Respond Rather than React
Creating Conscious Connection
Ashe
(“Ah-Shay”)
The Creative in me honors the Creative in you!
Reaction is unthinking. It is automatic, visceral, instinctive, primal, and uncontrolled behavior.
Respond is to consider, and weigh our options and consciously choose your answer and your actions.
Reaction seems to be emotional and very uncontrolled. Response is measured and is consciously and mindfully reasoned out.
Recognizing and understanding the difference is empowering.
We have control over where we focus our attention. If we focus on the negative, what is not working, we experience fear and dismay and … all manner of negative emotions.
When we are consciously selective, when we focus on the positive, the possible, the overarching well-being, we experience an entirely different emotion.
They are both emotional – one focus is soothing and hopeful. The other brings us angst and tension.
A response can be negative but because it is a response rather than a reaction, it seems to offer us a logical way forward that a reaction doesn’t always have.
A logical way forward. A focusing of our ability to reason, to evaluate, to compare, and to choose. Those quantities make up a response. We want to cultivate our ability to respond rather than react as we move with conscious choice through our lives.
The first step for moving into purposeful evaluation is to quiet your mind. Shut down the what if’s and disbeliefs and particularly the scenarios of potential failure that we have a tendency to create.
Our first tendency when facing a new situation is to begin to use our mind to evaluate, but I’m suggesting we learn to move into our Still Point with a deep breath and consciously relaxed shoulders, and sit in silence. Listen as the silence deepens and calms and centers you. This is where the truth lives. Not the what if’s, but the serene, awareness of natural unfolding cycles, and the consciousness of Oneness. Go there. Be there. Trust that.
Once you are centered in your Still Point, you are in a position to evaluate and mindfully choose your response.
In this calm, centered state, feel yourself move to a place of seeing the overview. From that calm, centered, all-inclusive position, begin to consider your options, your possibilities, your potential path. Just observe with no emotion.
What can you actually control or directly affect?
Unless you are in charge of something on the physical plane, the majority of change comes from the energy and focus you create within yourself. Change begins within you. That change radiates out into the world and is powerfully vibrant and influential.
As an 88-year-old woman, my in-person service work is now done within. I’ve held signs on street corners in protest a few times a long time ago. I walked out on the highway in New York City to be part of the Hands Across America movement, but now my sphere of influence comes from within – though my intention and continually raising my vibration.
This work is subtle. But it is powerful. I watch as people join the Deeper Song Community from all around the globe and I know there are many of us, consciously moving to raise our vibration and the vibration of the collective consciousness. We are in deep service and we are making a difference. And because we are all doing inner work, energy work, consciousness work, we get to look more closely in order to see its subtle and powerful effect.
And we get to trust. Trust that this expanding, collectively raised vibration is making change.
To convince yourself of your innate power to change, begin by making changes you can see and experience. I can walk more and see the changes in my body. I can study more and experience the deepening of my knowledge. I get to choose where I focus my energy.
I’m relying on Gaia and my Soul Star to be my messengers, to help me support positive change. I consciously rise above the human chaos and focus on our wholeness, our heightened energy and I pick up my individual harp and join the Circle of Light Beings as we play our music to raise the vibration of – everything.
Tune your individual harp strings to the sound of One. Play your melody but stay in tune with the overarching symphony. To respond is to make conscious choices. Let us join together to raise the vibration of the whole.
DEEPER SONG AFFIRMATION
I move into my Still Point, tune my soul harp to the sound of One, and begin to play my melody for the well-being of all.
DEEPER SONG PROCESS
- In your quiet times, consciously raise your vibration and join it with the Circle of Light Beings and watch the powerful change that takes place.
To explore your options and develop your personal approach, explore:
How to Create a Transformative Energy Shield for Protection
The Gaia Gateway and Your Soul Star
How to Hold High Watch for the Planet
How to Direct Energy Outside of Time and Space
OUR GLOBAL DEEPER SONG COMMUNITY
Our Deeper Song Community extends throughout the planet. Welcome new Deeper Song Explorers. I’d love to hear of your experiences – caralumen@gmail.com or let’s have a discussion on the Deeper Song Explorers!
===DEEPER SONGS I EXPLORED THIS MONTH===
Simply Being – The Art of Wu Wei
There is an emptiness about Wu Wei. There is a tranquility about Wu Wei, there is a posture of moving with the flow, being gently rocked in the current of life while serenely sharing your inner light
Wu Wei is a concept in Taoism that means non-action. Wu Wei means do what is natural, appropriate and leaves no traces.
The “leave no traces” is an interesting aspect to consider.
Here’s how I think it is:
Stephen Mitchell’s translations of the Tao Te Ching says:
The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way and lets the Tao speak for itself.”
Wu Wie means to be present, resounds with inclusive clarity and leaves no traces.
Wu Wei is about non-interfering, non-obstruction, and non-forcing. It is about letting life unfold.
Cara Lumen, spiritual philosopher and Founder of the Deeper Song Community is a cosmic explorer who consciously travels into the unseen world to serve as a bridge to help us expand our relationship with the spiritual world. She shares what she learns and guides us to the next level so we can sing a deeper song.
In this episode we explore
Simply Being – The Art of Wu Wei
(20 minutes)
Listen to
Reflections of a Deeper Song Podcast on
Apple / Spotify /Google
Important Links From This Episode:
Stephen Mitchell Tao te Ching and Second book of Tao
Deng Ming Dao – Everyday Tao-Living with Balance and Harmony
To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:
The Concept of One and the You as Observer
Can You Experience Your Boundlessness
Metaphorical Messengers and the Unseen World
===INNER WORK===
Patterns
I drew the oracle card “Pattern” and had to explore what it meant to me. A pattern is a repetitive design. I looked at the pattern of my life. Strong elements in my personal pattern are intellectual curiosity, communication, and spiritual exploration. Those are some of the threads I weave into my life. But the pattern is up to me. I can change the emphasis of one thread over the other. I can change the depth and width of the use of that thread in the overall design. Each element has a different color range. How fascinating to feel myself weaving my day into being. What threads do I emphasize? What patterns do I create? What colors do I choose?
Think of your day as a tapestry you are weaving and choose your pattern with thoughtfulness and creativity.
===OUTER WORK===
What is Driving You Forward And Does it Leave you Room to Explore?
When we look closely, we will be aware that that are several core driving forces moving us forward. It’s important to know what your core focus is and also periodically examine it for relevance.
Survival is certainly a focus. But what level do you seek? Are you comfortably tucked into a modest home or do you want something luxurious that takes more time and money? Your choice will determine the size of the job you take and how long you work at it. Supporting your choices will determine how locked in you are to the path you must take to support it. If I have a backpack and an open road, I need only to take a dishwashing gig in a restaurant to find food. If I am running a big company, there are many layers I must master and manage.
Balance is important. Adjusting our goals is one way to make space to adjust our actions.
I’m still in a stage of evolution; however, the clues from my inner self are getting stronger and clearer. But I do not make myself so busy that I do not have time to listen and explore in the moment. We need to make space for new ideas to make themselves known. Spend quiet, contemplative time often.
Are you too busy to have time to listen, and think and consider what new opportunities are presenting themselves?
Find time to go exploring. I have modified my offering output so that I can literately sit here and say, “What do you feel like doing?” My absolute favorite thing is to explore through writing. That’s easy and fun. Shaping that into the format to share with others is the next step.
So I mindfully listen in stillness and make room to explore what shows up.
I love to learn but I’m rather full up. I love to create and that’s a priority. What is important to you? What is your priority? What is your driving force? What is crowding you so much that too don’t’ have time to explore?
Make some choices and leave room to explore.
Who Do You want to Serve? What do You Want to Help Them Do?
With the world undergoing such rapid and dramatic changes, this would be a good time to pause and make some thoughtful choices. What new needs have opened up that you might fill? Who do you want to serve and what do you want to help them do? Let the answers to those questions guide your choices as you set about to create your “next.”
I was in Michael Port’s first Book Yourself Solid Coaching certification and one of my favorite tools to work with is the “who and do what” statement.
If you are considering a new step, whether changing jobs, moving into retirement, or starting your own business. figure out the answers to these three statements:
I help (kind of people you want to help)
To Do (what does your service/offering help them accomplish?)
So that (what they can do after working with you that they couldn’t do before?)
Making those decisions will get you rapidly focused on the direction of your net step.
How do you want to be in service next?
“I help spiritual adventurers explore the Unseen World so that we broaden and deepen our personal journey and turn to share our discoveries with others. We are guides and way-showers with our light held high.”
===DEEPEN YOUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE===
Prayer for Sacred Pauses
Goddess of the sacred pause
please grant me the courage
to lay aside swiftness
and take up slowness,
to embrace limitations as learning,
silence as stabilizing,
waiting as worthy,
and sitting as divine.
Goddess of the sacred pause
help me to know stillness as strength,
patience as powerful,
and healing time
as holy necessity.
The Unexpected and Its Source
The dish I had ordered for my altar was not the color I had ordered, it was not ceramic as I had thought. It was plant-based resin and it has been a tremendous source of energy from the moment I opened the package. This feather-shaped dish sent energy to heal my body, my heart, my insight. All this happened within seconds of my opening the package. I had a sense the person who created this had infused it with very powerful healing energy. I accepted the gift.
I had ordered the dish from an artist on Etsy and the package came from Latvia. I had to look up exactly where Latvia is. “Latvia is a democratic sovereign state, parliamentary republic Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been part of the Russian Empire since the end of the 18th century, but after the Russian Revolution of 1917, they became independent states.” It is on the Baltic Sea across from Sweden and down from Finland. My little package had traveled a long, long way.
I wrote the woman who made it and asked what she had added to it energetically. And she wrote back “only a little piece of my heart.”
Be aware of the energy of “inanimate” objects. Learn to feel their energy. Learn to interpret their energy.
This particular item is a small dish shaped like a feather. I got it to serve as an offering dish on the altar I am creating under the window next to my desk.
I have to thank the universe for bringing this energy to me. I thought I ordered blue – I would not have ordered it in black. I thought it was ceramic or I would also not have ordered it. But the Universe made those choices for me. It wanted the energy it carries to get to me.
I have recently learned of the powers of the Condor in Peruvian shamanism so I will use this feather to represent the Condor, which represents the Upper World, the realm of the divine origins and Spirit.
So unexpectedly, I have received an additional gift. It has opened my heart and offers to take me on journeys to the upper world.
But the gift was greater than that. As I work with this dish and it keeps reflecting back powerful energy to me, I realized this is reflecting MY energy, perhaps enhanced by the women who made it, but the resonance is so strong in my heart chakra that I have come to understand it is the energy of my own heart that I am expanding. And when I held it above my crown chakra, it was like being blessed with very powerful cosmic energy. This is my own focused energy being reflected back to me! So here is my big lesson – don’t give others credit for the energy that is actually coming from you.
I did not expect this. I simply ordered a small dish for my altar. And I got much, much, much more.
Be aware of the powerful positive energy you project and notice how it is reflected it back to you.
Create Releasing Ceremonies
One of the strongest images I have received in my journey work is the idea of leaving behind what no longer serves us – to lighten our load as we move forward along our path.
A Releasing Ceremony helps us leave behind what is no longer aligned with our purpose, what is actually stopping us. Setting aside those obstacles clears the path for a positive journey into our next adventure.
In your Releasing Ceremony, you can be specific or general. With my blessing, I release whatever is causing my body to resist standing up straight. I am grateful for my eyesight and intentionally release any and all elements of my past and present that are causing my vision to blur.
Move deep within to create your statement of release. Feeling what you want to release, move out from the deepest corners of your being and begin to lift.
You have to believe that you can make this healing happen. It’s not you making it happen, it’s you opening yourself up to allow it to happen, to allow our body to self-heal, to self-correct. Encourage it. Keep releasing the known and the unknown beliefs that have brought you to where you are.
In one journey, I laid aside what I no longer needed and watched it turn into butterflies of transformation. In another journey, I watched what I laid down to leave behind turn into water to nurture the life near by.
Release what you no longer need however you are called. Burn it in fire and watch it turn to smoke. Dissolve it in water. Simply lay it down and leave it behind. It is up to you to choose what you want to release and how you want to release it. Look at your willingness to let go and make certain you are truly willing to release it – what you know and also what you don’t know, what you are not aware of. I release any and all beliefs, ideas, circumstances that are holding me back from wholeness in the present moment.
Make releasing a part of your daily spiritual price.
Further Exploration:
The RIver of Time – The Discovery
What Do You Need to Leave Behind?
Your Offering
I got a lovely lotus incense burner from Etsy with the intent of actually burning incense in it. But instead, I have turned it into an offering bowl in my morning ceremony. It is interesting to feel your intentions being offered as if they were the smoke of incense being carried off into the world. What do you offer the world today?
I offer my healing voice. I offer my curiosity. I offer my willingness to explore. You get the idea – create some form of an offering moment each day and with intention send that focused energy out into the world.
===DEEPER SONG INSIGHTS ===
When the Time is Right
This change has been a long time coming. I have felt it but nothing definitive showed up. Until now and I sure was surprised. “Sound healing with your voice. That is a new step for you. Heal with your voice. Heal with your tone. Heal with your intention.”
So, here I go exploring and experimenting with and sharing how we are to use our own voice to heal – ourselves, our planet, others. That’s all I know at this point.
Deeper song member Noralee noticed that I had changed gong sounds at the end of my podcasts. I had been using a handheld energy gong but have begun using a 6” desk gong that sits on my desk. Christina Gerber and I had a long conversation about using humming to heal. I have written The Intentional OM Hum. I have made up songs to the elements that I used to sing but now play on my flute. Recently I am beginning to use a focused intentional hum toward my body and my life. I will experiment with vowel sounds and pitch and sequence. I will begin with an intention and see what evolves. I may play with the poetry pattern I know of beginning with a word that is repeated and placed in an expanded context. I have words I sing in my head as I play my flute but it never occurred to me to sing them to anyone else.
My intention is for my voice to be healing. That could take many forms. I can do that.
In my journey on this topic of my unfolding process, the Circle of Light Beings were a primary component – singing our individual songs and also combining our voices to support an overarching collective, harmonious sound.
What it looks like is that in some future podcasts, I may sing to you!!!!
Aren’t new adventures fun!
A Deeper Song Exploration:
How to Use Sound for Self Healing
Join the Circle of Light Beings
How to Interpret the Messages from Within
How I Found Connection – The Visionary Harp
===OUR EVOLVING FUTURE===
Create a New Model For Our Changing World
Our world is constantly changing. Things are different but just how different are they? One major shift is that everything is now online. What do you need to do to get better at that? Create a home office, get a better microphone, adjust your lighting, figure out how to host on Zoom?
The first step in creating change is to recognize that change is needed.
The second step is to explore the possibilities. I like doing podcasts better than videos. I don’t want to teach a class but I will work 1:1. I increase my FaceBook connections by friending people I take online classes with. Where else do I need to do to make myself known – to reach the people I want to serve?
The second step is to choose from all the possibilities you have explored. For instance, my spiritual practice keeps evolving as I immerse myself more deeply in that experience. I moved things around so I can easily add my xylophone and my tongue drum to my morning spiritual practice. Drawing an oracle card each day has become very meaningful for me. Experiment, rearrange, choose what resonates.
Develop what you have chosen to explore. Take it a few steps further so you can see the possibilities, so you underhand the potential. Take time to understand how this new direction feels to you. How it expands and challenges you.
Adjust. Constantly adjust because as you grow, as you get better at what you are doing, you can take on more challenges or expand your reach.
Create your new model for this evolving world by recognizing the need for change, exploring the myriad of new possibilities that are evolving, choose those that resonate, develop them to fit your needs, and adjust until you own them!
===MESSAGE FROM THE SACRED EARTH ORACLE CARDS===
Stretch
“‘Stretch is the oracle card I drew for us for the next two weeks. It shows a woman with many roots and branches coming from her head and arms and hands. She is expanding her reach by deepening her roots and broadening her reach. Part of stretching is about exploring and another part is about nurturing what we have going for us. I might expand my reach through an action I take and I might deepen my reach by deepening my inner work.
There is an element of being flexible when we stretch. We must know how far to reach and when to pull back.
What area of your life are you ready to expand? How far are you willing to stretch in order to grow?
===CARA’S CORNER===
I am a Happy Rebel
I am such a rebel. I keep choosing and using only what resonates with me in the way I want to use it.
I just signed up for a three-month online course – “Andean Shamanic Journeys and Rivals to Align with the Divine Feminine for Strength and Purpose” and I already know I do not want some of the details I will be taught, I what the overview, the insights that I can turn and creatively apply to my own life and explorations.
I’m not a rule follower. It’s not that I’m a rule-breaker, but I am a major adapter. I take a core idea and shape it into what works for me. It’s great fun and is very freeing.
I am an over-view person, not a detail person so that’s also part of my free-wheeling response.
For instance, in the intro to this new course, there was a detailed ceremony. But what drew me were the intentions of some of the steps. I know I will find a way to add those intentions to my own spiritual practice in my own way. I would work with the intention and let the “how” part simply evolve.
Perhaps not so much a rebel as an individualist. I can work with that….
My DEEPER SONG
My way. My creative way. My personal way.
My way, my creative way, my personal way unfolds before me like a golden beacon of adventure.
My way, my creative way, my personal way unfolds before me like a golden beacon of adventure, bringing deeper understanding and broadening views.
I go exploring.
– Cara Lumen
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 spiritual adventurers explore the Unseen World so that we broaden and deepen our personal journey and turn to share our discoveries with others. We are guides and way-showers with our light held high.
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