In This Edition Of Mystical Scuttlebutt:
Upcoming Events
Practical Tip
Dilemma Of The Month
Reflection Of The Month
Clues For When You're Stressing Out
Testimonial
Faith's Dilemma: Should I Follow My Trusting Heart Or My Doubting Mind? This one day workshop enriches and enlivens your faith by illuminating the deep partnership between trust and doubt. You discover how this dynamic unfolds inside of you on a day to day basis. Following the guidance of Mystic Wisdom, you learn why it is not only ok, but desirable, to relax into your doubt as well as your trust. And, you are taught precisely how to do so. Staying true to the Facticity vision of creating genuine behavioral change, you gain knowledge of how to install this new awareness and pattern of understanding into your actual brain using a simple, and scientifically sound method. Date: October 14th - Time: 9 to 4:15 - Location: Seattle, WA - Fee: $160 - Register Online“Today my trust and doubt cycles have become smaller in that they are about little things now, but not the bigger reality. When I was asked to consider the possibility that the universe could perhaps be a friendly place, the whole spiritual context for my existence came into focus. Now I live in a context where I’m ok and it’s completely different.” David Bledsoe, Lawyer
The Enneagram From A Paradoxical Perspective
This two day seminar deepens your ability to explore the age-old puzzlement of how to be both human and divine. With a mindful eye and a compassionate heart, you discover how to recognize and embrace this paradoxical sense of Identity. You learn how to surf the interface between your human personality and your divine essential self with a fascinating and straightforward approach. At the end of the workshop, you have a deeper understanding of how to better navigate the ancient and profound question of “Who Am I?” on a practical, daily basis. Requires a fundamental grasp of the Enneagram of Personality. Date: November 3rd and 4th - Time: Sat. 10:15 to 5:30, Sun. 9:00 to 4:30 - Location: Seattle, WA - Fee: $295 - Early Bird Discount: $265 if paid in full by October 10th. Register Online
“For me, the Enneagram work opened a previously shut door to compassion. Aside from the insight into my own personality and motivations, it gave me great understanding of the people in my life. All my relationships are much easier and more relaxed. Understanding the underlying structure and overall source of coping mechanisms for any personality has turned out to be invaluable.” Valerie Loebs, Boeing Engineer
Being present to the moment is no ordinary task. Your mind is designed to compare, contrast, judge, and form opinions. Consequently the mind is a constant stream of thoughts, images, arguments, and conversations based on either a dead past or an imagined future. This seemingly constant flow is what prevents you from seeing what is actually before you. The action of taking a conscious breath can bring you to the present. Awareness allows you entry into the spaciousness between the thoughts, images, and feelings. Awareness can bring you to the silence behind the sound and to the stillness behind the movement. It can gift you with the direct experience of actually being present to the world around you – not just your story and opinions about the world. Taking a breath with awareness can connect you to Presence, or God, or the Mystery, or whatever words you might use to point to that which holds all things and is held in all things. In the words of Ch’ing Kung 14th century mystic,
“Things of the past are already gone.
And things to be distant beyond imagining.
The Tao is just this moment, these words:
plum blossoms fallen; gardenia just opening.”
The breath of awareness flows back and forth from the movement of the mind to the stillness of Being. I invite you to give it a try and explore the possibility of accepting your invitation to the mystical dance quietly unfolding between your humanity and your divinity.
Dilemma of the Month: Full Vs. Empty
The search for a sense of feeling full is ancient. Whether you label it satisfied, complete, satiated, stuffed, gorged, bursting, bulging, thriving, flourishing, rich, or many other synonyms, the experience of feeling full is high on the list of desired outcomes. It doesn’t really matter whether it results from eating, exercising, being successful, being recognized, being in love, having a good meditation, a happy family, or a fat bank account. Feeling a sense of fullness is one of humanities top unconscious desires.
Because of this drive to feel full, and it’s equally strong counterpart, the drive to avoid feeling empty, we anxiously strive to create and then recreate the rich, full moments of life. As an unconscious aside, we simultaneously become completely aversive to feeling empty, whether we call it feeling unfulfilled, barren, vacant, meaningless, purposeless, pointless, hollow, worthless, inconsequential or unimportant. We go to great lengths to stay as far away as possible from the life moments we experience as empty.
Once again, the problem lies in the fact that full and empty are an Unresolvable Dilemma. They are not an either/or situation. They are a both/and phenomena. Your Mystical eyes can perceive that the Unresolvable Dilemma is the fundamental pattern of impermanence as it appears on this plane of our experience. Because fullness and emptiness actually define one another, they are deeply interdependent and cannot be separated. Hence, try as we might, we will always fail in our efforts to capture fullness as a permanent condition, and to eradicate the experience of emptiness from our lives. Yet, we are driven to engage in this endeavor. What are we to do??
Managing The Dilemma
To manage this dilemma, you can draw upon your intuitive wisdom. You understand that for a tea cup to be useful, it must be free to shift from being empty (the potential) to being full (the actualization). For the tea cup’s potential as a container to manifest, it must be empty and then full. For that function to remain active, it must again become empty and again full – in an ongoing rhythm or cycle that brings the experience of both fullness and emptiness. The fundamental sense of fullness that we seek comes with the deeper satisfaction of living our function or purpose or design in an alive, ongoing, everyday process. This requires us to understand and embody a sense of balance or equanimity in the presence of both fullness and emptiness. When the partnership between full and empty is revealed, you will clearly see what makes up the coin of human satisfaction at its deepest level.
The next time emptiness or fullness comes knocking on your door, take a breath, and relax into the sensations. I invite you to explore exactly what emptiness is in your body – what fullness is in your body. You will discover how vastly different they will be from what they are held to be in your mind. Once you can relax into this rhythm of emptying out so a fresh fullness can emerge, that deeper sense of satisfaction that lives just beyond the realm of polar opposites will begin to arise. Enjoy your inquiry!
To visit this month’s new Reflection highlighting Sengsten, 3rd Zen Patriarch, please click here.
1. When you feel a sense of emptiness amidst the busyness of your life.
2. When you feel hollow on the inside.
3. When you feel your heart closed to the happenings around you.
Remedy:
When you notice these feelings overwhelming you, take a breath. Then imagine holding an empty glass and ask yourself this question. “Is this glass really empty, or is it filled with potential to hold a liquid?” If you answer yes to one option and not the other, you will miss the reality of what is there. However, if you embrace this shift in perception from the glass being empty of purpose to holding the fullness of its potential, you will see that being both empty and full co-exist at the same time.
A bamboo flute, hollow on the inside, simultaneously carries the full potential for music. This fullness only comes alive when the musician fills the emptiness with the breath of life.
What causes us to head away from our hearts is our insistence that life be only full, alive and comfortable, and never empty, hollow or painful. In the presence of whatever happens moment to moment, remembering that life embraces all that arises brings you back to the heart. This return allows you to expand and comfortably hold being both empty and full, hollow and resonant, open and closed. Give it a try and discover for yourself your mystical ability to see what is not there as already present.
"Since the dynamic and fun-filled afternoon you spent consulting with our board, I have really appreciated how many times we have made reference to a paradoxical perspective. Recently, I attended a community learning day where one of our councils consulted with a member of an organization that often collaborates with ours. Tension was noticeable in the room when the topic of competition came up, and I was grateful that three board members who were present spoke up, reframed the conversation to be about competitive collaboration and the energy shifted to a lively discussion.”
Woman’s Way Red Lodge – Non-profit Organization
To visit this month’s new Reflection, please click here.
To visit our On-Line Store, please click here.
All material (C) 2007 Ragini Elizabeth Michaels, www.facticity.com or ragini@facticity.com |
