nothing to fear + nothing to doubt

Welcome to the End.
But every End has a new Beginning. It’s the universal cycle.

The Structures are falling.
All those Beliefs we were so sure of. Beliefs we got comfort from. Or all those we were rooted in.
But now we feel uprooted.

Things we rooted in, like….
-What we do in the world (and that its always about ‘Doing’ something).
-Our relationship to money.
-Our place and identity, in (and from) Class, Gender, Family, Society and/or Nationality.
And so on.

But as the inevitable breakdown rains on, can we Reorient and Realign ourselves to new Possibilities?

It is and never was, about the structures Outside.
It is and always will be, about what we carry Inside.
Can we then radiate our Potentiality?
Outwards, from Inside.
Illuminate Outwards, from those deepest places inside we never explored..until Now.

leaving isn’t easy

He watched the racing Sun plunge into the oblivion across the horizon. The night was inevitable now.
Nothing romantic about it all. That’s how the process worked. The beauty of death and birth. Sunset, then the sunrise.

The Cattle were taking their time getting home. Their motion almost immobile from the distant mound he was sitting on. He felt engaged in all of it with an incredible calm. The day was ending it’s cycle. His knew his time was near too.

They were getting to him. This whole “heal me! heal me!’ thing. “Gives us more miracles. more!” .
It was getting a little tiring. How many times did he need to demonstrate to them??
“These Miracles and more, you can do too!”

The Healer needs the Leper as much as the Leper needs the Healer. For it’s the Leper who validates the Healer and the miracle of Healing.
But He had been validated many times over. Now something dangerous was starting to happen.
He was buying into their projections. Getting wrapped up in their adulation and admiration. This wasn’t good.
That’s not why he came here for.
For that matter he didn’t know why he came. Or why it all came through him.

The comfort of the mound was invaded by the distant shouts volleyed in his direction. ‘Fuck that shit! Not another laundry list of miracles’ he spat, frustrated.

They didn’t have ownership anymore. They didn’t want to learn for themselves. He had become their crutch.
His path was not theirs. It was indeed time to leave them. Time for them to learn, to take ownership of their healing and their growth.
Wearily he turned, as his name ricocheted towards him from the nearby rocks.
“Jesus… Jesus”.

(Fiction / 2003)

destruction, the womb of creation

She was about to make something from the pieces of broken wood and paper. Well, broken now, because she carefully broke it down. It was her most favorite toy, until now.

She was ferociously  breaking down the crafted wooden shapes with her tiny four year old hands, in no  particular order. They used to be carefully crafted pieces of wood and accessories in a box , that assembled into prearranged forms like an airplane, bird or something.

She broke the pieces of wood decisively, in no particular order or shape but fully engaged in the “Destruction process”.

From the expression in her face, it seemed like  she was arranging the pieces of wood in a way that made sense to her. But not to me. Though it didnt need to.

She asked me for paper so maybe she wanted to make something.

I didn’t know yet what yet.  I atleast presumed she did.

Not that I pressured her to deliver a Form. I was happy with it Not going anywhere .

I was happy, if breaking it  down was all she wanted do.

It didnt always need to end up in Form, like a predictable Hollywood movie ending.

Nevertheless I was curious what she was upto.

As if reading my mind, like she often seemed to, she lifted up her head to disengage from her project and look at me. As she did, her jet black lustrous curly hair slid to the sides of her head.

This also cleared her face to spotlight her deep shiny big black eyes formerly curtained by her locks.  She had her mother’s beautiful round eyes. “What should I make, Papa?”

I paused for a second or two engaging her deep eyes. I didn’t want to answer her question.

“what do you want to make, my darling?”.

Stressing on the word “you”.

She returned her gaze to broken pieces of wood and paper, going over some invisible thought in her head.

“I dunno” She shook her head.

“what would make you happy, Papa?” she finished, looking into me.

I was caught completely thrown off balance by her question.

Make me happy?  Did this come from a four year old?

Involuntarily, my heart started to well up with intense emotions. Some of which steamed up, to my eyes, condensed and rolled out as into tears.

I could not even start to fathom the depths  of her endearing question. There was so much purity in it.

I think it took me a minute or so to regain my composure.

“The most happiest thing you could do for me, my darling” I replied  “…..is for you to ignore what I expect of you and do what You feel like….”

She looked me for a second then went back her wood and paper.

Her focus now returning to her project. The topic and question, now completely forgotten.

Well, you know, attention span of a four year old. But the larger picture of it all didnt escape me.

She was learning her first lessons in Detachment…..the formula to moving from one reality to another. Especially the faded one.

After all, what we presume to be “real” is what  we have identified with. A “reality” that seems to have life only within the context of certain time and space. Beyond it’s shelf life, that “reality” has died, while we still hang on to the corpse.

Perhaps in this misguided feeling, that we can somehow resuscitate it to life.

In her case, it didnt take her  long to destroy her favorite toy and creating something New with it. Even though she didnt know what Form it was going to take. For that matter, she seemed unconcerned with Form.

Destroying, seems to be a paramount step on this road to  called our Growth.

If Growth, was about making changes, then Change is about leaving an Old place (of beliefs and concepts) and moving to a New place. At the center lies our ability to Destroy the Old. In our head.

She reveled in a child’s curiosity, enthusiasm and creativity.

All coming from a state of pure Playfulness.

Something lot of us seem to quickly divorce from, at the cost of “becoming adult” and “getting serious” about “life”.

Whatever happened to Playing, I wondered?

(Fiction)

aura (your information field)

Aura is the unseen energy field, the intelligence, that surrounds every living thing – plants, animals and humans.

Usually the Human Aura extends about feet and half around the body. It constitutes the “blueprint” of the physical body and sustains the physical body.

What does that have to do with your life??

Vibrations or energy or information in motion in the Aura correlates to your life – job, money, relationship, intuition, social programming and so on.
The seven chakras radiate bands of energy that form each aura layer.

First layer – your survival space – job, money, home and so on. Information, both your gifts and and patterns you are working on , around how to survive this body on this planet, is stored here.

Second layer – information on your emotions, sexuality and creativity.

Third layer – your personal power or your Will. It’s from here you manifest what you want.

Fourth layer – your heart space. your affinity for yourseld and affinity for others. Of interest is…your self image.

Fifth layer – your communication space, your self expression – spoken, written or any form of artistic expression.

Sixth layer – your Clairvoyance and how you see yourself.

Seventh layer – your Knowingness. Your wisdom. All that you just Know.

So you see the space around your body is not empty.

You are walking around with a potent field of energy field.

Energy….Information in motion.

From this view point, it is not hard to put together, as we go through how we can be affecting each other with our personal Energy fields.

less is More

(c) http://www.soulfountain.com, mikki mann

When I used to design software the consideration for the passionate of us was How to pack more features into a software yet make it simple to use?
For example, Apple always manages to do it. Most don’t.

This may not be different from what some of us aim for personally.
How to enrich (or add to) our lives without making it so complicated to live?

If we were to look at…. what we do, where we live and who we associate with…..
do they enrich or drain us?

Less, of All That Takes Away from us? More, of All That Centers Into Us ?

This is when “Self Centered” starts to take on empowering connotation.
You in your space, centered in your own Wisdom.

Less is More. More of that Less.

dying while alive, dying in grace (across the Scottish highlands)

“If you’re frightened of dying and holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth” ~ Meister Eckhart (German Theologian, Philospher and Mystic)

Oban, Scotland.
April 2010.

The striking landscape of Scottish West Highlands laced with pockets of water, raced past us as the Bus sped up the narrow roads that snaked across the lush green country side.

I flashed a glance at my fellow traveller. She was anchored in her quietness.
The way she seemed most times since I met her the previous day.
Partly it might have been her personality. Partly it maybe, like she said last night, “my English could be better”. I disagreed with her in my head about the language part.
She articulated in much better English than she gave herself credit for.
It didn’t help I didn’t speak German.

She focussed on the mobile landscape, as it appeared and disappeared across the window of the fast moving bus. It seemed like she was photographing the scenery in her mind’s eye, frame by frame, to be reminisced later.

The ride to the Ferry dock on Craignure was about an hour from Tobemory which was on Isle of Mull. We had just hiked there and left reluctantly hurrying to catch the last Bus.
The trail wrapped around the lush green hill to reach the Lighthouse. We sat on the grassy mound on top of the hill for hours, mostly silent, watching the boats go by in the Ocean below.
They were those coveted moments of deep peace.

The bus was moving faithfully towards its destination. We would be on time.
Occasionally, maybe remembering, she would turn to acknowledge me by radiating, by now her trademark, open agenda-free, smile that seemed to take roots in her big deep intelligent eyes. There was a certain Peace she seemed to have settled into by now.

I started to become aware that was I was only partly aware of my immediate surroundings.
My awareness seemed to oscillate between thoughts i was lost in and the beautiful landscape I was so lovingly enveloped by .

The land or the energy of the land, seemed to womb me in a safety and embrace that relaxed my body into a deep sigh.

But….it also started giving my body Permission and Safety.
This brought forth my dormant Pain to be processed. Like letting go of carcasses of some unfinished business.

In the recent time, like many many people, I was getting immersed in waves of the unprocessed pain that I was releasing and the loneliness coming from disconnection from the Old.

Pain, are memories, of undesirable experience that we resisted experiencing.
I had my fair share.
All of that were being brought forth to be experienced, so I could release it and be free of it.

Meanwhile through this process my mind was terrified losing its reference points…its beliefs and concepts. All decimated mercilessly by this thing called Change.
All my reference points which also served as my measurement of some sort of sanity in this world, had been either dismantled or destroyed.

I felt like I was Dying. Again.
I have died many times in my life. Maybe too many times.
But all that now seems like dress-rehearsal compared to what I was putting myself through now.

A while ago I knew this was happening.
As I changed, so did my relationships, what I did for a living and how I did it.
Hence my lifestyle and my entire life.
Everything, my world, that was strung together around my old self started falling apart rather quickly.

Anything or anybody that could keep up with me remained.
Which is, very few to none.

Someone who I used to admire, summarizing it for herself, rather uncharitably, said to me “You are quick to destroy relationships around you, aren’t you?”.

I saw it differently.
I preferred the line from Fiona Apple’s song.
I’m good at being uncomfortable so I cant help changing all the time.

So I knew I was dying. With it, everything and everybody, unwilling to negotiate with my change in position.

What did not know was how prolonged this process would be.
What I didn’t know was how meticulous and intense this sweep of breadth and width of my being would be.
It didn’t take a Psychic to to tell me I was completely lost.

This Loss of…..beliefs, concepts and its various combinations. Those one seemed to identify with to come up with this device called Self-Identity.

Feeling lost, looked at from another perspective, was Freedom.
Not identified with, hence not bound by, any firm beliefs of Who To Be and Where To Be.

In the bus, the landscape was passing by faster, more of blur as I was getting wrapped up in the tornado of my thoughts and emotions.
In my head, I started making trips, transporting old fears from the past into the future.
An yet-to-be-formed Future was now being polluted with possibilities created from a bygone past.
I was in my head constantly, I noticed. I somehow allowed its dance to dance, doing nothing with it.
It was very painful to be in my body as I experienced it all. Yet that’s where I needed to be.

I was everywhere but not Here and Now .

But I also decided not to assault myself with thoughts of why I wasn’t “Here and Now” taking in all the landscape as my fellow traveler was so effortlessly doing.

Also the experience I came to have was not what she came to have, even though we were in the same boat. I was getting what I came to get.

It was then that her question brought me back from my bowls of my thoughts, to the bus, back to the moment in time.
I don’t know what it was.
If it was when she did finally talk it got my rapt my attention? Or the strangeness of the question?
Who knows why but I heard her question word by word in slow motion.

“How would you want your funeral?” She asked.

I was thrown off balance.

She still had “that smile” going.
I scrutinized her face for humor or to unearth where she was coming from.

Did she just ask me about my death?

“Why would you ask that out of the blue?” I quizzed her.

She shrugged her shoulders.
I weighed in to pursue the “why” deeper or answer her question.
She had said earlier “you ask…why…. a lot, don’t you?”.
So I decided to dig inside me to answer her question.

Somehow biological dying seemed a piece of cake. But death of my Mind and all that it identified with, felt excruciating.

I have many times wondered how dying would be like. I was not afraid of it.
But Living seemed harder sometimes. Not just existing but really Living.

Death was a release, in the Indian culture I was born into. Like talking of old clothes body, and stepping into new clothes, they would say. A significant part of us, was Eternal.

But talk of Death was zealously avoided in my adopted American culture.
A significant mass seem to get by with this pretense that Death somehow didn’t exist.
But when it was close, a stubborn denial and a shock that it was actually going to happen, set in. Maybe even this hope that it somehow could be avoided.

My thoughts returned to her question.
Perhaps I was caught off balance by the directness of the question and it coming out of the blue.

I paused before replying.
“I don’t care about what happens here after I die.”
“In lot of ways its easy for the person who is dead. They are gone.
“It seems harder for the people they leave behind. People left to grieve the loss of the one they loved. To deal with the situation that their loved one is not here anymore”

“How would I want a funeral?
I think I would leave it to the people who I leave behind. They can mourn or celebrate”.
“Its not up to me to dictate how they should feel when I’m gone when they are the ones left to deal”

She nodded.

“how about you? How would you want your funeral?” I volleyed the question back at her.

this thing called being “Psychic”

(c) http://www.soulfountain.com, mikki mann

Both those, who love and hate it, can generously charge this topic with their preconceived notions.
but what is this crazy thing about?

The word psychic or clairvoyant evokes so much imagery that people sometimes never quite get to the actual picture of what a psychic is.
The real picture is simpler.

So what IS the real picture?
There is no ‘real’ picture.
Why?
It’s personal.

Let me explain.

Your ability to be psychic, clairvoyant or intuitive is……..your sensitivity or your ability to “get a hunch” .

“Don’t we all have that ability?” you say.
Yes.
Thank you, for making my point. Yes we ALL do.

The ability to be Intuitive, Psychic or Clairvoyant is our birth right.
Some leave it open.
Others shut it down (especially if you were repeatedly told ‘don’t be so sensitive’ ).

Being Intuitive, Psychic or Clairvoyant, simplified, is a product of two functions:
>> Sensing
>> Interpretation (of what you sensed)

Sensing

Even those of us who don’t think we are Psychic have ‘sensed’ something at some point in our lives.
Often what we sense is abstract or intangible (at first) that we reject any usefulness.

Or may I boldly suggest, maybe our strong belief that we are not psychic or its not “logical” rejected the sensation without it’s day in court.
But there are also times when we clearly interpreted it as useful information. Maybe we didn’t even realize we did.

How about times you just didn’t ‘feel right’ about a situation or person?
Another time you had this “urge” to visit a Bookstore and you ‘coincidentally’ ran into the exact card you wanted for your partner’s birthday?
Or the time your friend’s face popped into your head at the stop light, only to run into her at a gas station?

How many times have these kind of things happened to you?

We are constantly bombarded by “energy” everywhere we go.
Sometimes so much it’s like watching 50 channels simultaneously, on the same Tv.
It just doesn’t make sense.

But, I digress.

We sense via different modalities.
Feelings.
Visual.
Hearing.
Kinesthetic.
Knowingness (You just know).

You may find you favor one over other.

Interpretation

The energy we sense is raw data. It requires you to Interpret it into usable information.
But it’s often rejected because the Raw data doesn’t make sense.

Sensing and interpretation happens as a single unitary motion.
There is a division, only because we are talking about it that way. To understand the process. The Sensing and the Interpretation.

How objective one stays while interpreting, differentiates a good psychic from not so good ones (NOT the sensing part).
This gets good psychics all the time.

People make erroneous read of the sensations because they project their beliefs and preconceived notions into the interpretation process.
Muddling the raw data. Making it, what its not.

So you can imagine this can be disheartening for someone who is just start to flex their Psychic muscle. They then tend not to trust what they are sensing.
But the problem is Not if they are are Psychic or Not, it’s really the “interpreting” part.

What will help?

Adopt the innocence of a child. Ask a lot of questions.

I’m I settling into presumptions?

What is this I’m sensing? I’m I making it up? (most times, you may not be)

What I’m I feeling? I’m I picking up on someone else?

People, often women, are so good feelers that cannot tell apart from what they are feeling from what they have taken on from someone else.

When you start asking questions instead of presuming or shutting the sensation down, you’ll be surprised where you get with it.

It’s like using the questions like a knife to peeling the layers of an onion, until you get to the core.

the sensitive male

Often Maleness seen same as “manly”, paints certain convincing pictures of how things should be.

Pictures, shaped by beliefs created and compounded by societal, family and cultural consensus.
Pictures, that boxes in what a Man is, what a man does and not. But nothing to do with reality.
Lies, for a Man who is Not those, is left to fight a frustrating battle on the road to personal autonomy.

Consider this from a Spiritual (or Energetic) angle.

Maleness defined

Maleness defined from an energetic perspective is a Man’s ability to access intelligence, hence wisdom unique to his Male body.
Unique to him, different from other men.
As you start to consider this, the idea of boxing in Men into checklist of stereotypes, starts to look silly.

The Sensitive Male

A Male body vibrates at 40Hz and Woman’s energy at 120Hz. A pregant woman’s at 240Hz.
Consider Men and Women have both Masculine and Feminine energy channels running through their body.
The bump in energy for Women come from powerful creative force of the the “baby making” machinery which sits in the Sacral chakra.

A “sensitive” male, can defined as one sensitive to “Energy”. Perhaps more so than his peers.
“Energy” includes unseen like “thoughts” and “emotions”. Ours and others.
Sensitivity from that view is Awareness.

Though being sensitive is not same as being governed by it, often Men (or women) can become product of what they Sense.
As opposed to being alignment with their own wisdom.

Often such Sensitive Men run higher degree of Feminine energy in their feminine channels.
This is starting to become less uncommon with more and more Men embodying the Feminine energy flowing into this planet.

But a Man “running” or accessing his Feminine energy is not as same him running a Woman’s feminine energy through his 40HZ body.
One is a 40Hz body another 120Hz body.

Sometimes the high vibrating female energy of Woman is something the Sensitive Male find easy to “drop into” .
For men who do that starts arise the consideration,
“How much I’m I becoming a result of the Women’s energy (their opinion/beliefs?”
OR
“How much of my own information I’m in touch with?”

What kind of Man are you ?

One of my Clairvoyant Teachers once posed the question as….

What kind of Man are you? A Man’s man? Woman’s Man? Or your own Man?

A Woman’s man is the one who shapes himself from the sensitivity to the opinion of the women in his life.
There is a Mother, sister, girlfriend, daughter to please. Maybe to an extent of giving power away.

A Man starts to become his own man when he starts to be a result of alignment with his own wisdom. Or information from his Male body.
A state of being that says “yes I’m sensitive to opinion of women and others around me but I’m not necessarily governed by it”

A Woman’s Man

If spiritual pursuit was defined as search for one’s own Truth.
The subset, from a Male perspective maybe find a Man asking “How much of my Male information/wisdom do I access?”

Or “how much I’m I shaped and defined by what I’m Not?”

So the question for men affected by Women around them maybe…
“What parts of me are shaped by opinion of women?”
Women he surrounds himself with. Women he had history with. Starting with his first female experience, his Mother.

But the place to start is,
“Why do I allow myself to give my power away to All That is Not Me?”
Or why and how does a Man start to lose access to his own wisdom.

Someone looking at personal autonomy may start to wonder,
are questions like “How I’m I doing?” and “I’m I OK?” ,
defined by a checklist women around him carry??

Or does the gauge come from within, the Man’s inner wisdom.

Becoming You

As one start to embark on the journey to freedom from What is not Me, some questions start to shape their path.

What is mine and what is Not?
How do I let myself governed by What Is Not Me?
How do I start to Be, All that is Me?

The first step to all of this is Inward Awareness. That is Awareness of what is going on Inside the person. As opposed to being fixated on “look at what They are doing to me”.

Armed with Inward Awareness and some sort of Tools, one begins to peel layers and layers of Lies.
All that is Not Me starts to fade away to reveal All That is Me.

————————————————————–
Every month once FREE 20min Clairvoyant Reading. Email mikki.mann@gmail.com or visit  http://www.soulfountain.com

Mikki Mann is a Clairvoyant Reader and teaches (practical) Spiritual tools for self empowerment.

aura (demystifying)

Often people who are new to Psychic work, ask me in Readings  ”Sooo…what colour is my aura?”.

Most times I answer “Mmm….it really doesn’t matter”.
They think I don’t want to answer the question. It’s true sometimes. I don’t.
Sure there is  a resident  aspect to the colour of an Aura but……the layers of  an Aura show the Vibration you are at in the moment.
Which means it could be different next week. Heck, in 10minutes.

Colour is not the point. Vibration is.
Naming different Colours is how we  identify different vibrational frequency of Light. It’s a tool.

What matters is, the intelligence or the information that Vibration represents.

Energy is intelligence in motion.
It’s both information and its movement.

Examples of that  information are:
- your “concept” of  how to  get what you want in life is information is carried in the Third layer of your Aura. This pattern, energy, intelligence or information is usually resident in that Layer  long term. Until you choose to change the pattern.

-  the feelings of isolation you started feeling suddenly after returning from a shopping mall….maybe the energy you picked up in the Fourth Layer of your aura . This is temporary in nature. It can cleared quickly by a healing. or one’s intention to heal.

So, there are many such examples of energy or information that are resident in the 7 layers of your Aura.
Some serve you, some don’t. Either way it’s what you attract as Soul to work with.

The vibration of this Energy Field is seen as Colour by some Psychics and then interpreted as Information. Yet others just bypass it to go  to the Information. There are different modalities of reading energy and interpreting information from it.

Your Aura

Aura is a unseen energy field, the intelligence, that surrounds every living thing – plants, animals and humans.
Usually the Human Aura extends about feet and half around the body.
It’s spiritual  ”blueprint” of the physical body. What happens in the Body happens in Spirit (or energy field)  first.
Suddenly, you start to see the mechanics for the notion As above so below.

There are Seven layers to an Aura.

But what does that have to do with you??

Vibrations in the Aura correlates to your life – job, money, relationship, intuition, social programming and so on.

First layer (Survival space) – Your concept/information of to survive in the world and take care of your basic survival needs. Job, money, home and so on. Please include in this others notions of how you should do this.

Second layer – your emotions, sexuality and creativity. Your ideas and others.

Third layer – your personal power. It’s from here you manifest what you want.

Fourth layer – your heart space. Your relationship with others and your most important  how do you relate to you?

Fifth layer – your communication space.  Your self expression – spoken,written or any form of artistic expression. Your ability to express your Being.

Sixth layer – Your intuition and Clairvoyance.  How see yourself and your place in the world.

Seventh layer – Your Knowingness. Well, you know? when you just Know? That, is your access to your own Wisdom.

How to care for your Aura?

Simple meditation. Takes you 5minutes.

Find a quiet room. Take a few deep breaths. Notice.  where is your body tense?
Do Nothing.
Just Notice.  Acknowledge your body. Acknowledge your ability to breathe. That’s it.

Why do nothing, you ask?

Everytime you decide something/someone needs to be somewhere else than where they are, you are making a judgement.
Judgement is a low vibration energy. You access your spiritual information in a high vibration. not low vibration.
Besides, You or your body does not need any more judgement.

Doing nothing is you making a statement you are fine  exactly where you are.

What is the Physics of do nothing?
It’s  being nuetral to you and your body where its at….without adding any more charge to an already charged situation – Neither ‘positive’ nor ‘negative’. It’s simple Physics.
Consider a swinging pendulum. You leave it alone. Do Nothing. It slows down to a stop.

What happens is when ‘do nothing’  or do not apply any more energy to an already charged situation, what you are looking at…starts to dissipate. Or there is a Release. This is Healing.

Now, back to the exercise.

Now….Picture your  body and your Aura surrounding it (oh cmon, make it up if you think you cannot picture it!).
Picture this…. about  or over 2ft in front of your forehead.

1. See or picture,  a beam of light come  up from center of the planet and see it connect to bottom of your spine (this is to ground your body).

 

2. Next, See a beam of light come  up from center of the planet. Connect to the picture of your Aura. See connections on both ends secure.

3. Then intend for all energy not in your highest good to be drained off.

Let it all ride down the beam of light like an elevator shaft to the center of the planet.
Notice your body. Notice your breathing. Do nothing. Just acknowledge them both.

Now …..Replenish yourself.
Fill in with our Life Force. Or replace with your own information.

How?

Picture a golden sun above the picture of your Aura. Picture it 2ft or so in front of your forehead.
Let the Golden Sun be filled with your vibrant Life Force.

When the sun is full, let it come down like a shower and soak up the picture of your aura and your body.
Completely saturating your Aura and your body.
Now you have replaced energy that was not in your highest good with your own energy. Or your own information. Your Wisdom.

How do you feel?  Not bad, eh?

spiritual growth, psychic tools and pursuit of happiness