
How Does A Tree Know When To Drop Its Leaves?
Living Our Deeper Song
Ashe
(“Ah-Shay”)
The Creative in me honors the Creative in you!
The Weeping Birch tree outside my window recently began to drop her leaves. How does she know it is time? Is it marked on her calendar? Is it simply the subtle changes in the weather?
How do we know when it’s time to let go of something, to release it, to let it fall to the ground and be left behind?
I can see more sky as leaves fall to the ground in golden showers. I like that because I like the shape-shifting clouds. Letting go offers a new view.
If I were a tree with acorns, I would release them and they would be gathered and stored and later used to nourish a squirrel in the middle of winter. By releasing my gift, it would keep on giving.
When is it a time for withdrawing in order to restore and replenish in preparation for a new season? A great deal happens when we let go of our leaves.
We can let go at any point in our life and at any stage in a cycle. What kind of inner wisdom do you call upon to let you know when it is time to let go – to leave something behind? And when you do, what can you see more clearly?
DEEPER SONG AFFIRMATION
I easily and effortlessly let go of patterns that no longer serve me.
I rest and restore and make room for new growth.
DEEPER SONG PROCESS
- Go within and see what you need to let go.
- Release it and study the new view it reveals.
- Notice what new insights show up in the space that opens up.
- Go exploring.
===INNER WORK===
Deepen Your Inner Awareness
Intuitive Planning
When you listen to your inner guidance, it will lead you to your next step on the path you are to explore. Pay attention to those nudges and hunches. They are your inner voice guiding you.
Then go exploring. Visualize. Can you imagine walking down that path? See how it feels and notice what opens up for you to consider. Make your decisions based on what you discover. Follow your intuition. It will take you where you need to go next.
===SELF-HEALING===
Take Responsibility for Healing Yourself
The Healing Power of Music
I have listened to and performed music all my life. I sang alto in the high school girls’ trio and girls’ quartets. I took voice lessons at the local college and sang in the chorus of their production of Bizet’s opera Carmen. I went through periods of liking Carol King and Rob McKuen and Peter, Paul and Mary. For about 10 years I listened to nothing but classical music.
You can listen to all sorts of music on your television. During my day I often listen to light classical music and take great pleasure in listening to the range of instruments and the power of their individual sounds as well as the incredible harmony and emoting they produce.
Music reaches deep within. It changes our vibration. It changes our intention. It changes our expectations.
Where does sound fit into your life? How does it affect you and how can you go exploring more broadly?
Optimism and Longevity
Japan recently broke another record for having even more centenarians.
Work ethic, a seafood-rich diet, deep family ties, and now improving medical technology are elongating the lives of the longest-living people on earth who are yet further defying perceived limits on the human body, mind, and spirit.
Optimistic men have a better shot at living a less-stressful, healthy life. Now I’m not a man but I sure can be optimistic.
Optimistic means to be hopeful and confident about the future. Hopeful is pretty easy, confident may take some practice. How do you feel about your future? Is there a difference between how you feel about your immediate future and your future future? How do you approach each day? Is it with optimism and gratitude and high expectations? Or is it with dread and uncertainty? You are the captain of your emotional vehicle. And you can make those choices. When you move into conscious gratitude, you become more aware of the positive aspects of your life. Begin to be more aware of what is working physically, mentally, and emotionally. Be grateful for the positive forward steps that you take.
I will tell you from experience it gets a little trickier as you age and stuff starts not working so well. But I am in control of my expectations. So not only do I practice coming from a place of gratitude but I keep looking for the positive aspects that keep showing up in my life. Stay optimistic and enjoy a longer life.
===OUTERWORK===
Explore New Potential and Possibilities
Where Do You Find Like-Minded Friends?
The more eclectic your interests, the further afield you have to go to find people who share your excitement. I think we begin with one interest at a time to develop our tribe around it. For instance, when I became a Reiki Master Teacher over three or four years in New York City in the 80’s, other Reiki students were my friends. And the more advanced my studies became, the narrower became the field of people who were interested in the same depth that I was.
That was also true when I became a practitioner in the Center for Spiritual Living. Again, the more deeply I delved into the work, the more advanced were the people I was drawn to hang out with because our interests were similar.
Five years ago in a shamanic class with Sandra Ingerman, I was paired with my friend Martha (Minnesota) and we have talked nearly every week for five years. Even though we each have other interests that we are developing, we have a strong core interest in the metaphysical and our spirituality and we remain close friends. I met another close friend, Thuy, (France) when we were both students in the same class. Christina, (California) another good friend I speak with regularly I actually know in person from when I lived in California. And another friend, PJ, (Colorado) reached out to me because excerpts from one my books “Getting Your Feet Wet in Science of Mind” is on the websites of many Center for Spiritual Living Churches. Noralee (Canada) proofreads this newsletter and always sends me encouraging words along with the corrections. I periodically get emails from other followers of this newsletter. I love that I am connected with people all over the planet.
But that’s a very small group of people to interact with on a regular basis to explore my specific interests. I share slightly different interests with each of them.
I have taken a lot of classes on the Shift Network and they have Facebook groups in which I have found like-minded people on a particular topic. My suggestion is to follow a topic that calls to you and see what friends you find with similar interests.
For those of you in the Deeper Song Explorers! perhaps we can each share our favorite topics and teachers along with a link.
Do You Have A Vision Board?
I haven’t made a vision board in years and as I approach 90, it feels like a strange thing to be doing. But it’s a good idea and now we can do it digitally and have access to some fabulous pictures.
You can have areas on your vision board like “relationships” and “career” or you can just start with what you want in your life and find graphic representations for your vision board.
What do you envision in your life? Make a vision board to help it manifest.
Look for A Creative Alternate Solution
One of the most helpful things my daughter Cathy has said to me recently is that I’m not the only one with a particular problem. With that in mind, I put inquiries out to the manager of this senior complex and the Social Security Director to see if there is a transportation company that would bring a wheelchair, put me in it, put me in the back of a van, take me to my eye doctor appointment and bring me back. And I found it. You don’t just stop needing things because you can’t move very well.
What do you need in your life that you can find creative ways to get help with? Maybe there’s a special need that you want to build a business around that you can offer. Get creative as your needs change.
===DEEPEN YOUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE===
Self-Healing Spiritual Practice and Deepening Awareness of Our Cosmic Oneness
An Altar Turns Your Space Into Sacred Space
As I continue to contemplate the pending downsizing, creating altar space has been first on my list. Without it there’s not much point to my life. It could be space in a bookcase or a table. I once had an altar on the floor. It could be an arrangement outside your window. Create sacred space and work with it, mentally be in it, and spend time with it every single day.
I continue to rethink what I need and want to choose for the smaller space that awaits me. What ceremonies do you perform? Does it involve music or chanting or drumming or movement?
I use instruments to sing and play to the directions every day. I have a collection of special crystals to talk to and hold every day. I might begin to add an intentional element to my alter and work with that to manifest what I want in my life.
Periodically changing and rearranging the elements of your altar could meaningfully deepen your spiritual practice. It will shift your focus and let you deepen different aspects of your spiritual practice.
Spend some time rethinking and rearranging your alter space and the ceremonies you choose to bring to it. Then notice what changes in your life experience.
===HOW TO BE A STRONG CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF THE DIVERSE CIRCLE OF LIGHT BEINGS===
Expand Our Role in the Rapidly Evolving Universe
Is There a Past Mistake You Need to Heal?
We all have things in our life that we wish we had done differently. I’m not suggesting you dwell on what choices you made along the line, but are there any past actions you might do differently if they occurred today?
What comes to mind specifically is a personal interaction with another person that you could’ve handled better. In my case, those mistakes were usually because of my lack of awareness. Maybe you write that person a note and reestablish contact. Maybe you call them up. Maybe you just forgive yourself in your mind. A mistake is not intentional, it is one step taken in a particular moment for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t done it. Sometimes it was a happy mistake and worked out well. In your life are there any interactions that you wish to apologize for? Or, as you look at how it played out, you may find out it was not as big a deal to the other person as it was to you and you can actively forgive yourself.
This introspection is not intended to blame, it is to create an awareness that helps us not make the same mistake again. Our choices were made out of what we had to offer in that particular moment. Our awareness in particular, is a foundational cause of our choices. We are either aware of what we’re doing or are in a situation in which we are not very aware. We make our choices based on what we understand in the moment. Sometimes that awareness is more on target than others.
Learn from your less-than-stellar choices of the past. Try not to repeat it.
===OUR EVOLVING FUTURE===
Support and Encouragement for our Unfolding Role in the Future
What Brings Meaning To Your Life?
We get what we focus on. What aspects of your life are important to you, or nurturing to you and what do you do to encourage them, to cultivate them?
My mind is important to me. It helps me learn. It helps me experience. I cultivate it in many ways. My spiritual practice is important to me. It has many aspects and I continue to explore there too.
What aspects of your life do you value and how will you expand them? Identify and explore and find the things that bring meaning to your life and do more of them.
======THE UNFOLDING DIVINE FEMININE=== ===
Explore and Interpret the Guidance and Messages of the Divine Feminine
The Masculine In Religion
It wasn’t until I listened to the Episcopal service for Queen Elizabeth that I remembered how predominate the masculine energy is in man religions. I guess I’m pretty far into this concept of the rising feminine.
I was brought up in an era when women didn’t go to college, they just got married and had kids. But I did go to college. I even got a Master’s Degree in my 40’s and I did go off and make my own professional life.
When I got divorced, I could not get a credit card in my own name because everything was in my husband’s name. A gas credit card was the break I needed to begin to establish my own credit. But I had no work history to add to it. It’s been a long road.
Women today are brought up to believe they can be independent. And young women are the ones calling for major change today.
So here we are in an era where women are standing strong and yet we do not earn the same amount of money for the same job as men do.
I’m no longer around any young people but I know one granddaughter has two children and is making major money while working from home.
“These times they are a changin” (Bob Dylan) and that’s a good thing.
These Times They Are A Changin
Bob Dylan 1964
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
That was nearly 60 years ago!
===REFLECTIONS OF A DEEPER SONG PODCAST===
Simply Being- The Art of Wu Wei
Listen to my
Reflections of a Deeper Song Podcast on
Apple / Spotify / Googleand the
Deeper Song Website
===CARA’S CORNER===
Make Better Choices
What my life looks like and feels like is because of the choices I have made and continue to make. Therefore, all change is up to me. Some of my choices are very conscious. Some are rather unconscious. I need to check both out to make certain they are what I want and are taking me where I want my life to go.
For instance, I know that I need to add more movement to my life. That’s a given. So my choices becomes what form that takes. Then the choice becomes how willing I am to extend myself, as in do more or do it longer or do it differently. Of what am I willing to let go? How am I willing to change?
I need to stop thinking about the future because it’s not here, it is still unfolding, and I’m only guessing at parts of it. That is a waste of my time in this present moment. Be present. Notice what you are creating and what those choices are creating for you to consider. Give long thought to how you would like your life to be different and what steps you could take to make that happen. Then do those.
My choices include staying in the present. Doing physical stretching at my kitchen sink, standing up to do some of the Qigong even if I’m hanging onto my walker. And do Qigong at least three times a day. There are podcasts that I want to listen to. I want to listen to less news and check out at least one audiobook to see how I like listening instead of reading. That’s a pretty good list.
I can go exploring. I may discover new opportunities that will change the results I’m getting today. What new choices will you make today? And what happens when you do?
===SING A DEEPER SONG ===
Change Your Choices
The choices are mine and I can change them.
The choices are mine and I can change them. I can look up instead of down. I can do it or not do it. When I choose, I must observe the results and let that guide my next choice.
The choices are mine and I can change them. I can lookup instead of down. I can do it or not do it. When I choose, I must observe the results and let that guide my next choice. It’s all up to me in every moment. I make choices that lift me up.
– Cara Lumen, September 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.
Please forward this newsletter to a friend and suggest they
Join the Deeper Song Community
Past Issues of this newsletter are being curated on my site on a page called Insights.
Our Global Deeper Song Community
Our Deeper Song Community extends throughout the planet. Welcome new Deeper Song Explorers. I’d love to hear of your experiences –caralumen@gmail.com or let’s discuss on the Deeper Song Explorers!
Subscribe to this weekly Deeper Song Newsletter at www.deepersong.com