Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

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You ARE Vibration and Why it Matters

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You ARE Vibration and Why it Matters
An Inner-world Exploration

You are vibration, so even as you walk in the world you are sending out vibration.  As I cultivate mindfulness and inner, my very breath, my very being emits a soothing vibration. I can walk into a room and bring the vibration of serenity with me. 

Your thoughts have vibration

Exciting thoughts can keep you awake. Creative thoughts can inspire you. Loving thoughts can soothe you.  Thoughts are very powerful. Cultivate the thoughts you want in your life.

The first step in raising your vibration is awareness

When a vibration is affecting you – positively or negatively – locate its source. Notice how it makes you feel.  Notice the tenseness in your body. Or the sudden feeling of contentment. Listen to your inner voice. What is your mind thinking?  If the vibration is not welcome, simply change your thinking. Start thinking of something peaceful and watch your body relax.

When you pay attention, you can feel the energy when you enter a room. Remember a time when you instantly liked someone?  That was vibration recognizing “like” vibration. When my cat jumps up to join me in my big chair, we both settle down into some peaceful togetherness. 

Be aware. Be choosy.  

Learn to feel the change in vibration but also learn to identify its source. 

The shift in your vibration begins in your heart

If your heart is in a positive place, your words and actions will express positive frequencies and heighten your vibration.  

Breathe wholeness into your heart. Breathe in and out with awareness. Open your heart to the positive vibration.  See if you can identify the source.  Is it within you?  Or from your outer world?

Change your vibration through intention, visualization, and choice

First, you notice your vibration, and then you choose what you want it to be more of or less of. 

I sometimes visualize myself simply setting aside whatever I seem to be worried about.  Then I trust.  Trust that whoever shows up will be perfect and that I can handle it. I may even actively visualize a positive outcome.  

Choose the highest vibration you can identify, and focus on that.  It will make a difference in your experience.

Vibration has a tendency to synchronize

When you change your vibration, it serves as a filter. That means when you cultivate a high moral vibration, and a lower vibration comes along, you will either reject that lower vibration or you will change it and bring it up to match your higher vibration. 

That’s just the way vibration works.  The higher vibration has greater power and attraction.  Be that higher vibration and your life will change. 

Consciously radiate your vibration

A portion of my daily spiritual practice is to simply sit and radiate out the highest vibration I can manage within myself. I radiate it out from my heart with my intention.  I send to the Transformational Thinkers of the World, to the Higher Collective Consciousness, to the well-being of our planet.  I just sit here and vibrate at the highest frequency I can manage with the intention of helping others raise their vibration.

Things change. It’s my way to participate, to help heal our world.

Raise your vibration

When you begin to live consciously at a higher vibration, you’ll attract more things of a higher vibration.  It’s really that simple.  Change your vibration, change your life.  

How will you raise your vibration today?

Deeper Song Affirmation

I am aware of my own vibration and seek ways to raise it.

Deeper Song Process

  • When you sit in stillness, bring yourself to a state of serenity. Feel that vibration and allow it to expand until you are radiating out serenity. 
  • Notice any negative energy around you.  How do you keep them from coming into your experience?  See your body surrounded by a soundproof shield that reflects any negative energy away from you. Or, see a field of energy around you that dissolves the negative energy and sends it back with love.
  • Add to your spiritual practice steps that help you raise your vibration and deepen your sense of inner peace. 
  • Repeat.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Raise Your Vibration With Serenity

Raise Your Vibration Through Visioning

Build a Launching Pad for Your Inner Work

How to Walk a Path of Inner Stillness

Energy Cannot Be Destroyed – Only Re-Purposed

Believe In The Power Of Your Own Ripple

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.

 

The Pillar of Light Process

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The Pillar of Light Process
An Inner-world Exploration

The Pillar of Light Process creates an experience of focused power coming from your own hands.  It began with an energy experience I had in a Qi Gong class and has evolved from my intuition and inner guidance. 

It began with the image of the Tree of Life  

The Tree of Life reminds us of our roots deep in the lower world, our branches touching the upper world and we, in our body suits, expressing those gifts in the middle world.  We stand as a connector to all three worlds. 

The final result is that you see and feel and experience yourself as a Pillar of Light radiating positive energy out into the world. It is very powerful for balancing both your physical and vibrational body. 

The Pillar of Light Process

Become the Tree of Life

Standing, sitting or lying down, feel yourself become a tree standing solidly in the middle world with your roots deep in the ground and your branches touching the sky. Point one hand down toward to the Lower World. Raise the other hand up toward the Upper World. Feel yourself in your body suit standing firmly in the Middle World.

Gather in the energy

Begin to draw energy from the Lower World up into the hand that is pointing down. It will have a color.  Simply let it reveal itself. 

From your raised hand, begin to draw energy down from the Upper World.  It, too, will have a color.  It can be any color that shows up.  The two colors can be the same or different.  Don’t try to put a meaning to it, just notice it.  Pull color up through the downward facing hand.  Pull color down through the hand reaching up. 

Absorb the color for healing

Feel the colors moving in your body, moving within to heal and balance and release and restore. Let your imagination take the light into all parts of your body and your inner world. 

When you are ready, bring your hands up so the palms are facing about four inches apart

Here is both the magic and the proof.  When you bring your hands together with palms facing about four inches apart, you will feel the heat, the expression of the vibrant energy you are now focusing.  Just notice and be amazed. 

Bring the energy into your chakras. Affirm your intentions

  • Turn the palms of your hands toward your face and experience the warmth of the energy coming to you. 
  • Crown chakra – Bring your hands to the tops of your head with the palms facing downward over your crown chakra. Offer an affirmation like “I expand my connection with my higher self.’ 
  • Third eye chakra – With palms facing about four inches from the third eye, say “I see clearly within and within”. 
  • Throat chakra – With palms facing the third eye, say “I speak wisely within and without”. 
  • Heart chakra – With palms facing the heart, say “I love deeply, within and without.”
  • Solar plexus – With palms facing your navel, say  “I act with mindfulness, within and without.”
  • Sexual chakra – With palms facing your reproductive organs, say “I care for my body, within and without.”
  • Root chakra – With palms pointing toward your root chakra, say “I stand wisely in my illumined service.”

You can change the affirmations and make them your own, but do hold your palms facing your body in order to send energy to each chakra. 

Heal Yourself 

Spend time now, focusing the healing energy from your hands into any part of your body that needs healing.  Spend as much time as you wish. Your intentions will focus the energy’s direction and usage.  It can clear, release, strengthen – whatever is needed.  And you can also just send the energy to “whatever is causing…”

Add sound

Sound is a very powerful healer so begin to hum with the intention to send the vibration to the places upon which you are focusing the energy from your hands.  Experiment with pitch. You can experiment with sounds, but the humming is like singing yourself a healing lullaby.   

Raise Your Vibration and Feel Yourself Radiating Light

When you’re ready for closure, place your hands on your heart and allow the healing and restorative energy to flow inward. When you feel full, allow your vibration to radiate out until you feel yourself as a golden light, radiating out positive vibrations. Feel that light move out from you – into your physical space, out into nature, out to the planet, out into space. Feel yourself as a Pillar of Light radiating wholeness. 

For that is what you are. 

Make the Pillar of Light process your own

Experiment with this idea. Change the affirmations if you like. Make it your own. For a closure, my original intention was to send this energy to the world by opening my palms.  But when I did that I realized that I really liked how it was feeling when my palms were focused on me.  My powerful “compromise” was to turn one hand out to offer it to the world and keep the other on my heart.  What happened was totally unexpected. I felt healing energy coming in from the world through the extended open palm, and at the same time, I became aware that my whole body was vibrating wholeness out into the world. 

Closure

To conclude the Pillar of Light process, I bring my palms together about four inches apat and blow between them to send the wholing energy out into the world and to conclude the experience. 

Make it your own

I do this process every morning as part of my spiritual practice. Sitting in a chair looking out at nature.  I could add it to my morning Qi Gong practice.  And I always do it in bed before going to sleep. If I were to add to this, I might hum into each chakra.  

You can certainly choose any affirmation you like for each chakra.  I made this process up and have experimented with it for a while before sharing it. The core concept is to gather energy from above and below into your hands and use it to heal and whole yourself – to raise your own vibration and send it out to raise the vibration of the world.

Deeper Song Affirmation

I work with the Pillar of Light process and add it to my spiritual practice.

Deeper Song process

  • Do the Pillar of Light process the way it is described for a few days.  
  • Then experiment and adapt. 
  • Keep on radiating out light!!!!

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

When I See Myself As Light

Build a Launching Pad for Your Inner work 

Another Part of You-The Unseen World 

How to Interpret the Messages from Within 

Energy Cannot Be Destroyed – Only Re-Purposed

Raise Your Vibration and Change the World. 

I help transformational thinkers raise their personal vibration so that we, collectively, can raise the consciousness of our planet.

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

How to Interpret the Messages from Within

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How to Interpret the Messages from Within
An Inner-world Exploration

We get messages from the unseen world all the time.  We first recognize them as hunches and intuitive nudges.  We either learn to pay attention to them or we don’t.  However, when you pause to listen, your inner voice becomes stronger and clearer. 

Nudges and knowing

How often have you acted on a hunch and been right?  Many times, I’m certain.  Begin to notice the choices you make based on those intuitive insights. See how often they turn out to be right. Learn to trust those inner knowings.

Feel Your Inner Voice

Notice what forms your nudges and knowing comes in.  Certainly, you have experienced a sense of simply knowing. No reason for it, just a certainty about the right choice or the next step to take or what was about to happen.  You FEEL your inner voices. 

Years ago, I remember driving home during a heavy snowstorm. It was a rural landscape and the highway only looked like a larger snow drift while the highway was barely visible.  I had driven that highway many times but it was night and there was freshly falling deep snow. I remember the sensation of putting out my antennae all around me and as I drove, I got flashes and pictures and knowing of where I was on the road.  I drove by instinct.  I drove by feeling. I trusted because I had no other choice. I could barely see.  And I got safely home. The feeling of extending my antennae to the countryside around me was immediate and intense.   I was really vibrating with sensory listening. 

Hear your inner voice

You may hear a loud internal voice. Or a soft one. But the suggestions and information may also come in the form of words.  You HEAR your inner voice.  It speaks to you in phrases and sentences…!

My inner voice often shouts at me.  A word or a phrase will be amplified in my mind – by a book, or the television, or some passing stimulus. My inner voice simply shows up as a very loud thought!  Those words, that specific phrase are loud and immediate.  It’s as if they are saying, ”You need to look at this.  You need to explore this.” So I do.  My inner voice is often very insistent.   

Interpret your inner voice

I was taught to “read” crystals fifty years ago. My friend told me to hold the crystal in my left hand and see what came up.  I got a sensation in a particular part of my body and since I knew the chakra system, I used that as a guidepost for the beginning of my interpretation of the messages of the crystal.  As I worked with crystals, I learned to immediately know if a crystal was for the heart or the crown or the third eye.  Then one day it was clear to me that a particular green calcite crystal was to be used by people who were grieving.  I began to listen more broadly, more deeply. 

Just recently a crystal (I have over 150 of them) called out loudly to me from a shelf I was passing by and told me quite clearly it was to be taken to a certain place on my desk. It has not yet fully explained its reason for being here but it’s nearby and I’m listening. And it’s talking… 

Nature will talk to you

Whether it’s the warmth of your cat who has come to sit beside you, or the call of a bird outside your window, or the wind rustling the leaves of a nearby tree, nature speaks.  We must learn to listen.  

One winter, a very wet, heavy snow fell and the weeping birch tree outside my window bent deeply in response.  I realized there was an important message so I wrote Messages from a Snow Fall and learned a lot.

Nature talks to you when you listen. 

Move when your inner voice tells you

I’ve made some major decisions based on a sudden “knowing.”  When it was time for me to move from California to the Mid-West to be closer to my daughter, I made the decision in three hours.  I got the nudge, did research about the area I wanted to go, found an apartment complex that felt right, and called my daughter to say I was coming.  

In three hours. 

Yes, there were other factors building up to that “sudden” decision.  A roommate had just moved out, a new one was financially imperative and the choices that were appearing were very unappealing.  Was it time for me to move to a more affordable place? It became a major choice made in a small window of time. 

Pay attention to your nudges and knowing. You’ll know when it’s time to take action.  Trust that. And act.

You can “channel” your inner voice any time

If you’re hearing an occasional voice speaking loudly to you, you’re channeling your inner wisdom, your inner voice.  I’ve brought my inner voice more deeply into my writing.  Over the years, I’ve found myself typing in things that I wondered where they came from.  

I was present.  I was typing, but the words seemed to flow from elsewhere.  That is your inner voice and you must listen and learn to interpret its subtle messages.

When I do my shamanic journeys, I set an intention before I begin. I close my eyes go within and type my journey.  Occasionally my fingers get on the wrong keys and I can’t read what I typed, but I periodically peek at the screen to make certain I’m still making sense.  This typing and journeying has allowed me to deeply explore the inner world of my spirit guides and review and thus remember the details. I begin by going to my sacred garden to meet them, each time I journey. 

Dreaming your inner voice

It’s very powerful to set an intention for your sleep.  A lot of good healing and rebalancing occurs there.

Years ago, I was given a green hand-holder stone.  I meditated with it and eventually lay down on the bed and slept while still holding it. I had a very strong dream of being in a group of robed women. We collectively were being called to do spiritual work.  When I awoke I remembered every detail of the dream.  Forty-five years later I have reconnected with what is now the Circle of Light Beings in my shamanic journeys. 

Let your dreams open doors.

You have to trust your inner vision 

I take a shamanic journey every day. I place my mala beads around my neck, ring a ceremonial bell to signal my beginning, sit at my computer and type in my intention, my question for the journey. Then I sit with closed eyes and prepare to feel myself disappear until only my typing fingers are moving and the rest of me is busy in my inner world. I am not very aware of my body but am actively following my thoughts. 

In shamanic journeying, we are offered metaphors that can be in the form of animals, or helping spirits, or elements or plants.  It’s up to us to interpret the metaphor. As I continue this inner world practice, I feel my ability to hear and interpret my inner voice growing stronger, my answers growing clearer, and my calling growing louder. 

If you are beginning to journey, a shamanic drumming track may be useful. 

Hearing your inner voice may take some practice.  You must do it enough so you recognize the signs and whispers you’re given and then more practice and actual experience in order for you to begin to accurately interpret them.  

Just begin by talking to your inner self.  And listening to the soft answers.

You can ask for physical signs of your inner voice

Kinesiology is actually about receiving information through muscle testing and I have been taught to do that. For my first experience, I was told to stand with one arm outstretched and to resist the downward pressure from the other person. I did. I was strong.  Then a packet of sugar was placed in the other hand and all physical resistance whet away.  I had been weakened by the presence of a negative. Pretty amazing.  

I use a version of kinesiology to explore other choices I make.  I may take identical slips of paper and write each choice on one side. I include a paper that says “other” in case I need to make a choice I have not considered.  I place them face down before me and mix them up so I have no idea which is which.  Then I hold my hand over each paper one at a time and feel and listen to what I’m told.  One answer always calls to me. 

Sometimes I use that selection system to narrow down my choices in case two things call to me equally. Just listen to the thoughts that show up. Learn to interpret them out of your deeper self-awareness.  It’s a very powerful tool.  

Pendulum

A pendulum is used for dowsing.  You can make one with a bead on the end of a string. And you can buy some lovely ones. It’s a very fast way to get a “yes”, “no” or “maybe” answer for any question. Each time you begin, hold the pendulum away from your body suspended between your thumb and forefinger. Run the fingers of the other hand down to make the pendulum perfectly still. Then one at a time, ask it to show you a “yes” and see which way it rotates, then a “no”, then a “maybe”. The choices will be circle clockwise, circle counterclockwise and move back and forth, left to right or possibly not move at all. After you have identified the form the answers will take, ask your question which obviously should be phrased with a yes/no/maybe answer in mind.

Allow yourself to channel

Learn to trust your intuition, your  inner words, your inner nudges. 

Begin with your intuition. Learn to trust that.  Do some meditation and perhaps ask for a message to be given at the end.  Then write that message down.  Journey/meditate with a specific intention, looking for a clarifying answer and let your helping spirits guide you. 

Learn to interpret the answers you get.  No one can do that for you.  With practice, you easily learn to do it for yourself. 

Let your inner one-word nudges expand into complete sentences.  Often when I was writing a few years ago, I would have an entire section come in that I was aware of typing but I thought it was too good to come from me.  I pictured a trio of Shakespeare-type writers with feathered pens, dictating to me.  

Now, I just listen and type and know that it’s my inner voice coming through.  It’s a lovely mix of conscious and unconscious thought that shows up on the page.  

Trust what you receive. Learn to interpret it 

If the message or metaphor or symbol isn’t clear to you, ask your helping spirits to clarify it for you.  Then watch for what they give you.  You might also ask, “How am I to use this information?”  And see what you get.  

Keep an eye out for your ego. Interpreting your inner voice is so much fun and you get such great answers that for me it’s never about me doing anything.  It’s about me simply opening up to receive something wonderful.  Don’t judge. Don’t filter.  Listen. Absorb.  Adapt. And maybe you even need to reword your question.

Trust what you find when you speak to your inner voice. 

FOR DEEPER EXPLORATION:

Unleash The Power of Your Inner Garden 

 Live in the Center of Your Being 

Discover Your Spiritual Heart

Join the Circle of Light Beings

The Language of the Stubble Realms 

How to Explore Your Invisible Self

What Seeds Do You Allow to Grow in Your Garden?

Does Your Path Have Heart? 

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

Know The Power of Our One Light

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Know The Power of Our One Light

I am light. You are light.  We are light.  The same light.  One light.  When we live in that awareness there are no barriers, no differences. There is only One Light.  

Feeling and experiencing and knowing ourselves as one light is not as easy to do as we might wish it to be.  First, you have to know you are light, then you have to understand how to live as light.  When you learn to live as light you’ll find ways to change both your life experience and the world. 

See yourself as light

Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing eyes and hair and what you perceive as you, close your eyes and feel you, feel you from the inside of your body and let yourself, your body suit, disappear until you are a pinpoint of light, floating in the Emptiness That Holds Everything. Stop and do that now.  Go within.  Take a slow, deep breath and go within so deeply that your body suit despairs.  

You have begun to see yourself as light. 

See others as light

Now, look at another person.  Again, soften your eyes or close them until the body suit of that person disappears and there’s only light where the person was. There’s no person, only light.

Come together in light

Picture yourself and the other light being floating in a void, the Great Everything, as two points of light.  Floating. Moving closer to each other. Allow yourself to merge and become one light.  There’s no longer any separation between you and your friend, you are one bright light. No longer separate body suits, but intertwined, integrated as one light.  

Slowly other points of light began to appear and float toward you.  As they approach you and your friend as a combined light, embrace them, include them, absorb them into the one light you are. Feel that one light grow bigger and bigger as more lights release from body suits and join the One Light.

And that’s the way the world works. That’s the way we are.

Experience the world as Light

When we expand our awareness and feel ourselves as light, our world shifts.  We begin to see the light in everyone.  It’s true that not everyone can see the light in themselves, but those that can also see the light in you. It’s those self-aware lights that come together and become one.  One light. 

Gradually, everything – from the butterfly to the giant trees to the moon in the sky – becomes light to you.  One light.  One interconnected, wholing light.

Shine your light

How do you get to that feeling of oneness from your body suit?  You practice.  Sit with your eyes closed and breathe, breathe in light, breathe out light. You can breathe in light in from your crown. You can breathe in light through your pores.  Just keep breathing until you feel yourself as all light.  

Now walk around all day with the feeling of an internal glow that everyone can see and feel.  Because they can. When they look.  When they open themselves up to feel. When they become aware.

Come together to heal the world

Those of us who know we are light are coming together through our spiritual hearts. As we do, our collective light brightens and deepens and broadens as we cover the earth – with light.  The energy of unconditional love, one light. First in a thin layer. Then in a layer that grows thicker as more and more people turn to the light within them and focus their gaze as a healing force for the planet.  Become light. Join with other lights.  Let us live in a world of light.  

Begin to experience yourself as light in your personal spiritual practice. Breathe in light. TUne into light.  Sing light, dance light, drum light, simply see light in nature, in people, in everything.  What you look for, you find.  Look for the light in yourself. Look for the light in others. And connect with it. 

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Our Defense of Non-Existent Boundaries

Come Out of the Protective Darkness of the Unconscious 

Light and Darkness Cannot Exist Together

What Does Spiritual Friendship Look Like? 

How to Weave the Sacred into the Ordinary

 

Life Messages from a Potter

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Life Messages from a Potter
An Inner-World Exploration

I took a course in clay sculpture a long time ago in New York City.  I remember rolling the clay into “snakes” and then weaving them in a circle to make a bowl.  I remember looking at a live model and managing to mold a small figure.  The instructions were to cut away what was not needed.  

Cut away what is not needed

Now there’s an amazing life lesson! What are you carrying around in your life that you no longer need, or never needed, but are hanging onto as if you did?

Self-doubt, comes up.  Not experiencing your own self-worth.  Who needs those! Take away what is not needed. What should be left, what should be saved is self-love.  

Build a foundation

To build a larger structure, potters create an armature.  It’s a wooden or metal base they construct to hold the clay when they sculpt a figure or a head.  

The pottery lesson here is that although we can shape our lives into any wonderful figures or elements or expressions of our life that we wish, we may have to provide an armature, a strong, supportive foundation upon which we can build.  That means we need to know our values and our spiritual beliefs.  

The potter knows that the structure of this foundational armature must be in the correct proportions or the entire sculpture will be flawed and unsteady.

How strong is your armature, your foundation?  Does it need strengthening?  Start with self-love. 

You magically shape your life every day!

Become more aware of your role as the sculptor of your own life. I never expected to become a really good potter, but I did love the learning process. And I surprised myself. My most amazing feat was to create the head of a woman model that was really good. I was really proud as well as truly pleased at the talent I showed that I had no idea I had. It surprised me that I could do it.  I took away what was not needed and true beauty emerged.

Then the head broke when the instructor fired it but I was so surprised and pleased that I had done it that I carried the unfired sculpture with me for years. Remember your life successes and bring them forward with you.

Clay can be made into anything, as can your life.

You begin with nothing and you make something.  Is that not a perfect metaphor for life?! 

Chose your clay 

We come into this world with the ingredients of clay, along with the ability to fashion our life in any manner. But we can add elements to our clay to change how it can be used.  We may mix different colors of clay for a specific effect.  We may vary the coarseness of the mixture. We may need to make the object thicker to make it stronger, depending on its intended use.  

We begin with the clay of our being, evolve its purpose, add our choices, our beliefs, our experiences into our own unique clay-ness to form and create and evolve the expression of our life.

Mix in clarity of purpose

The clay itself will vary depending on where it comes from the earth.  Just like us.  The potter (that’s us) slowly adds water (choices) until the right consistency is reached. 

We add all sorts of things to our “life” clay.  We add experiences and beliefs.  We add learning that we accept and learning that we reject.  

Start with your intention

What do you want to create in your life?  You have access to the ingredients to make anything you want.  What will that be?  Begin with an intention but let the clay talk to you and help shape the end result.

What do you want to make of your life?  How do you want your “clay” to be in service?  That will determine how you shape it. 

Form the shape you want

In pottery, you work the clay to get out all the air bubbles, the excess, the unwanted. That takes massaging and folding and pulling and kneading.

The next step is to put the kneaded clay (you) on the wheel (the Wheel of Life) and center it. Picture this.  The lump of clay (you) is on the wheel (life) and the hands of the potter are there to hold you and center you.  These strong, supportive hands (your values and spiritual beliefs) help you begin to form the shape of your life experience and your form of service. 

Shape your life based on the clay you have chosen to work with and the service you wish to provide

To get clay ready for the wheel, you press it to make certain all the air is out.  Air will cause distortion.  Think of air as unfound beliefs or ideas that do not serve your final destiny. Get rid of them.

The very first act is centering  

Here is a major lesson in this metaphor of life.  We must center ourselves many times as we move through our lives, through our day.  It is at the center that we find balance, redefine our direction, and move forward. 

The potter makes certain the clay moves into a balanced form as the wheel is slowing turned.  A slight pressure here, a release there, and the clay begins to take its intended shape. 

The potter begins to get a feel for the texture of the clay and her hands adjust in order to help the shape take form. She “listens” with her hands and responds to the needs of the clay. A little pressure here. A little release there. Just like life.

Draw the clay up into the desired shape

If you’ve ever watched a potter work, there’s a constant moving of her hands.  She “draws” the clay up as the wheel turns.  Pressing in one place so another area can expand. A potter talks to her clay.  She listens to what it offers and she uses her imagination and intention to shape the piece into the best form for its intended place of service. 

Cut off excess

After the shape is as she wants it to be, the potter lets the clay harden, leather hard, soft but holding its shape. She examines her piece to see that it is what she intended and trims off the excesses. She checks for balance and trims off what’s throwing it off.  She checks for appearance and balance. What do you need to trim off in your life?  What’s keeping you off balance and needs to be discarded? 

Trim the unnecessary pieces in your life and refined its shape to make your life experience more balanced and aligned.

Fire it to make it hold its shape

The idea of firing something to help it hold its shape is an interesting life concept. You need fire in your life to hold your shape. Passion, conviction, a little testing here, a lot of testing there. That firing, that heat, allows you to make choices that firm up your beliefs and helps you recognize your gifts and take steps to shape your life according to your calling.

The potter lets her shaped clay dry completely.  Then she puts it in the very, very hot kiln.  This is the bisque firing.  Clay is super fragile before you fire it.  Once you’ve done the bisque firing it holds its shape and is as sturdy as stone.

Does that mean our times of pressure and difficulty are simply ways to help us toughen up so we can truly be in service?

How do you decorate your life?

Now comes the fun part.  The artistic part.  The decoration part.   Now that you have the shape of your life determined, how will you decorate it? What colors do you use?  What shapes do you draw?  Your life is yours to decorate.  What do you choose?

Once the color is on, the decoration complete, it’s ready for the glaze firing.

Put your life in service

The life you have shaped and fired and glazed is ready to go into service. Who needs it?  Who wants it?  Where will the life you have shaped and decorated have the most impact?

Did you shape a life that could hold the joy and love you want? Are your lifelong lessons emblazoned on your surface? Is your place of service clearly evident?

Make each day a new creation

If I approach each day as a new opportunity to create a unique shape for my service I’ll begin by using my spiritual practice as the armature, the solid frame upon which I’ll build my day.  I’ll consciously and intentionally shape my vessel for the service I intend to offer through the choices I make.  And I’ll decorate my life with my thoughts and actions so everyone can see how I’m in service.

How do you shape your day?  What form do you want it to take?  How do you want it to look?  Are you willing to do what it takes to make that happen?

Each day is an opportunity to create a new offering.  Make it a useful one.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

What Are Your Weaving in Your Reality?

Are You Sacred Space? 

Make Work Your Offering 

Does Your Work Stir Your Heart

The Power of Being Different