Search Results for: Expand Your Spiritual Heart

Stoking the Fire Within

September 8, 2016 By Cara Lumen

Our passion is the fire that propels us forward. Our determination is the fire that makes it happen. Our willingness opens us up to more fires of inspiration. How do we keep stoking the powerful fires within?

Listen

The fire of your passion has been present since the beginning. You know it, your recognize it as a vital part of your being, and you put it to work. Where and how you put your passion to work depends on how well you listen.

Listen within

I got a very clear message when, as a metaphysician, I moved into a senior center where everyone just seemed to be killing time until they died. I was consumed by the need to make sure that I didn’t buy into that mindset!

The reality is that I’m 83, and death is higher on my list than it used to be. I had a strong, comforting spiritual concept of death, but since it was now a stronger consideration, I decided I wanted to explore my spiritual beliefs and develop a stronger spiritual connection with what the Persian poet and mystic, Rumi, calls “the nowhere that we came from.”

That became my inner calling and I went exploring. The call is extremely strong and the more I give myself over to listening, the more I hear.

Listen without

I love to learn and am forever listening to what others have to say. Recently I was on a webinar summit sponsored by The Shift Network and heard a lot of people who are drawn to Shamanism talk about changing our fragile planet by doing our inner work.

I believe inner work is a key way we can change our world. I was grateful to find others equally convinced and actively working with the idea. As I listened and learned, a vital inner shift occurred. The goal of my work became not just personal but very global in nature. What a powerful expansion and an additional focus for my exploration!

So, the fire within me was fueled when others expressed their personal fire within.

Allow fire to clear the space

Fire performs many important tasks. One of them is to burn things to clear the way for the new. In nature, that often looks very destructive but it has always been the way of nature – the old must make room for the new.

As I follow the glow of this new fire toward the expansion of my work, I leave behind some of the thought processes, focus, and even projects I’ve begun so that I can move rapidly into this new space that has been opened up by the fire of the vision of others that expanded my personal purpose.

What do you plant in the new, cleared space?

I now have a new space before me. Around the edges are the tools I’ll use, the depth of the work I have done so far, my passion for learning, my compelling need to write, my philosophical insights, and the wisdom of my heart. What I’ll plant there is emerging.

“Be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted,  a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.”
-Rumi

I don’t know exactly what I’ll plant in this new space, but for the moment it is cleared by the fire of my enthusiasm for my ever-deepening direction. I’ll call on the fire within to direct my passion and soon, very soon, my new crop will begin to flourish.

Follow the fire of your passion

Allow the fire of your enthusiasm to clear the field. Then plant from your heart.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:
What if You Broke the Mold?
How Do You Define Success?
Message from a Rainbow Mother
The Length of Your Reach
The Many Faces of Your Calling
44 – How to Define What You Do So Others Get It
46 -How the People You Hang With Affect Your Life

Mindfulness as a Path to Self-Awareness

July 4, 2016 By Cara Lumen

Mindfulness is a path to self-awareness. Self-awareness is a path to aligned choices. If you don’t know what you want and need, you’re not going to get it. Self-awareness expands your possibilities.

Choose mindfulness in caring for your body

I realized how powerful mindfulness is for developing self-awareness when I got serious about eating mindfully – chewing each bite longer and taking time to explore its flavor and texture. I turned off distractions like television. I took time to offer thoughts of gratitude to the people who helped get the food to me and to the crops for growing and the sun for shining and the rain for dropping. (I’m vegan or I would thank the animals, too.) Mindfulness is awareness. Eating mindfully lets me become aware when my hunger has ceased. Mindfulness tells me when my body is tired or needs exercise. Tune into your body and make the changes it requests.

Bring mindfulness to your self-talk

We say the most harmful things to ourselves – “I can’t, I’m not good enough, they don’t like me.” We do more damage with the thoughts we direct to ourselves than any other person could possibly do. Start thinking and speaking in the present tense. Say “I am”, not “I will”, “I have”, not “I want”.

Make a list of the good things people say about you and absorb them until you believe them. That is the reflection you offer others. Believe it. Change it if you don’t like it. Trust your reflection to give you guidance but teach yourself to give you praise.

Bring mindfulness to speaking

As you begin to monitor your self-talk, take time to be mindful of the words you speak aloud. Think before you speak. Watch the reaction you get. Listen to the words the other person is not saying and respond to those unexpressed feelings. It takes practice to speak mindfully but the rewards are heart-warming.

Use mindfulness for your spiritual expansion

When you spend mindful time in contemplation, you hear the inner voice of All-That-Is. Whether you journal, write poetry, draw mind maps, write songs, or read wise words, use some form of mindfulness to continue to expand your spiritual practice. Explore new concepts and bring into your life the ones that resonate.

Bring mindfulness to your service

How do you want to serve? Where do you want to serve? Whom do you want to serve? Go exploring. Find where you are needed. Find where you are the most effective, and get to work. Find a community that needs you, people who are traveling in the same direction whom you can help. Take time to share your light with them and walk beside them for a while.

Mindfulness leads to positive choice

Mindfully practice mindfulness. It leads to self-awareness and self-awareness leads to positive choices that are aligned with your passion and your purpose in life.

How will you be mindful today?

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

Embracing Tao
Live in the Nowhere That You Came rom
The Freedom of Not knowing
Why Unfolding Works
The Power of Non-Action
35—How to Hold the Space for Change.
23 – What Are the Truths You Live By?
17 – Exploring The Village of Nothingness

Build on the Distance You Have Come

June 27, 2016 By Cara Lumen

The way you process is to build on the distance you have come. You have skills you have developed, talents you have expanded upon, experience that included success and failure. All of that is the foundation upon which you stand. It is what you build on.

You passion is clear

It’s much easer to identify your passion after you’ve lived a few years. You keep seeking out the same type of experience, the same opportunities. That makes the next part of your journey easy to map out.

Your talents are evident

Sometimes we forget our natural talents. When I started doing videos I loved doing them. Then I remembers I have two degrees in theater. Duh. No wonder I was having a good time. Look back over your life for the talents you developed at an earlier stage and bring them into now.

Your skills have been honed

I know things I didn’t know a few years ago. I do things better this week than I did last week. The more you use your skills, the more choices you have when it comes to a new project – or a new path.

You are wise from experience

Been there, done that. What a time saver that is. And it also keeps us from making the same mistake again. (Hopefully) Let experience guide you but don’t let it keep you stuck. Stay open for change. Embrace change. Take that experience and go exploring.

You know your heart

In retrospect I can look back and see several things I have brought forward steadily in my life. That is my heart. One is writing and the other is an interest in my own spiritual exploration. Now those are coming together for this part of my journey.

Use your past to build your future

Stand firmly in your experience, look deeply into the wisdom of your heart, and build on the distance you have come. Reject what didn’t work. Expand on what did. You have the wisdom now to make choices that are aligned with your passion, your calling, your skills and your talents – all of which have grown richer with age. That’s how you build on the distance you have come.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:
The Power of Your Personal Path
Can You Control Your Own Destiny?
The Power of Exploring the Unknown
The Power of the Label You Choose
The Art of Mastery
32 – How to See Your Work As Art
35—How to Hold the Space for Change

Our Opinion Requires No Thought

June 13, 2016 By Cara Lumen

Where do our opinions come from? Our opinions come from a hodgepodge of unexamined beliefs and experiences. Opinions require no thought. If opinion is the lowest form of human thought, why do we value it?

We hang on to our opinion because we are afraid

If someone is doing their life differently than we are, we feel uncertain around them. We may feel less than, we may feel more than, we may just feel afraid because their expression of life is outside of our own experience, our own comfort zone.

Opinion requires no accountability or understanding and it leads to violence, discrimination and a narrowing of our own life experience.

We hang on to our opinion because we don’t understand

When I took my final exam in Comparative Religion in college, I wrote at the end – “How do I know my religion is “right?” Up until that point, I had not been aware of the variety of ways that humankind seeks their own spirituality. I hadn’t known about those other religions, therefore I didn’t understand them. I begin to go exploring to find what resonates with me and my particular path and it has been a rich, rewarding and unique journey.

We hang on to our opinion because it’s easier than gaining knowledge

It takes time and energy to get the facts. It’s way too easy to believe what we are told – in the media, by others. If we want to move beyond the shallowness of opinion, we have to be open. We have to be willing to consider our options, to explore several approaches to a solution, to listen with an open heart to the concerns of others.

It’s so much easier to just believe what we fear, what feels uncomfortable, than to examine ourselves to see what we might learn and therefore change about our own feelings and beliefs.

Opinion is scary because it can be harmful

We get attached to our opinions and if they are questioned we hang on even harder. It leads to confrontation. Can you pause for a moment and look closely at your opinions and do some fact-checking, listen to the concerns of other, and be willing to expand your thinking?

The only way to move beyond opinion is to explore

Do some research. Read a variety of viewpoints and recognize that even those “viewpoints” might just be someone’s narrow opinion. Look for the facts and know that even the facts that were selected to share where chosen based on someone’s opinion of what was important. You have to look hard to find what feel like the truth. We fear what we don’t understand. Learn what you need to know in order to broaden your viewpoint.

Question you own values to make certain they are truly what you value today and are not simply the values and beliefs you were taught in your childhood and have never bothered to question. Don’t take on someone else fear. Move yourself into the understanding of the human-ness of what you feel.

The highest form of knowledge is empathy

What if we tried to walk for a bit in the other person’s shoes? What if we truly understood that we are all one – all one energy – all one spirit – all one essence. That you are me and I am you and to harm you is to harm me. What if we embraced that?! The highest form of knowledge is empathy, being able to understand and share the feelings of another.

Can you move beyond yourself?

The first step to compassion and empathy is to feel and see beyond yourself. Each of us is beautifully unique just as we are. We are here to be appreciated and valued and learned from. You are. I am They are. We are. We are one.

Can you empathize enough so that you can feel both the joy and pain of the people you have a negative opinion about? Can you look deeply into the things you hold in common and celebrate their unique value in the world?

A person is a person, whatever their race, nationality, or gender. People love, they share, they teach, they learn, they walk, they rest, they think, they create. We are all the same, whatever we look like or however we express our own individuality.

What is the highest good for all?

A person stepping forth to lead will not “please” everyone. We are too beautifully unique – and unfortunately too opinionated. What if we all found solutions that were for the highest good for all? The highest good, the best for everyone. That would mean compromise, that would mean flexibility, that would mean understanding the feelings and belief and needs of others. Can we do that? Can you?

Appreciate what others offer

A person expressing his or her gifts is simply that, a fellow human following their passion and giving of themselves to the world. You can accept it or not, but feel their heart. Feel their love of what they do. Do not let that be overshadowed by anything superficial that tempts you to bring yourself down to that lowest form of thinking – your opinion. Raise your sites and absorb the gifts others offer.

Think empathy. Think love. Think oneness.

Go beyond yourself and live in the other persons’ world.

Move from the self-serving world of opinion into the world-embracing place of empathy and see how your own world experience changes.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:
We Are Part of a Larger Spiritual Order
What is Your Truth?
I Am You
Live in the Nowhere That You Came From
28 – How to Walk Beside Someone in Service
35—How to Hold the Space for Change.

The Power of the Label You Choose

March 23, 2016 By Cara Lumen

Your power lies in how you see yourself. If you see yourself as strong and powerful and capable, that’s what you are. If you see yourself as less than that, that’s what will show up.

How do you see yourself?

Before you read on, take two or three minutes to write down a few words that describe you. Think about your personality, your skills, your passion. You can also write down a few things you’d like to change about yourself.

Are those observations positive? Or are they mostly negative? How you see yourself affects who you become.

How others see you

Now list the qualities others see in you. If you’re not certain, ask your friends.

Compare the two lists – how you see yourself and how others see you. Who are you going to believe? Are you going too hard on yourself?

Years ago, I began to keep an acknowledgment list. I wrote down the kind things people said about me, along with the name of who said it and the date. When I was feeling less than confident, I would read those comments and could see how people saw me as much more capable than I sometimes saw myself.

I still keep that acknowledgment list. It helps me stay aware of how I’m touching lives and hearts.

A label can help you change

The impact of my work relates primarily to internal change. That change is so subtle it is hard to recognize let alone describe. So when I receive a positive comment, it feels supportive of my choices even though I know in my heart I am on the right track as I offer ideas for positive change.

If there’s a quality you’d like to expand, practice doing it for a week.

If I want to be more thoughtful of others, I take every opportunity to expand my ability to do that. If I want to help my introverted self be more sociable, I need to practice showing up at events.

A label can help you see yourself differently

I had a huge personal shift when a series of events helped me see myself as a verbal artist and thus made it okay for me to be as introspective as I am. Qualities that I perceived as limiting turned into strengths.

A friend who had been putting herself out as a proofreader and editor mentioned that she enjoyed doing presentations coaching and she wants to begin to do more of that. That was not how she was putting herself out in the world.

Recently, I noticed that she had added Presentations Coach to her email signature. That was huge!!!! She was taking ownership of a new label. She was trying it out. She was getting comfortable with it.

What label would you like for yourself?

Some of the labels I would like to apply to myself feel too lofty for me to achieve. But what if I pretend? What if I dress up in the labels that appeal to me and see how they feel? What would they be?

I started to write that at 83 there are a few labels that aren’t going to happen without a lot of work; labels such as “strong” and “vigorous”. Until I realized that compared to a lot of older people, and even to many who are younger than me, I am still strong and vigorous.

Do I want to be a well-known writer? Not particularly; but I would very much like to know that my words change lives. And I do know that they do. I can tell by the number of posts opened and podcasts listened to and emails I receive.

I’ve worn several versions of the coach label. I realize that how I want to express that label today is to create courses that use my gift for creating introspective processes to help people sing a deeper song – whatever their song turns out to be. So my label changes from “content development coach” to softer definitions like “guide” and “teacher”.

But even these no longer fit, as I see my work as simply walking beside others to shine my light, my awareness, on their path. I have chosen softer words because I am living a softer life.

How labels limit how we see others

How easy it is to apply a label to someone. It can be about their physical appearance like cute, handsome, short, tall, or it can be about their personality, perhaps bubbly, serious, talkative, demanding.

But these are only momentary conclusions we have reached based on the situations in which we met those persons.

My introversion has made me be perceived as standoffish. My intelligence has been interpreted as “she thinks she’s up there and we’re down here.” But there’s no up and down, there are just different puddles we play in.

Rethink how you have labeled someone. I know a person who seems very negative and judgmental. I think underneath she simply wants to be approved of and loved. I know someone who is very skilled at what he does and yet from our conversations, I know there’s a lot of self-judgment and uncertainty standing in his way.

Does your label limit you?

Notice how you label yourself. See if you can reword it. I work with “spiritual philosopher.” And I’m still growing into that. Spiritual is easy; “philosopher” is a label I still need to own.

What are you comfortable calling yourself? If you’re not comfortable with a label but want to see yourself in that new light, look at yourself in the mirror and practice calling yourself that. Introduce yourself with your new label until you believe it of yourself.

How a label can help you take action

Trying on a label is a good way to explore a new direction. If I decide to label myself as a motivational speaker, I’m going to start acting like a person who motivates and inspires by the words they speak. I will learn to craft talks. I will study my delivery, my gestures, my voice intonations. I will improve my skill and see how it feels.

I actually did a version of this. I do monologue podcasts. That means, it’s me giving a talk. I happen to craft a script because that’s how I’m comfortable working for now.

One day, I recorded a too-long, too-wordy podcast and realized I didn’t have the right framework. I went to Craig Valentine’s book, World Class Speaking, and found an outline for a talk. I put that in my podcast template, wrote my next script to that format and it was the best script I had created so far.

I’m not a live speaker, but I do communicate with words. I’m not going to label myself motivational or even inspirational. Those labels restrict me. What I am is a person of the heart. Now that’s a label I can grow into.

The label you choose defines you.

How do you label yourself? What less-than labels are you applying to yourself and how would you like to change that?

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:
How to Develop Your Distinctive Voice
Fitting In Is Not What You Do To Be Extraordinary
How Often Do You Redefine Yourself?
Is Everything You Know Still True?
Are You in the Right Room?
Engage in the Power of trust
30 – The No Plan Plan
27 – Why Have You Been Chosen
28 – How to Walk Beside Someone in Service