In This Edition Of Mystical Scuttlebutt:
Upcoming Events
Practical Tip
Dilemma Of The Month
Clues For When You're Stressing Out
Testimonial

May 20, 2006 - Labyrinth Walk for Couples**Still Time To Register**
Explore the twists and turns of your committed relationship in this Labyrinth Walk for Couples. Within the ancient mysteries of the Labyrinth, you will open to a new awareness and rhythm of relating. Come and dance a deeper connection with your beloved. Facilitated by Narayana Granatelli. Fee: $125 per couple To register, call 425.681.0017.

May 27, 2006 - No More This Or That Seminar
In this profound and fun seminar, you will discover Facticity - the missing link in practical spirituality. You will learn the core tool of Facticity Training - a simple, fast, and proven six-step process based on the Psychology of the Mystics. This will help you surf the interface between your material life and your spiritual life with less indecision, a new sense of Inner Peace, and a fresh approach to Practical Wisdom.
$175 9:30 to 5. Click here to register.

May 30 - June 4- Paradox Management Certificate Training
Polarized thinking is but a stage in the evolution of human understanding. Paradox Management delivers you to the next stage for your personal and professional growth. This training fills an important gap in the professional and spiritual training of Coaches, Corporate Consultants, Business Leaders, Educators, Therapists, and Spiritual Teachers. 6 Days $2,500
Registration closes on May 15th. Click here to register.

June 17-18, 2006 - Reiki I Training - Awaken the Healer Within
Reiki is an energy healing system that taps into the Universal Life Force flowing through all things. Reiki I initiates you into this healing energy. It opens your crown, third eye, heart and hand chakras, and teaches you to use the hand positions of self healing. Join me in exploring your healer within. Facilitated by Reiki Master Teacher, Narayana L. Granatelli  Fee: $175 (includes manual). Saturday and Sunday. 10 to 5:30. To Register call 425 681-0017 or e-mail narayana@thedragonandpearl.com 

The Marketplace Mystic's goal is not, as many think, to get rid of your story, or to even make it a better story (re-framing). The goal is to literally see through it. Because core stories that shape your perceptions of reality are precisely coded on your basic neurophysiology, they are not going to completely disappear! However, you can literally, and I do mean literally, see through them.

As you become more adept at making this distinction between story and what is, the thickness of your belief in the story as Truth begins to thin out. When it becomes thin enough, you can see through it, like a veil. You then know, without a doubt, that it cannot be the ultimate truth of the moment, nor anything more than a partial truth at best. From here, you can continue investigating this next level of reality we're calling what is that is resting just outside the mind. Entry into this level opens the door to the famous peace that passes all understanding.  Please, don't believe me. Take the challenge of discovering for yourself and enjoy your investigation!

Strength Vs. Weakness

Our modern day world loves strength and disparages weakness. Strong people succeed. Weak people fail. Strength and weakness have clearly become statements about who we are.

Do you ever privately chastise yourself for being weak? Or do you use other words like fragile, delicate, flimsy, frail, wishy-washy, thin-skinned, tenuous, easily pushed around, a wimp, or a coward? Do you find yourself defining strength as the tenacity of your personal will? Do you tell yourself to "suck it up" and stoke your inner fires to temper and strengthen your will from tenuous to iron-clad to steel??? Today's sense of strength is primarily determined by force, might, potency, muscle and, at its worse, the power of destruction? Terrorism exemplifies the notion that strength is determined by who is willing to destroy the most randomly.

Still, most of us continue to unconsciously hold strength as an asset and weakness as a liability. It is obvious this inner tug of war to avoid weakness and gain strength can demoralize your deepest sense of self and usurp your capacity for self-love, regardless of whether you succeed or fail. It may not be so obvious that the root of this polarization comes from our deep misunderstanding of strength itself and how it needs weakness to come into being.

Managing The Dilemma:

To manage this dilemma, begin to approach it with your Mystical eyes. The Marketplace Mystic perceives strength and weakness as two sides of the coin of Aliveness  that pulsing, dynamic, alive sense of Presence that simply states, I am here! The Mystic understands that the Essence of your life force itself must, in a dualistic universe, also arise and pass away. There is a harmonious rhythm to this cycling of strength and weakness in your mind/body system. Seen from this perspective, weakness is nothing but the life force itself resting, renewing, and rebalancing in order to re-emerge with a new surge of vigor and liveliness.

To understand this dynamic, go to the muscles in your body. Many fibers make up each muscle and each fiber has the ability to both contract and relax. When a fiber is working, it is contracted. When it needs to rest, rebalance, and renew, it releases the contraction and relaxes. Then other muscle fibers take over the job by leaping from relaxation into contraction. There is the presence of a patterned rhythm that allows your muscles to work for quite a while until the entire muscle reaches its threshold for the buildup of lactic acid and has to completely stop and rest. You know this as that shaky feeling in your arms and legs that lets you know the muscles are getting ready to give out.

Explore what unfolds when you begin to perceive strength and weakness as the ebb and flow of your own personal life force that Presence of Aliveness that is the gift of life itself. Does understanding and seeing from this mystical perspective free you to relax more easily into your real needs for rest, rebalancing and renewing??? Do you have more clarity that these are the needs of life itself in a dualistic universe?? Do you have more trust that by surrendering to this rhythm of your own life force you will emerge with greater strength, and Presence, to live fully and follow your passions?

I encourage you to join this adventurous investigation and discover a wiser and kinder understanding of strength and weakness. I guarantee it's an interesting ride - although somewhat bumpy for your personality and ego. However, the Marketplace Mystic is learning the Knack for loving and respecting the personality and ego exactly as it is which paradoxically, does not negate supporting your efforts to heal and awaken those aspects of your psychological self that are still sound asleep and snoring away. Have fun!

 

1) Gossiping about others in order to make yourself feel better or right.
2) Intentionally (consciously or unconsciously) attempting to create or maintain conflict between others.
3) Pushing someone else?s ?hot buttons? because you can.

Remedy:
As always, take a breath and ask yourself, "Is what I?m doing creating a sense of separation for me, or a sense of connection for me?????"  If you have enough presence to ask this question, you will feel an immediate answer in your body.

If what you want is to feel connected, then you can literally shift your attention from looking at the other through the eyes of your mind to perceiving them through the eyes of your heart. Then say to yourself, "That is me in another form. I am them. They are me. We are both remarkably the same and amazingly different."

If what you want is to feel separate (and make no mistake there are days when that is exactly what you will feel you want), then continue with what you are doing. But notice what is happening in your body and your consciousness. Is there expansion or contraction? Is there love or fear?? Simply notice. And allow your judgments of yourself to arise and pass by while you observe (and feel) what is unfolding moment to moment.

Whether the desire is to be separate or to be connected, the Marketplace Mystic has the knack for being present to what is there be it pleasant or unpleasant, kind or mean, loving or hateful. Having the wisdom and the knack for accepting what life brings moment to moment is the beginning of true inner peace. Paradoxically, this acceptance does not negate doing all you can do to awaken and allow your heart to take the lead while you follow the passions of your soul and Being. 

"Paradox Management is without a doubt the most powerful new way of thinking to be introduced into business today! I have used Ragini's techniques both personally and professionally with incredible results.? My clients are able to manage change by making decisions faster, more easily and with greater confidence. As a result they are more productive, more profitable, and best of all, happier. What a find! Thank you, Ragini.

Debbie Barry, Consultant and Coach

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