Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

Service

Who is Walking Beside You on Your Path?

By

Who is Walking Beside You on Your Path?

Adventures in the Unseen World

How aware are you of the people that walk beside you on your chosen path?  They might be someone you see every day.  They may be someone you interact with only occasionally. They may be people whose words you read or heard that offered a meaningful shift in your awareness, a deepening of your understanding.  

Those encounters are with fellow travelers who are on a path that is parallel with yours for now and you are to become more aware of them. 

The interaction may be brief

There have been two occasions recently in which a phrase in an email has totally shifted my awareness.  One new friend said, “I am sooo grateful for your Presence on my path”. I was touched and then turned to look to see who I was grateful for on my path if I was acknowledging their presence enough.

That one phrase shifted my awareness in a split second. 

The contact may be lasting

In a recent energy session I received, I was told that I had a lot of family, but they were different from what one views as one’s immediate family.  

Family means support and caring and being there for someone.  When I stop and think about those people who support me who are in many places in the world, with whom I connect on the internet only, I realize that they are my “family.”  My support system is deeper and more far-reaching than I realized. 

I am grateful to understand that. 

The contact may be in the past

I began my work as a healer in New York City in the 1980’s. Many people contributed to my path there.  Sometimes in the form of one workshop.  Sometimes in the form of a long training.  Sometimes in the form of like-minded friends. 

The new friend that invited me to go to the Church of Religion Science in Santa Rosa, California in 1995 changed my life.  I spent the next five years being very involved.  I became a Licensed Spiritual Counselor and was part of the Teaching Faculty.  

Many, many wonderful people walked beside me on my path there.

Do you see how this works? I study Taoism and the people who wrote the books I read walk beside me on my path.  I study Shamanism and the teachers who taught the class walked beside me on my path.  

Who is walking beside you on your path today?

The more specialized you become in your interests, the more challenging it is to find people to walk beside.  I have a few valued friends that I speak with regularly on the internet. Each one nurtures a different facet of my journey and each one is deeply valued. 

Look around and see who is walking beside you on your path.

Who are you walking beside in service?

Sometimes you don’t even know that’s what you are doing is impacting others. I put out one post and one newsletter a week and have no real idea how much of either is read, let alone by whom.  Until someone writes to me. And then my heart is touched and my step bolstered.  

People may walk beside you for a short while or for a very long time.  Just be aware of where you are going and who comes alongside to support or guide or nudge you.

Stay true to our path but accept the companions that offer to walk beside you for a while

Whose presence are you grateful for along your path?

Who are you walking beside in service?

Deeper Song Affirmation

I pause to see who is walking beside me on my path.

A Deeper Song Process

  • Begin by noticing who you are supporting on their path.  What do you do for them?  How does that feel?
  • Look closely at those who are walking beside you on your path.  How are they guiding you?  How are they supporting you?
  • I am grateful for your presence on my path.

To Sind a Deeper Song Consider:

Walk the Sacred Path Within Surely and Steadily and Leave a Trail  

Raise Your Sails 

Believe In The Power Of Your Own Ripple

When I See Myself As Light  

How to Walk a Path of Inner  Stillness

Come Sing a Deeper Song

I help people who are consciously
raising their vibration
to explore the Unseen World
so that we can help create a New Consciousness.

To receive our weekly
Deeper Song Insights and Applications
Join the Deeper Song Community


How Do You Make Your Actions Lasting and Meaningful?

By

How Do You Make Your Actions Lasting and Meaningful?
An Inner-world Exploration

We would all like to feel we have value, that we contribute. How do we make our actions lasting and meaningful? I pose a question to which I have no immediate answer.  I just really like the question.  

When a phrase like this asks me to explore it, to understand what it means to me and how to apply it, I usually begin with the dictionary to expand my awareness and interpretation of the meaning of the words. “Lasting” means enduring, permanent. “Meaningful” means significant, consequential.  I want my actions to be all of that.

To make my actions lasting and meaningful, I begin by working to identify my purpose, deepening my own understanding of my unique gifts and what’s calling me from my core. Then I figure out how to express that in my life. 

What is calling you?  Find the form

You know what’s calling you.  Put it into descriptive words, a label perhaps. I am a ….

I see myself as a spiritual philosopher, an explorer, a map-maker and messenger. Only lately have I realized that I am still a teacher. 

How do you express what’s calling you? How do you see your role?

When you have passion behind what you do, it deepens your impact on everyone you meet.  Your enthusiasm and excitement is as effective as the work you do, the service you perform.  You affect all who come across your path. 

My initial actions can be very subtle. I can be sitting here doing whatever, and suddenly a thought comes barreling into my awareness and I’m deeply called to explore the meaning behind that idea. 

I want to understand the concept and if it resonates deeply, I try to figure out ways to add it to my life. And I need and want to share what I discover.

The initial call is incredibly powerful to me.  The need/desire/calling to figure out is imperative.  And writing it in a form to share with others not only helps me complete my inquiring process, but offers my insights to others as well.  

The form of your offering begins with what’s calling you.

Action – Take your calling to the world

Our actions create our life experience. What we think, say, do, and believe are reflected back to us in our lives.  We are to learn to choose actions that are in alignment with our highest good.

Our actions impact what we receive. What we put out, we get back.  Anger brings back more anger.  Love brings back more love. We get to choose what we receive by being conscious of the energy we put out. 

Our actions also impact what others receive and absorb from us. Just as we are affected by the vibrations we put out, so are those around us affected by the level of vibration we emanate.  Do you have an idea of how your presence is perceived by others?  This is not about pleasing others, it’s about being aware of how you walk in the world. How your mere presence affects others. 

The choices and actions we take are vital.  How we conduct ourselves – the words we use, how we interact with others. Just the simple act of being present is a meaningful action that has deep impact. 

The focus of our actions affects our impact.  What we choose to do with our lives, in our lives, leads us on a path of our own making.  It’s not about what we achieve, it’s about how we go about our lives – our attitude, our consideration, our compassion.  

The form our work takes is revealing.  We may be a leader, a team player, an individual stand-out or a steady support person.  That’s the form our action takes.  How we take that action is key not just to our physical-plane success but to our inner, spiritual development as well. 

Action is in our deeds, our behavior, or conduct and our endeavors. It is also in our thoughts, beliefs, and expectations.

What is a “meaningful” action?

What is meaningful to you includes experiences that feel significant, impactful, important, relevant, important, and worthwhile.  

Spend some time considering what is meaningful to you. Begin there. That will dictate your calling, your actions, your focus, and your development.  

We are talking about how to make your actions meaningful and lasting. But to whom? The world, others, your family?  Who do you want to impact?  Who do you want to see your existence as meaningful?  Who do you want to reach?

You will know about some of your impact.  Much of it, you will not.  A simple smile may be enough to have a meaningful and lasting impact on a person who needs it at that very moment.

A less tangible impact may be something someone said to you a long time ago that you have based a lot of your life upon.  That could be a parent, a teacher, or a friend who encouraged you and that led you to steps to build on that encouragement. Words of encouragement are very impactful. 

We may not have to look very far afield to understand the many ways our actions, both large and small, can be meaningful and lasting. 

We want our work to be lasting

Lasting means “abide or able to endure over a long period of time.” It has a deep vibration, a profound effect. 

To be lasting means that the action you took created change.  It created change in someone’s outlook. It created change in someone’s understanding.  It created change in what someone thought was possible or what they thought they deserved.  It changed them.  It changed what they thought, or perceived or considered or chose.

A very simple action or thought can make a lasting change.  

“Lasting” means a change at the core

This phrase “make your actions lasting and meaningful”  came from something I read.  I don’t even remember what.  But look where it’s taking us.  I feel this exploration shift me as I compose this piece. It has made me stop and think and consider and wonder and question and … That’s a lot of impact for a few words. 

And whoever wrote them will never know the adventure those few words are taking us upon.

You won’t necessarily know who and how you affect others.  

“Lasting” means inner work

Just as we don’t know who our actions and words will impact, we don’t know how.  

But lasting change begins within. 

My work is to identify ideas and concepts that lead me into greater clarity and incorporate them as an actual practice in my life. 

That purpose will impact what I choose to write in my posts and newsletter to share with others. 

That purpose will impact how I interact with the people close to me and the people not so close to me.  

That choice is certainly going to impact my spiritual practice.  When I start holding up each action I take to the measuring stick of “meaningful and impactful”, I will leave a pile of ideas on the floor and choose the ones that are – yes – meaningful and impactful to both me and those I serve.

Choice and your measuring stick

I rely very heavily on my inner voice. It hollered at me to write down that phrase.  It immediately demanded that I write the first draft to begin to figure out what it meant to me.  It was clearly important to my inner self that I both understand this concept and figure out how to absorb it into my life.  And as I live with this idea of wanting my actions to be meaningful and lasting, I have set up a new measuring stick to help me select the next steps I take. 

Sometimes we don’t know what will be meaningful and impactful

A long time ago, I remember walking across Central Park in New York City with a friend who said, “We are rocks.  People depend on us.”  I was a bit startled at the idea, but I recognized myself in her statement. I asked, “Where do rocks get help?” “From other rocks,” was her reply. 

That was 45 years ago.  And that idea, that image has profoundly affected my life and how I live it.  

We simply do not know and may never know, how we help to change the lives of others. 

So besides raising our own vibrations, expanding our spiritual exploration and consciously trying to serve others, we have to simply be true to ourselves. The more we deepen our own spiritual awareness, the stronger our light becomes and the more attractive and vital and meaningful our light presence becomes to others.  

We may never know

I can have an intention to have my choices be meaningful and lasting but I’m not always going to know if they are. But I absorb this idea and look for ways to raise my own vibration, to be of greater service in the world, and I hope, I intend, that what I offer, what I provide, will be both meaningful and impactful when it moves out into the world. 

Deeper Song Affirmation

I choose to make my actions lasting and meaningful.

Deeper Song Process

  • List what you think makes your life and work meaningful.  To you. To others. 
  • Of those things you have listed, what do you think may have the most lasting impact?  To whom?  Why?
  • Do you see any changes you would like to make?
  • Do that.

Deeper Song Affirmation
My life is meaningful and impactful. 

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Does Your Work Stir Your Heart?

What Are Your Weaving in Your Reality?

Life Messages from a Potter

When I See Myself As Light 

How to Interpret the Messages From Within

To receive our weekly
Deeper Song Insights and Applications

join the Deeper Song Community.

Can You Let Your Life Unfold?

By

Can You Let Your Life Unfold?
An Inner-world Exploration 

Periodically during the year, we make grand plans.  Sometimes it’s because there’s a new year beginning, sometimes it’s a new quarter, or a new month or even just one week at a time.  

The most productive, aligned way to manage your life is to simply to let it unfold.  See what shows up, check it out in the moment and decide if this is the time to explore and develop that idea. 

Otherwise we run the risk of being overwhelmed. 

It helps to follow the seasons

There’s an unfolding flow in nature that we would do well to align ourselves with.

Winter: Contemplate and explore the possibilities in the seed catalog. Close what to plant. 

Choose only the things you really want to do and the things you realistically can accomplish. How many plants can you grow in your personal garden of self?

I’m exploring new ideas and they’re currently in sort of a book format because that’s how I’m organizing my own learning process.  However, the idea of working on a book while doing all this inner exploration/discovery work is overwhelming. 

So, since it’s winter, I’ll contemplate the choices and experiences before me and go exploring to better understand what I’m being called to do. I place my order from the idea seed catalogue. That’s all I do – choose my priorities. 

I may have different criteria for my choices – income, most effective use of time, greatest impact, easiest to do. A full seed catalog can be tempting.  Do a reality check before you place your order. 

Spring: Choose how many seeds you will plant based on what you can realistically care for, want to harvest and how much is needed. 

After choosing what we want to plant, we have to do a reality check on how much we can physically and emotionally care for. How big is the garden plot (your available time). We have to prepare the ground. What skills and equipment or help do you need to produce this crop? Then you have to decide how much to plant based on how much you can care for and harvest and, better yet, use. 

These are the decisions of spring.  How much to plant.  Where to plant. And make certain not to overprint or underplant. Give careful thought to what you actually need to produce. 

I seem to have a second book that’s much closer to completion than this one I am creating from my new work.  Hmmm.  Can I harvest two crops? Oh yes, and there’s a niggle that I might record some guided meditations. Be careful here that you don’t choose too much to plant because there’s a lot of work to be done in the cultivation and care and bringing to harvest of whatever you choose. 

Summer: Do the work

This is the part I love – the growth and development of an idea.  The unfolding of a book. It’s a time for deep creativity and introspection as I pull together all I have learned in a form that others can understand. I put what I’ve been learning into a form I can share that will help others move along a similar path.  

What will be required of you to tend the crops you have chosen to plant? Can you bring the crop safely to harvest?

Fall – Harvest what you sowed

I dread this part.  We are talking technical stuff.  Not hard, I just don’t do it very often.  Get the book out the door stuff.   But if that’s all I do for the fall – complete and publish – that doesn’t feel so daunting. 

See how working in seasons makes the task less daunting?

There’s another step here I tend to not do well – let others know what I’ve created.  So perhaps I can devise practical and realistic ways to do that.  

If you found a stumbling block in your projected harvest, what solutions can you explore and what choices can you make earlier in the year to help you move through this challenge?

Completion time is made for giving gratitude for the gifts you have harvested and been encouraged to give.

Fall is also the time to notice what your work produces. What is popular and what is not?  What did you run out of?  It’s time to evaluate what action has called to you the most. Where did you receive the most satisfaction? What was the easiest part to do?  Then set those ideas aside to be contemplated in the planning that takes place in the winter cycle. 

Do your inner work

Before you begin a new cycle, do your inner work.  What new skills did you develop? What do you want to do more of? Less of? What are the needs of the people you serve? How has the world changed? What is needed that you could provide?

What has changed in you and how will you honor that?

Then it’s time to begin the cycle again.

Deeper Song Process:

  • Write down what you would like to accomplish in the next year, quarter, month, whatever you choose. 
  • Put a mark by the one accomplishment that would be the easiest to do. 
  • Put a different mark by the one that would make your heart sing. 
  • Use a different mark to identify the action that would bring in  the most income, or whatever value you are working to achieve (personal growth, relationships, etc) 
  • Choose one project that you marketed and apply the seasonal steps to it. 
  • Winter – Contemplate the future possibilities. Order seeds.
  • Spring – Plant what you can care for and harvest. 
  • Summer – Produce.  Do the work. Get help if you need to.
  • Fall – Take your harvest to market and see how it’s received. 
  • Repeat each season.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Make Work Your Offering 

How to Weave the Sacred into the Ordinary

Are You Sacred Space?

Do You See and Hear and Walk in a Sacred Manner?

What Core Beliefs are Guiding You Today?

Does Your Work Stir Your Heart?

By

Does Your Work Stir Your Heart?
OUR LUMINOUS LEGACY

At the end of your day, do you feel a deep glow of satisfaction at what you got to do and how well you did it?  Did you get to stretch yourself a bit, offer your best self in service, change a few lives?  

If you did, you’re doing work that stirs your heart.  Keep doing more of that. 

I’m lucky. There’s nothing more awesome in life than having the freedom to do exactly what you want to do every day.  As a retired old person, my days lie open with an invitation to soar. And I do.  It’s only now that I no longer have to make a living that I realize how vitally important it is to do what you love to do.  

What’s your passion?

What do you love to do more than anything else in the world?  Forget about its financial potential.  What calls to you in the moment?  What makes your heart sing?

Follow your gifts

My passion is learning new philosophical things.  I read, I take courses, and I write to clarify and figure out how to apply it to my life. Then I share what I learn with others. As long as I can keep learning and exploring and sharing, I’m fulfilled and joyously satisfied.  I don’t like to repeat things. I prefer to keep building and expanding.

All it takes to stir your heart is a passionate interest and identifying how you want to express that interest.  What’s calling you?  How do you express it? How do you explore it?  What are your unique gifts?  How do you use them?  What do people ask you to do for them?  What is an over-arching pull that takes you on life’s adventures? Go do more of that!

Your gifts will call throughout your life

I began using writing as a way to express myself in my teens. I remember writing poems for my high-school newspaper. I still write poems – odd ones – but I call them poems. My senior year, I was tapped as Managing Editor – not Literary Editor – because someone recognized organizational skills I had no clue I had. I’m still a fabulous organizer.

My first job out of college was as a radio continuity editor at a major station in Kansas City.  I have no idea how I qualified for that right out of college but that was another call to develop my writing and organizational skills.  I have written for print, radio and television, served as on-air talent for both radio and television and worked as a copywriter in advertising agencies.  I have produced small books and blog posts and podcasts and a few videos. I’ve always been called to be a communicator.  

You have a similar thread, something you have done throughout your life. Look back and identify the most joyous and satisfying times until you see signs of the path you have taken that shows your passion, your calling, and your place of illumined service. 

Let your heart guide you 

What calls to you so deeply you cannot resist the pull?  What makes you tear up in anticipation of sharing it?  There is some way that you participate in the world that deeply nourishes you.  Go do more of that. 

This calling, this deep urge to share in a particular manner, needs to be a part of what you offer, an integral element in the work you do.  That doesn’t mean you have to start your own business around that gift or even do it as a major part of your work. It simply means you need to know your own passion, your own gifts, your own heart and use them regularly throughout your life.

Begin with that call, that deep yearning, that undeniable need to explore, discover, and share. 

Follow that. It’s your heart calling you. Share it with the world.

Do those things which stir your heart and change the lives of others.  What you set out to accomplish has to consume you with the need to express it. Then you find ways to make it valuable to others.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider

Make Work Your Offering

Live in the Center of Your Being

What are the Foundations Stones Upon Which Your Build Your Life

One Powerful Way to Change Our Future

The Path of Supportive Service

The Constant Search for New Wisdom

By

I don’t like to repeat anything after I’ve learned it.  I seem to be in a constant search for new wisdom.  That makes me see myself as an explorer and mapmaker rather than a teacher or even a guide.  To teach and guide requires a detailed translation of what you find.  I just want to explain it, and then keep exploring.

The role of mapmaker

Think of Lewis and Clark.  They explored uncharted territory, made maps, they wrote reports and they moved on.  They were not the people who settled and developed the land.  They simply explored and reported what they discovered.

For me, the role of explorer and mapmaker is exciting, the role of a settler is not. Are you an explorer or a settler?  Or a bit of both? It’s helpful to know so you don’t try to fit yourself into a role you don’t truly want.

To teach is to learn

One of the most powerful ways to learn is to teach something to someone else.  It makes you organize your thoughts, discover the necessary learning sequence that’ll make sense to others and figure out what’s important to learn first; the foundation, if you will, the core information.

I used to teach courses, but if I teach now it’s in small blog posts that explain my thinking and insights.  I simply offer it, you read it, and it sparks something in you and you apply it to your life – or you don’t.

Through doing, we teach

I had stopped thinking of myself as a teacher because I felt I was simply offering my new insights.  It was pointed out to me that the fact that I’m both old and productive teaches others what’s possible.  I hadn’t thought about that.  How you live your life can be a lesson and an inspiration to others.

So I’ll stop beating myself up for discovering, tasting, sharing what I find and moving on.  That’s simply what I’m doing right now.

Don’t beat yourself up if you are an explorer and not a settler.  Explorers are needed in the world too.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Why Do You Believe What You Do

Your Desire to Heal the World

The Language of the Stubble Realms

How to Effortlessly Radiate Light

How to Explore Your Invisible Self-