Search Results for: Does Your Path Have a Heart?

The Power Of Your Blessing

Living Our Deeper Song

Ashe
(“Ah-Shay”)
 The Creative in me honors the Creative in you!

For a moment I was stopped by the word “blessing” and I paused to see why. I realized I had momentarily gotten caught up in the religious definition of blessing and didn’t think I had the power to do so. It was the job of someone of a higher station or impact than I saw myself. I looked up the synonyms for blessing – dedication, grace, absolution, benediction, commendation, consecration, invocation – and I began to see why I felt that I could not offer a blessing. So for me the word ‘blessing” was tied to a person of status being permitted to bless, a status I wasn’t certain I had achieved. And that is not true.

This came up for me in a meditation by Roel Crabbe in which he said, “Offer your blessings”. And I realized I was an occasional “good luck” or a blessing before meals person but I had not added many places in my life in which I offer a blessing. 

I found my answer in Shamanism. “Blessings are special ceremonies intended on ushering in positive energy.” I can do that. You can do that. We can bless anything with a spirit (and that’s everything).

Ceremony is used to usher in positive change. The change of seasons, a move to another environment, a change to a new job, to your home, to your day.  You can bless anything with a spirit – and that’s everything in shamanism. I/we have some work to do. 

Where will you send your blessings and how will you send them? What kind of ceremony will you create? It could be long or short. It could be anytime and anywhere. It begins with an intention that then becomes draped in a ceremony of your design.

I sing and drum to the directions each day but I hadn’t thought of it as a blessing to my day. I can deepen my intention. I have gotten out of the habit of offering a blessing of gratitude to the food that I receive, to the people who grow it, the people who transport it, the people who prepare it. They all deserve my gratitude and blessings for the work that they do.

Blessings are special ceremonies intended on ushering in positive energy.

I have a daily ceremony to clean away any negative or unsupportive energy that was released during the night and I put up a protective shield of positive energy around the space I live in.  I send a blessing to the well-being of my body and its self-healing. I send a blessing of protection out to the world – for planet Earth and its inhabitants. I do that every day. 

I’m going to expand the ceremonies that I use to begin my day. I bless my work in general but I can use more specific phrases than “bless my work”, like “may the words touch hearts and change lives.” I can say, “My body continues to strengthen and support my work in the world.”

How active is your “blessing practice”? Make a conscious choice and make it creative, timely and tune into what’s going on in your life and smooth the pathway with a blessing. See it as a living and powerful door-opener for positive change.

DEEPER SONG AFFIRMATION

I mindfully expand my spiritual practice by offering blessings.

DEEPER SONG PROCESS 

• Create a blessing for your work or anything you share with others. I have a blessing in my books but I am going to begin to consciously bless this newsletter. Even though my intention is to change lives and offer new thoughts, up until now I have not had a ceremony of completion as I send it out. 
• I will get more detailed and creative and imaginative in a blessing that I offer each day.
• I will consciously set up a protective transformative shield before I go to sleep and in the morning consciously release anything that does not serve me. It will be a ceremony of creating sacred space in which to rest.
• There are many ways to design a blessing of change. The Solstices and Equinox come to mind. The beginning of each week also deserves a blessing and gratitude. 
• Where will you add blessings?

===INNER WORK===

Deepen Your Inner Awareness

Seek Silence

“In the attitude of silence, the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. “ – Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

I could spend more time in contemplative silence. I have an active spiritual practice but I need to spend more time in meditative silence. It’s simply a conscious, aware choice I need to make. Contemplating silence. An empty mind. Space for Spirit to speak to me.  I can do that…

Creating Miracles

The two things that block us from believing we can create miracles are our perception of separateness and the fact that we don’t believe we can create miracles.

Let’s begin with feeling separate.

Close your eyes and put energy around your body and connect with source energy. It is all powerful, ever present, it is who we are. We are light energy expressing ourselves as humans. When we remember our source connection, our source existence, we can touch and change everything. Then it is our responsibility to keep our focus on being light and working for the highest good for all. That is our job. To be light. To radiate out light. 

We do that by making certain we live light, as light. It is a matter of conscious choice.

What is a miracle and can we make one? 

A miracle is simply something that we often believe we can’t create. Sometimes it is a small shift or experience that feels like a miracle because it was unexpected and unplanned. Miracles often surprise us because they seemed impossible and are often unexpected. 

What happens if you changed that belief?  What happens if you started expecting a miracle? Perhaps you’d like to give it a try.  

Explore yourself as the light you are and experience your radiant power. 

 ===SELF-HEALING===

Take Responsibility for Healing Yourself

Healing With Music

Music can be healing and balancing and stimulating. In David Gibson’s sound healing book he suggests making a personal music list according to these categories:

1.To wake up to 

2.To get inspired 

3.To calm down or go to sleep 

4.To open the heart (without the nostalgia) 

5.To connect to Source 

6.For learning 

7.To be productive mentally and/or physically 

8.To meditate 

9.Opening your creative channels 

10.Helping you to focus on a project 

11.Relieving specific pain

12.Working with a specific illness or disease. 

You can also categorize your list this way: Is it good for: 

1.Grounding 

2.Clearing emotions or activating you sensually.

3.Empowering you. 

4.Opening your heart. 

5.Creativity and expressing your heart or thoughts (also good to tone or sing with). 

6.Opening the third eye and accessing your intuition about things. 

7. Connecting you to your Soul, Spirit or Source.

I have a number of classical pieces that fit this but Sibelius Violin Concert in D Minor by Camilla Wicks connects me to my soul. And this interpretation of the same piece by Hillary Hann  stirs me to action. If you have a song you like, check out various artists performing it and see how/if it changes your experience.

There are a lot of classical compositions that stir my soul. I will now go and identify them for this list. I will add a little Carol King and Rod McKuen. It will be fascinating to identify and use my personal play list. Will you join me?

I am Capable Of Healing Myself

I have not hard-wired this into my belief system yet but I’m working on it. I am surrounded by western medicine and caring staff but I am left on my own to do the holistic work – which I am doing with enthusiasm. 

At the base is my belief in the wholeness of our/my energy. I need to tap that, cultivate that, encourage that and utilize that at all levels.

I am doing several things and the edema in my legs is getting better. We are doing new things on the physical level as members of nursing staff take care of me, but I have to work on the energy plane. I’m sending energy in the form of humming and toning. I’m doing the work. And it’s working. 

What does it take for you to heal yourself? Do you need to up your game? Do you believe you are capable of healing yourself and how are you going about doing that?

===OUTER WORK===

Explore New Potential and Possibilities

Are You Living The Life You Want?

And if not, why not?

First you have to know what you want. You get to dream a bit, imagine yourself in different scenarios, try them on to see how they feel and how they fit you. Sometimes spending time to explore some “what ifs” is enough to send you down a new path of exploration. 

You are never stuck, you are never locked in. You always have a choice. Go exploring and forge a new path for yourself. Make certain you are living the life you want.  Open yourself up to new adventures – and dip your toe in the water…

Highest Good For All

We must learn to choose the higher good for all.  I watch the Republican politicians ignore the needs of the majority of people in order to cultivate their own need for power.  People who are truly powerful are aligned with the majority of people.  They are flexible and creative. And they are focused on the highest good for all.  

Politicians are theoretically caregivers of the people of their districts whether all those people voted for then or not.

Where are the statesmen?

Who are you responsible for caring for? At work? At home?  In your interactions with others? 

Schedule Breaks

Adding breaks to stand up and move throughout your day is an incredibly powerful health choice. The “Pomodoro Technique” suggest that you work in focused 20 – 25 minute stints followed by a 3 – 5 minute break.

Set your timer and give yourself a break!

===DEEPEN YOUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE===

Self-Healing Spiritual Practice and Deepening Awareness of Our Cosmic Oneness

Keep Ceremony In Your Spiritual Practice

As briefly mentioned in the opening of this newsletter, having daily ritual or ceremony in our lives is very important to keep us connected to what really matters. It is also a lovely bridge between the past and the future. We honor what has happened and envision our future. We examine our lessons and adjust our path. It is time to rethink and re-choose and step forward with fresh insights and determination.  

Create a ceremony of cleaning and releasing as you begin your day. Develop a ceremony around preparing and eating a meal. Create ceremony around tidying and cleaning your space – arranging it to enhance the space, and organizing and clearing it for proficient use. Create a ceremony around beginning and ending work. Create a ceremony around being with family. A ceremony of being in nature. Walk through your day with ceremony and conscious awareness.

Notice Where Your Choices Have Led You 

It is lovely to learn to trust your own path and the choices you made that got you where you are today. I think if we pause to reflect, we will see only valuable lessons that were learned as we made our choices.

Gratitude is a powerful reminder of the gifts we’ve been given and the choices we have made.

=== DEEPER SONG PHILOSOPHIES ===

Live Deliberately

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…” 

― Henry David Thoreau

Live deliberately. Live mindfully. Make your choices with deep awareness and consciousness. 

How do you live deliberately? How do you suck out all the marrow of what you find around you so you’re sure you have received its deepest lessons and insights and blessings?

You have to make space in your life. You have to build in pauses in the form of moments of meditation, and by looking out the window and simply being present. 

When you savor a meal you eat slowly, you are present with each bite, each taste, and the effect it is having on your body. That’s part of the experience of eating. You eat deliberately. You eat mindfully. 

How do you live deliberately? How do you live with an expanded consciousness that allows you to experience all the world has to offer? 

You need to slow down. You need to take mindful pauses. You need to be aware. And you need take time to savor each moment of your life. 

Stillness open doors. Stillness will help you be present. Stillness works to focus your awareness. 

Be still. Be present. Be aware. Be. And listen to the whispers of the universe. It is talking to you.

===HOW TO BE A STRONG CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF THE CIRCLE OF LIGHT BEARERS===

Expand Your Role in the Rapidly Evolving Universe

Stand Steady In Your Own Light

You may not like what I’m going to say here, particularly if you have been married for huge number of years, as in most of your life. But I am an advocate of cycles. A cycle to have a family, a cycle to develop a career, a cycle to develop a different career if you choose. And for me it is always about walking the path alone even if I joined up with someone for a portion of it. So my view is if two people stay together all of their lives, neither one of them will have had the opportunity to reach their full potential because there was always compromise as a couple. They were never free to fully explore and follow their own wisdom and calling. It was always compromise because of a relationship. Some people choose that.

I talked with someone recently who is not in a very good relationship but says she’s 55 and is hesitant to go off and live her own life. The majority of my friends are in their 60s and some are starting new careers or forgetting new paths for themselves. They have another 30 or 40 years to express a new calling and whatever new path or profession they decide to pursue. Some are going into healing, some are teaching. Some are expanding a long, cherished talent. 

I am 90 and the role I am playing now as a bridge between Holistic Medicine and Western Medicine is the most important role I’ve had in my entire life. Circumstance brought me here, but probably it was fate and the direction I’ve been going in all my life. You never know when you’re going to step into your personal circle of influence where everything falls into place – your skills, your calling, your gifts, your perfect target audience.  Be ready to step into that. Be ready to let go of the familiar and explore your unique vision and touch the lives and hearts of those who are drawn to your light. Be a beacon. Stand steady in your own light so others can find you.

Your Role As A Wisdom Keeper

Raise Your Sights and Your Expectations 

How Do You Share Your Wisdom?

The CEO brought his 15-year-old son in to see the unusual collection of items I use in my spiritual practice. I cheerfully demonstrated my Tibetan Singing Bows and Kalimba and even shared my heart rock with him which he felt in his chest.

I shared with a staff person how much I valued my choice to walk my path primarily alone, allowing the nudges and bops on the head that helped me expand my path. 

I share my curiosity and my enthusiasm in this newsletter and one staff person says it is the highlight of her week. 

Keep an eye out for when something you say resonates with and impacts another person. Not to keep score, just to become aware of how valuable and impactful your mere presence is. Keep finding new ways to share your wisdom. 

===BROADEN YOUR HORIZON – EXPAND YOUR VIEW===

Choose A Way Of Life That Fits Your Personality And Need Not Meet The Needs Of Others

If you were alone in the world without emotional connections or responsibilities, what would you do? How would you express your personality? How would you fulfill your needs? What would you say or do? 

Begin with the word “no”. No, I don’t want to do that. No, I don’t want to experience that now. No, I don’t want to go in that direction. No is a very empowering word. You should use it with awareness and determination and a deep sense of power.

If you are involved with others as a parent or a spouse or an offspring, you have made compromises.  Where do you draw the line? How do you draw the line?

What unique gifts or unique lessons do you need to learn? Sometimes they are entwined. We may have an expanded gift of generosity that may allow ourselves to be run over by others. 

Where do you draw the line? How do you draw the line?

Begin by noticing what others ask of you the most. It might be time, it might be physical support you are being asked for because you’re willing to give but where do you draw the line? And how do you draw the line? 

I don’t think we are brought into this world to subjugate ourselves to the lives of another as a parent or child or spouse. We are here to fulfill our own destiny, to walk our own path.

Part of our responsibility is to not be pulled off course by the needs, demands, and requests and expectations of others.

Unless that’s what we allow ourselves to be.

What is your role? What do you want to do? What do you need to release in order to do that? Do that.

Make sure your way of life, the past you chosen and your interaction with others, fit your personality, your needs, and your overarching calling. Don’t compromise. You have a responsibility to fulfill. Do that. 

Watch For The Nudges 

The nudges were pretty big and a surprise to me. First the CEO asked me to speak to the leadership team. That totally surprised me but I was glad for the opportunity. 

Then I was asked to give a talk to the residents of this long-term care community. I talked on sound healing because I knew it was empowering even for those win low mobility.

I have found myself in conversations about leadership with individuals who are leaders and even a conversation about leaving a non-supported relationship to stand on your own at age 60. I’ve been a bridge to a 15-year-old who held my gray river rock in his hand and said it touched his heart. I have opened new doors of exploration to 19-year-olds who are starting their journey. I have had people who work here say my newsletter is the highlight of their week. I get emails from around the world sharing the way my words have impacted their life, and made them think, and rethink their choices.

This newsletter is full of nudges. I read a phrase or sentence in my email notices and end up writing an entire segment on it in order to figure it out for myself and share it with you. 

Call it a nudge, call it an alert, call it an unexpected circumstance or opportunity, or even something someone says that turns you in a whole different direction. These are our nudges from the universe. Pay attention and enjoy them as wisdom being shared for you to consider. Keep an eye out for the nudges of the universe and let them open new doors for you.

Align Your Vibration And Frequency To The Sources Of Life Around You

Be still and listen to the sounds of nature and the messages of peace and serenity it sends to you. 

Feel our oneness. Oneness with nature. Oneness with others. Oneness with the planet. Oneness with the Cosmos. Immerse yourself in it. Let yourself rest and restore within the wholeness of that energy and move out into your life restored, replenished, walking in the light of wholeness. 

Be in true union with Source. Align your vibration and frequency to the Sources of life around you.

Listen to the tonality and messages and interactions as friends and loved ones ask you to experience their ongoing love and support.

What are your thoughts telling you? What is your body telling you? What are your emotions telling you? 

Sometimes it’s a simple matter of tuning in. Other times it seems to take a bop on your head to make you look and listen and reconsider. 

Immerse yourself in the experience of being Source – one with All-That-Is. Experience our oneness. Experience the collective energy. Align yourself with the highest energy, the highest good for all and let it guide you through life. 

Listen With Your Heart

When we begin to listen with our hearts rather than our heads, our whole world changes and becomes softer.

What is that person feeling underneath her words, and how can I touch her heart? What is she not saying that is still unspoken?

Listen with your heart to what their heart is trying to express. Perhaps you help them clarify their feelings. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you just listen. Then they can heal themselves and achieve their unspoken desires.

Listen deeply. Listen from that soul place of interconnectedness. Listen with your heart and experience our oneness. 

===OUR EVOLVING FUTURE===

Support and Encouragement for our Unfolding Role in the Future

Your Work Ahead

We are to build our life on our Light Within. As we do, our light in the world grows brighter. That light attracts others who recognize their own light within and turn and share it with others. As more and more people recognize the power of their light and stay centered in it and share it with others, our whole world shifts. 

What needs to change in your life?

Spend more time with people living in light and learn from them. Become a beacon in your own right. Focus on raising the vibration of your own personal choices. We are One. Feel that. Be that. Live that.

=== ===THE UNFOLDING DIVINE FEMININE=== ===

Explore and Interpret the Guidance and Messages of the Divine Feminine

The Divine Feminine Is about Inclusiveness

There is a lot of hatred in my country, hatred of the ideas of other people, hatred of their race, their culture, their sexual orientation, their mere existence. 

I don’t know why it is there other than feeling inferior and not knowing what to do about it. These people are using Christianity to spread hatred. That makes no sense. I’m very holistic in my spirituality but I was Christian once and ‘love the neighbor as thyself” was and is a core doctrine. 

What is happening? Why is hatred so core to the functioning of the entire group of people? 

I believe in inclusiveness just as much as they believe in separateness. To look at this from the perspective of the emergence of the Divine Feminine, I know that inclusiveness is core to her work. Somehow this circumstance is making us choose. We must choose to be inclusive or we must choose hatred – which truly separates us from our hearts. It looks like a pretty easy choice to me. But apparently not to some others. 

This is an evolutionary process but what will make them change their mind? And maybe that’s not even what we are supposed to do. Maybe we are just to continue living in light with as much inclusiveness and generosity in our own heart that we can manage. Those who are living in the light will see it and respond. Those who do not see it or care about it or resonate to it will let it pass by.

What is your path in life? Open your inclusive heart and let your choices and actions and words reflect your feelings of deep inner connection with others and All That Is. Be the light you are, so others will see that and recognize it in themselves. Keep shining. 

===INTENTION BLESSING===

May we hear and heed the call of the Divine Feminine. 

May we expand our hearts and our expectations.

May we walk the Path of Light with a sure foot. 

May we keep our gaze on the summit.

May we take this journey with a full heart. 

I entwine my light with yours as we move forward to guide the way.

===REFLECTIONS OF A DEEPER SONG PODCAST===

Follow Your Personal Drumbeat

Listen to my
Reflections of a Deeper Song Podcast on
Apple / Spotify / Googleand the
Deeper Song Website

==== DEEPER SONG EXPLORATION ===

Past issue of this newsletter and found at Insights Of A Deeper Song. Past Podcasts are found at Deeper Song Podcasts

===CARA’S CORNER===

The Energy You Keep Around You

I have a rather small desk but one of the things I have enthusiastically and lovingly made room for is the gray river rock that is a bridge to my heart chakra. In a small container, I have a crystal that speaks very strongly to my eyes. As someone with a fair amount of crystals, these are the ones that I choose to speak to and hold and be with several times a day. 

My space is small and I can turn in my office chair and be with my crystals and my drums and my flutes. It is one dynamic end of my physical space filled with empowering energy.

If you were to expand your spiritual practice, what would you do? What would you add? When would you add it into your day? 

Rearrange the space you spend time in. That could mean meditation space. It could mean a desk space. That could mean a look out the window space. Whatever elements you have in your spiritual practice, make sure they are supportive of what you need to do and how you need to do it. 

I pick up my gray river rock many times throughout my day to center and focus myself in my heart. I pick up my merkaba crystal to heal my eyesight and expand my third eye and to take me more deeply into the spiritual realms for insights and guidance.

Check out the energy where you spend the most time – the energy around your workspace, around your bed, any place else that you spend time in the surrounding energy. See what needs to be changed, and experiment until you find the right configuration to support your intention for the space.

Are you nurtured by the energy you keep around you? Perhaps change or rearrange it. Put the energy of your room and your possessions and your intentions to work around you. 

===SING A DEEPER SONG ===

Sacred Objects

The smooth grey river rock sits serenely on my desk waiting to be touched and held. 

The smooth grey river rock sits serenely on my desk waiting to be touched and held. It is patient but demanding. 

The smooth grey river rock sits serenely on my desk waiting to be touched and held. It is patient but demanding. I pick it up and accept its heart energy in many aware moments throughout my day. It hears me.

– Cara Lumen, June 2023

We create our future with every thought we think, every action we take.  Move forward mindfully as you sing your Deeper Song.

Namaste,

Cara

Come Sing a Deeper Song  

I help Transformational Leaders

deepen our relationship with the Unseen World 

and expand our role in the New Consciousness

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My Books

Do You Have Moral Clarity?

Living Our Deeper Song

Ashe
(“Ah-Shay”)
The Creative in me honors the Creative in you!

The reporter was talking about how in the January 6 committee, the women were the ones who stepped in to report the misdeeds. The consensus was that women had a greater sense of moral clarity than the men did. I stopped to consider what it looked like and felt like to have moral clarity.

Moral clarity is about knowing right from wrong. We each have our own moral values. Where do they come from? How do they evolve within us?

I am watching many Republican politicians say one thing on a personal level and expressing an entirely different opinion to the news. They totally defy what is showing up as truth. 

What makes some people recognize and talk about a moral truth and others brush over it in denial? A lot of it in the US seems to be political ambition.

And so it is the women who have reported on the gross immorality that had taken place in the United States government under Trump.

Morality is about knowing right from wrong. The problem with the US situation is that those male politicians who know the difference between right and wrong are consciously choosing only what will forward their own political ambitions. And this is causing a crisis in the United States politician because Republicans seem unwilling to acknowledge the truth.

Too many people in the States are overlooking our truth or history. Others are trying to eradicate that truth from schools and laws and books in an effort to what? Eradicate history in this country by not telling how immoral the white population in particular was. 

How do you gain moral clarity? You look for your answers in a variety of resources. Learn about a topic from a variety of resources. Get clear about your own moral code. Be clear about what you believe and make certain that it is founded in truth.

When women stepped forward for the January 6th Committee, they had great moral clarity about what was right and what was wrong and their testimony blew the lid off the January 6th Committee reporting.

Be very clear about what is right and what is wrong. Develop your own strong sense of moral clarity and live by it.

DEEPER SONG AFFIRMATION

I will work hard to stay on the right side of moral clarity 

DEEPER SONG PROCESS

• Look closely at what you see as right and wrong and make sure it is based on truth.
• Keep strengthening your moral sense of what is right and wrong.
• Live by those standards.

===INNER WORK===

Deepen Your Inner Awareness

Path Corrections at the Winter Solstice

December 21st is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the beginning of a new season. It is a good time to make corrections to your path.

First see how your path has changed. With hip replacement surgery scheduled, my goals have changed – walking better is now at the top of the list.

Notice what new doors have opened and which ones you wish to walk through. There is a whole new group of healers to work with in some form that is gradually revealing itself. I have to go exploring to find what path suits me the best right now.

What has changed and what new opportunities are opening up new possibilities? Examine your choices to male certain they are still rewarding and fulfilling ones. 

Keep exploring!

Give Yourself Permission To Follow Your Heart 

Sometimes we get so caught up in our worldly existence that we forget to follow our heart. Have you stopped recently to talk to your heart? To know what it wants for you next and know how that feels? Do you know what it’s telling you to do?

Perhaps write it down on a blank sheet of paper and begin to prioritize by simply listing your passions. Then look over the list and begin to prioritize them. What did you discover? How do you need to rearrange your time? What new choices do you need to make?

It helped me to identify a large umbrella that holds a lot of my activity. It’s been tricky to identify because I love to write, I like the mental stimulation. It is all of those things. And probably more.

I have a dry macular degeneration and am gradually working with diminished eyesight. So I really have to understand what lies beneath this need and desire to write to see how I can continue to address it even if the form has to change. 

What does your heart want? What does your heart need? And what new forms can you find to express that in?

Put aside the world you have created and sit with your heart. Make certain that you listen to it. Make certain that you express your heart in all that you do. How will that change what you have in your life right now? Give yourself permission to follow your heart and do some rearranging of your life choices. 

===SELF-HEALING===

Take Responsibility for Healing Yourself

Being In Nature Is Healing

I haven’t been outside very much in the last two years so it was really great when Nathan, one of my care partners, put me in my wheelchair and wheeled me out into the garden that is actually right outside my window. There is a koi pond and Master Gardeners take care of the garden. I told Nathan that anytime he had free time, I would go outside. I mentioned that to Stephanie, a nurse’s aide and the next day she came and took me out too! I got here with two types of philodendron but maybe this next summer I can get a red leaf coleus for summer and bring it inside in the fall. Do you have enough nature in your life? Go buy a plant and talk to it…

===OUTER WORK===

Explore New Potential and Possibilities

On Being Resourceful

Imaginative, intuitive, creative, bright – being resourceful is all of those things. It means thinking outside the box. It means looking around corners, it means exploring new paths. Sometimes it means taking chances. Go explore the unexpected or the unusual. It is that moment when you draw on your inner wisdom, your practical experience and your free-wheeling imagination with a deep knowing and a healthy amount of trust in order to make a decision and try something new or different or unexpected. 

How often do you do that? Are you an adventurous type who goes exploring at every opportunity? This is not about bravery, it’s more about having fun and trusting your instincts and insights.

Notice when you respond from your inner wisdom and learn to trust it as a wise guide and creative innovator.

Being resourceful is about using what you have at hand to move yourself forward in a unique and unexpected way. Do more of that and see how your life changes. 

Choosing A Life Of Service

Service takes many forms. It can mean helping people who are helpless and it can mean helping people who are strong. It’s your choice, your place of service.

In the 80s when I became a Reiki master teacher we stood in a circle and were asked to share how we would use Reiki in the world. The person before me said, “I’m going to teach all the poor people.” I knew then what I was to do. I said, “I am going to help people who are already flying to fly higher,” And so I have. 

Choose your place of service – helping people reach their own potential, helping people overcome a setback, helping the environment or a cause. Go exploring to see what calls to you and then do the work.

On-Going Learning

Over the past seven years, I have depended heavily on The Shift Network for the on-going education that I wish to receive. Beside their paid classes, they have free summits on all sorts of topics that allow you to explore a topic and make informed choices. I have extensively studied Shamanism and Qigong. I have studied the Native American Flute and the drum and sound healing. As I understand the topics better, I found other teachers I wanted to study with.

Sounds True is another resource for interesting classes and books. I need to remember to explore TED Talks more regularly because there is great information there. They give away a lot of free information in order to draw you into their work. Go exploring more to find new topics to explore. 

My problem is that I don’t know what I want to learn next. I looked into sound healing but it’s not a deep calling for me although I have some tuning folks and use sound in my spiritual practice. 

What topic do you want to explore next? What do you want to learn next? Do some research and find some free introductory classes to take you more deeply into a topic so that you know what you want to commit to learn next. 

I love to learn. I hope I never stop. Right now, I don’t know what I want to learnnext so I guess I’ll just wait until something knocks on my door and calls out to me. Keep exploring, there are great learning opportunities out there. Get on Google and find them. 

Be Present At Work

I become so absorbed in writing that I disappear into my work. It is rewarding, exciting, stimulating and satisfying. I totally lose myself in the process of creating and capturing and responding to an idea I want to explore. 

How do you feel when you are at work? Are you fully present? Are you having a good time? Do you leave your work with a feeling of accomplishment? Do you leave with a feeling of satisfaction at work well done? 

Perhaps pause before you leave your place of employment to offer gratitude for being able to do work that is rewarding and satisfying and provides a good quality of life for you and your family. 

If you can do none of those things, you deserve to find yourself new employment. 

First list your passions – those that interest you and have called to you throughout your life. What kind of profession allows you to work with those passions? I have volunteered to write newsletters for assorted organizations for free because I love to organize ideas into written form. I have written radio content. I have written television commercials. I have written poetry and books and podcasts and newsletters. Writing is at the core of the majority of my jobs. But I’m also a really good organizer so sometimes I have had jobs that call upon that skill more than any other. 

Identify the skills they give you the most pleasure. Identify the skills that are the most marketable. And keep an eye on your overarching passion as you find the perfect place of employment. 

===HOW TO BE A STRONG CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF THE CIRCLE OF LIGHT BEARERS===

Expand Your Role in the Rapidly Evolving Universe

Shared Vison

I’m working on my vision for the world and I’m having a hard time because there sure are a lot of places that need help. 

I think my vision should start with the planet or we won’t have a place to live. One solution would include eliminating all the fossil fuels and using the many remaining replacements that have already appeared. In my vision I will raise the consciousness of everyone to individually take mindful steps to care for our planet by way of the products we use, what we recycle, how we care for the earth around us. So raising our collective consciousness about preserving the planet would be high on my list.

Then we have the people who hate other people. The vicious eruption of hatred in the US is my first thought because that’s where I live. But there is hatred and suppression going on in way too many places in the world. I don’t understand evil or purposefully doing harm to another so I think my vision will include an opening of hearts and a sense of a peaceful world community. That’s a big one. And it’s going take some doing even to imagine that. But it is our imagination and visioning that are the core creator of the creative process to make change happen. 

So part of my process needs to be actual visioning. I have to visualize a peaceful, whole, healed, vibrant planet. I have to envision people coexisting peacefully. I have to envision those people mindfully caring for the planet and for the animals on the planet and for each other. And somehow I have to envision everyone caring about the well-being of everyone else. 

If our imagination is one of the ways we create change, what kind of world are you imagining? 

===BROADEN YOUR HORIZON – EXPAND YOUR VIEW===

Raise Your Sights and Your Expectations 

Nothing Happens Without A Purpose

We may not like this, but nothing happens without a purpose. It is a lesson, a door opening, an opportunity knocking, but whatever it is, it is something we need to examine and consider and explore and learn from.

And sometimes if we don’t get the lesson, the lessons just keep coming back at us. It’s taken me three years of semi-isolation that included two years of gradually increasing physical impairment to get that I needed to move into long-term care. That was a long lesson. When I got here, it took me about a day to figure out that my new friends were among the staff and they were younger people who were joyously and deeply in service and it turned my life around. So some lessons take a while but others can be pretty instantaneous. 

I think pretty much everything is a lesson. A casual encounter with someone who inspires you and motivates you to take a next step. A meaningful relationship that shows you how to be steady and compassionate and caring. A failed project is a wonderful lesson. It frees you up to open new doors and have new experiences. 

I had to get pummeled before I made the decision to make this move. But that was because I didn’t get the message sooner even as my physical condition began to change.

My previous major cross-country moves were all done quite impulsively and the decisions were made in a matter of minutes if not seconds. The need for this move across the street has been beating me on the head for over a year. 

Nothing happens without a purpose, we just have to get the message. What message has been trying to get to you?

===REFLECTIONS OF A DEEPER SONG PODCAST===

Expanding Awareness

Journey to the Sacred Feminine

Listen to my 
Reflections of a Deeper Song Podcast on
Apple / Spotify / Googleand the 
Deeper Song Website

===CARA’S CORNER===

What Are Your Expectations For Aging?

Granted this is long-term care but in talking to the staff, they can only identify one other resident that is looking for mental stimulation. I will try to meet him. Why do we give up our minds as we age?

One of the reasons I got so isolated over a year or two was there was no one interesting to talk to. It was a senior community and I was the only person being active in worldly things. I had one good in-person friend who was the social worker but the rest of my friends were all online and we still meet regularly on Zoom. Therefore I had only one person to have an in-person informative conversation with, so I unknowingly and gradually became quite isolated.

So why are all these old people sitting around being old? What happened that they gave up their personhood in order to just be old? 

Is that an expectation we hold for ourselves? Is it our expectation we hold for others? Is the way of old people to sit around and just be old? Uninterested in much? Never learning anything new? 

Now I admit that I am behind on some technical things because I don’t have occasion to use them. And now I have this eyesight thing that makes it all a bit tricky. Do we get behind because we stop exploring or stop pushing ourselves a bit? Probably. I think aging is like any other point in our life, we have to keep pushing ourselves and stretching ourselves and exploring and trying new things. 

I’m one of five people in this whole community that will keep up their maintenance physical therapy. Five people out of 30 on this wing. I watch my suite-mate sit in her wheelchair all day and make no effort to restore her strength as she watches reruns of 50-year-old game shows and western shows. She refuses to go to physical therapy, she allows herself to be lifted in and out of bed. She’s quite a bit younger than I am. 

We have to do the work. We have to do our version of whatever it takes to keep moving, to keep our brains agile, to maintain our relevance in the world. 

I maintain my feeling of relevance by writing this newsletter. I write it because it helps me learn what I need to learn next and it opens my heart to share it with you. I don’t exactly see myself taking any more online classes because the money is no longer there but I sure will find other ways to learn.

What are your expectations for aging? Are you raising the bar high enough? 

===SING A DEEPER SONG ===

On Raising The Bar

I have to set my own goals. I have to raise my own bar. I am the one in charge of my destiny. 

I have to set my own goals. I have to raise my own bar. I am the one in charge of my destiny. Do I expect enough of myself? Do I continue to challenge myself? Do I continue to expect the best for myself? 

I have to set my own goals. I have to raise my own bar. I am the one in charge of my destiny. Do I expect enough of myself? Do I continue to challenge myself? Do I continue to expect the best for myself? I am the only one who can do that for me, I must do the work.

Cara Lumen, December 2022

We create our future with every thought we think, every action we take. Move forward mindfully as you sing your Deeper Song.

Namaste,
Cara

Come Sing a Deeper Song 

I help adventurers who are ready to explore the new possibilities in the emerging energy of the Divine Feminine to align their dreams and choices with what is emerging as possible today so that they go beyond their own expectations.

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