Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

Alligned Choices

Raise Your Sails

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Raise Your Sails
An Inner-World Exploration

We are sailing along on the sea of life.  Sometimes we have a destination.  Sometimes we’re simply flowing and allowing ourselves to be taken wherever the current takes us.  And when the winds are calm, we may even paddle a bit. But when we raise our sails, when we catch the wind, we determine the speed and direction of our journey.  

We have only to raise our sails. 

You set your direction through intention

Sometimes we steer.  Sometimes we drift.  But even when you are casually drifting, it is good to have a general direction to move in.   

Your intention will also determine your speed – it tells you how many sails to raise. How full you let them out.  It may be a lazy slow-moving day or it may be an all-out race.  Your intention will determine your actions. 

Use a mudra as your compass

There are many ways to center yourself before setting sail. A mudra hand position is an easy one.  Experiment and find the ones that call to you.

One of my favorites is the Buddhist Walking Meditation mudra – simply close your fingers around your thumb.  Do this with each hand. Notice how your energy shifts. It’s amazing what a single hand gesture will do to focus your mind and your intention. 

Fill up your sails and center your compass with your breath

Use your breath to begin this inward journey.  A mindful breath in, a releasing breath out.  Create a steady rhythm that keeps you moving increasingly inward.

Merge with the “I AM”

Lose yourself in the experience of gradually sailing inward.  Allow your body suit to disappear.  Allow your awareness to disappear.  Simply be the vibrational energy that you are.  That is your destination – to be aware of simply being One.

Heal with colors

On this inward journey that you take with your mind, you can use colors to balance your body suit and your earth-bound world. Fill yourself with whatever color comes to you and simply feel it, experience it.  Don’t interpret.  Let the color move through your body to release and rearrange and heal any part that calls to it.  Let it tidy up. Let it clean and clear things out. Perhaps you even change colors.  

Rather than see and feel the light energy coming through your crown, let it come from within you as a sphere, and simply change colors at your core.  Let it radiate out.  If there are blockages or stuck places, they release themselves and leave the circle of light that you are.

Expand your vibration

On each slow exhale, feel your sails unfold and expand and begin to pull you forward. You are a golden sailboat, shining in the sunlight, sailing smoothly atop the waves.  It is a happy day, a positive day, a fulfilling day. Fill your sails and feel yourself fly over the surface.  

Allow the experience of being limited to your body suit to disappear

Become one with the wind.  Become one with the sun.  Become one with the water.  Disappear your body and then finally disappear even the pinpoint of you as your mind. 

Now that you are still, expand your vibration

Feel yourself as a circle of light. Feel the energy radiate out, first in inches, then feet, then yards and then miles until you are radiating out energy that covers the planet, energy that moves to the center of the earth and reaches out into unknown galaxies. You are radiating as Everything-That-Is, as The One All, the Everything.

Hold the expanded energy that is All-There-Is in your heart and feel its power expand into an all-encompassing vibration.

Lift your sails

You are safe, you are expanding, you are raising your vibration. Raise your sails and fly across the surface of life. Experience and accept.   Accept the serenity. Accept the healing.  Accept the guidance. 

There is trust involved in sailing 

When you set sail, you have to trust that the wind will be there, to trust that you know how to set the sails.  

A slight shift in the sails, in their tension, will slow you down or speed you up or change your course.  Adjust your sails to keep you on course.

What to do if there’s a storm

When the ride gets bumpy, take down your sails and ride the storm out.  Withdraw into yourself.  Trust yourself.  Heal yourself. And wait.  The sun will come out again.  It will soon be a great day for sailing. 

Awareness + choice = change  

When you are ready to set sail again, become aware of your desired destination, set your intention and you will head in the direction of your choice.  

Hold the feeling of Oneness within your heart

There is only one All-that-Is. There is only one Emptiness-That-Holds-Everything.  There is only one Cosmic Soup. Once you have released your awareness of your body suit and have moved into the sacred space within, allow yourself to sink into the feeling.  Deepen that feeling.  Remember that feeling so you can return to it immediately on a single mindful breath.  

You are One.  We are One.  All is One. 

Deeper Song Affirmation

I raise my sails and journey inward.

Deeper Song Process

  • Decide where you want to go, what you want to accomplish.  It may be a small goal or a large one. 
  • Plan the best course.
  • Raise your sails and go for it. 

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

How to Walk a Path of Inner Stillness 

Believe in The Power of Your Own Ripple 

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning   

Why We Need to Raise Our Vibration 

Build a Launching Pad for Your Inner Work 

Broaden and Deepen
Your Personal Journey 

I help spiritual adventurers explore the Unseen World so that we broaden and deepen our personal journey and learn to share our discoveries with others.   We are guides and way-showers with our light held high.

To receive our weekly
Deeper Song Insights and Applications,
join the Deeper Song Community.

Learn the Vibration of Recognition 

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Learn the Vibration of Recognition
An Inner-world Exploration 

Our world is made up of vibration. We are vibration. Everything around us is vibration.  The more we learn to feel and hear and recognize the subtle vibrations around us, the more aligned and in tune we become with our own vibration.  

Begin with feeling vibration

Think of a time when you heard someone sing so deeply from their heart that you felt the vibration tingle all over your body.  Sound carried that vibration but the singer’s heart sent it.  

Think about some kind words that have been offered to you that touched your heart. A friend recently said to me, “Remember, you are light wherever you go.” I needed the reminder.  I needed the validation. Sound vibration can carry unconditional love from heart to heart.  

My hand can feel the vibration of my cat’s body, and I can hear his purr of contentment and love.  

When I tune in, I can feel the vibration and specific messages of my crystals.  When I pause, I can feel the vibrational gifts of my food. When I take a moment as I first enter, I can feel the welcoming vibration of my home.

Vibration is everywhere.  It’s a powerful form of communication and we must learn to feel and hear it — and learn how we, from the confines of our body suit, can radiate vibrations of wholeness and unconditional love. 

Learn to listen

Sit in your workplace and listen.  Listen to the sounds and vibrations of people doing work.  Many of them love what they do and you can feel that energy of joyous engagement coming from them.  

Stand in nature and listen.  You may hear a bird joyfully living its day.  You may hear the leaves rustling in the wind whispering to each other.  You may hear the wind howling around corners.  

Nature is full of sounds.  The world is full of the vibration of sound. Learn to listen. 

Recognize how vibration speaks and resonates with you

I learned to feel the energy of crystals years ago.  A friend simply told me to hold the crystal in my left hand (receiving hand) and see what I experienced.  I felt a sensation in my body, identified it with a specific chakra and began to interpret from there.  

Now my stones call to me across the room, “Talk to me today.  You need me for this.”  It’s all a matter of listening and feeling the vibration. 

Hear and heed your inner voice

I have a very loud inner voice.  I’ll hear a phrase nearly shouted in my mind, or two or three words pop out at me and I know I have to explore them and write about them and learn to apply them.  

Sometimes I have an inner conversation with myself:  “you want to do this because….“,  “you want to rethink that because.“ I sometimes have a running debate with myself until suddenly I just know.  The decision is made and I act on it. 

Cultivate your awareness of vibration

Your awareness of vibration begins in silence. Just sit in a quiet place and mentally scan your body to listen and feel. Just notice what you experience. 

Then move to sound — perhaps begin with the sound “OM” (pronounced “Aum”).  It’s the seed syllable of the universe.  Say it out loud.  Take a deep breath, feel it cleansing and restoring your body suit, then on the exhale say “OM”.  

Begin there.  

Mudras will change your vibration. A mudra is a hand position. You see them on Buddhist statues.  They communicate great energy. I like the Buddhist walking meditation of simply holding your thumbs in your closed fingers making a light fist.  It immediately calms me.  Experiment with mudras and allow the vibration they create to speak to you. 

We are all vibration

When you begin to feel yourself as pure vibration, you’ll experience yourself as nothing and everything.  It’s an incredibly expansive feeling. You experience yourself as simply vibration with no boundaries, no limitations, only vastness to explore. Be with that.  Explore that.  Go where it takes you.

In time you will see and experience others as pure vibrations.  You will understand that there is no difference, you are the same thing — vibration.  Actually, you are the same vibration, one vibration. One. 

And your world changes. 

Begin with the awareness of vibration — your vibration, their vibration, the vibration of nature and of your world  

Then you, as vibration, go exploring in the invisible world.  

As vibration, you can go everywhere and become anything.  Merge with a mountain, merge with a cloud, merge with the eagle flying overhead.  Merge with the earthworm and the butterfly.  Still your mind, cease your separateness, and become one. 

One.  Just one

All is One. 

Be that. 

Deeper Song Affirmation
I experience the vibrations around me with deeper awareness.

Deeper Song Process

  • Feel vibration. Sit quietly and sense the vibration around you. It may be a breeze on your arm, or the breath moving in an out of your body, or the beat of your heart.  Begin to explore vibration.
  • Hear vibration. Ring a bell, or strike two sticks tighter or make a humming noise that resonates throughout your body. Listen to the silence.
  • Absorb vibration.  Feel the sunlight on your face and let the vibration of warmth enter your body. Expand your awareness to feel the vibration of your home. Feel the comfort and nurturing and safety in the vibration. Find other ways to absorb vibration.
  • Feel the vibration of your barking dog or purring cat. 
  • Put your hand on your diaphragm and sing a few notes and feel the vibration of your own sound.
  • Listen to music and feel the vibration of the instrument and the vibration message of the melody or the rhythm or the harmony.
  • Find other ways to experience vibration. 

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Expand Your Spiritual Heart

Our Defense of Non-Existent Boundaries

What Does Spiritual Friendship Look Like? 

 How to Weave the Sacred into the Ordinary

When I See Myself As Light

To receive our weekly
Deeper Song Insights and Applications

join the Deeper Song Community.

Create a Releasing Ceremony For Yourself 

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Create a Releasing Ceremony For Yourself
An Inner-world Exploration 

There is “stuff” within us that’s in our way. It may be making us sick. It may be making us unhappy. It may be keeping us from doing something. Some of it we recognize.  Some we don’t. We need to let all those unwanted inhibitors go. We want to release whatever is keeping us from moving forward in our relationships, in our health, in our business.  Can you identify a personal problem you want to solve, and can you also identify the cause?  Think about letting it go. 

Is your body suit showing signs of imbalance?  Let go of whatever is causing that. We may not know the specific cause of an imbalance, but we know we want to release it.

Create a Ceremony of Releasing

You may feel the need to reset your life at the New Year, on your birthday, at the solstice and equinox, the full moons, the new moon.  Or you just may think, “Today’s the day.”

You want to create a Ceremony of Releasing that works for you.  So begin to experiment. 

I do my Ceremony of Releasing through shamanic journeying, which is a form of mediation.  I can get very creative in how I release what I want to let go. 

Put it down and leave it behind

In my meditative journey, I’ve carried an emotion in a knapsack on my back and simply laid it down along my path, only to turn and see it change to water and become a new form to nurture others. 

I’ve carried an anger I wanted to get rid of in a bag with the intuition of burying it, only to lay it on the ground and have it turn to earthworms who actually waved at me as they went off to do good work for the earth. 

The lesson, it seems, is that whatever you want to get rid of that’s harming you can be changed into something useful.  

Let the fire consume your unwanted blockages

Another ceremony for releasing unwanted beliefs, idea, unknown-unwanted things is to put them in a fire.   The fire changes it to smoke, the smoke dissolves in the air and it is released into a form that no longer harms. 

I, however, seem to have a hard time burning things. Destroying even a twig.  I have no idea why.  You will create your own Releasing Ceremony to honor your purpose and intention.

Release your unwanted belief into the earth

In a recent shamanic journey, I thought to place the perceived blockage I wanted to release into pinecones, but I didn’t want to destroy them in fire. So I visually buried them with the intentions for them to grow into something useful.

Release your unwanted blockage into water

Sometimes I go and stand under the waterfall in my Sacred Garden.  That certainly clears things out.  But there’s also a quiet pool there where I can also release what I no longer want to carry with me.

Let water rinse away what you wish to release.

Let air carry away your blockages

Blowing bubbles is a fun way to release whatever you want to release.  You could use a balloon.  Or, you can simply stand in a gentle breeze and feel the air moving through you to carry away what’s no longer needed or wanted. That’s a good one. 

What you release may take different forms

In one of my releasing journeys, I ultimately found myself wearing an imaginary cape that was weighing down my shoulders and affecting how I felt and even how I walked.  Sometimes cloaks feel cozy; this one did not.  I filled this imaginary cloak with all the emotions and beliefs and feelings that no longer serve me.  I thanked them for their service and threw the cape into the fire where there was a loud roaring sound as the flames consumed it.  Sparks flew up, smoke rose, and all those burdens, beliefs, unknown “whatevers” that were holding me down, changed form.  I stood up straighter and felt myself filled with a golden pillar of light, not one of protection but of inner strength. 

This is your releasing ceremony.  Do what works for you. 

You can make a list of what you no longer want.  You can write it on paper, and tear up the paper or burn it over the sink.  Whatever symbolic gesture of releasing you can think of will work. 

You can simply tear the paper up into small pieces over a wastebasket. 

You can dance and release.  You can take a deep breath and when you breathe out release what you no longer want. 

You might pause as you enter your house each evening to mentally shed your work day and bring yourself as a loving presence into your evening. 

You might create a releasing ceremony at the end of your day and put aside anything our have accumulated.  You can release it then or you can put it in a bowl to be mutated by your helping spirits during the night.  Do whatever works for you.

Look closely for what you want to release

A key part of the releasing process is to identify what you no longer want.  Look behind the obvious problem to identify the subtle causes. It may be a belief, a fear, a misunderstanding, a disappointment, an unknown that is causing something physical to appear. The blockage or unwanted energy can take many forms. I found I had expectations of a family member that I had to release. A particular expectation.  Something I wanted, but something that was not going to be given. 

Identify what you want to release and create a symbolic way to release it.  

Blow it toward the flame of a candle. Shake it out with a rattle. Beat it out with a drum.  I have a wind whistle and I can release the unwanted, unknown, unidentified “whatever” to the wind by using my breath.  I can also do that without a wind whistle. 

Set an intention to release

The core of a releasing ceremony is your intention.  You don’t have to know the cause but you do want to have the intention: such as,  “I release whatever is making my back hurt.”  You have no idea what that is, but you can release it.  “I release whatever is in the way of my feeling loved.”  “I release whatever is holding me back from expressing myself fully.”

What’s your intention for your Releasing Ceremony?

Do a Releasing Ceremony often

Some days it’ll be obvious that you need to do some form of a Releasing Ceremony because something happened and it affected you. The sooner you can release it, the less impact it will have in your life. 

On other days you won’t know what you’re releasing but you’ll be willing to let go of what no longer serves you.  You don’t have to know what it is, just notice how your life changes after you do.  

Before entering your home, you might blow any burdens, worries, upsets or disappointments out into the wind.  Just let it go.  Then enter.

Offer gratitude

When you release something, thank it for its service and let it go.  

Perhaps at the end of the day go back over your day and see what you have been given and look for what you want to release.   Do a short releasing breath before you sleep with an affirmation like “I let go of whatever I no longer need.”   

If you’re very attached to it, lay it aside to be picked up after a good night’s sleep, but do put it aside. 

When you do some sort of releasing, a “thank-you-very-much-but-go-away” ceremony each evening – however short, however elaborate – your life will change for the better.  Each day will become a clean slate upon which to uninhibitedly express yourself. 

What kind of releasing ceremony will you devise for yourself?  How often will you do it? 

Deeper Song Process:

  • What would you like to release? Identify it or identify the imbalance it’s causing. 
  • Choose one of the ways to release from above, or make up your own method.  
  • Choose a time for your Releasing Ceremony where you won’t be disturbed.
  • Sit quietly and decide what you want to release. You may want to write it down. You may want to say it out loud. You may want to just think about it.  Choose one thing to release in this first ceremony. As you progress, you can release multiple things during one ceremony.  Try to find the core problem.  Anger might be at the core.  Or fear, or disappointment.  Look for the emotion involved that you want to release. 
  • Create your Releasing Ceremony – whatever that means to you.  Music, candles, silence.  Do it physically or do it in your imagination.
  • Do the work.  Let go of what you no longer need or want and what no longer serves you.
  • In the days that follow, notice how you feel. 
  • Repeat as desired. 

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Who Needs to Give You Permission?

The Power of your Imagination

Do You Believe In Yourself? 

Our Defense of Non-Existent Boundaries

What Are Your Weaving in Your Reality?

Do Not Conform to the Ways of the World

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Do Not Conform to the Ways of the World
An Inner World Exploration

We are so much more than our body suit. That is why we must not conform to the ways of the world. It’s too limiting. We have to honor our vibrations of wholeness, listen to our unique calling and stand up tall in our own light, taking the actions we’re called to take by our gifts and passion.

Only we can do that for ourselves.

We are to evolve consciously – purposefully – actively 

Each day, in every choice, in every action, in every thought, you need to celebrate your uniqueness, your individuality, and you have to have the inner belief that you are uniquely distinctive and are to serve in a uniquely distinctive manner. 

It means you are not to conform to the world around you.  You are not to be like everyone else.  You are to be self-aware and conscious of the personalized nudges and unique opportunities given you by your inner self.  You listen.  You heed. You step out into the world as your own unique light.  

Join with similar uniqueness

The more deeply you cultivate and honor your distinctive calling, the fewer fellow travelers you’ll find on your particular path.  

However, when you take your individual, unique distinctive light out into the world, you’ll find other aware lights shining in their individual uniqueness.  You join together and your combined vibrations make major changes in the world – for the well-being of all.  

Don’t conform to the ways of the world 

Don’t limit yourself to our body suit ways.

This doesn’t mean you have to rebel, but you can quietly and calmly disengage from what’s not aligned with your awareness of your collective oneness and move along the specific path that calls to you.

The more individualized your path, the more closely you’ll have to look to find fellow light travelers going in a similar direction.  Walk with who shows up and see where it takes you both.

We’re not our body suits. We are light – the whole, complete vibration of light and that means that so much more is possible than we can imagine from our body suits. 

How do you step away from the ways of the world?

Do not allow yourself to become simply part of the herd, a lump in the collective human race. You are beyond that.  You are aware of yourself as light. Be aware of your own uniqueness. Notice what gifts you have been given, what passions are calling you, and where circumstances have placed you. 

Raise your sights.  Examine each opportunity as a gift and gauge the degree of its calling and its potential to help you create change – for yourself – for others.  Then follow your heart and step into the place of service that calls to you.  

Live your life however you have agreed to do it.  Show up however you need to.  Just keep coming from your spiritual heart, your inner self and you’ll never conform to the ways of the world. 

Deeper Song Process:

  • Deepen your awareness of yourself as the vibration of light.  
  • See who else around you seems to be aware of the same thing. 
  • Hang out with them. 

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Know the Power of Our One Light

Who Needs to Give You Permission? 

What Are Your Weaving in Your Reality?

Expand Your Spiritual Heart

The Power of Being Different

Do You Practice Self-Transcendence? 

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Do You Practice Self-Transcendence?
An Inner-world Exploration

“Self-transcendence” is an interesting idea.  To move beyond Self. To be more than Self. To go beyond the limitations of Self.  To transcend Self.

We become so absorbed in our body-suit lives that we forget that we are much, much more than a single human on the planet earth. 

We are Infinite Essence manifesting on earth confined in a body suit. A body suit complete with ego and perceived limitations. We are so confined that we sometimes forget that we are actually Infinite Essence — an energy of unconditional love and wholeness.  A fluid, active, shape-shifting energy of wholeness.   We forget and think that all we can do is what our body suits can manage. 

Not true!!! We are so much more than our body suit, more than our personality, more than our worldly accomplishments.  We are Infinite Essence!  Now that’s something to work with. 

How do you go beyond your body suit?  

To move into your invisible self, begin with your mind, use your imagination and move as fast as you can past your ego — that state of being that keeps us separate from, well, everything — each other, life, the world.  When you move past your “self”, you disappear into a state of Oneness.  That’s hard for us to imagine. 

One of the ways that helped me begin to disappear my ego is to feel like I’m a drop in the Cosmic Soup. You can’t separate me out but I’m a part of the whole and my “flavor” affects the entire cosmic soup.  That image helps me feel immersed in the whole and yet have the responsibility of managing my own “flavor”.

Become “more” in each moment

Each day I get to move out into the energy of the moment.  Each day I get to move mindfully, think thoughtfully, be aware of the energy around me and work at monitoring my humanness, while continually moving toward my soup-ness, my oneness, my I-am-contained-in-the-All.   Not separate.  Included within. An integral element of All. 

“Self-transcendence”.  Being better, bigger than Self.  Getting rid of your ego, allowing yourself to merge into the greater whole and be a contributor to the Emptiness That Holds Everything. 

I do it through conscious breathing.  I do it through moments of listening to nature. I do it through meditation and shamanic journeying.  I even do it through the process of writing, which, for me, serves as a gateway to what’s going on inside.  

How are you working to transcend self?

Deeper Song Process

  • Sit quietly and breathe. Inhale, exhale and then notice the pause.  The Infinite Essence lies there. 
  • Inhale, exhale, reel yourself as Infinite Essence
  • Repeat throughout your day.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Where Do You Find Your Inner Circle of Light Beings? 

How to Weave the Sacred into the Ordinary

The Power of Being Different 

What are the Foundation Stones Upon Which You Build Your Life 

The Power of Your Imagination