Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Warrior

  • 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

    . Memory – The Past:

    If This Card Chooses You – Check your conscious/subconscious/unconscious/collective consciousness levels. How comfortable are you with the depth of these levels? Do you ruminate about past events? Are you haunted by what was done & left undone? Do you feel nostalgia for a past that never was? Do you have a favorite period in history or a fantasy universe that you wish you lived in, instead of this one?

    You are the Hero of Your Warrior Saga – Accept your centrality in your own myth. It doesn’t matter what other people think – they are the bit players. Think of your past as a Quest Saga. What did you want? How did it change? What blocked you? What tools have you got at your command? Where do you go from here?

    Rewrite the Past – You absolutely CAN, but first you first must face its full horror and that effect on you. Generally, because we were immature, we didn’t understand what was going on, were co-opted by our persecutors and prevented from fighting back. Things are different now! The hardest thing to accept is that beloved caregivers didn’t want the best for us – they only wanted us to be just like them.

    “I don’t believe in ghosts but I never met a person who wasn’t haunted” is a very wise saying. What haunts you exactly? Or who? Ghosts are malignant – if they weren’t they would be power spirits, fairy godmothers or guardian angels. What malignancies from your past are out to get you and how do they make themselves known? One of Freud’s contributions was to point out that people prefer their neurosis – ie imprisonment – to liberation. Why? What’s in it for you?

    You became YOU. Yes, you have scars – these are bragging rights! You have been through the wars! ‘Rewriting” the past means understanding what really happened, the limitations of those who surrounded you, and exploring your chances and choices today. Just because parents, teachers or “society” sentenced you to play a role, you can step out of it at any time. Buddhist thought is very helpful here. Buddha teaches that life itself is an illusion – a dream. It changes depending on how we think about it. In the present, inside your mind, you hold all the keys to your own liberation. Re-visit Pema Chodron’s Noble Heart and Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now to explore how you can assume immediate control of your life and your mind and turn your past into fuel to power your growth.

    Warriors Know Who They Are – Remember, you’ve got a purpose. You’ve got a future. You’ve thought about your past and worked out conflicts with a mentor and in your Training Journal.

    Warriors Develop A Sense of History – You understand that history is a spiral, not a circle – the same things do keep coming around but in a different form. You see all around you the operation of karma.
    Choosing evil is choosing chaos – it can’t work out for anyone except temporarily. You understand the battle between darkness and light and you have committed yourself firmly to The Light.

    Warriors Are Storytellers – You pass the message on with your life, with your words, with your body, with your very presence. You have become one link in the unbreakable chain of Eternal Perfection and you will have your reward.

    Models & Mentors – “You never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”

    – Dr Seuss

    “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things” – Cicero

    “In the end, we’ll all become stories.” – Margaret Atwood

    “Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining a task or actually doing it”– Yo Yo Ma

    #Haiku: No-Fault Apology

    Atone?
    Conspire:
    Delete:
    Rewire
    My memory and
    Yours; potent
    Fire.

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Marriage – Partnership:

    If This Card Chooses You – 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? Warriors 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?

    Warrior 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 warrior 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 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.

    Warrior Danger – A substantial number of partnerships 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.

    Warrior 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 is the best way to achieve that goal!

    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.

  • Becoming a Warrior – The Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Duality – Ambivalence:

    If This Card Chooses You – How many people are you? Twinning is Entwining. Sometimes we dream disturbingly about things we don’t want and people we aren’t. Feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting. It’s confusing. What gives?

    Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality manifests all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious river. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of other peoples – dead, alive, even fictional. Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a label.

    Warrior Challenge – Facing this might seem the toughest part, but it isn’t for artists, who routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Art is the best way to express this, an enormous relief since it’s non-committal. Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your work becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised to be related to those people.

    Warrior Danger – Society seeks to label, limit and stigmatize. Everyone is afraid of becoming our fear but Warriors need to explore our fear. A simple safe word can’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so fundamentally untrustworthy. That is why our identification of ourselves as Brave Warriors is so vital. The vastness of our potential cannot be controlled by language. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

    Warrior Opportunity – Appreciate your Self. Don’t slam the door on your potentialities too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is Us. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to get home safe. But Warriors carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell, if we are the captains of our souls we can be the masters of our fates. (Henley.) We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence.

    Warriors Tolerate Uncertainty – Being a warrior is all about balance. The experience of balance-seeking is indescribable linguistically – it must be felt experientially. Warriors learn to live in a world beyond language where we can savor uncertainty and foretaste eternity.

    Warriors Relish Paradox – Two contraries not only exist together but empower each other – that creative tension is the lifeblood of emotion, imagination and personality.

    Warriors Coast on the Knife-Edge of Ambivalence – The desired is undesirable, the only possibility is impossible and the act of wanting forbids getting. Warriors become comfortable with the pleasures of this dance: “My future dissolves in beads of sweat, my present is my mirror, my past’s a shape-shifting whirligig.” (Aallyn)

    Leaders Must Surrender – Physics is magic and dreams embody history. This quantum world of “spooky entanglements” is one in which we warriors become expert. We accept not only that the cave we fear holds the treasure we desire, but that we are both cave and treasure, indeed, fear itself.

    Models & Mentors – “It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It is this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.” – John Scott

    “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.” – Erica Jong

    “The Simpsons is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but drives you crazy” – Matt Groening

    “Poetry is the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.” – Billy Collins

    #Haiku: Yin/yang

    Inclined to spring forward
    Fade back; yin;
    Urge to return?
    Float forward;
    Yang.

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Danger – Risk – If This Card Chooses You – Look out. Are you a worrier? Anxiety driven? Haunted by nightmares and worst-case scenarios? Do you wake up gasping and trying to forget what you’ve just experienced?

      You are Alert – Nightmares mean you’re paying attention. Life is scary, but we need to grow, and growth requires we learn to cultivate risk if we are ever to expand and venture outside our comfort zone.

      The Number One Complaint About Becoming a Warrior? – Fear management. The only way to manage fear? Become a Warrior.


      Study risk intelligently. No point being afraid of dragons if dragons are only symbolic. No point being “afraid” of “foreigners” if the man telling us to be afraid has a reputation for befriending people and then fleecing them.

      1. Don’t rely on rumor and innuendo
      2. Dangers must be proven Real
      3. Dangers Need to be Historically verified by data: “How likely is injury?”
      4. Assemble likely risk-avoidance strategies that have performed well for others in your situation.
      5. What exactly is your situation? Quantify.
      6. Know who your friends are
      7. Be prepared to alter strategy to maximize success and to learn from mistakes

      Warriors Train – Warriors accept, identify and study the challenges. They learn to make sophisticated risk assessments and pick their battles cleverly. To do that, warriors need a Purpose. You get to find out who your friends are. Friends want the best for you, but the relationship must be reciprocal. You have each other’s backs. Know the difference between a Team and a Gang. Gangs work to suck power from individual members and concentrate it in one individual. Teams work for the success of all. Coach can’t win if the team doesn’t win.

      Warriors Test – their and mental physical abilities constantly against life’s games & mazes

      Warriors Transform – The physical pleasure of meeting the moment cannot be overstated. Soon the training itself becomes a rush of joy. You are making love to the universe and the universe loves you back

      What About Defeat? – There are no defeats, there are only lessons. Everything is practice for The Greater Contest.

      Won’t You Ultimately Lose? Truly, we all die, some sooner, some less dignified. This is where your purpose upholds you. Study your models. What allowed Nelson Mandela to be “captain of his soul” after more than 20 years in brutal captivity? Are we just bodies? Or are we also souls? Are our souls so easily defeated? Can we also train, test and transform our souls?

      Remember – a caterpillar’s “defeat” is a butterfly.

      Models & Mentors – “Extreme Fear can neither fight nor fly.” – William Shakespeare

      “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear” – Mark Twain

      “If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will return stronger” – Deepak Chopra

      “We’re more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” – Seneca

      #haiku: Everything

      Everything you’ve
      Ever wanted
      Is on the other side
      Of fear

    1. Becoming a Warrior – The Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

      Synchronicity – Education

        If This Card Chooses You – Never Quit Learning. Synchronicity is the magic of daily life, but you can’t see it without Education. Do you dream of longed-for events and fulfillment? Glorious parties of perfect happiness where life finally seems to be unfolding exactly the way it should? Synchronous events are harmonious, as if the universe is a vast perfectly working clockwork machine. Understanding machines, systems, attribution and calibration are the subject of the educational process. This is the reason we spend the first twenty plus years of our lives in instructive settings.

        Warriors Learn for a Lifetime – You are a fierce absorber of knowledge. Advertisers know this, as do the designers of games and entertainment generally. We adore self-educating mazes. The complex dance between our skills, our bodily manifestation and the physics of reality is never-ending. Warriors determinedly master the synchrony of Right Thought, Right Instruction & Right Action.

        Warriors Have Young Brains but Old Souls – We have seen, known, learned and struggled so much. We have much knowledge to pass on to the brash beginners. But we ourselves confront each day with Gratitude Practice – re-experiencing the thrill of being alive and relishing the challenge of bending the universe toward light.

        As We Fill Our Souls With Light we Confront the Darkness – Remember – always get the oxygen mask over your own face before you try to help others. We need to design a life-long learning plan that benefits US, not one that puts our hard-earned money in someone else’s pocket.

        Beware the Quicksand – The culture seeks to bog us down in titles, degrees, honors, acquisitions and pro forma protocols. Don’t succumb. Our motion is always upward, our benchmark always health. Are we becoming stronger, smarter and more peaceful? Can we pass this flexible, constructive protocol along? Danger: we are seducible. We get tired, we long for reinforcements and approval. We just want to put our feet up.

        You Chose the Synchronicity Card – You have something to learn today to perfect your balance in this uncertain world. Write it out in your training journal before you go to sleep – what new thing have I learned today? Where will it fit along my map? But we are smart! Our self-designed goal system must contain refreshment and renewal breaks. Most importantly, we will be needing a buddy as we go through the system, and a spiritual guru who provably has our best interests at heart. You can recognize them by the fact that they don’t trap you into a dominance/submission matrix.

        Models & Mentors – “Education is the key to unlocking the world. It is the passport to freedom.” – Oprah Winfrey

        “Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci

        “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela

        “Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today” – Malcolm X

        #Haiku: The Dark Ages

        Treasure Learning
        Compassion &
        Trust
        Bastion against
        These Dark Ages

      1. Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

        Recovery – Rebirth –

          If This Card Chooses You – Re-Imagine Yourself. Have you been dreaming of rebirth? Second chances? Starting over? Do you wake up in the middle of the night screaming, “Mulligan!”

          “The bad news is time flies – the good news is, you’re the pilot.“ Recovery is what happens we repel a demonic force that kept us in thrall – could be addiction, illusion, corruption, compulsive behavior; even a poisonous culture. Were we hostage to another human being who didn’t want the best for us? This requires deep thought about our best interests. As our brains clear we get ideas. Ernest Hemingway used to say we are “stronger at the broken places”; Nietzsche expressed it as “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. Healing provides peace as well as joy. We give thanks that we have begun the journey.

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

          Warrior Danger – Life never goes the way we planned. There’s the excitement of finding a plan, investigating goals, making them ours, and committing to the plan – and then there’s living the plan. Suddenly we don’t know how to get through the next ten minutes – worse, we make a “big mistakes” unconsciously. The rational self we’ve planned for fails to show up and instead we turn into some irrational monster who threatens murder when momentarily frustrated. This is like sport-learning. Allow each new behavior to penetrate every fiber of your whole body. Rehearse over and over. (10,000 times?) It’s ALL mistakes at first.

          Concepts of “perfection” and “purity” are completely misplaced here; this is more like forming calluses over tender new skin. It feels funny at first, sore. It might actually “hurt.” We’re on the early steps of a long journey to a wonderful place; and we won’t get there unless we forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up and keep going.

          Warrior Opportunity –
          Ever heard of a “dry drunk”? The phrase refers to the state of envying those who “indulge” and feeling that we are somehow lesser, damaged beings because we “can’t.” How does this regret pertain to the warrior’s pledge of mindful living? We are devoted to contrasting our planned empowerment with others’ benumbed abandon. Think about what this means. Who envies loss of consciousness? Wouldn’t it be better to remove the source of the pain, the shame we are escaping from? Is this nostalgic fantasy of mental sleep really some faint memory of union, with the lost, beloved Other? What would it mean to give up these blind yearnings, this cultivated pain and these unbearable memories to lead a fresh, released and intentional life? It means accepting and becoming a new self in all our exquisitely uniqueness, exploring everything that implies. Recovery is “self-forgiveness”; going forward with a clear-eyed, honest appraisal of ourselves, resources and desires. “I am free”

          Warriors Crest the Wave – Most people have too narrow a self-definition to dare to try new things, but daring and courage are essential features of being a Warrior. Just because something sounds uncomfortable doesn’t mean we won’t someday like it so much we make it part of ourselves. If you’re used to sleeping on the floor, going without breakfast and struggling with a new language, you’ve learned to be unafraid of those things.

          Warriors Are Cagey – We don’t expose ourselves to unnecessary danger. We are constantly developing our safety instincts to recognize insecure situations before they get out of control. A main reason for frugality is that situations can become “too comfortable” – your senses are being dulled! Sharpening senses is what Warriors are all about!

          Warrior Are Reborn Many Times – Creating our own maps means we go many wrong ways before we find the right one! It’s the process. Throughout our quest we transform ourselves many times to incorporate our new knowledge.

          Self-Definition Is Key – Should you be ashamed of taking a wrong turn? Or confident because you figured it out, and proud that you were able to change?

          You Chose the Recovery-Rebirth Card – Your body is completely new every seven years. You welcome every new day. You are eager to meet new people and find out what makes them tick. You like putting yourself in new situations and figuring out how to cope. Read “Survival” manuals and try out escape rooms with your friends. Explore the sport of orienteering.

          Models & Mentors – “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life”

          – J.K. Rowling

          “The airplane takes off against the wind, not with it” – Henry Ford

          “Believe you can and you’re halfway there” – Theodore Roosevelt

          “The best way to predict your future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln

          #Haiku: Recovery = Rebirth

          Mulligan –
          Rare gift;
          A “do-over”
          ‘Cause you DO know
          What you know now

        1. Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

          The Storm – Conflict –

            When This Card Chooses You – Something’s coming. Are you having bad dreams? Of natural disasters like storms, volcanoes and flooding? Do you fear war, robbery, violation, home invasion? Or do you dream about your loved one’s face turning bitter and their words cutting sharply? Conflict is inevitable. It is even necessary – birth pangs seem terrifying. In dreams we rehearse our fears until some of us fear to dream.

            It Always Comes Before You’re Ready – Here it is – the reason you became a warrior. You have to battle or go under. The force against you is superior – no question about that – you will have to be wily and know when to expend energy and when to conserve your strength.

            You are a Force Field. You are a magnet for desire, change, for evolution itself. This comes by virtue of your warrior birth. Others may tell you to stand back, take your place in line or wait your turn but your appearance into this chaotic universe triggered no such guarantee. We are here to learn to use our power.

            Conflict Makes a Warrior – Force stirs up resistance. Actions create re-action as we swing back and forth in our determination and direction. We clash and crash. Sometimes we regret it bitterly, “why did I do that?” Sometimes we fear loss or harm so much we become immobilized. The challenge is to assume your stride, elucidate your goals and plan a direction.

            Warrior Danger – It’s all too easy to make others fear you. The one with the biggest weapon THINKS he wins every fight. But what looks like compliance to you could be revolution – you will be toppled and lose your heart’s desire.

            Warrior Opportunity – Learning to use conflict constructively and creatively is a Superpower. Other people are force fields, too? If there is any way to blend these powers and head in the same direction, we become invincible. Welcome the knowledge provided by the Storm card in your Warrior Oracle deck.

            Study Your Opponent – Some clever scholar has separated these opponents into groups & classes. Read up! Some opponents – physical contests, weather conditions – don’t even have a brain. So who – or what – are you playing against?

            You Are Playing Against Yourself – your own fear, incapacity, beginner status. Seek mentoring so you have advice along the journey. Who is the sensei who will guide you? Someone who desires both your safety and your growth.

            Reward Yourself – The best place to do this is your training journal. Think hard about every contest and how you performed. Assess your challenges and accomplishments. Way to go!

            Models & Mentors – “I used to tell myself, boy, if you can survive this, you can survive anything” – Tom Lichtenberg

            “Laughter is the proof that our tragedies don’t define us. Laughter is the survivor’s language” – Josh James

            “Cancer didn’t bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet” – Michael Douglas

            “If you want to awaken humanity, awaken yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering, eliminate what is negative in yourself. Your gift to the world is our self-transformation.” – Lao Tzu

            #Haiku: Sleuth

            Named is
            Tamed.
            Brainstorm:
            Exceed
            Outstrip
            Surpass
            Unveil
            Lay bare
            Prevail

          1. Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

            Self-Sufficiency

            When looking for approval, you first notice that the “approvers” aren’t in agreement, keep contradicting themselves and shifting their own goalposts.

            This is enough to make a warrior out of anybody.

            How to choose your standards? How to design our path and feel confident about it?

            As a child, I was a sunflower, looking for nourishment I could turn my face towards. People who dampened and depressed, who structured and suffocated, were to be avoided.

            My parents claimed to be interested in physical health (and I wasn’t even completely convinced of that) but mum on the subject of mental health, which seemed to be the purview of adults who’d mastered the wherewithal to “step out of the rat race.”

            As an elementary school student, I was certainly in a rat race. And it looked like a long haul. When we moved to Morocco and I was sent to a school where I didn’t speak the language, life got downright dangerous.

            Luckily there were books. Agatha Christie in specific, who turned out to be the favored reading of travelers passing through Dar El Baraka, where we had been installed.

            Agatha Christie is excellent training in the Art of Being a Warrior. Life in her books is dangerous, but since everyone is lying and pretending to be someone they’re not (“Society”) it’s difficult to tell where the threat is coming from. The Detective uses Clues and a knowledge of Human Nature to figure out The Truth.

            This is riveting stuff for an eleven year old. These skills of judgment, analysis, research and truth-telling are essential for the Warrior.

            Clue Gathering

            Don’t take people at face value

            Check their stories –

            Question values

            Motives,

            Duplicitous

            Suspects

            Hoodwink

            Bamboozle

            Beguile

            Ignorant

            Dupes like

            You.

          2. Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

            The Life Force

            We teenagers at our co-ed religious boarding school wanted to mate. This desire was more powerful than the faculty, it was more powerful than anything. They were always digging us out of bushes, rescuing us from ponds, chasing us out of the woods. We were lustfully ablaze. They kept trying to demand we give an account of ourselves but reason had been bypassed – we were in the grip of an eternal force powering the planet, perpetuating our kind.

            I knew that force again when I turned 29 years old. Suddenly I wanted to have a child. There were men on the scene – but they were a shiftless crew of can’t-bes, don’t-bes, and wanna-bes. Warriors don’t take No for an answer. I had to be able to do better than that, but my parents assured me that because of my career of exposing My Body For Profit, no decent man would have me.

            But suddenly High School Boyfriend showed up, a working journalist, half-way through law school, interning for Ralph Nader. On our first meeting he told me he’d never loved anyone but me.

            Hey, I thought. This could work.

            Your Biological Time’s Up

            This crowded world could not make do


            without your life;


            Summoned up, you surged


            you split the crust


            Shocked, I shuddered in my sheaves


            as you uncored


            Loosened my skin as we 


            Unmerged. 

            We travelled to the rim;


            Your fragrant cell became


            a soul unsheathed.


            From my rind’s brim


            you blinkered on the world


            wondering at the fuss.


            We are you and yet


            You are not us.

            Committed to a course beyond our love –


            a forfeit tithe;


            gentle as a snake and


            wiser than a dove;


            As stars consume their fuel


            you were birthed to speed our lives.

            Against the odds we found you


            You found us


            against the odds.


            Consecrated to the great transformer 


            We love like mothers


            We create like gods.