Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

Inspiration

Your Work is You

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It’s easy to understand that an object made by hand holds the spirit of the artisan. However, have you considered that everything you do is like breathing a bit of your own spirit out into the world? What a difference that concept has on how I do my work.

A little piece of me

If everything I do is a little piece of me, I want that to be the best piece of me I can give. This is not about perfection, it is about immersing yourself in the activity, the project, the final result and generously pouring yourself into the work.

Your legacy lives on

If what I do today holds a little piece of me, where does it go in the world? This blog post – where does it end up? Who reads it and responds to it? I don’t know and I’ll never know the impact this may have had. That makes it all the more important that I do my best work, that I fill my work with love, that I send it off with my blessing. What a wonderfully conscious way to work!

Send your work out mindfully

I used to put a blessing at the end of the ebooks I wrote. It said something about sending the book out from my heart to your heart. I’m going to start consciously sending my work out into the world. Whatever small blessing or releasing ceremony I create will bring me closure on the work and add a loving energy to my offering.

Receive from others mindfully

Knowing that the work people send out into the world contains a bit of their spirit, how does that change how we receive it? We should certainly honor the energy that it contains whether it resonates with us or not. We should respond from a place of gratitude that the other person chose to share of herself. My heart is so frequently touched by the words and actions of others that my world is much richer for their participation.

Offer your spirit with love

I’m going to begin to look at everything I do and say as containing a breath of my own spirit. I want that breath to be loving and thoughtful and meaningful. I want my words and actions to help other people, to give them deeper insights, to inspire them to believe in their own greatness. I do that, by breathing my own spirit into everything I do.

This is for you, with my love.

 

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

I Am You

Return to the Simplicity of The Uncarved Block

I Want to Sing a Deeper Song

Are You a Gift Person

What is Your Personal Promise?

 

“I Am You”

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I-am-you

I was totally challenged by the Buddhist exercise “I am you.” I’m an introvert. I love being alone. My “people skills” could use some work. I’m independent so my compassion and empathy could be increased. I wasn’t sure how I might improve them until I heard of a Buddhist exercise that asks you to look at each person you encounter and think, “I am you.”

Wow.

Our natural tendency to stay separate

“Namaste” means the light within me honors the light within you. That’s a lovely way to greet another person or end a meaningful conversation. I like using it along with a short bow. However, in light of “I am you.” there is separateness in it. I am here. You are there. Your light is there. My light is over here. “I am you” asks a lot more of me.

Can you hear what is not said?

I’m getting better at listening to what is not said – a person’s worry that makes them snappy, a distraction that makes them seem distant. I observe a person’s response and take a moment to feel the energy beneath it. That helps keep some remarks from feeling too personal. It makes it possible for me to respond with more empathy and compassion.

Can you sit beside them?

Instead of telling, people what to do, or even offering advice or suggestions, I’m gradually learning to metaphorically sit beside them and look at life from their point of view. Then we can find a new way to look at things together. That has been a very powerful change for the natural organizer and overview observer that I am.

A major insight: what you don’t like is all about you

The qualities you don’t like in another person are the qualities you don’t like in yourself. That’s a huge awareness to have. I don’t like to be told what to do. Guess what the natural leader in me is prone to do. This awareness of the reflection of yourself in the people around you is a huge idea to grasp. It also means that the good stuff you see in people is a reflection of you too. That feels better, doesn’t it? Be patient with the people who annoy you. Take a closer look to see what you need to change within you. Mirror, mirror on the wall…

I am you

I’m not sure I can do “I am you.” At the very least, it is going to take some practice. I have so little in common with the senior community in which I live that I have developed a very strong and supportive community online. What do I see/do when I come across someone far removed from my own interests and way of being? I know they are bored because so few have developed interests that stimulate them. I know they are, in their own way, dealing with the aging process. Very few are proactive, most of them expect decline and rely on their doctor to tell them what to do. I cannot identify with that at all. It is going to be challenging to think “I am you” under those circumstances.

However, I can identify with the fabulous people I am connecting with online who are doing their thing, sharing their excitement with others, and encouraging each other to do their best work. With those people, I love to think “I am you!”

So what do I do about the people I don’t “get”? The people I don’t want to copy. The people I don’t want to spend time with? I don’t know. I have some work to do.

“I am you.”

 

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

Are You a Gift Person

What is Your Personal Promise?

How Your Self- Esteem and Self Image Affect the Outcome

How To Set Values Boundaries That Express Your Self Love

How to Fill the Hole of Loneliness

We Must Know When To Go It Alone.  

How Chris Brogan Changed My Life

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Chris Brogan changed my life. Well, actually, I changed my life, but Chris was a catalyst. It was a simple email exchange discussing how we have impact. I mentioned that my impact was softer now that I was 81 and a little harder to identify. Within his reply, Chris asked, “I wonder what you’d like to tackle in the next 30 years.” And my vision of what is possible exploded.

Eliminate time as a constriction

As I got older, I used to kid that my five-year plan was to simply still be here. Yet on the other hand, I kept making plans to live to 114 because anything else was too close. There are many reasons I stopped thinking long term, mostly because I moved into a culture of seniors where the majority of the residents merely exist. But the fact is that I want to be productive, I need to be creative. I want to feel useful, heck, I actually want to feel valuable and I wasn’t certain exactly how to do that. Chris’s idea of the 30-year plan eliminated time as a consideration and freed me to actively continue dreaming, planning, creating and figuring out how to touch more lives. If you feel stuck, if you feel unproductive, raise your sites  and make a grand plan for the next 30 years. How are you going to be in service?  What passion will you express? What new skills will you develop?  How will you change? How many lives can you touch?

Release what is keeping you stuck

I’m not the greatest marketer in the world so there always seemed to be effort around selling my stuff to others. I do fabulous work, but I often felt like I was asking a favor or promoting something instead of simply interacting. Earlier this year I decided to give all my books away free and it was a huge relief. I can now let the energy of the books speak for themselves and there is no barrier of money between wanting and having for those who are interested in what I have discovered. I made it easy for people to share my ideas. In addition, it allowed me to cut back on the yearly fee of my shopping cart because all I needed was the autoresponder package to keep my community going. The books I am currently completing will also be free and that means I can share them with people without any motivation for making sales or getting publicity. I can simply write what I want to write and share it with those who resonate with my thoughts and ideas.  I find myself in a true place of service that is extremely rewarding.

Reposition yourself by following your passion

I was a content development coach before I retired. After I took time off to do some old-person physical correction stuff, I found I didn’t want to coach anymore. What I passionately wanted to do was to understand change, change like the one I was going through, change that was hard for me to make. I had a need to reinvent myself, to change the focus of my work. Who did I want to be? What did I want to learn? What would I explore? I started writing about change – what it meant, how to do it, what stood in my way. Learning to create positive change became my passion. That, in turn, became the focus of my current work.

Teach what you want to learn

I’m doing all this writing for me. I want to learn about change. I want to figure out how to apply the qualities of mindfulness and unfolding to my life. I read the phrase “deeper song” in The Prophet and wondered what that meant to me. I’m writing a book “I Want to Sing a Deeper Song”. I made a workbook to go with it. There are thoughtful piece in it like “Practice Moving Your Gaze”  and “How To Live A Wider Life.”  Those are all principle I want to apply and in order to figure out how, I wrote about it. What do you want to learn that you can teach through your business?  What are you passionate about that you are burning to immerse yourself in? Move in that direction.

Think global

I now live in the mid-west. I’m actually a liberal, metaphysician in a very conservative area. I am also a vegan in cow country. That’s not necessarily a natural fit. (Yes, I loved living in New York City. I loved living in Santa Rosa California, but two of my children are here and it seems a prudent place to be at this point in my life.) However, in order to find like-minded people I have to go on the internet. I have to find bloggers to follow like Chris www.chrisbrogan.com..  If you do not have supportive, like-minded people in your close-up life, go find them out in the world.

This free thing

I don’t know how to translate this freedom of giving things away free into creating an income. Marketing is not a comfortable mode for me so now that I am free of this concept of selling something, I am happily giving my books to anyone and everyone because I want nothing back. But what if you need to get something back, like income? It looks like one model is to give much of our writing away free and then build paying workshops from the community our writing attracts. We’ll have to ask Chris about that. I do know that my email exchange with Chris prompted him to interview me and that interview created new exposure for my work. Yet he was drawn by my ideas, not what I was doing or selling. A simple e-mail began our connection. We are both philosophers and our interview connected us on a deeper level. If ideas are the coin of the realm, how will you exchange them? How can you put yourself so deeply into service that income flows effortlessly to you?

Know the value of your work.

However, the words from Chris that brought me to deep, racking sobs were “Your work is very important. Leave none of it undone. Generations will depend on it. :)”  Oh, how I want that to be Oh, how I KNOW that CAN be. I just need to stay productive for the next 30 years.

Let it unfold

I don’t know what opportunities my current activities will create, but I’m open. My 30-year plan is not goal oriented or laid out step-by-step, it is the idea of having 30 more years in which to participate in life that has opened up my life. What can I do? What will I do? I have no idea what’s going to show up. However, I do know that I just received a great gift of an idea that jump-started my life again. Thank you, Chris Brogan.

Here my interview with Chris here: http://cbrogan.me/omradio  It is entitled “LOTS of Smart People. “7/10/14  15. Coach Sean Brawley, Alan Jackson and Cara Lumen

This Day is Mine

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I opened the door
And the day tumbled in,
Clear, joyous, full of Life.
Puffy white clouds
Float peacefully above.
Yellow, pink, purple and salmon glowers
Wave “Good Morning” from my patio garden.
Peace comes to my heart.
This day is mine,
Every nook and cranny of it,
To sense, to savor, to hold.
I listen to Spirit for Guidance,
I open myself to signals and signs,
I hold my vision in my heart,
And step forth into life.
Cara Lumen
March 27, 1997
Spring Equinox