Welcome to the Lake Tahoe Spiritual Living Center!

I haven’t posted in a few days.  There’s no particular reason for that, except that I’ve been coming up dry whenever I sit down to write.  I’ve used up my backlog of posts, whenever I get a burst I sit down and write a whole bunch of posts, for those times like now when I come up dry.  But I can’t go on without writing at all, that just wouldn’t be cool on so many levels, so today I thought I would ask you:  How are you doing?

Are you at peace?

Do you experience joy in your life?

What’s happening in your world?

Are you buying into the “race consciousness?”  Now before someone flames me and accuses me of being a racist, let me say that race consciousness is Ernest Holmes’ word for the general state of the general populace.  You know, when they say things like, “better be careful, it’s flu season,”  that’s race consciousness.  You are free to believe it is flu season or not, just remember that what we believe manifests in our lives.

Are you in balance?  Or do you experience it once in a while as you swing past it?

I believe that life was meant to be lived full out and that we were meant to experience peace and joy.  Even in the midst of outside appearances to the contrary.  I believe that every day we should have a gut level laugh, hug someone, play, experience a period of quiet, learn a little and have fun doing it.

If you are reading this, know with me that this is your experience.  This is what Practitioners are for, to help people experience the best of life, and you have just been the recipient of my treatment for you!

First of all, I know I haven’t posted a few days.  I’m not gonna apologize for that, it’s just the way it is sometimes…besides, I’ve been gathering some good blog food for you!

I went to a Practitioner’s retreat yesterday.  It was in Vallejo, at the Center there, and it was put on by two extraordinarily talented women:  Rev. Dr. Margaret Stortz and Sharon Cross, RScp.  I had never met Rev. Margaret before, but I’ve read her stuff, and my dad and stepmom know her well,  so I knew I was in for a treat.  I was not disappointed.  She is wise and outspoken, and I think I wanna be just like  her when I grow up!  And Sharon was awesome.  She is another of those Practitioners who makes a living at it and had some very powerful exercises for us.  They are both women that I want to get to know better.  And the other Practitioners who attended were all wonderful people as well!  They came from all over Northern California, some of them had been Practitioners for less than a year, and some had been Practitioners for decades.  I purposely strayed away from my home group of three others who came with me to get to know some new people.   When you are in a group of Practitioners, the talk is not superficial. We bypass the “what do you do for a living” sort of conversation starters and go right to the meat:  where are you at in your spiritual practice?  What’s happening in your life?  I met a woman who was on a spiritual pilgrimage, a woman who was grieving the loss of her husband, a woman who changing careers.  It was all very wonderful stuff.

I experienced a bit of an epiphany while I was there.  More like another in a  series of inner shifts that has been going on for a few weeks now.  I’ve done the work, now the work is doing me, and things are shifting around.  I had the opportunity, during a dyad exercise, to watch another woman experience what seemed to be an epiphany also.  We were both crying by the end of the exercise. 

Such is the way of retreats.  If you have never been on one, I highly encourage it.  It’s important to get away once in while and do something entirely different, refresh, renew, recharge.  I did not even turn on my computer while I was there!  (and I survived!)  And my cell was on silent.  I did return a couple of business calls, but I did so on my schedule, not when the phone rang.  This was only a one day retreat, although my travel partner and I turned it into a two day retreat by leaving a day early and going to Six Flags.  It was seventy degrees outside and after a winter of bundling up to go outside to play, we really didn’t care much what we did there, as long as we could be outside in shirt sleeve weather.  We ate cotton candy, ice cream and snow cones, walked for miles, saw all the animals, and I bought a Superhero cape!  I will be using that, somehow I will find a way to work that into some of the workshops I have planned for you.  For now it hangs on a hook in my bedroom, easily visible, to remind me that while I do have energy and talent and skills that many do not have, I am really not Superwoman, and I must remain in balance with a good mix of studies, work and play.  Symbolism is great stuff.

So….what does all this have to do with spirituality, and what is the message for you, dear reader, in my ramblings today?  It is this:  do not get so caught up in this business of life that you do not take time out for yourself.  You need time to rest and time to play.  It doesn’t really matter what you do, just take some time.  You could go to Six Flags and be a kid, or you could go to a spa and spend a day getting pampered, or you could drive out to the middle of nowhere and just explore, or  you could go to a new town and just wander aimlessly, or you could just stay at home, and do something you don’t normally do.  For me that would be cleaning the house, but for you it might be doing something entirely different.  The point is to take time regularly to rest and recharge, you are worth it!   This is your assignment:  go and do something different.  Put  your cell phone on silent, leave the laptop at home, and take your body and have fun.  And let me know what  you’ve done, I want to hear all about it!

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about balance.  Balance is important:   if we don’t have it we seem to wander around willy nilly, not being very effective.  Being out of balance can cause us to feel vaguely ill at ease, and can create chaos in our lives.   Conversely, if we are in balance, all is well in our world.  We are at peace, efficiently going about the business of our lives with positive feelings.

I have a friend who used to say that he knew about balance, cuz he swung past it every so often, going in one direction or the other.  I still smile when I remember his saying that, but the truth is that we can be in balance more often than not.  It does take a certain sort of discipline, a committment.  Life has a way of clamoring for our attention, but we can better respond to those clamors if we do the steps necessary to stay in balance.

The steps are really quite easy, they are called Daily Spiritual Practices.  I’ve come to refer to them as DSPs.  There are many ways to do DSPs:  journaling, reading spiritual literature, quiet time, meditation and visioning.  But for staying in balance, meditation seems to best do the trick.  There is something about that deep regular communication with the Spirit within us that seems to allow us to be in balance.

If you are feeling a bit out of balance, start or increase your meditation practice. 

I close this post for today, knowing that you who are reading this is peaceful, in balance, meditating regularly!

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The Lake Tahoe Spiritual Living Center is starting a book study!  Sunday nights, from 6:30!  We have  our choice of two books:   Choices that Change Lives, by Hal Urban, or Born For Love, Reflections on Loving, by Leo Buscalgia.  I need to order books, so please let me know your preference.  Study starts on April 11th!  Email me at karen@laketahoespirituallivingcenter for more information!

You deserve to take some time off.  All of us do.  Yet I know many folks, myself included, who don’t always honor that we need regular rest time to recharge our batteries.  Rest time does more than that however.  Rest time allows us to be more productive, have better attitudes, and be of maximum service to ourselves, and to our families and the  people we work with and for.  If we don’t take regular rest time, we cheat ourselves and those around us.

It’s all about balance.   Being out of balance tends to produce a sort of blahness about it all, we might be tired all the time, or experiencing some health issues, or be short tempered.  At the very least we lose our productivity and become less and less able to efficiently perform our duties at work, whether work is as Domestic God or Goddess, or whether we are the Chief Executive Officer. 

It takes a sort of humility to recognize that we are not superhuman, and that we need to take some time off regularly.  It’s an acknowledgement that we aren’t the end all and be all of life as we know it.  We somehow think that if we take a day away from our duties, that it will all fall apart.  Actually, the opposite is true:  when we take a day off from our duties, upon our return, things run much more efficiently. 

Balance is not only about taking regular time off.  It’s also about nourishing ourselves spiritually, as well as physicallly.  Daily Spiritual Practices (DSPs) allow us to maintain balance in our lives.  When we take even five minutes a day to sit in the silence, or read a daily meditation book, or meditate, it makes a world of difference in our lives.  Twenty minutes allows us to run at peak efficiency the rest of the day.

 We need to take time for ourselves daily, as well as weekly.  And vacations and retreats are a part of that as well:  they all allow us to be at peak efficiency in our lives.

Taking time for ourselves is a spiritual practice.  Even if you don’t think you live a spiritual  life, you still need the rest and you deserve the time for yourself.   You honor yourself and the people around you by resting.

So, take some time for yourself, both today and weekly.  Try taking time daily for one week and notice how it changes your life.  Then take a day off one day this week, and notice how productive you are when you get back into the swing of things.

If you haven’t been doing DSPs and taking a day off regularly, just try it and notice what happens and let  me know!

I don’t know about folks who live in the rest of the country, but in this area, at this time of year, folks tend to get a bit out of balance.  It’s a combination of things.  One of them is the splendid weather we have during our summers:  nice dry 80 degree heat.  But this good weather doesn’t last for long, so everyone scrambles to pack as much outdoor fun in as they possibly can in just a few short months.  Also, I live in a tourist resort area, and the crowds come to visit during the summer, meaning long work hours and days for the people who live here.  Plus we have a tendency to follow the dictates of Mother Nature, who encourages us to be busy in the summer and engage in rest and introspection during the winter.

All of that contributes to an out of balance feeling.  A feeling of not enough “me” time, not enough quiet time, simply not enough time to get it all done.  Balance is important in our lives, and we need to be in balance more frequently than simply swinging past it on the way from one extreme to the other!

So, how does one stay in balance, especially when you feel like you have to take advantage of the work when it’s there, and the weather when it’s nice?  How do you respond to the demands of family and  visiting relatives and still keep your sanity?

Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you just spin faster and faster and faster, until one day, like a top, you fall to the side in a useless pile, your body demanding rest by becoming ill.   Or maybe you hang in there, responding to all the demands, but become less and less efficient, until one day you stop and realize you’ve been moving around in circles all day and not accomplished a thing.  Or you’ve done it incorrectly and it needs redoing.

So, obviously, balance is a good way to go.  How do you stay in balance with all of that happening?  It doesn’t take much and it’s easy.  Here’s a few tips:

1.  Take five or ten minutes out of your day to do nothing.  Just sit.  If weather permits, do it outdoors, but sit nonetheless.  Contemplate the birds, the air, the ticking of a clock, whatever, but just sit and do nothing.  Allow your body to recharge for a few minutes.  All of that stuff to do will still be there when you return and you’ll be better able to handle it.

2.  Meditate.  Take 20 minutes out of your day.  The style of meditation doesn’t matter.  If you think you can’t meditate, download a guided meditation off the internet and listen to that.  Some of them are free, and some are only 10 minutes long.  If you have kids who are demanding of your attention, and no partner to help out, have the kids join you in meditation.  Seriously.  It helps them too.  

3.  Get a massage once in a while.  Even if you only get one once during the summer, it will go great lengths to helping your sense of balance.

4.  Take a day off.  I know, I know, you’ve gotta take the business while it’s here, you can’t afford it, there’s too much to do, blahblahblah, yeahbut, yeahbut, yeahbut.  Trust me, I know this one on personal experience:  if you don’t take a day off once a week, you will become so ineffiecient that you’ll never get anything done.  There’s a reason the religious folks advocate a day of rest.  It’s because we need it!  It doesn’t have to be Sunday, and you don’t have to go to church.  Just don’t go to work on the day you have chosen.

5.  Exercise.  Even if it’s only a walk, just move around.  The body was meant to move and you will feel better if you move it.

If you are way out of balance, it may take some extra doing to get back in the groove again, but once you are there, it’s easy to stay there.  Do this for yourself, take care of yourself, and you will be much more efficient and much healthier.

Ok, so I’m out of balance.  How do I know this? 

I want to describe the symptoms to you, and tell you what I’m going to do about it, because balance is very important in our lives, and not just to swing past it once in a while!

First of all balance is about being in integrity with yourself.  It’s about doing the things you need to do to be at peace and running efficiently.  If you are anxious, mad, tired, short tempered, low on energy, feeling overwhelmed, chances are you are out of balance.

I’m out of balance.  Feeling a bit overwhelmed, sleep patterns a bit off.  I haven’t done my spiritual practices in a couple of days, haven’t ridden a horse in about a week, I’m behind on projects at the studio.

So, how do I get back in balance?  First of all, it occurs to me that perhaps someone might be reading this and asking, why on earth would I want to be in balance?  I’ll tackle that one first:  balance is an indicatior that you are living in integrity with yourself, your needs, your values and your wants.  If you are taking proper care of yourself: getting enough rest, enough exercise, enough time off, enough work, in other words, a balance between all those aspects of your life, then you are feeling ok with the world. That is balance.  We all need rest, down time, play time.  We also need work time and productive time.  Remember the saying “all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy?”  It’s true!  We need a balance.

So, what does one do to get back in balance?  First of all, it starts with spiritual practices.  We all need a bit of quiet time, every day, to connect with whatever we call god, wherever it is.  We need that time.  Some people journal, some meditate, some write.  I do a combination of meditation and wrting.  If you do nothing else, spiritual practices will insure that you stay in balance.

I also need exercise regularly.  Not only does it help me sleep better, but it lowers my blood pressure, strengthens my immune system, makes me generally healthier, helps me sleep better and actually raises my energy levels.  Horse back riding does that for me.  Some people go to the gym, some walk, some run.  The form of exercise you do does not matter, what matters is that you do it.  some people combine spiritual practices with exercise:  yoga, contemplative or moving meditation while walking.  Whatever works for you, just do it.

Once I’ve got my spiritual practices consistent and am exercising regularly, I’m back in balance and can be efficient at work and polite and pleasant to the people I encounter on a daily basis.

Balance is an important part of life!  So if you find yourself merely swinging past balance once in a while, set an intention find middle ground and stay there, then do what you need to do to achieve that intention.  I know I’m going to!

Today I want to talk about balance, as I have been lacking balance in my life for a little while now.  Lack of balance in this case has resulted from not enough exercise and not consistently taking my vitamin supplements.  Sometimes lack of balance looks like a feeling of overwhelm, or anxiety, but many times lack of balance looks like depression.  I’ve struggled with depression before, been clinically diagnosed, done the anti depressant route.  I was able to get off antidepressants with help from a specialist who put me on a regime of meditation and amino acids.  I added the exercise in.  While I’ve been pretty consistent with my meditation, that alone is not enough to keep me in balance.  At this time of year, life in Tahoe can sometimes get difficult and if I have not been taking proper care of myself, depression steps in for a visit.  I woke up this morning after a third sleepless night in a row (due to a cold) feeling that old familiar feeling of not wanting to do anything, no excitement for the day ahead, I just wanted to stay in bed.  You might be saying right about now that you would want to stay in bed too if you had had three sleepless nights in a row.  There is a difference between being tired and depression. 

You might also be saying that this isn’t a very positive post, and so far, you would be right.  But I was taught a couple of things by my mentors along the way.  One was to talk about what I was feeling, and two was to never share a problem without also sharing the solution.  I know the solution to this particular problem.

Get back in balance:  heal this cold so that I can get a decent night’s sleep, start exercising again, be more consistent about my supplement regimes, eat better, get outdoors, make sure I meditate every day.  And do daily affirmations to change my attitude.

I read something once where the writer was saying that affirmations were nonsense, they didn’t work.  I felt sorry for her, because I have experienced that affirmations work very well in my life.  This is a time to do my affirmations even if I don’t feel like doing them.  This is a time to get out and about and exercise, even if I don’t feel like it.  This is a time to eat right and take my vitamins, even if I am not hungry.

For I know that I am a vibrant, healthy and active woman.  I know that I am worth feeling good.  I know that I am actually quite happy and peaceful.  I know that I am one with Source, and Source is never depressed.  Source is always vibrant, healthy, active, peaceful and happy.  And so am I.

And so it is.

Today I want to write about balance in our lives.  I was going to write about it before I ever saw today’s meditation.  Funny, I haven’t yet read the meditation for today, but I get the affirmations emailed to me and guess what it says?

“The intelligence of Spirit expresses through me as right decision and right action. I accept the free flow of life in all of my affairs. I live life to the fullest.

That living life to the fullest part can get us out of balance sometimes.  I don’t know about you, but for me out of balance feels like I just don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do.  Life is so full, there are so many places to go, people to see, things to do and it’s all very exciting!   But sometimes we need a rest, sometimes we need to just stop, or slow down, and stop doing and start being.

This is where the intelligence of Spirit expressing though us comes in.  Taking enough time with ourselves to recognize that we are beautiful children of God, that we don’t have to accomplish anything in order to know the intelligence of Spirit.  We can get quiet, do our daily spiritual practices, and know what the free flow of life is for us.  We can just be, for a while, then go out into the world in balance and do, all the while maintaining a sense of our essential beingness, accepting the flow of life in all of our affairs.

Today, take the time to do your spiritual practice.  Meditate, write in a journal, take yourself for a walk in nature.  Then go out into the world and accept all the wonderful things that life has to offer.