract. What would it be like? Have you been dreaming lately about weddings? Love, proposals, marriage? About The One that got Away? About partnership enterprises in general – video gaming, tennis – where an Ideal Partner/Helper’s got your back?

    Creatives can’t make it through life without a partner. We’ve got friends who come and go, sometimes special ones, but they’ve got obligations of their own. What if we had a Perfect Friend who made our Best Life their priority? What if we were not only willing to do the same for them but to promise this in public?

    Everybody Deserves Somebody – We come into adulthood with strong memories of familial dependence. We are all attracted to caretaking behaviors and easily seduced by promises to read our minds and give us what we really want, even if we haven’t figured that out for ourselves. Then hormones click in and we discover Desire. Not only for bodies, but for Persons, Lives, Individualities. Other people are a spice, other people are a medicine, other people are a distraction – everything our lives appear to be lacking. What if we could combine all these needs together in one appetizing human package?

    Creative Challenge – We rarely ask our friends to change their lives for us. They are VERY rarely willing to do so. But a partner is someone to actively plan a life with. You get to talk through all the Wants, the Possibilities, the Fears. Heady stuff! The challenge is to know Yourself well enough to make any sort of honest statements about who you are, who you CAN be and who you want to be.

    Sometimes Allies Need a Long-Term Contract – Lives are uprooted. Possessions are shared. Long term strategy results in map-merging to create a new – but more exciting – map. If you’re a giver, learn your limits. Because takers don’t have any.

    Someone Needs to Take Your Back – As the great mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg pointed out, each one of us is only half an angel. You need someone to cover the things you can’t cover. And if you were planning to start a creative family, you need more than a partner, you need a spouse.

    Spouses Teach Honesty – The person who knows you best doesn’t put up with a false front. You literally force each other to get to the root of emotions and behaviors that will open up your psyches not just to each other, but to the world and to yourselves. The spouse who falls in love with you and forgives you finally allows you to fall in love with and forgive yourself.

    Staging, Experimental Life Lab and Boot Camp – we get to try out our ideas on each other. The Beloved Other is a Mirror and a Coach. The purpose of existence, the purpose of YOUR existence – suddenly becomes clear.

    Creative Danger – A substantial number of partnership contracts fail. We all know this but we keep trying. Then there are the partnerships that evolve into Something Else, a Financial, Real Estate or Caregiving unit that is very necessary but also pretty far from what we had in mind originally. Our challenge remains the same. Is it possible to both know and be known? Can we find our Soulmate? Does such a creature exist? Is it possible to evolve with another soul to a higher plane of SuperSoul? Disappointment and betrayal are all too often the apparent outcomes.

    Creative Opportunity – Soulmates DO exist! They DO evolve. We WILL change our life for another and they will change, blend, merge with us. Any interaction with another requires communication, boundaries, honesty, planning and “rules”. I put rules in quotes because a good partner keeps “transforming” the game and we keep transforming ourselves to meet it. The best way ever to honestly know yourself is to keep conscious, subconscious and unconscious in alignment. Purposeful dreaming, journaling and planning is the best way to achieve that goal! Get out your Training Journal and start with absolute honesty, realizing that tomorrow you may see things differently. Accept it!

    Models & Mentors – “It’s not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes for unhappy marriages” – Friedrich Nietzsche

    “What counts in making a happy marriage is not compatibility but how you deal with incompatibility” – Leo Tolstoy

    “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short”
    – Andre Maurois

    “The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re the right person if you want to be with them all the time” – Julia Child

    #Haiku: Marriage: Partnership

    Merged.
    Eyes when
    I can’t see –
    Two extra hands;
    Relay race –
    Inspiration.

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

    The Lovers – Alliances

      When This Archetype Chooses You – You Don’t Have to Go Through This Alone (and you don’t want to!) Check your friend list. Do you dream of love, sex, connection? Hand-holding, hugging, family celebrations? You were born to search for Alliances. An alliance is symbiotic, good for both sides of the equation. To reach out, you must each decide your motive (“I Could Use a Friend”) and approach with the CERTAINTY that you are WORTHY of friendship. This last one is tricky because we are ALL looking for validation. This is the source of many “imposter” dreams where we find ourselves naked in front of the entire class, unprepared on Test Day!

      Love Begins With Friendship: You Are a Giver and Worthy of Help – We can’t see everything because we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads. Luckily, we are surrounded by other humans, struggling, just like us. If we pledge to help each other, we can dispatch terror and celebrate joy! Comforting! But how can we tell the difference between Builders and Exploiters? We don’t want to end up devoured; someone else’s temporary “meal”.

      Creative Danger – When someone is trying to mangle your self-esteem, recognize that fact. Many women purposely diminish themselves to attract mates: Bad Idea. Even if it comes in the guise of “friendship” any person who takes you up on that offer is an enemy. This is not what friends, and certainly not lovers, are for. When someone is trying to “capture” you, i.e. limit and control your possibilities and behavior, that person is a hostage-taker looking for slaves. NOT a friend.

      Creative Challenge – How to recognize friends? Friends are honest: “I just don’t like that dress but maybe it’s me.” Friends are forgiving, ‘I’m sorry, I was having a bad day. I know you’re sorry, too.” Friends are fun, “Let’s cheer ourselves up.” Friends are helpful: “Let’s figure a way out of this.” Are you honest, forgiving, fun-loving and helpful? You’re ready to be a friend. Friendship is a good place to start. Be the friend you want to have – warm, funny, loyal, truthful.

      Love Enriches – It Does Not Deplete – – Friends are a mirror in which we see ourselves. We can experiment with possibilities, we can expand our reach. Our intelligence is doubled, as well as our efforts. Our sorrows are halved and our ideas are increased exponentially. Reach out! You never know until you try. And there’s always the possibility of Love and a deepening sexual connection.

      Love Transforms the way Creativity Transforms – Things you thought you could not do seem possible now because someone believes in you. Believe in yourself because they do, and honor them by believing in them, in return.

      Locked Back to Back the Creative Pair Sees Everything – Gaze turns outward at the world, not inward on each other. Are you chewing or strengthening? Learn the steps of your tango. Add new steps of your own.

      As You Change, the Couple Changes – Compare Training Journals. Are you evolving? Can you evolve together? Is it safe to speak the truth? Does one partner try to dominate? Does one partner use infantile behaviors to get “their way”? There is no “one way.” As joint creatives, the couple has goals also. Compare. Allow differences. The truth will be revealed.

      Models & Mentors – “You are my sun, my moon and all my stars”
      – e.e. cummings

      “All that we love deeply becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller

      “Love makes your soul crawl out of its hiding place” – Zora Neale Hurston

      “Love is not proud or boastful, keeps no record of past mistakes – love rejoices in the truth” –
      II Corinthians

      “Laugh as much as you breathe, love as long as you live” – Rumi

      #Haiku: The Lovers

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

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

      The Daisy = LOVE “Is love real?” “Love Waves”

                  Love is the secret. Love is the answer. Love is what we say we feel when we look into the Soulmate’s eyes According to our long, rich tradition of romantic literature, it’s a connection/identification with someone else so powerful (and so rewarding) you would walk through fire for that person. 

                  Biblically defined as:

                  “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” 

                  Love is the opposite of the winner/loser “fuck you” ethos. 

                  Love is patient. We can’t expect the Soulmate to be on the same page with us immediately, or all the time. We must work out our differences, analyze our difficulties and strategize        solutions. Love takes time.

                  Love is kind. We handle each other gently, with care. Thoughtfully, with reverence. Slowly. Savoring.

                  Love does not envy. We are not competitive with each other. When we wrestle, it is in play, for joy, not because we want to         trounce the Soulmate or knock the feet out from under the Beloved.

                  Love does not boast. We are not seeking to impress each other. Love is not a hierarchy where we can lift our status above the Loved One.

                  Love is not proud. We can admit fault. We can say we are sorry. We can weep with the Beloved and we can begin again.

                  Love does not dishonor others. There is no “score”, no winner  and no loser. We don’t take tattletales of the Beloved to friends, family, social media or the public space. 

                  Love is not self-seeking. It is not transactional: “what can I get out of this” “you are not giving enough” “you are not making me look good.”

                  Love is not easily angered. We resist anger, touchiness, rage over our wounded narcissistic self-importance. If we are angry we cannot join, touch each other, embrace whole-heartedly or solve problems. When you get angry over a problem, now you have two problems. 

                  Love keeps no record of wrongs. When we say, “I forgive you”, we mean it.

                  Love does not delight in evil. We do not seek the diminishment or disrespect of the other. Popular “bondage” and “sadism” games that memorialize the helplessness and subjection of the Other are dangerous, volatile and can be triggers of past dangers and will map out a bleak and lonely future.

                  Love rejoices in the truth. The truth evolves because our brains evolve. Truth is a process as our lives are a process. We are all heading for an end goal – both together and separately – if we        can   figure out what it is. Truth is our ally in this dilemma, because it tells us the real results of all our strategies which allows us to calibrate our efforts and improve our outcomes.         We must speak truth to each other and we must grow in stature enough to dare to speak truth to Power.

                  Love protects. We shelter. We nourish. We steward. We cherish. We assess. We unite.

                  Love always trusts. We believe. We have the best assurance that God is good and that truth, justice and love will win in the end.

                  Love always hopes. Things will get better tomorrow. We will         work towards constant improvement.

                  Love perseveres. We will never quit. We are in this for the long haul.

      Meditation:  I am part of all I have met  – Tennyson

      #Haiku: Love Waves

      Sound travels forever

      Like love;

      Stars’ boundless dance

      Launched

      By mortal hearts

    2. 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.

    3. 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.”

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

      The Gazing Ball = PROPHECY “You Are Not Lost”

      “Who can foretell the future?”

      If you could, would you?

      Would you find yourself performing all the same actions all over again?

      What do you most regret? Sometimes grief lies in wait for us at our happiest moments. What would you change, if anything? How about altering your Soulmate, fellow traveler on life’s journey? Would you roll those dice again?

      Skeptics say a stopped clock is right twice a day, but whatever the causation, sometime prophecies come true. A creeping suspicion bubbles up out of nowhere – manifesting as reality. We guess restlessly at “The Truth.”

      This glittering gazing ball at the center of our garden reflects our hopes, wishes and dreams, one of which is that it confers the gift of prophecy. We know we must be right about some future event; but if we share our knowledge too often we are discredited or disbelieved.

      Perhaps all we need is to cultivate our gift; forget “knowing”; concentrate on the blur of memory and project it forcefully into the future. Think about past, present and possibility, making all our choices with our Wisdom Eye fully open. It could be that the answer to the question we seek is already known to our Soulmate if we can only learn to trust and understand.

      What fresh new worlds might we create with our clear shared minds?.

      YOU ARE NOT LOST

      Do forests think?
      These trees know where they are
      In spite of all our attempts
      At subjugation
      We are all still here
      In spite of prophets who
      Calculated chances of survival
      With the eye of a murderous god
      Every one of us
      Who has ever been
      Is still here

    5. 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.

    6. 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?

    7. 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