Finding the Gifts in Dysfunction -Lynne Forrest.

Some­times there is con­cern expressed that we might actu­ally mis­lead or make mat­ters worse by look­ing for the gifts in every sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially when we’re seek­ing the pos­i­tives in painful rela­tion­ships with those who may NOT have our best inter­est in mind. The con­cern is that seek­ing to find grat­i­tude for such sit­u­a­tions in our lives might mis­lead us into ratio­nal­iz­ing and/or deny­ing injus­tice and abuse when what we need to be doing is pro­tect­ing ourselves.

Indeed there is a fine line for many in mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion between ratio­nal­iz­ing as a way of deny­ing dan­ger as opposed to find­ing the gift in painful sit­u­a­tions … so I appre­ci­ate the word of caution.

And I want to clar­ify for those of you who may have won­dered sim­i­larly by first ask­ing a cou­ple of ques­tions for you to consider?

The ques­tions:

Is it true that we can­not find or focus on the gifts we received in a painful sit­u­a­tion with­out deny­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of it being a dan­ger­ous one for us?

Is it true that it is safe only to appre­ci­ate the rela­tion­ships in our life with those whose inten­tions we trust are honorable?

A brief, but rel­e­vant, aside:

Do you know the story about the scor­pion and the frog?

It is this:

The scor­pion was drown­ing and begged the frog, who is not threat­ened by water, to give him a ride to dry land… but the frog refused, saying,“You will sting me if I help you!” “Oh no,” said the scor­pion, “I would never hurt you, why, I would be so grate­ful to you for sav­ing my life that we’d be best friends forever!”

Finally against the frogs bet­ter judg­ment, he con­sented to give the scor­pion a ride on his back to dry land. Well, sure enough, as the scor­pion slid off the frog’s back onto dry land, he gave him the frog a killing sting.

The frog, in the throes of dying, cried out, “WHY did you sting me after I helped you? I risked my life for you and this is the thanks I get?!”

To which the scor­pion replied, “It’s sim­ple … I did what I did because I am a scor­pion, and that’s what scor­pi­ons do!”

Now, regard­ing the story’s rel­e­vance to the ques­tions asked above:

The story reminds us that all of us, peo­ple and scor­pi­ons alike, do what we do because we believe what WE think. How “safe” or “dan­ger­ous” we are to our­selves and oth­ers is deter­mined by our own belief sys­tem — it’s our beliefs that deter­mine our nature.

That means if some­one believes they must hurt oth­ers to be safe or to pros­per, they will treat them in hurt­ful, destruc­tive ways .. i.e. they will be hurt­ful and abu­sive to those around them.

Does this mean we must with­hold our love from them?

Might it be pos­si­ble to under­stand that a person’s mis­be­hav­ior is not AT or TO us, but that they treat us the way they do sim­ply because they believe their own dis­torted thoughts? How would know­ing that affect the way I see them? Feel towards them? Treat them?

I have expe­ri­enced that we can remain lov­ing and kind to them with­out putting our­selves in dan­ger to do it. Sort of like if Mr Frog had said, “I under­stand you are a scor­pion and I know that means you will have to do what scor­pi­ons do, and I do not need to judge you for that, but, nor am I will­ing to endan­ger myself by giv­ing you a ride on my back … not because I don’t respect or care about you, but sim­ply because my job is to love and take care of me.”

We can take care of our­selves, say no when we need to take care of our­selves, and STILL not need to attack or blame or feel vic­tim­ized by the “scor­pi­ons” in our life — who, after all, are just being true to their own nature based on what they believe they must be and do to sur­vive, just like the rest of us are doing too.

Here’s what Real­ity teaches us:

There is not a sin­gle per­son in our life that is not there by design. There are no coin­ci­dences. And since

Real­ity is ALWAYS work­ing with us, for us, we can totally rely on know­ing that the peo­ple in our life (both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive) are there to bring us gifts — of insight, aware­ness, com­par­i­son, or in end­less ways that are too many to count… It is up to us to reap the har­vest — but if we are busy judg­ing, blam­ing, defend­ing our­selves from them, as if we made some kind of ter­ri­ble mis­take to have landed them in our life, we will not be able to har­vest these gifts and grow­ing opportunities.

It boils down to this:

We are ener­getic beings. What that means is that we auto­mat­i­cally attract to us the peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions that are a fre­quency match to our own belief-created fre­quency. If we have painful beliefs that say we are worth­less, for instance, or that says peo­ple can’t be trusted not to hurt us, then we will trans­mit an emo­tional fre­quency that will unfail­ingly attract to us the kind of per­son who will demon­strate or play out for us those unhappy beliefs. In other words, they will treat us in ways that prove us right!

When we begin to under­stand that there is no coin­ci­dence about who is in our life, when we come to see that the peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions we have in our life are here as mir­rors that reflect our own lim­it­ing, self-destructive thoughts and beliefs, then we can choose not to resist them, and we can instead start using our encoun­ters with them as oppor­tu­ni­ties to clear and refine our own belief system.
THIS is when we come to appre­ci­ate the many ways they serve us, regard­less of how they treat us! It does not mean we have to tol­er­ate, min­i­mize, deny, or jus­tify abuse … it just means we do not have to turn them into enemies.

Accept­ing their gifts has noth­ing to do with deny­ing their unkind nature, nor do we need to allow them to hurt us — it is our job to pro­tect us, not theirs. After all, why would we, in being kind and lov­ing to our­selves, allow any­one, includ­ing our­selves, to hurt us?

Accept­ing the gifts that come from dys­func­tional rela­tion­ship is to under­stand that we attract these peo­ple into our life, not because we are stu­pid, weak, or sick, but because, see­ing our own unkind beliefs play out in a phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship with another is the way the world works with us to help us ele­vate our own consciousness.

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Lynne Forrest is a non-traditional practitioner who has been in private practice for twenty six years, and the author of a new book, Guiding Principles for Life Beyond Victim Consciousness. Find her on the web at www.lynneforrest.com or www.lynneforrest.com/blog. These articles are copyrighted material. All rights are reserved. No part of these articles may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without first obtaining the written permission of the author. Permission for reproduction may be requested by contacting Lynne at Another Way Center: (423) 698-0814.Read the original post here: http://www.lynneforrest.com/articles/2011/06/dying-to-live. Original post: http://www.lynneforrest.com/clearing-story/2012/07/finding-the-gifts-in-dysfuntion

Living as an Angelic Human -by Toni Elizabeth Sar’h.

It is one thing to talk about Angelic Humans and it’s a completely different subject to talk about living your life as an Angelic Human. So let’s look at a few of the attributes you may run into with your encoded message:

• If you feel out of balance, you are here to bring alignment.
• If you experience a sense of being left out, you are a model of acceptance.
• If your life has been centered on being ignored, you mirror attention.
• If people in your life seem narrow-minded, you are here to expand vision.
• If people in your life seem incoherent, you transmit focus.
• If your life seems filled with limitation, your message is freedom.
• If sorrow, grief and despair have stalked your environment, consider being the utmost in joy.
• If anger, war and frustration seem to be in every situation, you come to bring peace.
• If you constantly feel the need to control, surrender is your message.
• If you have been betrayed, now you resonate with trust.
• If you have been lied to often within your life, truth is your encoded message.

You can take it from here. These are just a few examples of how to decode the message you carry as an Angelic Human and how to bring it into your daily life.

The message you carry is a two-sided coin. One side of the coin is for you as a human being alerting you to your Angelic Human signature. The other side of the coin is for the group you came to bring a message for or it could be for the whole. 

Some Angelic Humans bring a message for a particular group, for instance nurses, teachers, mothers or fathers. Other Angelic Humans bring a message for the whole. 

It doesn’t make any difference what your message is or to what area of the population you feel drawn to direct it. It is your message, front and center, and inherently you know that.

Focusing on the essence of your Angelic Human message creates a sense of coherency within your life because it changes the surface tension you experience providing the stimulation to awaken to the message replacing it with the embodiment of the message itself. If this feels difficult, know that your soul does not ever experience anything that is “too hard to handle”. Your ego personality may believe so. Your spirit and soul know better.

Bring your message forward into the world loud and clear. Do you know that everyone is waiting for you?

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Toni Elizabeth Sar’h Petrinovich is a Master Teacher, mystic and quantum physical researcher with a ministerial doctorate in metaphysics.  She is the author of The Call – Awakening the Angelic Human, and its accompanying CD, DNA Re-Awakening,  You – A Field Guide, Finding an End to Seeking, DeLight of the Orbs and Speaking of Light. Toni teaches metaphysics and the sacred connection within through her Meta yoU classes, guided meditation CDs, DVD production and video presentations. www.youaresacred.com
See original post here: http://sacredspaceswa.com/documents/LivingasanAngelicHuman.pdf

Five Essential Skills for Leadership in the 21st Century, by Melanie Greenberg.

The 21st century presents many new challenges for both employees and business leaders. In an interconnected, fast moving world, we need to learn cognitive flexibility, stress tolerance, and divergent thinking. While technology can make us more effective, new theories of leadership emphasize the importance of trust and establishing long-term relationships. In a competitive world, we need leaders with novel ideas, who are willing to take risks, inspire and motivate, and build new strategic partnerships to address global challenges.  In these endeavors, leaders need to incorporate skills that are more in the realm of psychology and cognitive science. Below is a psychologist’s perspective on what it takes to succeed in the new world of business.

1. CONTRIBUTE UNIQUENESS

"Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own." –Bruce Lee

There are so many people out there saying exactly the same thing. To stand out, you have to be original. Being original involves taking time to really think about material that you hear or read. How does this story or research finding relate to finding solutions for the problems that you want to address? 

• Have an original perspective that inspires people.
• Apply knowledge from one area to another or synthesize ideas from different disciplines.
• Tell a different story about the material; Relate it to your own life and work experiences.
• Find a novel way to communicate key concepts or approach a problem.
• Trim the fat off of a theory or operational system; add new elements that improve.

2.  ACT EFFECTIVELY

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker

It’s not about getting things done quickly or doing the most activities in the shortest time. Rather than doing a bunch of busywork, take time to formulate a vision and set priorities and goals. Find a balance between doing the urgent and important things.

• What are the short- and long-term challenges that your team/organization will address? 
• In what way will you contribute unique value in addressing these challenges?
• What potential barriers will you face and how will you deal with them?
• What skills and resources do you need to optimally provide and support these new services/technologies.
• How can your team support people to do their best work and support customers to get the best use out of your products/services.
• Sometimes doing the right things will not be the most efficient. Gaining the trust of  customers and employees can consume time and resources, but will lead to better long-term stability and effectiveness.

3. BE RESILIENT

“Fall seven times, Stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb

The truth is that everybody makes mistakes. The bigger your goals, the more mistakes you will make. Being innovative means trying new things; and venturing where nobody has gone before. It’s easier to do things the way they’ve always been done, but your long-term impact will be less. If you want to have a memorable and long-term impact, you need to take strategic risks, and that may mean failing or messing up sometimes. Self-confidence is key. Often this comes from having prior successful experiences. Even if you’re doing something new, remember your prior successes, and the personal qualities you have that created them.

• If you believe in your mission and abilities, failure is just a temporary detour.
• Most failures contain one or more lessons.  Be willing to admit your contribution to the failure, and be ready to change your thinking about the issue.
•  Listen to and collaborate with others, but do not suppress your own voice and goals.
• You may need to take time to grieve the loss of a dream, contemplate, and regroup. 

4. EMBRACE CHANGE

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity." – Peter Drucker

We live in a time of rapid technological, geographical, and economic change. Old formulas don't predict as well, anymore.  New knowledge about the brain and human genome is already leading to radical new ways of viewing the world. Mobile technology makes the world smaller and increases the access  & knowledge of constituents who previously had no voice. This creates many challenges, but also opens the door to new opportunities.

• The human brain naturally resists change, seeing it as a threat.
• It is important to counteract your brain’s natural, fear-based,  conservative tendencies and cultivate an optimistic attitude to change.
• Think about how you can apply your tried and true skills and strengths to this changing landscape. What new needs does the change create?
• Pay attention to the thoughts and feelings that change brings up in you. See if you can watch fearful reactions without feeling you have to act on them.

5. STAY GROUNDED

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. “ – Lao Tzu

When you do succeed, do not get too distracted by your ego. Success does not make you invincible or more worthy than other people. Every person has something to contribute and all are worthy of respect (except perhaps human cannibals, etc.).  Similarly, if you don’t get desired results, your preconceived views may need to be tweaked, so be willing to change your thinking.Be patient with the process. Results take time. You may have to go through a stage of investing your time and resources, learning new skills, putting ideas out there and waiting for them to take root.

• Always keep the meaning of your work at the forefront. Why are you doing what you do? What contribution do you want to make to bettering the lives of others?
• Value the simple things in life, such as nature, health, friends, coworkers,  and family. These will sustain you through the difficult times, so remember to feed them.
• Practice mindful self-awareness to learn compassion for yourself and others. Much of business is about relationships. If you exude a humble, caring, open attitude, and are a team player, others will be more willing to work with or follow you.
• Work hard, but don’t drive yourself like a machine. Life is a marathon, not a sprint., so use your energy wisely and know when you need to  replenish.
• You may have underlying needs, that drive you, such as to be acknowledged, have power, be part of a group, be respected, cared about, and so on. The more you understand and acknowledge these needs, the less they will get in the way of your mission.

Using these strategies should help optimize your personal strength and adaptability, passion for your work, ability to act strateically, and work with others in mutually beneficial ways.  While the old model of business emphasized dominance and power, the new models are more abou vision, focus, communication, cognitive flexibility, authenticity, and partnership. The world is becoming too complicated to be effective alone. Forming meaningful, trusting relationships with others who have different skills and knowledge, but similar goals and values is the way to succeed in both small business and large organizations.

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Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. is a Psychologist in Mill Valley, California, and expert on mindfulness, emotions, stress-management,and leadership, who has published more than 50 scholarly works and conducted numerous workshops and invited talks/symposia. Previously a Professor, she is now a practicing psychologist, speaker, and media consultant. Dr Greenberg provides workshops and speaking engagements for organizations and coaching and therapy for individuals in person and via skype.

Anger Births the Angelic Human by Toni Elizabeth Sar’h

“I’M SO FRUSTRATED.  I WISH ‘THEY’ WOULD JUST GET IT!”

“MY HIGHER SELF IS DEMANDING THAT I CHANGE ALL OF THIS.”

“THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS WORLD.  WHY CAN’T YOU SEE?”

“IF THEY’D JUST STOP DOING THAT, I’D FINALLY BE ABLE TO GET SOME PEACE.”

“I WANT OUT OF HERE!”

How many times have you heard yourself voicing one of the exclamations above? Maybe, all of them?  Well, you can take them as labor pains for the birthing of yourself as the Angelic Human you are.

Anger signals a need for change. That change must be within you.  It cannot be change outside of you since it is your energy that is fueling the signal.  Anger requests adjustments in your perspective and beliefs.  If you choose not to make those shifts, the anger will remain until you do.  It is the same as labor pains, remaining until the birth is complete (and caesarian births are not an option for the soul).

Many of you feel that “righteous anger” is justification for your emotional outbursts of outrage. “Righteous” connotes you believe you are “right” and someone else is “wrong”.  This is due to living in your contrasting world of duality where there are two sides to everything.  One side is neither right nor wrong; it simply is.  Your anger regarding what you observe as being “in the wrong” is based solely upon the belief you embrace of “how it should be”.  That doesn’t mean the person or situation should be that way.

What this means to you is this:  The changes you so desire that it promotes anger or frustration within you are signals of your emerging Angelic Human consciousness.  Your awareness is expanding tremendously triggering all of the aspects within you that no longer resonate as you.  Your mind, ever on the outlook for its own survival, projects these observations “outside” of you onto other people 

or situations.

What can you do about it? Change your belief to change your perception. This, in turn, will alter your interpretation of the observation causing the angry behavior. When you no longer believe that another person or situation “should be” different than it is, you will be less inclined to animosity.  Not only does this illuminate your life, it opens the door to being that which you know yourself to be rather than what you think being spiritual might demand of you.  This is where you really have an opportunity to remove the mask your ego personality wears and let yourself be seen.

If this creates fear within you, recognize that the energy is neutral with an overcoat of fear due to believing you lack control within a certain situation. You are completely invested in anything you are experiencing, no matter how small a part you believe you play within it. The structures of any situation are emerging from within source as are you so there is no difference between you and what is causing 

the anger to arise.  This is your signal and the discomfort is the labor pains of birthing yourself anew rather than living as you have existed - more or less unconsciously.

Due to your human desire to control what is occurring, the natural shifts within consciousness that would occur if you would surrender to what is happening become moments of frustration based upon your expectations. These experiences are then “seen” as coming from someone or something separate from you while they are actually emerging within your own consciousness.  This is the time to strike!  Take action in that moment of recognition when you are saying to yourself, “This really makes me mad,” and look into your inner mirror.

Control of others or various situations mirrors your experience of personally feeling out of control.  There is only one being you can regulate and you know who that is; it is yourself. You may decide to change your perception of a person, place or thing or you may decide to fight against it. The simple conclusion remains that the anger displays your desire to change something and the only person or “obstacle” you can shift is yourself.

This is the birthing of yourself as the Angelic Human you know you are capable of being.  Each frustration, every moment of anger is your heart and soul’s signpost held high for you to see and take action upon within yourself.  Birthing is painful. Breathing with your labor pains, surrendering to the wave of the birthing will result in the delight of recognizing yourself for what you are – Source in form existing in an ever-changing world of diversity and enjoying every moment as an Angelic Human.  Your message for the world is vital.  Don’t wait any longer!  Stomp your feet, stake your claim for yourself and accept the signal of your anger.  

We are all supporting the arrival of YOU.

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Toni Elizabeth Sar’h Petrinovich is a Master Teacher, mystic and quantum physical researcher with a ministerial doctorate in metaphysics.  She is the author of The Call – Awakening the Angelic Human, and its accompanying CD, DNA Re-Awakening,  You – A Field Guide, Finding an End to Seeking, DeLight of the Orbs and Speaking of Light. Toni teaches metaphysics and the sacred connection within through her Meta yoU classes, guided meditation CDs, DVD production and video presentations. www.youaresacred.com