Skip to content

Published on

I recently got a new iPad and when all the books got downloaded into the kindle app, they were no longer in the order of most recently read. So I had to do a search for my favorite daily readers, and some came up that I had forgotten about. This morning was a huge gift that I very much needed:  I had time to read the daily entry for no less than 8 books, plus I got a few pages read of a couple more books.  Heaven!  While I always create time to do my foundational spiritual practices every day (connection and personal self awareness) I don’t always have time to read as I would like.  Today I want to share with you some quotes that made me think, or made me remember. 

This first one comes from Paul Ferrini, in his book The 12 Steps of Forgiveness: “Properly speaking there are only three states of consciousness available to us. One is love, which is eternal and unconditional. One is fear, which is temporary and conditional. And the last is forgiveness, which is a bridge from the illusion of fear to the reality of love.”

WHOA.  THAT’S HUGE.

I have spent YEARS believing and knowing and teaching that there are only two states of consciousness:  love or fear. The idea that there is a third state, a bridge, if you will, from fear to love, is radical for me.  And yet, it answers the question of how one gets to love when one is feeling fear.  I said I have believed and taught this concept for years, and many times a student will ask me, “how do I turn my fear into love?”  That question has always been a difficult one for me to answer, because how I’ve done that internally is a process that I can’t put into words.  It has to do with faith, or knowing.  It has to do with allowing.  It has to do with acknowledging and inner awareness.  It has to do with all that stuff.  But as I think about it none of that really addresses a process for moving from fear to faith.  But now we have one.  Forgiveness!

And of course I have a lot to say about forgiveness.  Forgiveness is probably one of the most difficult spiritual practices to do, but it is also the most rewarding.  And of course, you know that forgiveness is never ever ever about them, always about yourself.  But perhaps you did not know that inside just about every book on prosperity and abundance is a forgiveness piece. 

Obviously forgiveness is a big deal if we are to live happily and joyously on this earth.

And I just happen to have a way to forgive for you.  A forgiveness process if you will.  This is a process recently created by myself and my students in a class called 5 Gifts for an Abundant Life.  We were in the class on forgiveness (there’s that connection again!) and more than one student voiced frustration that there wasn’t really a process in the class to use to forgive.  So we created one.  Thanks and acknowledgment go to Julia Mattis, Cindy Mesa, Jamie Russell and Sharon Anyan for helping to create this.

This process is for self forgiveness, but as Ferrini says, we can’t forgive others until we forgive ourselves.

I offer this process to you for your consideration:

1.         Create a safe container by going into meditation, so that forgiveness of self is more of a heart space thing than an intellectual thing.  Be gentle with yourself.

2. Identify what wants to be forgiven

3. Breathe.  Honor what comes up, and don't dismiss it. Accept it without judgement
4. Ask:  What am I feeling? What are my beliefs behind this feeling?  Identify your limiting beliefs. More meditation might be necessary.

5. Talk about it with a practitioner, prayer partner, mentor, coach or trusted friend.

6. Resolve to change your thinking.  Do a treatment:  Identify what you want to replace the old belief or way of thinking, then identify how you will feel when the old way of thinking or believing is replaced, then treat for that. Ask for help from a practitioner or prayer partner if necessary.

7. Resolve to change our feelings about it, not our thoughts.  courageously release my resistance, courageously surrender.

8. Set the intention every day to feel the way you identified that you want to feel.  Then go about your day, trusting that your intention is coming true.

9. Make amends to yourself, which means to set things right with yourself.  Sometimes the treatment and intention is enough, sometimes you might need action as well.  Resolve to do things differently if needed.  

10.Go forth and have fun!

Affirmation: Today I fully and completely forgive myself, thus opening myself up to joy, happiness and peace.

SIGN UP HERE FOR THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER AND GET MORE TIPS AND UPDATED NEWS!

Published on

Fourteen years ago I created a workshop called Status Quo or Status GO! Just for kicks and giggles I went back to look at my outline and realized my workshops have changed a bit over the years. This one went deep, as they all do, but I was less focused on spiritual principles and practices back then. That workshop dived into what fears would keep us stuck in our lives, and what we could do about those fears. The premise behind the workshop is that if we address our fears properly, we can better move out of the status quo, the stuckness, and into more creativity, more liveliness, more GO in our lives.

Fast forward to current, and I just finished teaching a 4 week class based on a book by Dennis Merritt Jones called “When Fear Speaks – Listen.” This book talks about seven messengers of fear, and their descendants, and how those fears will keep us stuck in status quo unless we listen to the messages they have to offer.

This morning I was thinking about status quo, because the theme for this month in Centers for Spiritual Living is Unstatus Quo. And then in the daily meditation voice mail I recently received, it talked about superiority and inferiority and how our judgement of others as inferior to us really gets in the way of our good.

Here’s where I tied it all together: according to Jones in his book, judgement is one of the messengers of fear, and superiority and inferiority are its descendants.

Here are the messages we can receive from judgement, superiority and inferiority, if we allow it. Judgment tells us there is something going on within us that we don’t want to look at. And it is that judgment that allows us to feel superior to our fellows. Ironically, it is also that judgement that allows us to feel inferior to our fellows, because superiority and inferiority are two sides of the same coin. So we move through life judging others, an ego maniac with an inferiority complex. I’m sure you don’t have to think too hard to come up with times in your life when you have felt like this, or when someone you are familiar with that has those traits. Being like that causes a lot of trouble for us in our lives. And it keeps us stuck and limited, in the Status Quo.

What if you could move through life without judgement? What if you could move through life with a true sense of what it means to be humble, to know your strengths and your weaknesses and to be able to truly take your place in this life?

To not feel superior to anyone nor inferior. Feeling that way makes us feel separate from, and feeling separate from is a very lonely place to be.

What if we were to, instead, release all that judgement and superiority and inferiority and replace with humbleness, with meekness?

Here’s where our spiritual practices come in, and for our spiritual practice today I want to explore what it really means to be humble. And for that, I first go to what is probably my favorite part of the Bible, the beatitudes. In this wonderful teaching called Science of Mind, we take into account the fact that the lessons in the Bible were never meant to be taken literally, because they taught in metaphor in those days. And just as important, most modern versions of the Bible have been translated so many times that they are inaccurate, at best. I use the George Llamsa bible, which has been translated directly from the original Aramaic language of the day, and I rely on the wisdom of folks such as Llamsa, Charles Fillmore and Rocco Errico to help me get to the true meaning of the words. In true Science of Mind form, I bring you a metaphysical translation of “blessed are the humble.”

What that really means is delighted are those who place more importance on God than they do on material things.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Meek means yielding, pliable, flexible, unassuming. And the earth means our outer conditions.

What that really means is delighted are the yielding, pliable, flexible and unassuming, for they shall have control over outer conditions.

As beautiful and powerful as the beatitudes are in their entirety when translated this way, this article is more about moving out of judgement, inferiority and superiority so I’m going to leave the rest of the beatitudes for another time.

Remember, one of the ways out of judgement, inferiority and superiority and all the limitation that those traits cause for us, is to be meek and humble. To be yielding, pliable, flexible and unassuming, as well as to place more importance on god than we do on material things.

We have more wisdom to draw on however. Dr. Bob Smith, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had a plaque on his desk. I actually have these words on my desk as well. Here they are: “Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around is seeming trouble.”

It never fails. Whenever I am feeling judgmental or superior or inferior, all I have to do is read those words and they bring me back to being right sized, which is another meaning for being humble.

One way to move from Status Quo to Status GO is to take a look at where we are judgmental, superior or inferior in our lives, and to transform those fears into meekness and humbleness. To being yielding, unassuming, flexible, pliable and right sized. And to do so by placing more importance on our connection with God in our lives than we do on anything else.

To close, I bring you this definition of humility from Ernest Holmes, in the Glossary of the Science of Mind textbook: “True humility does not mean self-abasement, but is rather that attitude which Emerson tells us is willing to get its “bloated nothingness out of the way of the Divine Circuits.”

Today, I move from Status Quo to Status GO by nurturing and strengthening my connection with God.

Published on

I sure am enjoying the sunflowers! At this time of year they seem to be everywhere, showing up along side fences and roads, volunteering in various places in my garden and in the gardens of others. I love sunflowers because they simply shine their light and they produce a seed that is good for you!

What else can we ask of life? I think to shine our light, to show up and produce something good is what life is all about.

We shine our light by practicing humility, which means nothing more than knowing ourselves and allowing our true selves to flourish. Humility means we are right sized. We aren’t ego maniacs with an inferiority complex, nor are we quietly hovering in the background too unsure of ourselves to fully participate in life, nor in people’s faces insisting we be given our due. We are simply being ourselves, offering ourselves to the fullness of life. This is how we shine our light.

And we produce something good by again knowing ourselves well enough to know what it is we are meant to be doing in life. I’ve never believed in showing up to do a job one disliked, just to bring home a paycheck. Life is worth so much more than that.

We do our spiritual practices so that we can know ourselves, and in knowing ourselves, we can then know what to do to make a living. And if our perfect job does not exist, we create it. Because we have the power to do that.

Today, I am like a sunflower, shining my light and producing good in the world.

Like the image? You can purchase it in many sizes, as well as in my favorite version: refrigerator magnets! Simply scan the QR code (purchased image does not have the QR code on it) and click on the link that appears. Or, if you are on your phone, save the photo to your phone. Then go to your photos, click and hold on the photo until the drop down box appears, and an option to go to your browser will appear. Like magic!

Published on

Fear.  

It’s a biggie.

All of us have it.

Most of us deny that we have it.

Most of us don’t even know what fear looks like.  We don’t know that it looks like judgment, close mindedness, bigotry, dishonesty, depression, anxiety, prejudice, hatred.

We don’t know that is shows up as abusive behavior, violence against others, toxic codependency, addiction.  Fear even shows up as cancer and other illnesses.

Obviously fear is a big deal.

And what the Course In Miracles says, in my opinion, is true:  we are either living a fear based life or a love based life, and fear and love cannot exist together at the same time in the same entity.

Personally, fear has played a big part in my life.  I got sober, got into recovery, and discovered something very delightful:  every step I worked in that 12 step program removed some more fear for me.  Instead of fuck everything and run, my motto became face everything and recover.

And today, I have a focus ministry called Fearlessly Feral Living.  

Not because I believe fear can be completely eradicated, but because I believe we can learn to live love based lives despite fear, and that we can learn to recognize all the different ways fear shows up in our lives and deal with it compassionately and effectively.

Along comes this new book, by Dennis Merritt Jones, called When Fear Speaks, Listen:  The Seven Messages of Fear.

And he also has provided a 4 week study guide to go along with the book.  

So guess what?  It’s time for a class!  A four week class, based on the book by Dennis Merritt Jones called When Fear Speaks, Listen:  the Seven Messages of Fear.  

Here’s the details:

First of all, buy the book.  You can get it on Amazon in both print and e-version.  Secondly, read it.  Because you will show up to the first class having read the introduction and part one of the book.  You’ve got a little over a month to read the book if you buy it now.

When:  Wednesdays, from 3-5 PM Pacific time, from July 10-July 31.

Where:  Zoom. Link will be sent upon registration.

Cost:  $30

Click here to register.

Published on

Whenever I get ready to sink into an affirmative prayer, what is also called a treatment, I first glance to my outer surroundings.  I don’t know why I do this and I’ve learned not to question why in such matters. But I believe this practice is a simple way for me to move into the first of the five steps of a treatment, which is to acknowledged that god is everywhere present.

Today as I went to move into a treatment, I looked out the window and noticed the wind.  I can hear the wind, making whooshing noises as it moves around out there.  So I knew it was a windy day.  But I saw the trees moving around and thought, “oh look!  God is dancing in the trees!”  

And then I moved into the second stage of a treatment, oneness, which is where I acknowledge that if god is present everywhere, it is also present in me, and so my next thought was, “oh look!  God is dancing in MY consciousness!”

And then my next thought was the third step of treatment, which is to state my word.  And so I know that God is dancing in my consciousness, and always has been, but today I feel it.  I feel that glorious presence of spirit moving through me as divine right and perfect energy.  I feel It as the ideas that are coming to me, from both within me and from other people.  I know this God stuff dancing in my consciousness is the result of fully feeling the feels of loss, fully appreciating the healing journey, fully knowing the gratitude for that has been and all that will be, and I also know that my every intention is now come to fruition.  All those beautiful ideas coming from the dance of Spirit in my consciousness are now so.  

And for that I am very grateful.  Which is the 4th step of a treatment.

And so I release it all, except the dance part.  Because I happen to love that dance and want more dancing!  And so I shall dance my way through the release of my words to that law that is also dancing with incredible joy at my words, delightfully accepting them and acting upon them.  Which is the 5th step of a treatment.

And I anchor it all with this:  AND SO IT IS!

Published on

Creativity.  It is one of my favorite things in life.  I’m not speaking about artistic creativity here, but about creating in our lives.  In fact, I was drawn to the liberation theology of New Thought, and specifically, Science of Mind, because somewhere along the line I learned that the philosophy taught one how to create one’s life.  Or how to recreate one’s life.  At the time, I was also searching for a god that wasn’t a religious god, and in Science of Mind I found both.  From the first class I took, I was off and running into a new way of life that continues to support me, reward me and fulfill me, each and every day.  Every day I create anew.  I do this by connecting and by examining my beliefs and thoughts, and changing them when necessary.

It gets pretty heavy does it at times.

So I’ve learned that it is important for me to regularly play.  Just play.  Play is why I have rocks in my life.  Play is why I have a garden in my life.  Play is why I have horses in my life.  Play is why I have dogs and cats in my life.  

Play is a big part of creativity as well.  Play can help us lighten up and change our perspective.  Changing our perspective is what coaches call reframing.  It simply means we view an event in our life differently, so that we can heal and move on and, well, play more.  

In the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin, he says, “In play, there are no stakes. No boundaries. No right or wrong. No quotas for productivity. It’s an uninhibited state where your spirit can run free.”

How do you play?  Play is part of living Fearlessly Feral you know.  Gotta have the play time in there.  If you think you don’t know how to play, watch a little kid play.  Then go outside and do what that little kid did.  Kids play.  They just play.  It is suggested that we be as little kids.  Not all the time.  I’m not suggesting immaturity.  I’m suggesting regularly taking time out to play in and with something that you enjoy. For me it’s rocks and horses and gardening and dogs and cats.  For you it might be something entirely different.  Some folks like to build model airplanes.  Some folks like to take old cars and restore them.  Some folks like to make stuff out of wood.  Find or create your playground and go play in it.

Published on

Hello Everyone!

I am getting excited about going the annual Centers for Spiritual Living Convention in a couple of weeks! If you are going I would love to see you!

And, I would also love to see you at a book study I will be offering, beginning in March. It is based on the book called Trust: Mastering the Four Essential Elements of Trust, by Iyanla Vanzant. This book study will be a facilitated book study, meaning we won’t just be reading together but I will be guiding us into a deep dive of this great work. It will be held on Mondays, beginning March 4, for 5 weeks, from 2-4 PM Pacific time, via Zoom. Contact me to sign up.

And I’d like to share with you an insight I had simply by reading the Introduction in this book.

I think releasing needs to be added to the official list of spiritual practices in my latest book. So I’m going to add it. 

Now, you may be wondering why it wasn’t there in the first place. 

Well!

There’s the little question of what we are releasing to. Because in Science of Mind we teach that God isn’t something that is separate from us, so releasing gets a bit tricky. But stick with me!

So let me clarify a bit. And back up a bit as well. Releasing can also be called letting go or allowing. It’s the opposite of controlling. Go with the flow. Releasing is about faith and trust. Control is about fear.

And there is a happy medium there. One has to set boundaries, and take care of oneself. One can’t just willy nilly go along with whatever happens to come along, that just makes one a victim. 

I’ve learned all this stuff through personal experience. 

And to be honest, I’ve never been one to release. Mostly because my understanding of God is that It doesn’t do things, It doesn’t make decisions for us, It isn’t something that just takes care of things. God is an energy force that is a part of us, just as we are a part of It, that provides us with the power to do things, make our own decisions and take care of things. So if I release, I have nothing to release to.

Except I was experiencing some problems. Unpleasant ones. Stubborn ones. Unsolvable ones. I tried everything, and nothing worked. It was frustrating! I kept asking what these problems were wanting me to know, what they were trying to teach me, and I wasn’t getting any answers. I was just getting frustrated. 

And then, through a series of tiny little events, it occurred to me that I needed to release. In a whole bunch of areas of my life.

So I did. 

And I got instant relief.

But there’s still the whole question of what I’m releasing to. 

And I still don’t quite know. But here’s the deal: I don’t have to know. I just need to set the intention to release, and let it happen. I don’t need to worry about the how or the what. 

All I can tell you is that when I did that, I got instant relief. Instant. 

I took my blood pressure, and yep, instant relief. My veins are very grateful I did that releasing.

Yep. This spiritual stuff is powerful. 

So if you are experiencing problems, try releasing. Just letting go. Leave the question as to what you are releasing to. That is not the point here. The point is just to release. Let it go. Turn it in. Allow. 

Simply set the intention. Don’t worry about how to do it, or what to release to. Just release.

Today I release and feel the peace that results.

Thank you! Rev. Karen

Published on

Today I pay tribute to Dr. Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind, the teaching of Centers for Spiritual Living.  You know those questions that ask about the one person you would love to be able to speak with, or the one person who had the most effect on your life?  It’s this guy.  Dr. Ernest Holmes, and today was his birthday.  I was a child when I first became acquainted with the teaching he presented to the world in the form of a textbook in 1926, called the Science of Mind Textbook.  I had some other things to do in life, mainly drink, but when it came time to move to the next stage of my personal development when I was about ten years sober, I came home to that teaching and began seriously studying it and applying its principles in my life.  Each class I took, each workshop I attended changed me from the inside out and this teaching continues to do so as I live its principles.

I was unable to find out how many books Ernest Holmes wrote, but at one source I found 49 listings.  I own 21 of Ernest Holmes’ books and have read and continue to use every single one of them in my own studies and research, and for my own reminders of the truth when I need refreshers.  I read lots of other books, but I always begin and end with Ernest Holmes.  He called Science of Mind the study of spiritual psychology and that is where my heart is, in spiritual psychology.

There is a web site called the Science of Mind archives that has a wealth of information and this quote is in the bio of Ernest Holmes:  “Once, when asked to provide a concise definition of the Science of Mind teaching, he replied that it is a “correlation of laws of science, opinions of philosophy and revelations of religion applied to human needs and aspirations.”

So for his birthday I want to present to you some of my favorite Ernest Holmes quotes.  This is by no means all of them.  There are far too many to include.  And these are just from the Science of Mind textbook, and more specifically, the Introduction.  The text book itself is almost 600 pages long, and mine is filled with highlights and notes.  I didn’t include any quotes from his other books.

“To learn how to think is to learn how to live…”

“… trained thought is far more powerful than untrained,….”

“… the very air is vibrant with power.”

“The answer to prayer is in the prayer. But what is a prayer? A prayer is a movement of thought, within the mind of the one praying, along a definite line of meditation; that is, for a specific purpose.”

“We do not will things to be done; things are brought into being, not by will, but by the power of the self-assertive Truth.”

“It has been said that we can know God only in so far as we can become God.”  (See my podcast episode titled What It Does for my take on this quote.  You can find my Fearlessly Feral Living podcast wherever you listen to podcasts) 

“One of the great difficulties in the new order of thought is that we are likely to indulge in too much theory and too little practice.”  (This one quote is why, if you work with me, I tend to nag a bit about spiritual practice.)

“ We should learn to control our thought processes…”

“ A new light is coming into the world. We are on the borderland of a new experience.”

Happy Birthday Ernest Holmes!  I am so grateful for your contribution to the world, and to my life.

Published on

I’ll be blogging this but you get it first:

Is inner peace our birthright? Do we have an inherent right to inner peace simply because we exist? I don’t know if it is our birthright or not, but I can tell you this: peace is one of the attributes I request the most, particularly in the last 8 years.

And I know why I request this attribute. It’s because I believe I can’t do my work effectively if I am not at peace. This belief is the reason why self care is so important to me. If I want to be effective in the work I do in the world, I must be at peace.

Plus there’s that pesky little law of attraction that tells me I attract what I am. Which I believe to be true as well.

So I strive for peace when I don’t have it. When something pisses me off, I retreat to my cave to restore myself. That’s my first stop in self care. The next stop is processing: what am I feeling, allowing those feelings, expressing them in appropriate ways to allow them to move on out of here, then replacing those feelings with ones that once again allow me to go out into the world and do what is mine to do, effectively.

Repeat as necessary. And yes, it’s been necessary a lot since 2016. A lot.

But what if who I am, by nature of my birthright, means I can’t even begin to expect to be peaceful in this world? What if, by virtue of the color of my skin, I am faced with things that piss me off on a daily basis? On an hourly basis? How might that affect my beliefs? If I were a person of color, would peace even be on my list of things to do? Most likely not. Most likely I’d be more concerned with survival. Simple survival. Except it isn’t that simple. Simply walking out the door means, if you are a person of color, that you are entering a war zone. A place where you must constantly be on guard.

I know only a little of what that is like. As a woman, I know to be aware of my surroundings, to practice situational awareness. I know to always check the back seat of my car before getting into it. I know to always have some sort of weapon handy and to know how to use said weapon. I know some very basic defense moves. I am very aware that in a world in which many men think that women are second class citizens, I am considered prey by those men. Yeah, like most prey animals, I’m a little jumpy, especially when someone who thinks it’s ok to grab women by the pussy gets elected. When a predator gets elected. Which, if you haven’t connected the dots by now, is why it’s been necessary for me to repeat my little peace process since 2016. It’s when that pussy grabber got elected.

Why does this threaten me so much? Because we tend to emulate our leaders. This guy gets elected, and all of a sudden people have overt permission to behave as this guy behaves. They have permission to be bullies, to grope women, to belittle physically challenged people, to be judgmental, to use violence against people who disagree with them, to use more violence if they don’t get their way, to seek revenge, to carry the distorted and hateful message of white Christian nationalism. All of a sudden, the world is filled with people like this. They used to hide in the shadows. With that one election, all of a sudden they are coming out of the woodwork like super-cockroaches, no longer hiding in the dark but boldly standing in the light of day.

It’s no wonder I’m a bit jumpy. A bit prickly.

Now, if I were a different person, I would retaliate in kind. But I’m not. I’m a spiritual person. I live, breathe and move in spirituality. I believe in the power of unconditional love to heal all things. Oh, don’t get me wrong, if some bully threatens me I can and will defend myself; I have in the past and will do so again. By the way, those of you who think women should dress down so they don’t cause men to behave in inappropriate ways? Shame on you. Those of you who think boys will be boys? No. Teach those boys some respect, not that they have the right to accost a woman because she is dressed in a certain way. Those of you who think women who sleep around are sluts but men who do so are manly? Shame on you too. Those of you who think men are the head of the household? Nope. Not buying that one either. That one came from fragile men distorting the message of Jesus so they could shore up their delicate and large egos. And here I am, angry again. Yeah, prickly.

Let me try this again. Back to love. Breathing. Back to love. Ok, that’s better.

I believe in non-judgment, knowing that judging others ultimately hurts me more than anything else. I believe in forgiveness. I know the futility of attempting revenge and how opposite such a principle is to all of my beliefs. I know and believe in the concept of Oneness, and that it is thus my job to be peace and love as much as I can, because what I do and how I show up in the world does effect others. And quite frankly I’d rather affect them with love and peace than with bullying and judgment and revenge.

But the basic question remains, and is one I’ve been returning to: I’m white. I’m privileged because I don’t have to struggle to survive on a daily basis. The ism I experience is much more subtle than the ism people of color experience. They get blatant attempts on their very lives. I saw a postcard the other day that showed about a dozen black people, all dead, hanging from trees. A postcard! This morning I saw a video in which some white guy was talking about being white meant to be both a savior and a conqueror. He talked about white America and said this country was designed for them. And I got FURIOUS hearing that bullshit. That utter nonsense. The arrogance!

And I expressed my anger and a person who I respect responded to my comment with this quote from James Baldwin:

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."

Yeah. So I’m privileged. I’m not in a rage most of the time. Only part of the time.

And yeah, self care is a big fat hairy deal. Because we can’t go out in the world and expect to do effective work if we are angry.

So this is what I am up to now. Self care and social justice. The two go hand in hand. We cannot do our work effectively in this world unless we care for ourselves first.

Published on

As we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, I believe it to be quite natural that we turn to a bit of reminiscing and review, along with contemplation and setting of intentions.  

For me, on the outside, 2023 was filled with 9 talks, 5 workshops and 45 weddings.  My podcast had 368 downloads last year, and I produced 10 new episodes in 2023.  I also had the privilege of serving another community as Interim Minister, wrapping up that assignment in June. 

I entered my first shooting competition this year and won a prize!  

I spent six months in 2023 venturing into the world of online dating.  I went on a lot of dates, met a lot of interesting people, and learned that I am no longer willing to settle.  Still single over here and happy with that.

I have been working on my third book for a couple of years now and quite frankly, I was stuck.  The book began life as a daily reader and it just wasn’t coming out.  I had an epiphany while cleaning the horses’s stalls one day, and realized I needed to change the focus and emphasis of the book.  A few edits and tweaks later and now the book is coming along nicely.  It will be called “How to Live Fearlessly Feral” and will be a deep dive into spiritual practices and principles.  Complete with monthly recommendations for leaning into, embodying and applying a different practice and principle each month.  It will have four main sections, and I’m happy to report the first three sections are complete!  

I think my greatest accomplishment this year has been in horseback riding.  I got diagnosed with PTSD when I got sober at 32 years old, and while I have experienced years of symptom free living it reared its head after a series of major changes and it has affected my horse back riding more than anything else.  And no, it has nothing to do with the horse and everything to do with PTSD.  I had symptoms in other areas as well, but they were strongest with the horses back riding.  With the patient and excellent work of an equine coach, I have been able to progress to the point where I am once again enjoying riding.  I’ve gone from not being able to even get on to being able to ride again with joy.  And that is wonderful.

One cannot do spiritual practices on a daily basis without having inner shifts and I experienced several of those.  I am grateful for all of them and today I live life more confident and feeling whole.  And I am grateful for that as well.   

Now comes to good part:  creation of 2024.  And here is where we leave the past behind.  We move forward into the future and use the practices of self awareness, connection, contemplation and setting of intentions to create what we want to create in the coming year.  Meditation is good for clarity if you are unsure as to what you want life to look like in this coming year.  Those practices exist for a reason and you can use them to your benefit.

This is the beauty of this teaching called New Thought.  We are at choice.  We are powerful.  In fact, another name for New Thought is Liberation Theology and I love that!  Use those spiritual practices.  Do them consistently and persistently and watch your life become liberated from limitations like fear and shame and guilt and all that other nasty stuff.  Do those spiritual practices persistently and consistently and watch your ability to create grow.  

We create by being at peace with the old and being able to leave it behind.  This creates a void, and we use spiritual practices to decide what we want to create.  I mentioned them already.  Self awareness, connection, contemplation and setting of intentions.

None of this New Year’s resolutions stuff.

By the way, those spiritual practices I keep mentioning?  They come in handy in other ways as well.  Yes, we have power.  Yes, we are at choice.  But none of what we teach guarantees that shit won’t happen.  It can and it does.  And it does so not because we thought it into existence.  Sometimes shit just happens.  Don’t go all shame based and blame yourself because shit happened.  That’s where our power comes in.  

Back to the future (see what I did there?). We get to set things up the way we want to set them up. Mary Oliver asked, “what is it you want to do with your one wild and crazy life?”  When you know the answer to that, also know that you can create that.

On tap for 2024:  publication of my third book, continued podcasting, giving talks and doing workshops.  More horse back riding, more competitive shooting. More speaking out against Christian nationalism, racism, misogyny, and politicians who believe in those things, including and especially that orange menace that is threatening our very democracy.  I have some exciting things on tap for 2024 and I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds!

This is the perfect time of year to begin anew.  To release the past with gratitude and forgiveness, if necessary, and to start fresh with new ideas and dreams, knowing you have within you a power that you can use.  I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds for you as well.

And I leave you with this quote by Hunter S. Thompson:  "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well preserved piece, but to slide across the finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and shouting GERONIMO!!!"