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

Ragini In Awareness Magazine -
Read Ragini's article "Unaware of Unresolvable Dilemma" in Awareness Magazine's September/October Business/Prosperity issue. "Awareness Magazine" is California's second largest bi-monthly holistic magazine. Click here:
http://www.awarenessmag.com/sepoct06/so06_unaware_of_unresolvable.htm?

October 21-22, 2006 - Getting To Now
Learn how to embrace the paradoxical nature of being both human and divine with Consciousness Teacher Ragini Elizabeth Michaels. Enjoy a fun, easy, yet profound 2 days that will identify the major obstacle that keeps you from living in the NOW. Get the knack for efficiently integrating your spiritual life into your marketplace life, both personal and professional. Discover what our current spiritual leaders, like Deepak Chopra and others, know but aren't specifically saying about how to handle the on-going dilemmas of daily life. Harness and utilize the practical wisdom of spiritual clarity to answer your questions and concerns about family, relationship, work, and the deeper issues of purpose, meaning, and faith.  Build your ability to embrace life with a paradoxical eye deepening the strength of your existing spiritual path. Location: Seattle, Washington  Time: 9:30 to 5:30 - Fee: $425  Early Bird Discount - $395 if paid in full by October 10th, 2006. Click here to register.

May 20-26, 2007 Paradox Management Practitioner Certification Training - for Therapists, Coaches, and?Organizational Development Consultants.
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. An absolute must for anyone interested in the conscious co-creation of a different kind of world. Please visit our website for additional information - Led by Ragini Elizabeth Michaels, Consciousness Teacher, Marketplace Mystic,and originator of Paradox Management. -7 Days Fee: $2,700
Early Bird Discount: $2,400 if paid in full by January 1, 2007 - $2,550 if paid in full by April 1, 2007. Location: Seattle, Washington, USA  Times:9 to 5:30. Registration closes on April 26, 2007. Click here to register.

"I learned more truly practical and useful information in this program than in my entire training as a contemplative psychotherapist. Fantastic!"
Carl Baccellieri, Colorado.

When you're feeling stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed and find yourself asking, "Is it the world that's gone crazy, or is it me, take a breath (of course), and remind yourself that you are indeed living in a world driven by an insatiable and unchecked desire for success, speed, pleasure, and more of everything! Anything that becomes insatiable and unchecked loses its sense of place in the wholeness of things, thus causing those feelings of craziness to begin to emerge.

Take a look around at the sky, the clouds, the trees, the water - and notice the wisdom being silently offered to guide you back into balance regardless of where the outer world is going. Tune into the speed of nature's rhythms, the cycles of its seasons, the easy flow of change from one expression of life to another. If you are reading this newsletter, you are already on the road to sanity the road that leads to a workable and enjoyable life  not just hurrying through it trying to get somewhere before you die. It's not an easy road to travel in our world, but it is a road that teaches us not only how to live but also how to die the final challenge for us all. 
 

Dilemma of the Month: Intelligent Vs. Stupid

This particular dilemma is especially difficult for our culture. Our Western world values intelligence, and we commonly place it higher than almost anything else. Our quest for knowledge of just about anything and everything reveals our need to be seen as, and to see ourselves as, intelligent and more importantly as not stupid. Whether we call intelligence being clever, bright, sharp, quick, gifted, intellectual, smart, knowledgeable, witty, brainy, on the ball, astute, adroit, shrewd, quick on the uptake, with it, alert, clued-in, or just plain on your toes, it is definitely where we all want to be.

At all costs we avoid being perceived by others, and by ourselves, as unintelligent, ignorant, dim, slow, dull, obtuse, dense, thick, brainless, foolish, mindless, silly, dim-witted, idiotic, unwise, lacking judgment, foolhardy, unreasonable, absurd, not bright, uninteresting, insipid, slow on the uptake, and of course the worst, illogical or irrational. We like to believe that rationality and logic are the best guides for creating our world.

Yet, without allowing the balancing factor of stupidity into the equation, unchecked intelligence can quickly turn into arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, egotism, superiority, pride, overconfidence, self-importance, condescension, disdain, pomposity scorn, snootiness, impudence, audaciousness, insensitivity, selfishness, self-centeredness, self-interest, self-absorption, narcissism, and most unfortunately, the absolute denial of any other point of view being valid. Current world affairs verifies that this unfortunate possibility has already become an unfortunate reality, with the majority of global conflicts rooted in the inability of those involved to allow others their differing points of view. This rather effectively places the vision of a world working together to create peace and prosperity for all into the category of an extremely remote possibility.

Managing The Dilemma:

To manage this dilemma requires willingness to explore the experience of stupidity in all of its forms. It requires us to open to the deeper understanding that intelligence, like all things, wants to change and grow. Any form of intelligence that ceases to expand and stops exploring what is possible to understand and harness and utilize becomes a harbinger of pain and suffering. To say no to the flow of change and thus to the continuing growth of human understanding, is as silly as trying to stop the body from following its natural course of development from the fetus to the fully mature adult. Intelligence fundamentally drives us to continue our quest for understanding and meaning. When we cannot allow ourselves to claim ignorance or foolishness or the simple statement I don?t have any idea how to handle this issue, we stunt the growth and development of our human intelligence, both individually and as a species.

Ask yourself what you need to be able to claim your times of being illogical, irrational, slow on the uptake, or dense. It is these times that invite us to open, relax, and be free to look at the situation with a fresh beginner's mind, unburdened by the success and failures of the past and the worries and anxieties from the future. It is these moments that let you actually use your intelligence to inquire, to explore, to ask the unasked questions. Stupidity by any name is a vital requirement for intelligence to rise to its highest demonstration as a creative response to the NOW. By embracing both, we invite our intelligence to reach for its innate destiny of wisdom both personal and collective.

So, the challenge is to learn how to delight in your stupidity, embrace its presence, enjoy it, have a good belly laugh, and open to its learning. If you'd like, I invite you to make a list of all the benefits you can find from enjoying a time of sheer ignorance, blissful not knowing, ecstatic foolishness, and witless mental meanderings. It is all good for the soul, and good for the spirit, and freeing to the innate drive of divine intelligence to delight in the joys of ignorance for it is only by embracing ignorance that intelligence blossoms and frees the fragrance of wisdom to stir into action the compassion that lives in your heart and soul. 

1) You'e taking your work life so seriously that it feels like a matter of your life or your death.

2) You'e completely attached to an outcome that you intuitively sense is not going to happen, but you continue to fight for it and demand that life give it to you

3) You can't et go of something that happened that you feel harmed you in some way, and you secretly want revenge.

Remedy:
As always, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and sit for just one moment with the rhythm of your breathing in and out  "in and out." Notice how every inspiration reaches a point of completion and can bring no more air in. Notice then, for a second, how everything just becomes still. And then, the exhalation begins. Follow the exhalation and notice how it too reaches a point of completion and can push no more air out. Feel once again the still point between this exhalation and the next inspiration, poised inside this exhalation and now readying itself to emerge. Don?t worry about what is going on in your mind. Just keep coming back for a minute or two to this experience in your body of your breath's teaching of how to bring in, how to hold, and most importantly, how to release. Without the release, no more fresh air can come in. Without the release, movement cannot resume. Let your awareness just be present and slowly open to receive this deep wisdom revealing the inherent rhythm of life. Your mind will not like it, but your body and soul will.

"In addition to a business technology, Getting To Now allowed me to experience a deep personal integration of my own capacity to live with and handle the paradoxical aspects of my daily life.?

Caryl Macleod, Managing Director, Cronos Consulting, Australia

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