Fearlessly Feral Living!
Fearlessly Feral Living!
Rambles and Rumbles
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I offer something different in this podcast: less scripted, more off the cuff. I hope you enjoy it!
Well, welcome, welcome, welcome, everybody. This is Reverend Karen coming at you. Welcome to Fearlessly Feral Living, broadcasting to you from the Wookiee Ranch in the back 40 of northwestern Nevada, where I'm a good half an hour from the nearest gas station and the nearest grocery store, and where wide open space is both a lifestyle and a spiritual teacher. This podcast explores practical, real-life ways to apply new thoughts, spiritual principles, and practices so that you can create a deeply successful, meaningful life and live creatively, courageously, and successfully. And Fearlessly for All Living is a focused ministry of Centers for Spiritual Living devoted to cultivating a world where every person lives wild, awake, free, and unapologetically alive. So today I'm going to do something a little different. This is totally ad-lib, you guys. Totally ad-lib. I have been feeling a need to check in with you. I've got like a dozen podcast articles, um, scripts, notes, things started to share with you. One is called Fun, Fearlessly Unleashed Now. One's about fear and faith. One's about vulnerability. One is about um uh fear hiding our power. One is about our triune nature. Um, one is about living outside the box. I've got all kinds of stuff started here, and they're all in various stages of being finished. And if I wait to finish one of them, you guys will never get a podcast. So I thought I'm just gonna ramble on here a little bit and share with you what's going on out here in the back 40. So I do live in northern Nevada, I'm about an hour and change south of Reno. I'm about a little less than an hour east of Lake Tahoe. And so uh I live in the high desert, and we've had some abnormally warm weather here for the last couple of weeks. It's been in the 70s every single day. And while for us it's a false spring, we those of us who've lived here, I've lived here my whole life, those of us who've lived here for a long time know the frost is going to return. We're probably gonna get some more snow, but for now, we're enjoying the warmth. And um, we don't plant anything outside here until after Memorial Day because of snow and frost. So um in the meantime, and I'm enjoying very much the warm weather and um pulling weeds, the weeds are coming up with this warm weather, and um I'm getting ready to go to convention. So, Centers for Spiritual Living has a convention, and this year it's in Reno, so it's really close for me. It was a no-brainer for me to attend this convention, although I've attended most of them as the years have gone on, wherever they've been held. And uh this year I'm doing something really fun and exciting at this convention. My third book, How to Live Fearlessly Feral. I'm gonna try to get those those um reflections out of there. Um anyway, it's out. And uh I've got a exhibitors table at the convention where I'll be selling the book. So if you're going to the Spiritual Living Convention, stop by the table and see me. I'm sharing my table with another minister named Reverend Sarah Nichols. Her first book is is um coming out or is out now. I can't remember her exact timeline. So she's gonna be selling her books as well. I'm calling it the How To Table because my book's called How to Live Fearlessly, Feral. Her book is titled How to Know What You Know. They're both based in Science of Mind principle, which is pretty exciting. I also want to mention about my book. So in Science of Mind, we talk about principle a lot around here. Like oneness is a principle, love is a principle. Well, how do you live oneness? How do you be oneness? How do you do that? Well, that's what I set out to explain in my book. So I've got a whole list of principles in my book and a description of them in how to go about living them. Because I can guarantee you, if you base your life in spiritual principle rather than in things like personalities or control or dollar signs, or someone recently was describing basing a decision on how long it took to do it one way versus another way. And I asked her, I said, if you want to do this, how why would it matter how long it took? So if we live in principle, all that outer stuff, money and timelines and all that stuff becomes almost irrelevant, really, in the overall scheme of things. When we live in principle, we open up room for um that thing, that wonderful force, some of us call it God, to work in our life. When we live in principle, we can do and be different than we've ever done and been before. And so my book really dials in, okay, how do you live in principle? How do you base your decisions on principle? And I have a really good example for you about basing a decision in principle rather than on a dollar sign. So for about six or seven years now, I've been subcontracting out to a national company that specializes in on location elopements, weddings, small weddings, and um, you know, it's been fun and easy to work with them. However, lately it's not been so fun, and it's not been so easy. I won't go into details. And I started to remember that if it isn't fun, I don't do it. And so I did a little research to decide how much money I was making from this company in a year, and it was a little bit, not a lot, it was some. It was nice to have the extra income. But given everything else, and given my principle of living in integrity with my values, because some of the things they were doing weren't in integrity with my own value system. Um, living in principle that, you know, I believe we're here in life to have fun. I totally ignored the dollar sign and resigned my position from them. And uh, I'm still doing weddings for myself, but not for them, not for them. And boy, I felt like a big weight was lifted off my shoulders when I did that. So that's just one example about how to live in principle. And you know what? I teach this stuff, I write about this stuff, I do this stuff, I live this stuff, and I experienced so much fear and hesitation leading up to this decision, you guys. And it's normal when we make a decision based on principle rather than on facts and figures and timelines and all that stuff, it gets kind of scary. So, inter-spiritual practice, which for me meant utilizing my prayer partners and asking for increased faith and for knowing the truth about who and what I am, and knowing the truth about how God shows up in our life, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Um, this is what happens when I add that. You get a lot of blah, blah, blah, and uh and a lot of treatment work, a lot of personal writing that will never see the light of day in any of my articles. Um, and when I finally made a decision, I felt so good. I felt like a big weight had been lifted off my shoulders. And today I know, today I know that that extra income is going to be filled in somehow, some way. And I'm actually pretty excited about that. And I'm starting to envision and create things because you know, if you're in touch, if you're spiritually fit, if you're doing the practices that are also mentioned in my book, if you get an idea, there is a yes there. That's the creative process. So I'm pretty excited about that. Um, the other part that's in the book at the back end of it is a year-long guide. It's a monthly guide. Each guide takes a principle and a practice, and you're meant to take a deep dive into that principle and practice for the month. So that by the end of the year, you're living fearlessly, Pharaoh, whether you want to or not. I really believe in this book strongly. That said, there's a couple of issues with the actual physical book itself. Uh, the publisher I chose to produce this book for me has messed up a bit. There's a table of contents in the book, but guess what, guys? There's no page numbers. So you can go to the table of contents, and there's this really cool table of contents. It's got all the principles listed and all the practices listed, and then the guide at the end. But and they got the page numbers, but the page numbers aren't listed in the book. So there's that. Um, Amazon has yet to offer my book in print version for sale. It's been on there as um uh I forget the the lingo they use, not available at this time or sold out or something. Um and apparently there's a glitch in ordering the copy from my publisher in their software. So if you want a copy of the book, contact me directly. I have copies. I will ship one to you if you want a print version. If you want a um a digital version, Amazon has it and you can get it like right now, instantly. I will be working on an audible version. I am currently recording an audible version of my first book, New Thought Journey Through the 12 Steps. This little guy still sells, and I wanted to do the audible version of this one before um I work on the long because look at the difference in thickness between these things. I mean, one book's really tiny and the other one's really big. So um, yeah, working my way through that. So that's pretty exciting stuff, and yes, I will be selling it at the convention as well. So if you're at the convention, I would love to see you. You I'll be easy to find. They've got all the exhibitors in this one central place called the gathering place, and um, I'll be in there more frequently than not. Uh, some of the other things that are going on, um, some wonderful community out here in the back 40. And uh, I've got some people that have joined me that are new on a spiritual path, let's say, and uh it's quite beautiful and wonderful and awesome to see their growth and have them join me and participate in things here. And uh, I've been having some little gatherings where I do a potluck and then we play card games, and one of them's making noises about wanting to have a barbecue here. I mean, I have plenty of space, so um, I mean, my house is tiny, but I live on two and a half acres, so uh lots of room to play outdoors on this property. So there's lots of beautiful community-wide things going on here, and um I had something very cool happen yesterday where I went and visited um a couple, and they live like like most of my folks that listen, like for most of you who listen to this podcast, you're all over the world, but there's a few local people. This lady lives about 40 minutes away from me, and um, it's a couple I've known for a long time, and the lady has taken my workshops and and she participates, and I consider her a member of Fearlessly Fair Living. So I went and paid them a visit, and um, her husband has dementia, and she's his primary caregiver, and it was just a beautiful visit. And during the course of the visit, she mentioned to me that he still likes to read the Science of Mind textbook, and that a while back he picked up his copy of the textbook and it fell apart. So this morning I put out an email to um the membership of Centers for Spiritual Living, the Ministers, basically, and I asked them for a donation of two Science of Mind textbooks because she told me she wanted one for her and one for him. Within 10, possibly 15 minutes, I got that donation. And so the books are on their way here, and when they get here, I will be um physically delivering them to her, one for him and one for her. So there's just some really wonderful things happening about that. And the other thing I wanted to address in this podcast is there are so many people hurting right now. The atrocities continue every single day. There's so much evil going on if you believe in evil. I once had a student in Foundations class who was struggling with the concept of evil, and what she finally came up with is something that I found very beautiful that I still use to this day. She said that evil is not God-produced, it's not from God, it's from people. And we have some people in leadership right now that are doing a lot of evil things. And, you know, it really sucks being empathic. It really sucks being aware. And one of the the gifts, and it is a gift, but sometimes it doesn't feel like a gift, but one of the gifts of embodying oneness is that uh we get we have this realization that we are connected with everybody else in the world, and and thus we feel things. So I feel things, I feel the angst of everybody, and I feel the dismay and the sadness and the grief of so many people in this country. And the one of the results of this is that it has um basically forced me to be even more diligent and more disciplined about my spiritual practice. In my book, I call it Gentle Discipline, and the explanation is in there. Anyway um, I'm gonna keep talking about the book, so you might as well just buy it and read it, and then you can respond to me and about some of this stuff. But um, so many people have written me or spoken with me over the phone privately and told me that they are so grateful for my regular writings because in my writings I try to be uh proactive and positive and recommend ways to not only survive but thrive during this time. I publish my writings on Substack, by the way. So um Substack's really, really cool. It's social media, but it's not anything like Facebook or Twitter, um, or that whatever name they're calling it these days. It's totally different. It's filled with people who write, and they write profound and moving things. And it's Substack's just pretty incredible. So all my stuff is produced on Substack, and uh it's another way to support Fearlessly Fair A Living, by the way. You can pay for a subscription or just sign up and get a free subscription. But there's goodies on the paid subscription. On the paid subscription, uh, you get more intimate access to me, and you can call me and talk to me about whatever you're feeling about, and I will talk back and with you, and we will share, and it's it's pretty cool. So if you support in that way, you can also support the podcast as well. But um these people subscribe to my articles on Substack. And so what happens with Substack is when you publish an article, anybody who's subscribed, that article lands in their email box. So they don't even have to go to Substack to read it. It's in their email, which I love. I absolutely love. And um, like I said, I try to be proactive, I try to provide ways to cope with what's happening right now, with the grief and the sadness and the anger and the what do we do about this and these these questions like um things like why would God allow this to happen? Which opens up a whole can of worms that is way too much stuff for me to talk about here. But I write about this stuff on Substack, so I hope you will go and and read some stuff and maybe subscribe and and uh I hope I hear from you. So that's some of the things that's going on over here. Um, like I said, I just wanted to add lib and share with you some things that are happening after the convention. A couple things are gonna happen. One is I'm gonna re-release the book under a different publisher so that I can get take care of all these little problems that are happening with the distribution of the book and with the fact that it's got a table contents but no page numbers. Uh, I don't know how that slipped through the cracks, honestly. Um, it shouldn't have, but it did. And so I'm gonna take care of that. The other thing that's gonna happen upon my return from the convention is I'm gonna start offering classes and workshops again. So I hope you will stay tuned. And I thank you very much for listening. And I'm gonna read this little closing thing I have here for you. So, in closing, until next time, remember, you don't have to live without fear to live a powerful life. You just simply have to stop letting fear be the one holding the reins. And I want to repeat that. Just stop letting fear hold your reins and control your decisions. And if fearlessly feral speaks to your wild and authentic spirit, then you can support this ministry, as I mentioned, through a donation or membership or by subscribing to my Substack. Supporting what feeds your soul helps it grow stronger in your life and keeps this message moving forward. So I encourage you to stay wild, stay awake, stay free, and keep on living fearlessly feral. And know that fear is not your enemy, it's simply untamed energy waiting for your direction. And you can harness that fear and use it, and you can trust your spiritual nature, and so I am knowing fearlessly feral living for me and for you. Thank you very much.