Welcome to the Lake Tahoe Spiritual Living Center!

What happens in our lives today is a result of our choices yesterday, so if what is happening today is not to our liking, then it behooves us to make better choices.  The questions then becomes, how to make better choices?  Here’s a few tips:

1.  Do not make choices from your head, make them from your heart.  When you make choices in anger, fear or even excitement, you are coming from your head.  Anger and fear is an altered state of consciousness that will lead us to make wrong choices.  Better to move from head to heart first by calming down, then doing some spiritual practices.  Meditation, journaling, visioning, even sitting in the silence will move you from your head to your heart.

2.  Come from a place of love, rather than a place of fear.  If you are making a choice because you think that’s what someone else wants, or because you think you will be able to control something or someone by your choice,  you are coming from a place of fear and this choice will not serve you well.  Come from a place a love and your choices will always serve you well.

3.  Examine your motives.  Why are you considering this choice?  Wrong motives can make for disastrous choices and manifest ikky things in our lives.

4.  Sometimes, in the heat of a moment, even if we aren’t in fear, we haven’t had time to properly consider a choice.  If it is possible to wait before making the choice, then do so.  The other option is to do things on a daily basis that will keep you spiritually grounded, so that when opportunities for choice come up you will be in a better position to make a better choice.  Staying spiritually grounded involves daily spiritual practices and embodying the consciousness of Spirit, 24/7.

Daily spiritual practices are things like meditation, visioning, journaling and reading spiritual literature.  If you are a religious person, add prayer to the list.  Embodying the consciousness means that you remember that Spirit is a part of you, surrounding you, within you…IS you in physical form.  When you are conscious of this, you are embodying it.  The more you remember this, the more peaceful you will be and the better your choices will be.

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Karen Linsley, RScP is a licensed spiritual coach. Questions about life coaching services can be directed to karen@laketahoespirituallivingcenter.com or by calling 530-906-9336

What can you do today to live your life with depth and weight?  Do you want to live your life with depth and weight? 

I believe it is more rewarding  to live our lives with depth and weight. Superficial carries with it a certain sort of numbness, a closedupness that prevents us from fully enjoying life, and from fully connecting with Spirit. There is a certain amount of vulnerability that comes from living life with depth and weight, but when we open ourselves up to everything life has to offer, we also open ourselves up to the richness of it.

You have a choice today:  to go for depth and wieght in your life, or to choose the superficial.  Whatever you decide, know that it is right for you at the time.  And know that if  you decide later to make a different choice, that is right too.

We all have choices in our lives, and the choices we make, every minute, every hour, determine the course of our lives.  It would be a good thing to have a system for making healthy choices.  Here are some things to consider when making choices:

1.  Go within.  What does your soul say?  What does your gut feel  like when you consider making one choice, as opposed to making another?  Remember, your choice doesn’t necessarily have to make sense on paper.   Where it has to make sense  is within you.  If your gut feels tight and upset at the thought of one choice, then don’t make that one.  Go for the choice that your body can sing to. 

2.  What is your motive?   If you are making a choice to manipulate a person or situation, guess what?  It’s a  non productive choice and won’t work for you.

3.  Are you making the choice because you’ve always  done it this way?  Maybe it might be time to do something different.

4.  How you feel about yourself can affect how you choose.  If you don’t have a good self image, you will choose things that aren’t good for you.  This creates a cycle which brings  you further and further  down until  you feel lower than a snake’s belly in a rut.   If  you find yourself in this cycle, try not making any choices for a while until you build your self esteem. 

Take a good honest look at how you are living your life and see if there is anything that you might wish to change.  You can change you know, all it takes is a choice to do it differently.  Try it and see!

In my Science and Spirituality class, there is one of those images that if you look at one way, you see one thing and if you look at it another way, you see another.  I opened that document on my computer and could not see the other image, I only saw the one.  I squinted and pondered and studied the image, to no avail.  I could only see it one way.  So I printed it out, and left it on the counter, where I could see it every time I went into my kitchen.  It took me several days to finally see the other image!  It made me think about how slow I sometimes am to change my perception.

It is sometimes quite important to change our perception, for if we don’t change our perception, we don’t allow for new and better things to come into our lives.  When I was looking at that picture, I finally found that if I just tilted my head just so, just a little bit, I saw the other image come to life.  So it can be with perception, if we just change our outlook just a little, miraculous things can happen. 

I also did a bit of letting go..instead of concentrating so hard on the image, I simply looked at it every time I walked into my ktichen, and didn’t think about it the rest of the time.  So it is with things in our lives.  If we become obsessed with them, nothing happens…except more obsession.  But if we turn our thoughts to something else, and then come back to address it with a clear head,  our perception changes and we are able to get into the solution.

Have you ever answered the question:  “is your glass half empty or half full?”  If you have answered half empty, you might to consider that viewing it as half full implies abundance, while viewing it as  half empty implies lack.  It’s just a slight change in perception that can make all the difference in the world.

If you are muddling over a problem in your life, try changing your perception of it.  And if you can’t change your perception of it, go do and think about something else for a while, then readdress the problem from a different point of view.

I would love to hear about your experiences with this little exercise!

Yesterday I wrote about a non religious interpretation of what Good Friday could mean for you in your life.  Seeing all that happens in our lives as good is a way to get into freedom, empowerment, the solution.  But sometimes it takes a bit of time to get to that place.  We need some time of contemplation and inner  searching.  We might need some time to grieve, we might need some time to heal before we can rise again, to a new beginning.

If you acknowledged yesterday that there were some things in  your life that you could perhaps view in a different way, to give  you freedom and allow you to get to a place of peace, then today would be the day to rest and do the necessary processes to get to peace about the situation.  Think about it:   if you were to forgive, it would make you feel better about  things. 

We all have roads to travel.  And we travel those roads to get to where we are today.  So many times I hear people declare:  “I’m not traveling down THAT road again!  It didn’t work!”  But if  you hadn’t traveled down that road, you wouldn’t be where you are today.  Are you grateful for where you are today?  Are you limiting yourself by buying into a story that happened previously?  These are the kinds of questions you can contemplate during  your time of rest.  Then you can decide how to proceed in a way that best serves you.

Take your time of rest and heal, for tomorrow will be a new beginning with new possibilities!

It might surprise you to know that I do not consider myself a religious person.  Spiritual, yes, but not religious.  But there are some good principles that we can obtain from religion, good sound spiritual principles.  Today, in the Christian world, it’s Good Friday.   If we step away from the religious dogma, what is left is this:  find the good in all that happens in your life, even in something that is seemingly bad.  

There is always a silver lining, always a new beginning, always a different way to view things.  And, if we can find the good we can allow ourselves to live life happily. 

No matter what has happened in our lives, we can always find the good if we look for it.  And if we can find the good, we can create more good in our life. 

Here’ wishing that you are always able to see the good in your life, today and always!

A fantastic storm came through town yesterday, it snowed all day long.  Today I awoke to several feet of new snow, freshly flocked trees and a winter wonderland.  As I gazed through my window it occurred to me that storms are quite necessary in the over all scheme of things.  They bring the moisture that is necesssary for our region to survive, and they bring snow, which in this area during the winter, is very necessary economically.  We all benefit from the storms that come our way.

Just as our  region benefits from the storms that pass through, so can our lives.  We all have storms in our lives and we can benefit from them.  Or not.  It’s up to us.  I think the temptation is to sometimes use the storms as reasons to limit ourselves.  We take those storms, make them the stories of our lives, and declare that we are never going to do that again.  The only problem with that is that we limit ourselves when we do.

Wouldn’t it be better to examine the possible benefits of the storm and use that to enrich our lives?

Take a look at where you might be today if you hadn’t weathered any given storm in your life.  What lesson would you have missed?  What aspect of the wonder that is you would be missing today if you hadn’t done all you’ve done, and gone through all you’ve gone through?

Examine your storms today,  and see if you can’t extract the lessons from them, release the negative feelings that may be surrounding them, and use those storms to enrich your life.

What’s the first thing  you think about when you wake up in the morning?

Is it positive or negative?

If you thoughts are not to your liking, you can change them.

It’s easy to change your thoughts, what is sometimes a bit more difficult is to keep them changed.  But you will want to make the effort if the pattern of your thoughts tends to be negative or pessimistic.

Why?  Because you will manifest according to the pattern of your thoughts.

You can change your thinking by replacing a negative thought with a positive one, or an affirmation.  You can also change your thinking by turning towards a positive activity.  For example, if you are worried about a situation in your life and have done everything you can possibly do to improve it, then move on and do something different.  Take your mind with you and engage in an activity that is productive, even if it’s a walk in the woods.  That will be more productive than worrying!

Try it today:  anytime you have a negative thought, turn it to a positive one and notice how you feel when you do that.  I’d love to hear your stories about how you changed your thinking!

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Do you truly believe that? 

Let’s look at it from a logistical point of view:  The planet we live on is a glorious physical space, but it was created with a dream.  It was created with a dream of a Spirit of the Universe, wanting to experience the physical.  Whether you believe the Genesis story, or whether you believe the Big Bang theory, or whether you believe in evolution or some combination of those, my point is this:  Somehow this world,  humans, mammals, birds, fish and other assorted critters, waterfalls, forests, deserts, mountains and valleys….all came into existence.

You came into existence too, and whether you believe this or not, know that I believe this for you:  you were made in the image and likeness of a powerful Spirit, and anything it has done, so can you.  If you can dream it, you can do it.

Don’t believe it yet?

Why don’t you try acting as if?  Why don’t you consider the possibility that you don’t need to go along with the race consciousness?  (Race consciousness is a term created by Ernest Holmes.  It refers to the general mindset of the general public)  It’s not flu season, you aren’t going to get a cold just because the rest of the world has it, you can buy into the recession if you want but it isn’t necessary,  just because you get old doesn’t mean you get limited and sick.  Dare to get quiet with yourself, know your own truth, and go for the gusto of life!

Who says you can’t start a new sport or change careers because you are in your 50s? If you want to do something new than do it!

Is something calling to you?  Remember the baseball movie called Field of Dreams?  The main character kept hearing:  “if you build it, they will come.”  It made no sense on paper to build a baseball field.  He was ostracized and ridiculed by folks who could not or would not see the possibilities in life.  He heard his truth, and followed it.  That motto, “if you build it, they will come,” is one of my mottos.  Perhaps you might like to make it one of yours.

Know that you are a powerful being, made more of Spirit than you might be aware of.  Connect with that Spirit and KNOW.  And go for it!

At this time of  year, many of us have decided to do it differently.  It doesn’t really matter what “it” is, for the purposes of our discussion here today “it” could be anything.

But how many times have you decided this?  How many times has the New Year come along and you’ve made a decision to do it differently, and even acted on that decision for a month or two, then fallen back into old ways of doing things?

Let’s make this year different. Let’s make this year the year that you implement the change you wish to see in your life, then you become that change.

In order to make a change in your life, I believe it is necessary to examine yourself.  I believe it is necessary to know what makes you tick.  What’s your story?  What’s your history?  What are your beliefs and the pattern of your  thoughts?  It is your beliefs and your thoughts that create your outer reality, and if  you want to change your outer reality, you must first change your beliefs and the pattern of your thoughts.

There is one other piece of the puzzle:  it is easier to change beliefs and thoughts if you know that you are safe and well cared for.  You may think that this comes from a relationship.  You may think that a feeling of safety and being cared for should come from a partner, lover, spouse or parent.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Expecting our love ones to make us feel safe or happy or anthing else places an unfair burden on them, and turns us into victims.  Instead, try placing the responsibility on feeling safe and well cared for in the loving arms of the one power that is capable of handling it:  The One.  Whatever you want to call it:  Spirit, The Universe, The Force, Mother Nature, God.  Wherever that Power lives, connect with it, feel it, know it.  Then you shall know yourself, and then you shall be able to safely and effectively make a change in your life.

So the formula for successful change becomes this:

1.  Examine yourself, particularly your beliefs and fears and how  you react when you are in fear.

2.  Connect with whatever-you-want-to-call-god, or deepen that connection, so that you feel safe.

3.  Change your thoughts, the general pattern of them, and change your beliefs.   Do this through a daily consistent regime of connection with that Power, and a conscious effort of replacing those  thoughts that  don’t serve you with thoughts that do.

4.  Envision how you want the new you to be.  Then affirm that.  Use affirmations, visioning, meditation, whatever works for you.

Soon you will find that you have indeed, become the change you wished to see in yourself.

To help with the process, I have scheduled  a Treasure Mapping Playshop at the end of this month.  Join us on January 30, from 10 am to 4 pm at the Center for Spiritual Living in Carson City.  Cost is $34 if you preregister, $39 if you register at the door.  At this playshop we will go through the process of visioning the change we wish to see in ourselves, and then playfully make treasure maps to guide us through that change.  Contact me for more information and to register.

In the meantime, prepare by examining yourself  and deepening your connection with Power.