Welcome to the Lake Tahoe Spiritual Living Center!

This is the January image and quote for a calendar I publish each year. The quote says, “The thing about creativity is, people are gong to laugh at it. Get over it.” Twyla Thorp

You don’t have to be an artist to be creative. You create every day. In fact, you create with each thought you have. Our thoughts are very creative, and very powerful. If you are not liking your creations, in other words, if you aren’t happy with what is happening in your life right now, you may want to consider changing your thinking. Creativity isn’t just related to artistic endeavors. Creativity is part and parcel of who and what we are, in all areas of our lives.

*another  quote!  This one is by Patti Digh, it’s the tag line for  her book, “Creative is a Verb.”

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Weekly meditation/discussion group, Mondays from 5-7. Call 530-906-9336 for more information.

Need a nudge, want some support? Coaching will help you move into the gloriousness that is you! Call 530-906-9336 for more information.

karen@laketahoespirituallivingcenter.com

I admit it:  I don’t watch much TV (except for Bones and NCIS), and most of the news I get nowadays comes from Facebook.  I’ve been observing the Occupy movement and wondering why I feel uncomfortable about it, but since I have term papers to write, two businesses to run, and need to get out and play once in a while, I really  haven’t wanted to use up any of my time to investigate what it’s all about.  I admit it, I don’t really know what the ruckus is. I just know that it seems like a lot of people are spending a lot of time voicing their powerlessness.

What we teach around here at the Centers for Spiritual Living is that what we place our attention on grows.  So I’ve been watching these folks place their attention on their lack, and voicing their powerlessness, and I’ve been seeing them become even more powerless.  Bingo, I just figured out why the Occupy movement bothers me.  I’m seeing people create victimhood in their lives, and that bothers me…a lot.  I know that when something bothers me like this, I’ve either got it, or I used to have it.  I am happy to say that I no longer am a victim, but I was at one time extremely good at being a victim, so I can recognize it now from a long distance.

I discovered a long time ago that when I quit being a victim, I was empowered.  Now I teach others to do the same.  I can tell you that the shift from being a victim to being empowered was a long time coming.  It was a process, and in order for me to get there I had to be willing to not live my life as a victim anymore.  I had to be so sick and tired of being a victim that I was willing to look into the unknown for a different way to live.  I’m so glad I did.  There are a LOT of folks out there who haven’t yet reached that point of willingness to change.  They are still in victim mode,  blaming the banks, the government, the mortgage companies and Wall Street for their financial woes.  I’m not saying these institutions are blameless. What I’m saying is that blaming them keeps the blamer in victim mode, and does nothing but perpetuate more victimhood. Staying in victim consciousness may be comfortable, because it’s all you’ve ever known to do, and it always feels very scary to move away from a lifelong way of being and into something different.  But until such a movement is made, you will continue to be a victim.

Here’s what life looks like when blame stops:   you live from a place of empowerment instead of from a place of victimhood.  Inside, you are at peace, no matter what. Inside, you are whole and complete, no matter what the  outside looks like.  Inside, you Know.  And what you know is all good, all the time, no matter what the outside looks like.  And  no, I am not advocating spiritual bypass.  I’m advocating a knowingness that surpasses all.  I’m advocating a knowingness that allows us to place our attention on that which is good in our life, and allows us to take our attention away from what the rest of the world is doing wrong.  I’m advocating a  move from negativity to positivity.

If it is true that we can be the change we wish to see in the world, and I believe it is, then I am advocating a move to be that change.  You want to see more jobs?  Get one.  Even if it means emptying the garbage at the nearest fast food restaurant. (one of these days I’ll tell you about the time I applied for a job at McDonalds….emptying the garbage) Get that job and be a good worker.  Show up on time and give it your best, make it something you can take pride in.  Concentrate on doing good, and more good will show up in your life.

Do we have something called an Empowerment Movement?  I did a Google search on it, and came up with an organization that advocates fighting back. Nope, don’t wanna fight.  I found another that advocates finding Jesus and being saved to be empowered. Nope, don’t need saving and never did.   I found a patient empowerment movement, and a girls empowerment movement, but none of them seemed to advocate what I am advocating:  We become empowered by taking responsibility for our lives.  We become empowered by shifting our focus from what others are doing or not doing and onto ourselves.

So, right here, right now, I am starting an Empowerment Movement.  Are you with me?  Do you want to move from being a victim to being empowered?  Are you so sick and tired of being where you’ve been that you are willing to go somewhere else?  Even if  you don’t know where that somewhere else is?

Here’s the first step to becoming empowered:  Instead of focusing your attention on them, focus it on yourself.  These words are no longer in your vocabulary:  they, them, he, she, or it, when used in conjunction with other words such as, “they did it to me!”  or “he said this.”  or “she did that.” or “I can’t because it won’t let me.”  or “it’s just not done that way.”

The word or concept of blame is no longer in your vocabulary either.  You don’t get to blame others, and you don’t get to blame yourself, and you really don’t get to blame God.  Throw blame out the window.

Second item on your list of things to do:  if you are blaming God, get a new God.  God is not something to be blamed when things go bad, any  more than it is something to give credit to when things go good.  It just is, and It can be a source of great strength and power, when we let it.  Think of it as more of an entity that is connected to you, not separate from you.

Third:  I submit that blaming others comes from a place of fear.  When we are in fear, we blame others.  The Course in Miracles says that fear and faith cannot live together.  Other spiritual traditions say the same thing, and I know it to be true.  You can’t be in fear and faith at the same time.  If the word faith bothers you, substitute the word Love for it.  Love truly does conquer all.  Find that place of love within you, and stay there.  When you find yourself blaming again, move back to love.

There’s more to this of course, but I risk writing a novel instead of a blog post by elaborating.  Does a movement from victimhood to empowerment take a lot of work?  Yes!  And you will probably need help doing so.  But I can tell you that it beats occupying wall street.

Someone was asking me recently about knowing your own truth.   My response was that if you go within and check the physical sensations of your body, it will tell you.   Try it.  Contemplate something, and check in.  Do you have sort of a sick feeling in your gut?  Or perhaps a slight tightening around the shoulders?  Or maybe the beginnings of a headache?  This is your body telling you that whatever it is you are contemplating, it’s not right for  you.  Listen to your body and it will guide you in the right direction.

Our bodies are a treasure trove of wisdom, wisdom that is there for the accessing.   If you pay attention, your body will give you valuable information.

The signals we get from our bodies are really just another way that Spirit uses to communicate with us.  We all are part of that One, that great Source of Power and Knowingness and All, and we can access the wisdom in our bodies, that Spirit-fed wisdom, simply by taking the time to do some introspection on a regular basis.  Do that introspection regularly and consistently, and pretty soon it will become a part of you, so that you are doing it all the time.  This is what is meant by praying without ceasing.   Praying does not have to be a beseeching to an outside God, instead look at it as communication with a part of you that is timeless and wise and all knowing and all powerful.  And one of the ways in which that timeless, wise, all knowing and powerful Spirit communicates with us is through our bodies.

Here’s some tips for listening to the wisdom in your body:

1.  Breathe.  Take several deep cleansing breaths, breathing all the way into your diaphragm.  Each breath in is wisdom, peace and power.  Each breath out releases anything unlike that.

2.  Relax.  Start with your toes.  Talk to each part of your body and give it permission to relax.  Move up from your toes and relax each part of your body until you’ve reached the top of your head.  Don’t forget the face muscles.

3.  Check in with any stress or pain in your body and ask it what it is trying to tell you.  Then listen to the answer.  You may want to have your journal handy to write down the information you receive.

4.  Thank that inner wisdom, take a few moments to become fully present to the here and now, then go about your day, being mindful of the information you received and acting upon it.

When we surrender, we allow for infinite possiblity in our lives.

Surrendering does not mean weakness.  It means that we no longer fight the battle.  

Take a look at your life.  Is there anything that feels like a battle to you?  Like you get up every morning, and feel as if you must armor yourself once again, and come out swinging, and defend yourself?  Give it  up.  Turn your attention to something else and refuse to engage in the fight.

In doing so, you will allow the Universe to operate in your world.  What you pay attention to grows, and what you resist persists.  So if you stop engaging in the battle and turn your attention to something else, not only will that battle diminish, but whatever you turned  your attention to will grow.

That is surrender, and it feels good.  It also gives a feeling of strength and power.  It’s a strange sort of paradox, but it’s true and it works.

Try it!

The United Centers for Spiritual Living has a body of folks who have been specifically trained to do two things:  heal and do spiritual counseling.  We are called Practitioners.  Whenever you see the initials RScP after a name, you can know that person has attended at least one year of prerequisite classes, plus two years of study, to earn that designation.  The initials stand for Religious Science Practitioner and I am proud to be one of this very large worldwide group.

However, anyone can use the power of the One to heal.  You don’t need three years of training to connect with and use this awesome Power.  However, my training does enable me to KNOW that I can, while many others remain ignorant of this.  Yet the web is full of sites extolling things like the Law of Attraction, which is all the same stuff.  The world is finally waking up to the idea that we all  have this magnificent power. 

We have power.  We have the potential to be as powerful as Jesus was.  Hard to believe?  Pick up any of the world’s best known spiritual literature.  It doesn’t have to be the Bible, although that is the one I am most familiar with.  They all tell us that we have power, that we are as God.  I believe that most people choose not to believe this because it’s really sort of a scary thought.  If you had this kind of power in your life, you would also carry a big responsibility, and many don’t want that.

That’s ok.  I don’t mind carrying the responsibility, because I love my Power.  I love being able to speak my word and know that it manifests.  I love knowing that I am as God.

I also love being part of an organization that has a training program specifically designed to teach people to access and become one with that power, and to help others, and to spiritual counsel people.

Practitioners over the world have many different callings.  I know one who specializes in helping people with relationships.  I know another who advertises that she does Celebrations of Life.  I know of some who teach in far flung places in the world.  I know of many who simply got the training and are content to have improved their lives, and help when called upon, but don’t have a specific ministry.  I’ve been a Practitioner for about a year now, and have not yet fully developed my ministry.  But it seems to be heading in the direction of one on one spiritual counseling, helping people to connect with the One so that they may lead happier lives and manifest their dreams.  And teaching is becoming a big part of my ministry as well.  I never knew I was a good teacher until I started doing it and realized that not only did I enjoy it, but I was good at it.  I also have discovered I have a gift for speaking and enjoy that as well.

When I write these posts every day, I set out with an intention to develop a topic that will help my readers.  This morning, my intention was to let you know that you have the Power to heal, the potential to be as strong as Jesus.  But again, many are uncomfortable with this concept, and so we have people like me around to do the work for you.  So if  you need healing, or need some spiritual counseling, or coaching to improve your life, give me a call.  I have the power and have no problem using it on your behalf.

I used to say that there were only two emotions, love and fear.  Now I know I was inaccurate in saying that.  There are really only two states of being:  love or fear.

When we make decisions based on fear, they are usually bad decisions.  When we make decisions based on love, things have a tendency to turn out well.

When we live in a state of fear, character defects are activated.  We are angry, resentful, physically ill, insecure, a victim….the list is a long one.

When we live in a state of love, we are at peace.  We feel emotions like happiness, and we have faith.  Things go smoothly in our lives and we manifest all good.

It is good to be able to recognize fear when it comes knocking on the door, and also good to be able to recognize love, and to then be able to replace fear with love when necessary.

The way to do that is with connection.  A deep inner connection with the One.  And the way to connect is through the daily spiritual practices of meditation, journaling and reading.  I’ve written about these topic before because I can’t stress how important they are, and because I never know if someone knew is reading this.

If you are feeling any sort of negativity going on, go within and examine how you are really feeling.  We don’t always like to admit we are fearful, so we mask it with anger, standoffishness, self pity, victimization.  We have the drama du jour and simply perpetuate more drama, which perpetuates more fear, which perpetuates more negative stuff.

A better way to go is to acknowledge the fear and replace it with love.  Replace the fear with an intention to experience good in your life, and it will happen.  Make love the dominant state of being in your world, and soon fear will fade away into the shadows. It might attempt to make an appearance now and then, but by making love your dominant state of being, that fear will not have any power.

I wish you all love!

Thoughts are things.  These three little words form the foundation for not only the Science of Mind philosophy, but also for all other New Thought organizations as well as the huge volume of Law of Attraction stuff that is out there right now.

Last night in the Science of Mind book study (which, by the way, is great fun, and open to anyone!  It’s not a class, but an ongoing book study, so come on by!) we read and discussed one of my favorite passages from the textbook.  On page 144 Ernest Holmes has a section titled, “Thoughts are things,” and in this section, he states unequivocably that it is primarily our thoughts that create illness in our lives.  He says: “…a prolonged discordant mental state is certain to eventuate in some form of physical ailment.”

If you believe this as I do, then it opens up wonderful new doors of opportunities for us to create our own health.  Please know that no Science of Mind Practitioner should ever advise you not to go to a doctor.  We believe in freedom of choice.  But I think it is empowering to know that I can, by virtue of my pattern of thinking, change my physical health.  I also know that it was a bit scary for me when I first realized this great spiritual law, and also that I had some shame behind being ill for quite some time, before I grasped the concept of not shaming myself, but simply changing what was no longer working and connecting myself with the Spirit that lives within each and every one of us.

When we connect with that Spirit, we are as powerful as it is.  Our deeds, words and thoughts all have power.  As Ernest states:  “Life externalizes at the level of our thought.”

So once again we are back to the slogan of  the entire Science of Mind movement:  Change your thinking, change  your life.

Are you ready for a change?  Are you manifesting things that you don’t want, and things that you do want continue to be elusive?  Align yourself with Spirit, know that God is within you right here and right now, and change your thinking, and you will change your life.

In this philosophy we talk a lot about attributes of Spirit.  When someone requests a treatment we want to know what attribute of Spirit they are going for.  In my daily Spiritual practices, I will usually pick an attribute of Spirit to embody for the rest of the day.  Sometimes one or more will be mentioned in my readings, sometimes something will be going on in my life that indicates I need to embody  a particular attribute of Spirit.

So just what are attributes of Spirit?  They are the qualities of God, to put it in a nutshell.  Things like love, compassion, empathy, abundance, good health, clarity, wisdom, kindness.  This is by no means the complete list.  I think to make a complete list would be as impossible as it is to define God, but I think you get the idea.

For today, think of what is going on in your life that you would like to change.  It could be a health issue, or confusion about something, or some sort of negative thinking going on, or fear.  Then decide what the opposite attribute of Spirit would be.  For example, the opposite of fear would be love.  The Course In Miracles says there are only two emotions, fear and love.  You get to choose which you live in.  And fear cannot exist where there is love. 

If you have confusion about something, the attribute of Spirit to progress towards would be clarity. 

Here are some more attributes of spirit:   faith, forgiveness, peace, power, truth, freedom, choice.

So what will it be for you today?  What attribute of Spirit will you embody today?

Here’s the affirmation:

Today, just for today, I will embody an attribute of Spirit.  Today, I will be positive, loving, kind or (fill in the blank).  I take this attribute with me today, wherever I go, whatever I do, and in doing so, I spread this attribute around to all who encounter me today.  I AM an attribute of Spirit!

The meditation for today in the magazine is “taking back our power” so I got to thinking about power and how we give it away, and how we can give it back. 

No one can take our power away from us, let’s get that straight right now.  We give it away by allowing others to affect our moods, by not taking responsibility for our lives, by having beliefs that created unwanted situations in our lives, by separating ourselves from the One Power that truly is.

We begin to take our power back, to empower ourselves, by first going within and becoming one with the One.  It all starts within.  Then we can start to change our beliefs, thus changing the circumstances of our lives.  Once the beliefs have changed, the circumstances will change to match our beliefs.  It’s almost like magic!

But the truth is that Power, true Power, comes from within.  It comes from connecting with whatever you want to call God, from knowing your truth, from thinking thoughts that make you feel good.  Connect with that Power, and you will have Power, and be Power, and be emPowered!

I’ll never forget when I suddenly realized  that I had power.  It was quite scary because with power comes responsibility.  But I’ve always been a risk taker, I’ve always lived on the edge (or so I’m told, it really doesn’t feel like the edge to me), and I’ve never believed in a separate God really, it just took me a while to get to the point where I realized that I had power.

Today’s meditation in the Science of Mind is about self recognition, which got me started on what I just wrote.  Now that I know I am no longer a victim, not of God’s will nor of anyone else’s will (amazing how that seems to be connected!), now that I know what and who I truly am:  a part of God with incredible inner power, what am I to do with that power?

This is the scary part.  Once I realized I had power, what was I to do with it?  It’s no longer scary.  I not only get power as a result of being One with God, but I also get comfort, strength, peace, joy, happiness, rest, and all the other attributes of Spirit. 

Are you powerful today?  Or are you one of those folks who thinks that if something good happens in your life, God was responsible?  Stop it, you are good, you are worthy and you are deserving of praise.  Are you one of those folks who thinks that if something bad happens in your life, you must have deserved it somehow?  Stop it, get off the cross, we need the wood.  Take responsibility for your life.

Today I know that I am One with God.  God is within me and I am a part of It, I AM.  I have power and with that power comes responsibility.  Today I choose to exercise that responsibility wisely, and today I know that I am good.  I embody all attributes of Spirit:  peace, joy, health, abundance.