Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

choice

Choices That Create Your Future

By

planet - future

When you live a simple, unfolding life, you don’t think much about the future.  You let it evolve, show up, become. So all you can really do, when making a choice, is to do what’s best for you right now, in this moment. Don’t make choices based on a future that hasn’t yet emerged.

Trust the Great Mystery

When an unexpected opportunity shows up, take a close look at it. It may be the Universe showing you an option that you’ve not yet considered. You don’t have to take it, but it would be wise to explore it. It may show up again as a similar choice and you will have thought about it and understood your response to it.

It’s our human mind that makes us think there’s a plan that we must follow. But all that exists is this moment, this moment in which we must choose and take the next step. It’s an opportunity to simply let life unfold.

You can’t choose for the future 

It often seems there are choices upon choices. They fill our lives. Even if we have a plan, we’ll undoubtedly end up someplace else.

The wise step is to choose consciously in the moment. How does this choice reward you now? What can you learn from it? What new detours can you make?

When you look at each moment, each choice, as an adventure, life gets very exciting.

Where are you headed?

As a person who lets her life unfold, I only have a fundamental understanding of where I’m headed. I know it’s focused on personal spiritual exploration but I don’t know anything more specific about it than that. I’ve been on this exploration all of my life.

Make certain your small choices are aligned

I constantly make choices to learn something new. But even when it’s to learn something technical, the result is to be able to share what I discover on a new platform.

It’s great to go exploring, to see what some new format or tool can do to further your general direction. But do work toward defining your general purpose and keep heading in that direction.

Increasing your skill expands your options.

What’s your overarching purpose?

I’ve been on some sort of spiritual exploration all my life. Sometimes I invested years exploring a certain spiritual approach. That’s how deeply I went exploring. Fourteen years getting a diverse holistic training in New York City, including Reiki Master Teacher Fourth Degree and a yoga teachers training, five focused years becoming a licensed practitioner in the Center for Spiritual Living, a deep five-year (or more) dive into Taoism, and now an ongoing purposeful exploration of Shamanism.

They are all related. The path is all spiritual exploration, the choices were simply in-depth explorations into a philosophy that called to me.

What is your over-arching purpose?

Identify and follow your core calling

My goal was never to become a writer – but I am one. My goal was never to become a teacher – but I am one. My goal has always been my need to know and understand, for myself. But I have a powerful urge to share what I figure out.

Know your underlying calling and align your choices with that.

You can learn from everything

Even if you feel you’ve gone astray, you’re learning. You’re learning what you do not like, what does not suit you, what you are not called to do. That’s a helpful exploration.

You can even learn when you seem to be blocked. You learn patience. You learn inward contemplation to search for what you need to change within you so that you can move forward.

Check in with yourself

Do the inner work necessary to keep yourself on track. Notice where you are. Feel what is aligned and do more of that. Release the rest. Explore and see what feels aligned. Choose what does. Let your inner voice guide you and trust that it helps you make choices that are aligned with your future service

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

The Guardianship We Hold 

Build a Transformational Community to Heal Our World

How to Nourish Your Inner Fire 

14- How Strong is the Foundation You Build On

What Seeds Are You Planting For the Future?

By

seedlign

We are constantly cultivating the Garden of Self deep within ourselves. What we say and do affects the growth of our inner crops. What we plant is what we harvest. I paused to look more closely at the seeds I was planting for the future.

What are you growing in your inner garden?

Any good gardener knows you have to prepare the soil. That means weeding out the old, the unusable and that which is no longer needed. Begin there. Examine your beliefs and expectations to make certain they’re aligned with your dreams and desires.

Taking a reality check includes knowing what you love to do, what you’re willing to do and what you keep putting off. That self-awareness will help you plan a balanced garden.

What do you want to grow in your inner garden?

Good gardeners have a plan. They look at color schemes, bloom dates, and their local climate. And they choose the size of the garden they plant based on the crops they want to harvest and what they can and are willing to care for.

Do the same with your inner garden.

I have let some things go fallow but I don’t want to weed them out. I just want to let them lie dormant for a bit. For instance, vLogs have taken over the space once occupied by my podcast. Short booklets have taken over from longer projects. I allow more space in my inner garden for meditative journeying to explore my invisible self. These choices will affect how much I plant and what crops I’ll harvest.

As there’s only so much time and space, plan your garden to accommodate your time and attention.

Expand the skills you need to cultivate your inner garden

When I learned how to make a vLog, it opened up a new way to communicate and a new audience to reach. The new skill nourishes me both inside and out. What new skills do you need to acquire and plant in your inner garden of the future?

Expand your knowledge of how to grow your inner garden

Growing your inner garden is a personal journey. With each new choice, each new awareness, you’ll need to make adjustments. You may need new skills. You may need to weed out an old pattern. Be fluid and flexible when cultivating your inner garden.

You may explore new spiritual processes and figure out ways to incorporate your version into your practice.  You may deepen your understanding by reading a book or taking a course or watching a video online. You may acquire a new skill that creates new opportunities. Use your intellect to explore and your heart to choose what to keep.

Interact with people who make you think in order to nurture your inner garden

The more specialized your crop, the further afield you may have to go to find people who are cultivating a similar crop.

I have developed a small circle of friends who are on paths similar to mine. I speak with them individually on monthly Skype calls. We encourage each other and talk philosophically and in depth about our mutual interests. Each conversation nurtures the seeds of ideas that we are cultivating within each of us and cross-pollinates our ideas.
Who would you like to connect with monthly for a conversation that would enrich and expand you both? Make that connection happen.

What new crop do you want to plant in your inner garden?

You can’t grow everything in your garden. You have to be selective. What crops are you growing that bring out the best in you – your passion, your sharpest skills, your most eloquent self-expression?  Do more of that.

Be realistic about your choices. I love to learn and am forever exploring new ideas. But it can become overwhelming. So much so that I sometimes end up doing nothing.

Be realistic about how much time it’ll take you to cultivate and harvest the crops you choose, and adjust your planting selection.

Cultivating your inner garden requires new self-awareness

Not only do we need to be aware of what we plant but we also have to be aware of what we allow to grow in our inner garden. We need to weed out any doubt or idea that doesn’t support our journey.

What do you need in your life?  How do you need to change your work habits in order to find balance?

Know what you want to grow and how much of it you’re willing to cultivate. What do you need to change about your inner garden that will increase your value and your impact?

Plant new seeds in your inner garden

Select the seeds that offer the most impact.

As the world moves into the need for a more aligned group consciousness, I’ve become more active in group meditations. I’m more aware of and active in supporting the causes I hold as vital to our planet. I plant the seeds of subtle activism.

The more I read and listen and exchange ideas, the more opportunities I find to explore, the more seeds I want to plant, the more crops I want to harvest. The seeds I plant and cultivate  in my inner garden are changing my inner landscape, and that affects my outer world.

What new seeds have you found to plant in your inner garden?

Choose your crops of the future

You have to adjust your crops. I prefer to let my life unfold, but I am actively selecting and planning new seeds that call to me. I allow time for them to ripen so I can see how best to use them. Those ideas that don’t resonate are not tended and they go away. Those ideas that call to me are explored and expanded and shaped into alignment with my passion and strengths.

Whether you’re planting a new crop for the future or weeding out things that you don’t want in your future, tend your inner garden in a manner that nurtures you. Thin out your ideas. Prune overgrown concepts to allow for greater growth. And fertilize and water those ideas and concepts you want to bring forth into your future.

Become a master gardener of your inner self.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

The Guardianship We Hold

The Three-Year Promise

What Do You Need to Leave Behind?

Your Body Suit and Invisible Self

40 – Who Do yo Want to Serve?

When the Barrier Seems Bigger Than It Is

By

 

mountain

I put off a final step of a project for ten days simply because it felt like a barrier I had to push through. And, of course, the longer I waited, the bigger the barrier seemed. What do you do when you seem to have hit a barrier? How do you overcome it? How do you work around it?

Barriers often begin small

My perceived barrier was a small technical step I needed to figure out in order to set up a wonderful display of my books on my website along with the way to obtain them. I worked really, really hard for three days getting to this point. Then there was one small step I needed to understand and do and it would be finished. Furthermore, it would then be set up and ready to receive more books.

That one step felt like a major challenge and stopped me in my tracks.

Some barriers are about making a decision

I was given an alternate solution by tech support. One step. One solution. And yet I put off for days even trying to understand that one step. It was because I had to make a decision. I had to figure out one more choice. Are some of your barriers simply about decisions?

I knew that it would probably take me 20 minutes to make this happen — well, maybe an hour — but the reward and relief would be enormous.

What if a barrier became an opportunity?

Once I master this one small step, it’ll be easy to put up the other small books that I seem to be completing at a rather rapid pace — probably becomes it’s more fun to create than to set up the back end of a website. So I have chosen to do what’s easy and pleasurable over what feels like a challenge, a place to push through, a barrier.

I wonder where else I’m doing that in my life?

Where are your stuck places?

I live alone so I can very much do what I want to do — or not do. I make rewarding choices like writing or meditating over mundane things like cleaning and cooking.

But there needs to be balance. I must push myself to walk more, to stretch more often, to even sit and look outside the window to connect with nature.

Once you identify your stuck places, figure out how to get yourself un-stuck

Don’t take the easy way

How hard would it be to walk five more minutes each day? Could I put on some great music and cook for an hour in order to have several special meals for the week? What if I tidy and clean some small area before I do something I regularly do — like watch the news. I bet I could even tidy up during the commercials.

Slip in some discipline

My mother made a point of sharing this story of my grandmother. Of all the daily chores she had, what she disliked the most was cleaning the coal oil lamp chimneys. So she did those first and freed up her day from the dread of doing them.

Smart lady. And smart mother to tell me that story.

Pick a “push through” time

Figure out a time of day when you have the energy to push through another step of the perceived barrier you have before you. If my barrier is physical, my push through time every day will be at 4 p.m., when I go for a walk. I’ll add more movement during that time.

As I reserve the beginning of my work day for writing and creating, early afternoon will be my push through time for mental barriers. It feels good to label it “push through” time.

Look at the reward for your effort

I will love having my books up on my site. I will feel proud to have them up on Amazon (another process I put off). Most of all I will love the feeling of relief and release and completion of the book project.

Just do it

Whatever you’ve been putting off, just do it. Set your timer if you want to — put it to 20 minutes, and see what you can do in that length of time. When the timer goes off, see how close you are to success. Acknowledge how far you’ve come and set the timer for another chunk of time.

Barriers are only opportunities to grow

What will you learn if you move through this barrier? What will it feel like on the other side? Is there another path you should take in order to get around this perceived blockage? What can you modify?

What is the lesson you need to learn in order to move forward?

Every opportunity has a gift. And barriers are opportunities. Look for the gift. For me, once I figure out this one small step, I can share my books in a lot of places. Look for the gift. Look for the reward.

And simply do what needs to be done.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:
How Choosing the Right Word will Clarify your Choices
What to Do When You Don’t Know What You Need
Why we are Afraid of Change?
When Change is Hard
Be the Story you Want to Tell
VLOG: Insights of a Deeper Song
PODCAST: Reflections of a Deeper Song

The Purpose of Barriers

By

 

road-block

What does a barrier do? It makes you stop. It makes you take time to figure out a way around it, or even to take another path. They suggest a new opportunity. Barriers serve a valuable purpose and are so helpful. Let me tell you why.

What are the barriers in your life?

A barrier can be seen as an obstacle or an opportunity. Our first response is an emotional reaction — anger, impatience, or determination. We’ve been moving along in a direction we’ve chosen; and suddenly the way is blocked!

Are you going in the right direction?

The first thing a barrier makes you consider is the direction you’ve been going in. It forces you to pause and re-evaluate. Your objectives may have changed since you set out on your path, as you gained more knowledge. The need to take certain action may have disappeared. You may have discovered side trips that are more interesting than your main direction.

What are the other ways in which you could proceed?

If you’re stopped in your tracks by a barrier, you have to pause and get your bearings. You have to look for a way around the barrier. Can you go around it? Can you move it aside? Can you push through it? You look for an alternate route, or you may even consider turning back.

A barrier is an opportunity to consider your alternatives.

Is the timing right?

We start in a certain direction with all good intentions. But things change — you change, circumstances change. Is this path taking you in a direction that’s still aligned with your passion and place of service?

A barrier gives you time to evaluate in the present moment whether your choice is still relevant.

Is something better coming in?

A comforting concept is that if something you want doesn’t manifest, it’s because something better is coming along and the timing isn’t right. If you proceeded in the direction you’re going, you wouldn’t be free to take advantage of the new opportunity.

Be still and reflect

Let go of everything you think you want. Everything you think you hope to accomplish and look for the feeling you want in your life. You want to feel valued. You may or may not want to feel challenged to be constantly expanding your knowledge or awareness. You want to feel secure and safe.

What do you want to feel, and is the direction you’ve been going in providing that?

Look around you at what’s working: the minimum — shelter, food, companionship, spiritual expansion. Sit with that peace and contentment for a while.

You want time for your spiritual growth. You want to be healthy. You want… What are the core things you want in your life? Look closely. You probably already have them. How could moving in another direction, away from this perceived barrier, provide you with the feelings and values that are important to you?

The barrier is also an opportunity to reevaluate what you already have and to be grateful.

Let the universe design your next step

Don’t be too specific about what you’d like to bring into your life next. You can’t force the universe. You can’t bully it to do it your way.

So here lies the barrier, this obstacle to what you see as forward movement. Sit down and be with that for a while. Pull back into yourself to see if perhaps what you’ve done up to now has taken you as far as you need to go in this particular direction. Sit quietly and see how you’ve changed in a way that may make the direction you were going in no longer viable.

Allow yourself to change

What if you got to do something entirely different? What would that be? Look around at the signs you’ve been ignoring as you stayed busy on this particular path and see what side trips you missed, what adventures you could have gone on. Go back on the trail if you like, and explore.

Allow the opportunity time to evolve

There was a period recently when I knew that I was to make some changes — perhaps in the direction of my work, or perhaps in the form it was taking. All I knew was that there was a very, very deep calling, but I had no idea what it looked like.

I’d been expanding what I offered, learning new techniques. But I had a feeling that perhaps even the form needed to change.

So I waited. I didn’t do much. I wasn’t particularly productive. It was like a soup simmering to meld the flavor, or a timer that was waiting to go off indicating it was time for action. I didn’t know if it would be a sudden “ah ha”, or a gradual knowing.

The change came in wisps of recognition. Some ideas resonated, others were tempting, some bright shiny opportunities tried to pull me off course; but when I sat still and listened to my inner voice, I knew I would receive my answer from within. I also knew there was to be a slight correction in my course.

And that has happened. The direction became clearer. The path I was to travel opened up. The specific tools I needed to take on this journey were made clear. I lightened my load. I left some tools behind. I wouldn’t need them for the next part of my journey.

My path began to appear. I don’t know the final destination but at least I now know the direction.

And all I had done was wait.

And observe.

And close.

Barriers offer us an opportunity to pause and reflect. Remember that.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:
What if You Broke the Mold?
Feeling Powerless is Not a Reason for Inaction
How to Hold the Space for the New Vision to Emerge
The Power of Positive Purpose
When Change is Hard
Where Do You Plant Your Stake?

The Core Value of Inclusion

By

diversity hands over world

President Obama used the phrase “core value of inclusion”. He said that a core value of inclusion was necessary for the President to have. I wondered what that looked like and felt like. I had never before considered inclusion as a core value.

What is the highest god for all?

When a group of people gathers to find an “inclusive” solution, it hopefully begins to seek a unified choice that will be for the highest good for all. That’s a pretty lofty place to begin any negotiation or search for a solution.

When I add “inclusion” to the process that is looking for the highest good, that means I need to really, really listen to what people are saying and to what they’re not saying.

Very often we have fears and outdated beliefs that are not even in our consciousness. We also need to question and examine the true reason for our own responses to each solution, particularly when our response is negative.

Groups have to compromise

The broader the group diversity, the wider the compromise must be. And no one, absolutely no one, will get everything they want. The necessity to compromise can be a very difficult mindset to take into a group endeavor.

What does inclusion feel like?

Inclusion means I have to move away from my own personal needs and look for a solution that’ll meet the needs of the majority of people in the group. Now, I don’t have to stay in the group, I am certainly free to go elsewhere, but inevitably we all find ourselves in a group where the final compromised decision will impact us in some way. Be aware that the compromised solution will be as close to agreement as the involved group can become.

Inclusion can feel like listening to others. It can feel like deep self-awareness — understanding what you need and want and prioritizing that so you know what you can release in the presence of inclusion and compromise. Inclusion will include thoughtful exploration of the possible solutions to the purpose of your group. Some for you. Some for me. Some for us.

What does inclusion look like?

If we’re lucky, inclusion looks like people listening to each other and trying hard to understand the other person’s point of view. Inclusion means we’ll need to change our mind, soften our stance and broaden our viewpoint.

I’ve never thought about having a core value of inclusion before. I’m afraid I’m the one who goes off by herself and hangs out with only like-minded people.

Community means the collective

“Community” means people who have something in common. It could be your city, your state, your neighborhood. When I’m hoping to formulate rules and regulations and support systems for my own community, I’ll have to compromise. There are many interconnected factors I may not even be aware of. Current finances, people-power, long-term impact. So many elements are impacted in any decision and must be considered.

I’ll have to look for the highest good, the best choices in the present moment and I’ll have to work to be aware of a core value of inclusion.

A national group has broader responsibilities than a city group. A residents association has a smaller set of responsibilities than the city. Each group will have a different set of problems to address but their overall purpose needs to be inclusive — taking into consideration the needs of everyone and then finding the choices that address the most needs and are focused on an over-reaching goal that will benefit the most people.

What does a core value of inclusion look like and feel like to you? Can you consciously put it to work in your life?

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:
I Am You
We Are Part of a Larger Spiritual Order
You Are All-That-Is
35—How to Hold the Space for Change.
23 – What Are the Truths You Live By?