Welcome to the Lake Tahoe Spiritual Living Center!

Another tragedy has occurred. All around the world, people are experiencing anger and sorrow and confusion, all normal reactions to a tragedy.

And from my brethren in Centers all around the country come the beautiful loving responses.

From Rev. Jeff Anderson, CSL Healdsburg, a call to express love, because love is all there is.

From Rev. Petra Weldes, CSL Dallas, a call to choose personal responsibility and unity.

From Rev. David Alexander, New Thought Center for Spiritual Living, a call to prayer, compassion and empathy.

And so today, here in Lake Tahoe, I call to you, dear reader. I call for you to remember that there are only two states of being: love and fear. I call for you to remember in your grief and dismay to take the time to stop….and breathe….and go to that place where you can always find Love….and then in that place, ask for the appropriate response, and then listen.

Is the response to assign blame, or perhaps might it be ask yourself where you can take personal responsibility? Maybe you can send a donation to an organization in Newton Connecticut that is helping with grief counseling. Maybe you can volunteer here, in Lake Tahoe, at an organization working to prevent violence. Maybe you can stop the violence in your own heart by asking for help if you need it.

Is the response to create separation between you and your fellow human beings by judging and assigning labels, or can you perhaps find a way to unify yourself with every human being you encounter today? Maybe you can stop judging others and love everyone, even the person who dresses differently than you. Even the person who believes differently than you. Maybe you can try and love without conditions. After all, that’s what God does. Maybe you can live as the child of God that you are, knowing that you are part of a whole, and that what you think and express DOES affect that whole.

And maybe you can retreat to your own personal prayerful space get to that place where you can be, do, and know empathy and compassion….for yourself and for every other human being.

Love is truly all there is. Go there now. Feel it, be it. Then come out and do it.

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New class beginning Tuesday, January 8! Running for 8 weeks from 6-8 pm, this class is titled “Knowing the Truth About Who I Am.” Cost is $99, sign up by calling 530-906-9336

Private coaching packages are available, call 530-906-9336 for more information

“Living my life as a victim, fear and doubt just made my heart feel sore.  Now I live in sweet surrender and I’m takin’ it through the roof!”   (partial lyrics from a song called Takin’ It Through the Roof,  written by Larry Steelman, from Oakland Center for Spiritual Living)

Are you living your life as a victim?  Do  fear and doubt make your heart feel sore?

Join us for  CSLLT’s Third Tuesdays!  This month’s talk is titled Take it Through the Roof! Be prepared to be inspired as I guide you through the steps necessary to move from victim to empowerment, from fear and doubt to love and confidence!

Third Tuesdays are held the third Tuesday of every month, with this month’s talk titled Take it Through the Roof given by Karen Linsley, RScP and Ministerial Intern featured on October 16, at 6 pm, at the Blue Angel Loft.  Address is 1132 Ski Run Blvd in South Lake Tahoe.  Make a wonderful evening out of it and have dinner downstairs at the Blue Angel Cafe.  They feature $2 tacos and Happy Hour from 3 pm until 6 pm on Tuesdays!  Their food is delicious!

Questions?  Call 530-906-9336

I read on a blog somewhere yesterday not to believe anything I read on the internet today.  I’ve seen some pretty cute stuff out there so far.  One minister I am acquainted with rearranged all the furniture in his sanctuary for this morning’s Sunday celebration.  I thought that was pretty funny.   Have you ever experienced something like that?  You walk into a place you know well and some….um…well….I’m trying to remove all negativity from my life, so let’s just say well meaning person has rearranged all the furniture. Actually, in my crowd, it’s the mischievous ones that tend to sneak in before everyone else arrives and rearrange the furniture.  Then they sit back and smile, entertained by all the reactions.  Just so you know, I’ve been know to be one of the furniture re-arrangers.  If I had a sanctuary, I would probably have rearranged the furniture today. Besides, it would have given me a good opportunity to get rid of the dust bunnies.  Oh well, the dust bunnies will live to talk about the April Fools Day they didn’t meet the garbage can.

But the metaphor of a surprise rearrangement of furniture reminded me of change, and how we sometimes don’t do well with that…at all.  What is up with that?  I can walk into a room and see the furniture rearranged and see the humor in it all, but spring a change of a bigger sort on me, say a relationship change or a career change or a living situation change, and I am experiencing all sorts of fear based stuff like self pity, intolerance, judgement, sadness, distrust.

You would think I didn’t have a Power in my life that allows me to know that all is well, all the time.

The fact is, I do have that Power, and that makes it even worse.  Because having that Power should mean I shouldn’t be feeling all those fear based things, right?  We’ll talk about “shoulding” on yourself in another post, lest I get off track into dust bunny land again.  Back to the topic:   Fear should not be on my list of things to do with Power, right?  Well, that’s a lot easier said than done.

Here’s the deal with change, and fear based reactions, and having a Power in one’s life to help with all of that:  it takes consistent and persistent spiritual practices to be able to respond (not react) with love instead of fear.  It takes introspection, paying attention to one’s self, to be able to know that all is well in the face of uncertainty.  It takes meditation to feel a calm and a peace, no matter what.  And it takes constant thinking about that Power in our lives to be able to live a love based life rather than a fear based one.

It’s like taking a shower:  you can’t expect yesterday’s shower to keep you from smelling bad today.  One needs to shower every day.  One needs to do spiritual practices every day too.  That’s just the way it is if you want to live a happier, more peaceful and freer life.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Except……somehow, I wanted to tie in today’s post with the image of the month.  These images are from a calendar I produce every year.  The images are mine, the quotes come from lots of different sources. The quote for this month just happens to come from…me!….Gotta tell you, it was a weird feeling to get the calendars back from the printer and open up to the month of April and see my quote there.  I liked it.  Anyway, here’s the quote and the image:

“When one does not know one’s own truth, one is subjected to the truth of others.”  (see those spiritual practices I talked about above, that’s how you know your own truth).

If you like this image, it is available for purchase (as a stand alone image, not with the black background and quote, although if you want that it’s available too!) here:  https://vando.imagequix.com/gallery.html?id=49R7J9W&eventid=1046-8080-0087

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Weekly meditation discussion group, Monday’s from 5 to 6 pm at the Center for Spiritual Living Lake Tahoe.  Cost is $10, address is 3665 Tamarack, South Lake Tahoe, CA

Looking for some one on one help?  Perhaps some coaching in a specific area of  your life?  Or some lessons on how to deepen your spiritual practice?  Karen Linsley is a Licensed Spiritual Practitioner and offers sessions over the phone or in person. Contact her at 530-906-9336 for pricing and more information.

Once in a while I hear someone say that living a life totally free from fear is impossible.  They even illustrate that theory with a metaphor.  They ask, “when you cross the street, do you look both ways before you step out into the street?”

Well, of course we do!  But that’s not fear, that’s caution, and there is a difference.

Caution tells us to look both ways before we cross the street.  It tells us to investigate the company we are considering for our retirement plan.  It tells us to stick our hand under the running water in the shower before we step in.  It tells us to compare products before making a purchase decision, or to compare interest rates before committing to a loan.

Fear tells us to stop dead in our tracks.  Or it tells us to run like crazy.  Or it tells us to fight back.  When we are judging anyone else or anything else for anything at all, we are in fear.  Fear separates us from our fellow human beings, and it also prevents us from experiencing all the joy that life has to offer.  Fear tells us to believe what the dogma says, even if something inside of us is quietly telling us not to, because if we don’t something bad might happen.  Fear keeps us from being true to ourselves.  Fear causes us to do what everyone else is doing,  to wear what they wear and say what they say, even if secretly we don’t want to do that, or wear that, or say that.  Fear causes us to do things we would not otherwise do.  Fear is the activator of everything negative in our lives.

Can you tell I don’t much appreciate fear?

Some folks will tell us that fear is there for a reason, that it is genetically bred into us, because back when we were living in caves we needed it to protect ourselves.  Well, we aren’t living in caves anymore, and while I acknowledge the existence of that adrenaline rush that happens when we are threatened or excited, I still think there is a difference between fear and caution.

So what do you do if you recognize that there is some fear going on within you?  I’m assuming you want to be rid of the fear in your life of course.  If you like being judgmental, not doing the things you want to do, doing things you don’t want to, and limiting yourself, then stop reading here.  But if you want to be rid of the fear in your life, here are some helpful tidbits.

1.  Recognize fear for what it is.  It is what some people call the ego, trying to protect us.  But it disguises itself as judgment.  Or you will finding yourself saying “I can’t” when you really want to say, “I can!”  And the infamous “yeah but….” is a dead ringer for fear.

2.  Know that fear and love cannot exist in the same place at the same time.  Some people say that fear and faith cannot exist in the same place at the same time, but faith is a misunderstood term and the subject of another blog post, so I’m going to stick with love.   Love demolishes fear in one fell swoop.  I’m not one to quote the Bible, but I’m going to refer to it here, because in 1 Corinthians it says that one can have all the faith in the world, but if one doesn’t have love, one has nothing.  It goes on to say that love does not envy nor boast, it isn’t self centered, it thinks no evil.  “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.   It is eternal.”  So if you are feeling fear, stop, get quiet, find the love.  It is there within you.  It’s in the beauty around you, in the trees, the mountains, the oceans, the rivers.  It’s in your pets, it’s in the face of a smiling child.  It is in the warmth of the sun and the quiet of the snow falling. Love is everywhere, you have but to recognize it.

3.  Know that fear crops up when we are feeling threatened.  When you feel fear, ask yourself, “do I think I’m going to lose something or not get something I want?”  Notice those are outside things.  I think the greatest creator of fear is attachment to outside stuff, whether it be people, belongings or circumstances.  What part of you would change, or be less than, if you lost that outside something?  I submit that nothing would.  Your essence of goodness remains, always, no matter what happens on the outside.

4.  Practice forgiveness.  Forgiveness is probably the greatest spiritual tool we have.  Forgiveness does not condone other’s behavior, but it does provide you with relief from fear, especially if you forgive yourself.  Do not judge yourself harshly.  Do not judge yourself at all.  You don’t let others judge you, why do you allow yourself to judge you?

5.  I changed my mind.  I am going to briefly mention faith here, but just briefly.  I found I couldn’t not mention it in a discussion about fear.  Faith is not belief, nor is it something you get from belief in an outside entity.  That’s a faith that I find fleeting at best, and false at worse.  Faith is a feeling, a knowing, that is based on experience.  Faith is that feeling of comfort that comes from knowing that inside of you, all is well, no matter what happens on the outside.  Faith is that essence of hope that comes from seeing that, with all that has happened in your life, something good has come from it.

6.  Be open at the top.  If you are being called to make a change in your life, don’t be afraid of the unknown simply because it is unfamiliar.  Don’t stay with an abuser because it’s all you’ve ever known and that is more comfortable than the unknown.  Don’t stay in your addiction because you don’t know what it could possibly be like in your life without it.   Do honor any callings that come to you.  If you are being called to take a new job, take it!  In ministerial school, we are constantly thanking one another for answering the call.  Most of us, myself included, feel we are being called and we are answering the call.  Most of us don’t know where we are going to go with this, or what we are going to do with it, but we can’t not answer the call because we’ve done our spiritual work, we heard the call, and we are compelled to honor it.  If you stop and listen, your body and your inner wisdom will tell you where to go and what to do.  Don’t be closed to that wisdom.

Be open, practice and express love in your life, see the spiritual in everything you do and everywhere you’ve been, and you will be free from fear.  It’s a wonderful place to be!

“The beauty of a thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”

I got that quote from a video called Science Autotuned.  (http://www.wimp.com/scienceautotuned/)

In Centers for Spiritual Living (http://www.unitedcentersforspiritualliving.org/) all over the world, we teach that we are all One.  All a part of that magnificent Presence that some people like to call God.  This means there is no separation between you and me.   It means that we are all connected on a level that is now being measured and proved over and over again by a science called quantum physics.

The days of separation between science and spirituality are over.  In the early times of humankind, religion separated itself from science, and science did the same.  Religion said that science was not compatible with what they taught, and science agreed.  But when you put two people in separate rooms made of impermeable material, with no way for them to communicate,  and find that their thoughts are linked, and that result is repeated over and over again, it is proof that there is something there, some Energy Force that links us all.  And when you notice that electrons go where you place your attention, how can you not think that your thoughts can and do affect your life?  This kind of stuff is scientific proof that science and spirituality are not only compatible, but that quantum physics is proving, over and over again, what we in New Thought have been teaching all along:  We are all One.

Just atoms, rearranged in a different way.

Yes, there are still some religions that will say that this kind of thinking is not right.  And that right there is a fundamental difference between religion and spirituality.    In Spirit, there is nothing that is not right.  For to claim something is not right would be to claim that none of us is right, because we are all One.

It presents some interesting possibilities doesn’t it?  What then, if we are all One, does it mean to be the change that we wish to see in the world?  If we are all One, then if enough of us be the change we wish to see in the world, don’t you think that we could effect a world change?  What if you, dear reader, practiced a life that included love and tolerance and understanding and peace and personal responsibility and love and acceptance and abundance of all good things, and love.  And what if you became Love, and then spread that message to a few more people?  What if you decided never to say another negative thing?  To never judge something or someone as right or wrong?  To never complain?  To always be for something and against nothing?  That is how you be the change you wish to see in the world.  And if enough of you do that, we will change the world.  We will rearrange the atoms to manifest a world of love and peace and personal power and tolerance and understanding and acceptance and abundance of all good things.

And that, in my mind, is what spirituality is all about.  It’s not about some code of behavior that is prescribed by a literal interpretation of a series of metaphorical stories that have been mistranslated.   It’s not about thinking that God is some separate entity which can only be accessed by an intermediary in a holy place.  And it certainly isn’t about thinking that we are all flawed from the get go.  It’s not even about whether or not one’s vocabulary is occasionally sprinkled with a four letter word.

Spirituality is that we are all One, just atoms rearranged in a different way.  Different physical manifestations of the One.  When you consider that, that you are a physical manifestation of the One, what do you wish to do with that?   Know…be still and know…and then go and be love.  That is what spirituality is all about.

Did you know that what you see in others is really a reflection of what you see in yourself?  And that it works both ways?

Yep:  if you can see things like wisdom, compassion, goodness, intelligence or love in other people, guess what?  You also  have those qualities in yourself.   And if you are seeing them, it means they rank pretty high on your list of things to do and be right now.

And conversely, if you see things like intolerance, negativity, bigotry or judgment in others, guess what?   You may have a bit of work to do….on yourself.  Seeing such negativity on an ongoing basis will make you sick, it’s better to get at the bottom of it and turn it around.

I have a friend who used to say, “if you spot it you got it!”  And he was right.  And another who says, “If you are pointing one finger outward, you have three more pointing back at you.”  And yet another (I have some wise friends don’t I?)  who says, “if you one into one idiot during the day, it might…might by them.  But if you run into two or more, it’s time to look in the mirror.”

Take a look today at what you are spotting.   If you are seeing good wherever you go, relax and enjoy yourself.  If you are spotting negativity, you may want to take a step back and go within and connect with the Good that is there, then restart your day.

Here’s to seeing good today and everyday!

My heart hurts today.

When I started seeing the reactions of people at the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden,  I began grieving.  This was last night, and I thought, as I always do when I am feeling strongly about something, that I would wait until I had gotten some rest to write my reaction.  I woke up this morning feeling rested, but still the same way.

So here goes.  I always experience a bit of trepidation at writing and publishing something that goes against the grain of what the majority of folks are feeling, but this is important stuff.

I admire the soldiers who went to fight that war, and I grieve for ALL the losses, and know what was sacrificed to accomplish what this country wanted to accomplish.  I understand the natural need for the spiritually untrained to get back at those who caused such devastation in our country on 911.

Now that they have accomplished what they set out to do, people are celebrating and I am grieving.  And I know a few others who are doing the same.  I’m grieving because we executed a global act of revenge and revenge ALWAYS causes more harm.

Revenge is not the answer.  It is a spiritual law that what we put out there, we receive back.  What we sow, we reap.  We’ve just sown a seed of monumental proportions, a seed of hate and revenge and violence.

And my heart hurts not only because I fear the violence will never stop, but because people are actually celebrating the death of another human being.  How did we get to a place where people celebrate the death of another human being?

So I go to the only place I know to go, and ask you to do the same:  Love.  Don’t celebrate violence and death.  Don’t participate in the jokes about it.  Instead, surround yourself with a glow of love and compassion, and do not allow anything that is unlike that to penetrate that glow.

Quantum physics tells us that there is an energy force that we can control with our thoughts.  At the Centers for Spiritual Living we teach that this energy force is simply another name for God.  So think love.  Turn to love, light, goodness and compassion in all your affairs.  Set your intention for love and compassion, and practice that.  Be that change.  Practice love today, and every day.  Write about what practicing love looks like to you.  Sit in the silence and contemplate what being love means to you.  Then do that.  If enough of us be love, we can overturn the swelling tide of violence.

Let this be the day you start a new life of love and compassion.  In all your affairs, go to a place of love and compassion.  Leave the revenge behind.  Leave the judgment, the criticism, the condemnation and the hurt behind.  Replace it all with love and compassion.  Do this with those close to you.  If enough of us do this, we can start a new groundswell of love that will calm that one of violence.

Be love, today and always.

“Courage means telling the truth of ourselves from our whole being.”  Patrick Cameron

Yep, it’s another quote from the Integration Conference, spoken in the seminar on leadership held for ministerial students.   About the same time as I heard this quote, I heard another concept from one of my teachers, also in a leadership class.  She said that we should not use “expressing our truth” as a means to bully others.

So…I’ve been thinking some about this truth and courage stuff.  I know that in the past I have been guilty of expressing my truth to try and control and manipulate others.  Setting boundaries is another concept where there is a very fine line between attempts at control, manipulation and bullying, and taking care of ourselves.  The line is drawn in that area between speaking in the first person (“I” statements) and speaking in the second person (“you” statements).  Yet it has been my experience that even first person statements can sometimes be  a thinly veiled attempt at bullying, or attempts to control and manipulate.  I’ve seen relationships destroyed because one person disguised attempts at control as setting boundaries.

So what is the answer?  How do we know our own truth, and express it in such a way that we honor ourselves without venturing into the land of attempts at control, manipulation and bullying?

If you have been reading this column for a while you know the answer:  do your spiritual practices!  In this case, going within through the practices of meditation and journaling seem to be the most effective.  When we go within on such a deep level, we know what our truth is.  And we will feel the difference between courageously expressing that truth or venturing into that fearful place where we try to control, manipulate or bully others.  On some level, it does not feel good when we go beyond simply expressing our truth.

Another part of the answer comes from that ancient wisdom expressed in the Course In Miracles:  there are really only two states of being, love and fear.  We are either in a state of love, or a state of fear, and we will always react from that place.  Learn to recognize what fear looks like for you, so that you can move back into a state of love when it happens.  Learn the spiritual practices that work best for you to move from fear to love.  Love means we do not need to try and control or manipulate any situation or bully anyone.  Love means we can rest easily in our beingness and KNOW that all is well, no matter what.  Love means we can simply honor ourselves, and take care of ourselves.  Love does indeed conquer all.

Come from a place of love, always.

What does that mean?  One thing I love about dogs is that they love unconditionally.  They don’t judge, they don’t love you when you  are “good” and then withhold love when you are “bad.”  They just love.  All the time.

I think we humans can take a lesson from that.

I got a message this morning on Facebook from someone telling me to “unlike” another person’s page because they did something questionable.  Not only did I not think there was anything wrong with the so called “questionable” act, but I wondered about the part of us humans that makes us want to harm another with no cause.   Now, I know that when we come from a place of fear, that’s what we do.  We strike out at others.

There are only two states of being:  love and fear.  They cannot exist together at the same time in us, so at any given time we are either in love or we are in fear.  We do some crazy stuff behind fear, so it behooves us to pay attention and recognize when we are in fear, and do what is necessary to move back into love.  For love is where Spirit lives, and love is where all good happens, and you cannot go wrong if you are coming from a place of love.

When we come from a place of love, it allows us to speak from our hearts.  It allows us to know that nothing and no one can harm us, and there is nothing to be upset about.  Coming from a place of love is coming from a safe place, it’s like wrapping a bubble of protection around ourselves, nothing can harm us when we come from a place of love.

Coming from a place of love opens us up to wonders and miracles and all sorts of other goodies.  Coming from a place of love allows us to speak with respect to others and work things out in a peaceful way.

I don’t do this perfectly, I don’t know anyone alive who does.  But we can aspire to this loving place, and make progress towards it.

So I won’t be “unliking” that page.  Nor will I “unlike” the person who sent me the message, which was what I really wanted to do.   But that would have been coming from a place of fear, not love.

Today, my intention is to come from a place of love, and express love, in everything I do.  What about you?

A new year!

The internet is full of all kinds of wonderful things right now:  quotes galore about starting anew.  The energy of the planet  is strongly positive, and thus it’s a perfect time to integrate some positive stuff into your life.  You will have the help of the “group mind” or “race consciousness.”  (Group mind or race consciousness refers to what the majority of the human race is thinking at any given time)  Right now everyone is thinking in terms of starting a new year on the right track.  Quantum physics is proving to us that the collective energy of our thoughts is a very powerful force indeed.  Contribute to the positive!

I did a workshop on New Year’s Eve and was energized by the responses of the people there, they were thinking in terms of being rather than doing, and in terms of setting of intentions rather than new year’s resolutions.   It seems to me that people are beginning to realize that new year’s resolutions don’t work very well.  But focusing on being as opposed to doing, and setting intentions, is a powerful way to join with the positive energy out there right now and a great way to start the year off right and continue it.

Here’s some of the thoughts that are swirling around right now:

1.   Be the change I wish to see in the world.  I think this one sums it all up nicely.  If I had one message to send, it would be that everything starts within, and if I want something, I must first be that thing.  So if I want loving relationships in my life, I must be loving.  If I want better health in my life, I must act like I am healthy, and back up that action with the things that will make it so.  If I want a better financial picture in my life, I must release the old ways of thinking and behaving about money.  If I want peace on earth, I must be that peace.

2.  Take that serenity prayer to heart.  You know, the one that says “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  I can’t change it when people choose to think they’ve been judged, when really it had nothing to do with them.  I can’t change it when people make choices that cause them havoc and pain.  I can’t change it when people have a victim mentality.  I can change my own thoughts, my own reactions  and my own life.    I can be the change I wish to see in the world.  I can choose to take responsibility for my actions.  And the wisdom comes from continuing to study and learn and listen to mentors.  It comes from listening and heeding the call of that still small voice within, the one that gets loud and clear when I get still enough to  hear it.

3.  Don’t take it personally.   If I’m blaming someone or something else for a situation in my life, I’m taking it personally, and I can tell you from experience that is not the way to peace, prosperity or anything else good in life.  If  I think a chance remark or a situation is directed at me or purposely affecting my life, I really need to look at the level of my own spiritual and emotional maturity, because 99.9% of the time the remark had nothing to do with me.  It’s really a way of saying I am not responsible for my life.  It’s really a way of saying I’m a professional victim.  I’m happy to say I gave up that profession a long time ago, but I remember the manifestations of it and can see it clearly in others now.  Maybe it’s a bit like being a reformed smoker, they say the reformed ones are the least tolerant of smoking.  I wouldn’t know that, because I never smoked.  I have to admit to a lifelong intolerance of smoking though.  And, I learned something interesting about that 14 years ago.  I used to think that I didn’t like smoking because it made it hard to breathe, made  your clothes smell bad, made the breath of the smoker smell like something died inside of them and makes people emotionally unavailable.  Yes, it does all that, but the real reason why I am intolerant of smoking is because I am highly allergic to second hand smoke.  It’s as if  all those years of intolerance  was really that still small voice within telling me to stay away because it was bad for my health.  And I only learned that through a series of circumstances which proved to me beyond all doubt that if I had listened to that still small voice within, I could have simply stopped with the intolerance and simply stated my truth:  I am allergic and need to stay away from it.

And that leads to another powerful thought that is swirling through my head right now:

4.  Perhaps intolerance is a sign for me to stop judging what is outside of me and go within, to stop long enough to listen to what that still small voice within is trying to tell me.  Perhaps if I listened to that voice more I would be in a better position to be the change I wish to see in the world.

So it all comes back to that same message:  to be the change I wish to see in the world.  For me, this year, it’s all about taking responsibility for my life and loving release of old ways of being and doing that no longer work for me.

I’d love to hear what your intentions are for the new you in this new year!