lara simmons

I was going to title this post "Gone Fishing," but I don't fish. Nonetheless I am taking some time off from blogging over the next few weeks to spend time with my family and enjoy the summer before it's gone. I will return sometime in August. If you'd like to be notified when I return, please SIGN UP to receive posts via email in the right-hand sidebar. In the meantime I hope that you are spending the summer doing something you love. PEACE ☮

On Saturday afternoon a friend and I headed to the spa for a relaxing soak. In order to do this I had to leave my fourteen year old on his own for a few hours. I have done this before and knew he could handle it, but I wanted to make sure that I had my cell phone in case he needed to contact me. I checked my phone before leaving and the battery was at 32%. Not critical, but low, so I decided to plug it in for a few minutes before I left. As soon as I made that decision I heard a tiny voice in my head say, "If you plug it in you will forget it. Why not just charge it in the car on the way there?" This was a perfectly reasonable suggestion, one which I decided to ignore. I walked over to my charging cord, plugged in my phone and sat down on the couch nearby to wait for my friend to arrive. When the doorbell rang I sprang up, grabbed my bag, slipped into my shoes and walked out the door - you guessed it - forgetting my phone in the process. Half-way to the spa I realized w

And here we go again! One theme flows from another as we continue the conversation with each other, with ourselves and with the great and powerful Universe which speaks to each and every one of us if we will but listen. The theme this week is INTUITION or LISTENING TO YOURSELF. As important as it is to listen to others , it is equally important to listen to ourselves . Here are some of my favorite quotes about listening to yourself. I hope you enjoy them and that they inspire you to pay closer attention to that still small voice inside: "In our 'doing' society, we have a zeal for sorting out our agenda and implementing it. But in my experience the world is there to guide you at every moment. The world is calling you to come play, to come risk, to come let your heart burn with a passion that will make sense of your life. The world will speak to you as intimately as your mother did when you were a child, if you can allow the body to teach you its different way of list

"To listen well, we must attend both to the words and the silence between the words."  --William Issacs in "A Matter of Spirit," the  Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center  quarterly newsletter Listening well is not easy, but it is a skill that can be developed with a willingness to learn and some practice. One of the techniques crucial to being a good listener is shutting the hell up. Also known as pausing. It is easy to get on a roll during a conversation and forget to pause and listen to the other person. This can be especially hard after asking a question. My husband takes a lot longer to answer a question than I do and it can sometimes be excruciating to wait (and wait....and wait....and wait....) for his answer. But it is important to do so. If you think you may need practice, watch the video above and listen for the birdsong. If it is hard for you to wait to hear it, pausing during conversations with others may be an important skill for you to

The theme this week follows  last week's almost magically. Listening is an important part of any good relationship and it is not an easy skill. It is hard to listen without judgement, to listen without interrupting, to listen without jumping in to share or solve. To just listen. I encourage you to try it this week and hope the quotations I have chosen will inspire you to listen well: "To listen well, we must attend both to the words and the silence between the words."  --William Issacs in "A Matter of Spirit," the  Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center  quarterly newsletter "The first duty of love is to listen." -- Paul Tillich "Listen to those who open a path to you; listen and don't say a word." -- RUMI "O Great Spirit help me always to speak the truth quietly, to listen with an open mind when others speak and to remember the peace that may be found in silence." -- Cherokee prayer "...[Y]our l

Continuing on with the theme for the week - RELATIONSHIPS - I want to share with you another quote that is really speaking to me today. It is from Deepak Chopra's book "Buddha," which is a fictionalized account of the Buddha's life. In this passage Buddha is speaking to his disciple Assaji: "When you're obsessed with hatred for someone, it's inevitable that you will return one day as his disciple." “Master, I just hope he's better when he comes back,” Assaji said doubtfully.  “He will be arrogant and proud,” said Buddha, “But it won't matter. The fire of passion burns out eventually. Then you dig though the ashes and discover a gem. You pick it up, you look at it with disbelief. The gem was inside you all the time. It is yours to keep forever. It is buddha.”  I have been struggling this week with hatred so this passage really spoke to me. Earlier today I did a meditation in which I spent time inside my heart feeling the hatred and

"Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we’re blocked. Seeing this is helpful, but it’s also painful. Sometimes we use it as ammunition against ourselves: we aren’t kind, we aren’t honest, we aren’t brave, and we might as well give up right now. But when we apply the instruction to be soft and nonjudgmental to whatever we see at this very moment, the embarrassing reflection in the mirror becomes our friend. We soften further and lighten up more, because we know it’s the only way we can continue to work with others and be of any benefit in the world. This is the beginning of growing up." -- Pema Chodron "Fucked up people will try to tell you otherwise, but boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments, or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing: the basic principles you identify for yourself that define t