In this edition of Mystical Scuttlebutt

• Upcoming Events
• A Practical Tip
• Dilemma Of The Month
• Reflection
• Testimonial

**New Training Beginning in February 2008**
 The Knack of Conscious Living
How to Embrace Your Personality's Story & Your Soul's Truth

Every Human Being has a story.  But everyone is not yet aware that the story – as personal and sacred as it is - is authored by your Personality.  This means your Story is not the final statement about who you are, nor about the value and purpose of your life – the two most powerful factors driving your decision making.

• The Knack  supports the transformation of your Personality by deepening your conviction and trust in the reality of your Essence or Divine Self.
• You receive precise tools rooted in the Enneagram, Ericksonian Hypnosis, NLP, Energy Psychology, and Facticity to help you separate your Personality’s Story from your Soul’s Truth. 
• The Knack awakens a very practical yet mystical flair that hides out in the depth dimension of your Being
• Through experiential exercises, dialogue, & group trance, the space will naturally open to explore, deepen, and expand your particular understanding of Faith.  
• Your Inner Guidance will help you uncover the reality of  your Essential Self in your own way

Schedule: 5 Friday evenings plus one Saturday over 5 months February through June - Pre-Requisite:  Participation in a Paradox Soiree, Salon, or No More This Or That Seminar - Fee:  $485 – Early Bird Discount of $20 if paid in full by January 31st – For other payment arrangements, please talk with Ragini.  Location:  Magnolia Area, Seattle, Washington.  To Register, click here.



If you’re feeling a bit down after the holidays, or a bit cranky, think for a moment about a few things that at first glance may seem unrelated.  Imagine the waves in the sea, the beat of your heart, and the mountains and valleys.  Each of these phenomenon show us the natural rhythm of Life - the crest followed by the trough, the rising followed by the falling, the opening followed by the closing, and the heights inseparable from the depths – all polar pairs holding the flow of life as we know it.  These are nature’s way of keeping things fresh and new resulting in the flow of impermanence and change. 

Practically speaking, this means our own lives are also subject to these rhythms of nature, whether we like it or not.  Highs will be followed by lows, joys will be followed by sorrows, and fullness will be followed by emptiness.  Remember the rhythm of things and your ability to “go with the flow” will increase beyond your expectations.  Relax into the rhythm of things and your sense of peace will come to visit more often.

I invite you to explore this practical tip and discover for yourself the rhythms of life that are wanting you to relax and join their perpetual dance creating the moments of your life, fresh and the new. 
 

This interdependent polar pair is particularly prominent right now.  With the beginning of the new year, resolutions, intentions, and goal setting all contribute to the decision to “influence” your life to move in a certain direction.  This is a necessary commitment as it reflects your determination to fill your basic psychological need for a sense of power or potency.  It stokes the fires of trust that you can indeed have a say in shaping your destiny and can use that ability to impact your life and experience satisfaction and happiness. 

Yet, with the urge to influence comes expectation. When your expectation is fulfilled, you feel a sense of success.. Then you naturally feel good about yourself, and may even describe the event as important and significant, and indicative of your potency and capability of truly swaying the direction of your life.  You may even want to inspire others to attempt to have some bearing on the shape of their lives, and to act in order to effect a particular change.

The glitch here is that your expectations don’t always get met, as you well know. When the consequences of your influencing actions do not bring you what you expect or want  – and especially in the case where you have literally done everything you could to make it happen – dissatisfaction, anger, and a sense of failure arise, all accompanied by the deeply painful sense of feeling helpless.  You may then begin the dance of beating yourself up for this failure, judging yourself as incapable, inept, incompetent, inadequate, spineless, weak-willed, or unqualified – all of which can lead to self-hatred, depression, and even paralysis.  But, in order to feel psychologically good about yourself, you must feel some sense of potency.  So, what are you to do?

Managing The Dilemma

Without understanding the nature of this interdependent polar pair (interdependent because they define each other) this becomes tricky business.  We have all struggled with feeling helpless to effect the changes we want so badly.  How do you claim the ability to shape the course of your life when your own experience indicates you will not always get what you want?  Do you ignore the basic desire to influence your life and do nothing?  Or continue making the efforts to shape your life, just hoping against hope that you will succeed? 

Mystical wisdom teaches that in the presence of a two-sided coin, peace only comes when you can say “yes” to whatever happens. When you flip a coin, it will never continually land on only one side.  You know that statistically, 50% of the time the coin will fall on one side and 50% on the other side.  If you take this wisdom and apply it to what I am calling an Unresolvable Dilemma  -  “Do I have influence, or am I helpless?” - you will recognize that experiencing the full potency of your life is paradoxically the result of accepting both your ability to influence your life by your decisions, and the reality that you cannot control the outcomes of your actions. In this regard, you are indeed helpless. No matter how much you want that coin to land 100% of the time on the same side, you are not going to get what you want.  It is not the way of a 2-sided coin in this level of reality.

When you can embrace both sides of this coin – “I have influence in shaping my life, and I am helpless in controlling the outcomes of my actions” - whichever side lands is acceptable.  It will still feel good when it lands on success and it will still feel disappointing when it lands on failure, but the roller-coaster ride of gain and loss of self-esteem will no longer occur.  Understanding how this interdependent polarity plays out in daily life can shift your way of understanding all the daily dilemmas that you face. 

I invite you to explore how often you decide you’re going to influence something, and then stress over whether or not you will succeed.  Pay attention to how often you actually get what you’re longing for, and how often you don’t.  Peace arises when you can accept whatever happens and feel your sense of self untouched as it rests safe in the arms of your Being. 

May you be happy and find this peace.

Ragini

 
To visit this month’s new Reflection highlighting The Dahli Lama, please click here. 


“Being trained in the Facticity perspective has given me everything I need to live comfortably with compassion and inner happiness in a chaotic world.  I wish I could have known this sooner.” 
                                                                                       Lisa Matzke, Graphic Designer & Mom

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All material (C) 2008 Ragini Elizabeth Michaels, www.facticity.com or ragini@facticity.com