Is It Time To Redecorate The Rooms Of Your Life? 

Is It Time To Redecorate The Rooms Of Your Life? 

Living Our Deeper Song

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

Several of my friends are moving, one because she wanted more space and another because she is going to retire and is building a new home in an entirely different state.  In both cases they are redecorating their life. 

Moving is a time to make new choices, to let go of things, to shed possessions and incomplete projects so you can see new possibilities. It is an opportunity to rethink and rearrange and rechoose what you want in your space and rearrange it according to who you have become and how you want your life to be. It’s like rearranging the rooms of your life. 

I began to think about that.

The room that contains my contribution in life has expanded since I moved to Evergreen long-term care. It continues to fill up with interactions with very kind people who touch my life and change me. And I am being asked to use many of my gifts and insights here. It is a huge redecorating of my Contribution-In-Life room that for me is very much a work-in-progress. 

The room in my life that contains my physical health got rearranged with the results from the hip surgery that aggravated the edema I’m still working with. So that room is my room for healing and restoring and regaining my strength. I will decorate it with determination and persistence and willingness to improve and get stronger.

The room in my life that contains my spiritual practice is well decorated. It includes my sound instruments, my tuning forks, my drums, my crystals, wind chimes and altar. And I have established my pattern for turning to look out the window at nature every day as I sing. I meditate most days. My wall of flowers has changed the energy in my small space.

The room in my life that holds my love of learning is always full of interesting ideas and projects and exploration. It is the busiest room in my house.

The room in my house that contains friends is full and rich with kindness and support and shared interests and interesting conversations.

The room in my life that holds my spiritual evolution is focusing on the well-being of the entire planet and the whole of humanity. I am focused on expanding my role as a Light Bearer.

The room in my life that communicates with nature is not as big as it once was but I have my wall of flowers, my tall windows with a view of the garden and the sky, the wonderful shift-changing clouds of the mid-west and sometimes the full moon. And I can go sit outside in the garden by the koi pond. I just can no longer go walking and exploring in nature.

Bear in mind that I live in one very small shared space so these “rooms” are all “entered” by simply turning in my desk chair, but each area has a specific focus.

Look at the areas of your life and see what needs to be rearranged or cleared out and take time to thoughtfully redecorate the rooms of your life.

Deeper Song Affirmation 

I am open to redecorating the rooms of my life.

Deeper Song Process

• Take a long look at the rooms of your life and pick one to begin to rearrange and re-decorate and clear out. 
• What is in that room that you no longer need? Toss it. 
• What needs rearranging in that room to make it more efficient or supportive of the direction you want to go and the work you want to do there?
• Is there a room too full of ideas and projects and ambition that need to be cleared out or streamlined? 
• Do you need to add a new room?
• Clear out, clean up, and re-decorate the rooms of your life so that you have a supportive starting point for each activity. 

===INNER WORK===

Deepen Your Inner Awareness

Is Your Vision Big Enough?

We create our lives with our imagination and our imagination can create anything. What is your vision for yourself? Is your life big enough and how do you make it even bigger?

That said, I can share that my physical plane visions for myself are rooted in my natural aging process but my vision for helping the world is to understand that we are each Light Bearers and vital and meaningful, important strands in the Web of Life and figure out how to live that. 

Remaining flexible requires frequent small adjustments and changes in directions as I learn more and my consciousness is raised through my inner work. 

Because my vision is just a vision at this point, I have to give my imagination free rein.  I have to meditate and journey and interpret the nudges from the Universe. I want to find my role, my path, my contribution and my calling. 

The vision I am working on now is still in the making.  I do not have very many specific ideas on how to make it happen – yet. That’s how you build a vision. You hold an over-arching vision and let your imagination fill in the possibilities. 

Visioning is not the time to be practical. It is the time to give you imagination free rein so you can identify possibilities and probabilities that, at the moment, you have no idea how to manifest. Do not be limited by what you don’t know how to do or have never before considered. Give your imagination free rein and make your vision really, really big.

   The Power Of Our Intentions

I haven’t thought of myself as a metaphysician for a long time but I am one and as such I believe that my words, my thoughts and my intentions carry tremendous power.

That means that I must be aware of what I think, what I say and what I do. Sometimes I do that better than others. 

First I have to believe that something is possible. That doesn’t eliminate unexpected and unbelievable changes, it just keeps an eye on the metal plane for new openings and opportunities and makes space for those concepts and insights to manifest. 

In the Center for Spiritual Living, people could literally not say anything negative because they believed in the power of their words. Sometimes it left us speechless because we couldn’t think of anything positive to say. 

As a practitioner, I remember being with a group when we went into someone’s home to see their brand new carpet. It happened to be both a color and a texture that did not appeal to me. Since I was not going to say anything negative, it took me a minute to find the right positive words. I think I said something like “It fits the room” or something neutral like that. That’s how strong the belief was and is that our words have energy and they create our reality. To this day I do not say anything negative because our words manifest into reality.

Monitor your thoughts before you speak and make certain that the energy behind them enhances and moves the situation forward. Intend to be inclusive and you will be.

Independence And Aging

Even as my body continues to need support, how do I manage to stay independent while aging? 

I will stay fluid in my thinking and learning and expectations. I will use my age and experience to filter and discern and choose what I focus on, including and accepting what I can change and when I cannot change. 

My role in the overarching world is primarily one of intention and visualizing and energy work. My role in my daily life is about being interactive and supportive of the staff around me. At the same time, I am the only one who is responsible for the quality of my life and my environment.

I continue to learn. I learn from my interactions with others. I learn from what I read. I learn from messages from the universe. I learn from what I write. It’s a pretty active existence.

I’ve just been included in a new small group organized by a therapist here and one of the members was a journalist who wrote three cookbooks and although I have not yet spoken with her about it, I wondered what she is doing for mental stimulation at this point in her life. We were all sitting there in wheelchairs. 

How do you repurpose your gifts and skills as you age? I have a doctor friend who is retiring and will be using her interest in astrology to offer medical astrology as part of her next business. She’s in her early 60s and has 30 more years in which forge a new career path.

We have two people here who made it to 100 this month so maybe I have ten more years on the planet. That’s a lot of time to get a lot of things done. 

How are you doing in your life? What are your plans for the future? How are you keeping your independence as you age – even when you need help? 

===SELF-HEALING===

Take Responsibility for Healing Yourself

Do You Need Courage To Implement Your Life?

All of the major decisions I’ve made in my life were made in a moment and they have led me on great adventures. If I had gotten stuck in the small stuff and worried about the detail and even possible repercussions, I might not have made those giant moves across the country. 

Sometimes we just have to take giant steps and trust that we’re going in the right direction and that it is what we need to do in the moment. Sometimes we have to trust our inner voice and do nothing. Perhaps wait. Perhaps do a smaller or bigger version of it. 

We need to be adventurous, flexible, and innovative as we explore our way through our lives. Sometimes we take action. Sometimes we don’t. But at each juncture we examine and contemplate, reconsider our goals, and then make our choice. 

What are the major choices for you? What are your next steps and will you take them? Are you exploring your options? You know you can always turn around, but if you don’t explore the path, you won’t know where it leads. Do you need courage to implement your life?

===OUTER  WORK===

Explore New Potential and Possibilities

How To Work For The Highest Good  

I have a belief that I wish everyone in the world would accept – that the planet is in trouble environmentally and there are things we should include and must do to preserve our entire planet. And there are a large number of people who believe that there is no such thing as climate change.

How do we raise our sights so everyone is willing to work for the highest good for all? 

I totally believe we need to take dramatic and drastic steps in order to preserve our planet. There are many others who absolutely deny the existence of a planetary environmental crisis. What I get to do is monitor my own footprint and if given a chance, educate others as to what they can do for the environment and why they should do it. I would like to see conservation laws passed that help regulate the environment and that will mean we have to adjust how we use our resources. 

I can do my part. I can educate others about the need to be more conservative of our resources. But I don’t think there’s much I can do about the nonbelievers who will make no effort to save the planet simply because they don’t see the need. 

What I know to do is to walk the path as clearly and cleanly as I can and if given the opportunity, explain to others why I made these choices. Educate, motivate, inspire by example. That’s a good place to start to change the awareness of others. Saving the environment will save our own lives and those of our descendants. Keep making choices for the highest good for all.

Use Feng Shui To Smooth The Flow Of Your Space

I don’t have a lot of space. I do have it pretty full up of things but I’m going to see what changes I can make to smooth the energy flow of my space by using the ancient Asian art of Feng Shui. 

“Feng” mean “wind” and the “Shui” mans  “water.”  Both wind and water flow. Can you increase the energy flow through your space?

If you can, begin with an empty space – a corner, a desk top, a room. Define a clear purpose for the space and make certain that what you select to put in it furthers that intention.

As you mindfully choose and place each piece, experiment to determine where it should be placed to enhance the energetic flow of the room. You can apply the principles of Feng Shui to a tabletop or a corner or a whole room or how a house is built on a lot. The principal is the same – encourage the natural flow of energy around whatever is placed there.

I have a dresser upon which I have placed a piece of fabric I chose as an altar cloth a long time ago. The things that are on top of the dresser are mindfully chosen and placed. But my computer desk is rather another matter because I have no drawers to put things in. My creative space is crowded but there is a pattern I have created for using it.

I cannot pass the test for simplicity by any stretch of the imagination. I simply don’t have room. But if I could clear off some surfaces and put only the meaningful things on it, my space would immediately change and feel more serene and peaceful. My Altar of Spiritual Expansion (formally called my Wall of Flowers) is well designed and very peaceful. The energy is very benevolent. 

Perhaps begin with your bedroom so that you can rest in a simplistic flow of nurturing energy. Try clearing your kitchen of everything and put them in boxes in the garage and then bring in only the things that you need to prepare your meals. You’ll be surprised how much you can leave in the garage. 

At the beginning of the season turn all the hangers toward you and when you wear something, turn the open part to the back. At the end of the season, you know what you did and did not wear. Consider getting rid of those. 

You might change items on table tops according to seasons, so you can keep the arrangements simple and focused. And at the same time set new intentions. 

How will you use Feng Shui to improve the flow of energy in your home and your life?

===DEEPEN YOUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE===

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

Nature and Spiritual Expansion

There is something very tranquil about watching orange koi fish swim in a small pond in our garden. My curiosity wonders to what their life is like, how they interact. I notice the hummingbird at the feeder outside my window and wonder about her life. I look at the gnarled trees in the courtyard and wonder whose lives they have touched.

I watch the plants on my Altar of Spiritual Growth and care for their environment and talk to each of them. 

There seems to be one lone fly in my room and his name is George. I have no idea how he got here because I’m pretty deep into the building. I have no idea how long a fly lives but George is hanging out here for now.

The sun dances on the carpet at my feet and I feel blessed and watched over and supported. The stained glass butterflies in my window look out for me. We have a large fish tank in the hall in which many colored small bodies live their lives. I wonder what they think. I wonder how long they live.

I love the clouds of the Midwest. They are expressive and as you watch them, they create marvelous images that expand your imagination. I like to sit and look at the sky.

There is a peacefulness in nature. There is a lesson about unfolding in nature. There is a tranquil acceptance of life, birth and death in nature. Nature simply is. When I am totally present in nature, I deepen my spiritual connection with All-That-Is. When I sit quietly and go within, I experience myself as a strand in the over-arching web of life that contains all of us. 

Spend time in nature. Tune into its gentle and constant expansion and contraction and notice the similarities in your own life. Nature shows us how to inter connect, how to share our gifts with each other and how to work together for the common good. Look to nature to expand your spiritual awareness.

Create Balance In Your Life

It’s very easy to become unbalanced in the structure of your life. Too much work, too much responsibility, no time to sit and contemplate – those are all signs of imbalance and we can consciously take steps to correct that. 

Perhaps you record how your time is spent over the period of a few days or even a week in order to identify the imbalance your choices create and discover places to change your choices so you have a greater balance between nurturing time and people time and nature time.

Look for creative ways to combine things like walking in the woods and finding a place to pause to meditate or creatively using drive time to listen to an instructive podcast. 

I’m going to begin to add intention to the exercise moves that I do.  I will encourage myself to stretch a little further, hold a little longer, walk a few steps more, and all will deepen my physical practice.  

I have added more sound to my spiritual practice in the form of humming to specific parts of my body for healing purposes. 

When I come to my wall of flowers now renamed Altar of Spiritual Expansion, I might start making up songs to nature and sing while I work. I play my native double flute to them. What will you do to create more balanced experiences in your life?

===RELEVANT AGING ===

Don’t Let Aging Sneak Up On You

The need to give up my car was my first clue that I was aging. My eyesight no longer made it safe. Then I started to use a walker. That made it hard to take out the trash and I had a grabber in every room to pick up fallen objects. It became harder and harder to simply live my life.

Now I have the physical help I need. I have the medical care I need. I can turn my attention to making a difference in the world.

Aging is inevitable. How we express it, how it slows us down, what changes we make to adapt and accommodate it, and our mental and emotional changes are up to us  – our adjustments and our creativity in finding ways to stay relevant and interactive is totally up to us.

Aging sneaks up on you but you get to make mindful choices at every stage.

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

Expand Your Role in the Rapidly Evolving Universe

See The Potential 

I used to love to sew and as I walked in a big room full of bolt after bolt of fabric, I used my imagination to see the potential for a fabric that I liked.

Sometimes you can see the potential and sometimes you just know that it’s something you want to explore more deeply. 

I can certainly see the potential for envisioning a role as Light Bearers for humanity but I can see very few details at this point.

Visualizing allows you to go beyond the limitation of the known world. You are free to explore and examine and create wherever your mind takes you. 

Don’t slow your imagination down by being too practical. Allow your imagination to take you on adventures you’ve never dreamed about before and let it show you its untapped potential.  

Find Like-Minded Friends

It is a small group of four of us plus our therapist organizer but I have connected with four other women here who are going to be interesting new friends. And it was then that I remembered something that I had forgotten. Since we are in the upper 10% of IQ in the world population, it is obviously a little trickier to find other people on that same level. So I need to stop lumping all old people into a category that I think I’m not interested in. I’ll simply know that I have to look a little harder to find interesting, compatible, active fellow seniors. 

Where are you finding your friends? How do you find them? 

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

Raise Your Sights and Your Expectations 

Don’t Get Stuck In The Small Stuff

I’m not much of a detail person, but I still often get stuck in the small stuff, the details, the not-very-important steps that keep me from examining and expanding the overarching goal of whatever I’m doing. I’m both casual and confident about what I do and how I do it. It’s easy for me to take an action and let it go rather than reworking it or rethinking it or redoing it. 

I keep the big picture in mind and try to make certain that whatever choices I make are as effective and impactful on that big view as they can be. 

I don’t concern myself with too much detail. If a detail helps further a big picture, I use it. If it only tweaks a little corner, it may very well fall by the wayside. 

Know what is important. But there is a point where some of the details can be a little more casual in order to move the bigger picture forward.

Be imaginative and creative and flexible. Don’t get stuck in the small stuff.

Many Paths

The head of nursing here is from Kenya. He won a scholarship to a school in Virginia as a star track athlete. Isn’t it interesting how we are brought along our path in unexpected ways and in sometimes unexpected directions. 

There are quite a few people from Africa on the staff here and I’ve often wondered how they ended up in Kansas which sure seems far away. I also didn’t know there were 56 different countries in Africa and every one has a different dialect. Most people know English and there is a common dialect everyone can speak. 

Look at the unexpected gifts that have been the catalyst for opportunities that you enjoyed and excelled in. My writing has taking me on adventures as has my gift of organizing. I guess I’m not self-aware enough to know what other gifts might have helped propel me forward but I sure have had a good time on the paths that I have chosen. 

As I look back over my life after I left Kansas City, it is a long expanding journey into spirituality and philosophical inquisitiveness. I have always shared what I learned.

Look back over your life path and see what threads and gifts have been woven throughout and see if you are cultivating and utilizing those gifts even now.  

How can you expand your gift? How can you expand your reach? Where do you begin? There are many pathways to take to reach your destination. Just make sure your destination is where you want to go. 

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

New Consciousness – New State of Being 

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

==== DEEPER SONG EXPLORATION ===

If you have a topic that you would like to see explored in this newsletter, please email me at caralumen@gmail.com. 

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

===CARA’S CORNER===

Don’t Go Back In Time

I almost went the wrong way. I almost went backwards in time and that’s not the direction I need to go. I have written thirty small booklets in the last 30 years published by me with some sold in my church bookstore and some on Amazon but I got the idea that I wanted to put all those old books on my website and give them away for free. I’m pretty sure it was an ego thing – here’s what I’ve been doing with my life. And then I realized how much time it would take to update the front and back pieces and reformat and get them in and out of PDF and it’s not a good use of my time. But I had to get pretty far into the process before I figured that out. Now I’m going to look at my life to see if there’s any place else where I’m trying to go backwards. I don’t see one at the moment. But this was a big wakeup call because I spent a lot of time organizing my book files on my computer and I’m not sure that it was time well spent – instead I accepted it helped me reach the decision not to continue. 

How do you decide what is important to do or not do to move you forward? What are the guidelines? What is the criteria?

I pause to look at where I am right now, what the universe has handed me, and where I think I want to go at this point in time. And backwards is not it, however strongly I need to show off my body of work. It’s interesting to have gotten this far along in the process of preparing to put up the books only to finally realize this is not how I should use my time. 

What pulls you off base? And how far off do you go before you realize you’re not going where you want to go? I’ve been thinking about putting these books out for several weeks and finally realized the past is the past and energy I’m spending on reaching out to others should be based of where I am now and what I am thinking now – not the past, but the present and definitely the future. 

What is pulling you off track? Look closely at your choices to be sure they are moving you forward in the direction you need and want to go now. 

===SING A DEEPER SONG ===

Stay On The Right Path

I almost turned backward. I almost retraced steps that I have already taken. It would not have served me.

I almost turned backward. I almost retraced steps that I have already taken. It would not have served me. I pause to consider the gifts I have been given. I pause to raise my gaze to my future place of service. 

I almost turned backward. I almost retraced steps that I have already taken. It would not have served me. I pause to consider the gifts I have been given. I pause to raise my gaze to my future place of service. I leave my past behind and move determinedly into the future.

• Cara Lumen, September 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

Cara Lumen, explorer, spiritual philosopher, teacher, guide, leads us on a journey of self-awareness, spiritual expansion and impactful service. She helps us believe in our value, trust in our gifts, express our passion in a unique manner and build something meaningful around our wisdom and expertise. She helps us sing a deeper song.

Live in the nowhere that you came from, 

even though you have an address here – Rumi

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