Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

personal growth

Are You An Independent Learner?

By

girls studying

If I was a kid today, I’d be hard pressed to keep up with technology. If nothing else, technology is moving so fast that it’s easy to be left behind. How can you help yourself, or your children, learn what they need and what is helpful for them? How do you nurture an independent learner?

We need to learn what we need to know to follow our passion

After we study for a while, we learn that we are better at some things than at others. We may be drawn to math, or writing, or art and get excited about one subject over another. Our mind may work in a way that enables us to learn one thing more easily than another. That’s why it’s a good idea to become an independent learner. You pick and choose what you need to know and figure out the best way to learn it.

We need to learn critical thinking

Critical thinking is when you explore something deeply enough to make an informed decision. The Oxford dictionary defines critical thinking as “The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.” But I know that whatever conclusion we draw will be colored by who we are and what we’re capable of observing.

In critical thinking, you gather as much information as possible, you sift it through your own values and beliefs. You look at the facts. You weigh your options. You examine your needs and come up with a conclusion. Then you act. Or you don’t.

We need to learn what we don’t know

Until you explore the possibilities deeply enough, you cannot see all your choices. You need to at least have a glimpse of what you don’t know and decide what part of it is necessary to learn in order to move forward and what part can be left for another time.

We need a reality check

As an enthusiastic and independent learner, there comes a time when I get to look closely at what I’m doing to see if it’s creating the results I want. My example is self-publishing. I had great plans to get my books onto other platforms and on several services. There was a lot to learn in order to do that. My reality check was that I needed to determine the best use of my time – either by concentrating on writing or on learning the technical stuff to get my work up in a few more places.

My greatest value lies in my creativity. I get to trust that whoever needs to read my work will find it. It helps for me to know how to get my books on Amazon, but is there a better use for my time than figuring out how to get them onto other platforms? Should I start recording the audio version? Should it become a course? How will voice recognition improve my writing? Those are a lot of choices. How am I most impactful in service?

When I make that decision, I can make informed choices.

Learn what you want to learn

If it excites you, learn it. I recently discovered how much I enjoy Nova. I seem to have reached a certain point that it resonates with me. Now, instead of watching dramas that seem either too innocuous or too violent, I can learn about places and people and ideas that are new to me. I find that very exciting.

Whatever you want to learn, you can go on Google and find a course or a video or someone to take you through the basic steps. TED talks give me access to fascinating thinkers who express their passion well. I often join webinars and listen to podcasts that offer me a fresh perspective.

There’s no excuse for not learning what you’re drawn to. It’s very available. It’s up to you to apply yourself.

Explore

I enjoy painting, even though I wouldn’t consider myself a particularly good artist. A few years ago I took an oil-painting class, and although the result was a very bad version of Gauguin, I was excited that I had filled up a blank space with something from my mind.

I took a couple of art courses during my senior year in college. In composition I got a C, but in drawing I got an A+ because I had literally gone from stick figures to doing a decent three-minute sketch. That vast improvement was rewarded.

Explore what interests you – whether you’re any good at it or not. Just nurturing that aspect of yourself opens new possibilities.

Learn by teaching

A How to Write Magnetic Articles course I taught years ago greatly improved my own writing skills because I had to research and learn more and organize my thoughts in order to teach it to others.

As I’m on a personal quest to discover the meaning of concepts that intrigue me, writing about them to explain them to myself is how I’m eventually going to share them with others.

Keep learning. Share what you know. It will grow you.

Independent Learning is what you do for yourself

You don’t learn something to pass a test, or even to complete a task, you learn because something calls to you, you are compelled to explore whatever it is that fascinates you.

Are you an independent learner? What’s next on your agenda? How do you nurture your need to learn?

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

How Do You Nurture “Different”
The Power of Your Personal Path
What to Do When You Are Between Teachers
The Art of Mastery
Fitting In Is Not What You Do To Be Extraordinary
27 – Why Have You Been Chose

Can We Think Our Way to Success?

By

top-11

The discussion was about the Law of Attraction, positive thought, and the idea of thinking our way to success.

My friend was being hard on herself because her new entry into the world of solopreneur was not manifesting the way she had pictured it. She felt she had no power, no control and that she wasn’t making things happen the way she wanted to, the way she believed she should be able to do.

But the fact was, she was making very powerful things happen. It just didn’t look the way she thought it would.

Do you have that sort of control problem? If it doesn’t look like you thought it should, it’s wrong, or you failed to manifest it.

I have a different view of the kind of power or control we have over our life – it’s choice. Choice in the moment. Choice that’s aligned with how well we know ourselves. Self-awareness is the key to positive change. Self-awareness is the path to success.

Can you recognize the success that is right for you?

This friend had come from a very big, responsible job in a very large corporation. I pointed out that what she was expecting her business to look like, based on what had been around her for so long, was not what she was going to find as a solopreneur. The “wins” would be on a different scale – a one-person scale. She hadn’t thought about that.

Relax into the power of unfolding

We talked about how she might begin to simply let circumstances unfold. Since I have consciously been practicing allowing my life to unfold, I have been pleased and astonished by what shows up.

There are two steps in allowing life to unfold and they both involve trust. You have to trust the Universe to provide you with the right opportunities and you have to trust yourself to make the right choice.

Making the right choice involves self-awareness

What do you love to do most? What are your strongest skills? What do you need/want to learn next? What do people ask you to do? When you identify your gifts and your passions, they become your guides, your measuring sticks for the choices you make.

The more I honor my natural self, the happier I am. Working and living in my nourishing home, writing from my heart, sharing it with others, making new friends online – it’s perfect. And it has evolved over time as I work to understand myself, making choices aligned with my passion and my calling and simply allowing my life to unfold.

See choice as an exploration

Begin to see choice as an opportunity to discover, to explore, to try something on for size. You’ll find life becomes more fun, more educational, more revealing and more inspiring.

When you make a choice to go down a particular path, you can always choose to turn around and come back, or explore another trail that leads off of it.

A choice is simply that – one choice, in one particular moment in time that seems appealing or right. It will immediately be followed by other choices – to continue, to create a variation of the path you are on, or to try an entirely different path.

Feel your way to success

Use your emotions as a guide rather than your mind. Your thoughts are limiting. Your intuition and imagination have no boundaries.

Stay in the moment and feel your way into a choice. Don’t over-think it. Don’t try to control it. Simply feel how it feels. If it feels aligned, or comforting or fascinating or exciting, go exploring and see where it takes you. See what else unfolds as you journey forward. Then make another informed and aligned choice.

Trust the universe to provide you with the perfect opportunities

Opportunities are always there, you only have to notice them. Pause and take time to examine a new idea, or think about a concept that you just discovered and determine how it feels. Is it right for you? Does it work in this moment in time? What new opportunities does the idea stimulate? What new doors just opened? A range of possibilities open in an instant, in the moment, in the now of simply being.

Can we think our way to success? I think it’s easier and more effective to feel our way to our next step and notice what unfolds. One choice followed by another choice. That’s the path to success.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

Our Opinion Requires No Thought
Can You Control Your Own Destiny?
What Do You Do for People That They Can’t Get Elsewhere?
The Power of the Label You Choose
37-Self Mastery As a Choice

Mindfulness as a Path to Self-Awareness

By

mediteation 1-3

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

Embracing Tao

By

tao

By George, I think I’ve got it! At least a concrete glimmer of what I’m going for. I’ve been studying Taoism and how to express the Tao in my life. I used to call Tao “All-That-Is” or “Universal Mind”. What drew me to Taoism in the first place was a phrase from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, “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.” I’ve been working to slow my mind and my responses and simply let things unfold.

Use your mind for sorting and selecting

For most of my life, I have been studying and thinking and writing in order to understand what interests me. Recently in 365 Tao Meditation by Deng Ming-Dao I read, “Education is a means of gaining access to the conventional world of satisfying our curiosity, and of avoiding superstitious tendencies. The intellect uses discrimination, categorization, and dualistic distinctions in highly sophisticated ways.”

I began to understand that I’ve been educating myself about many things all my life. I’ve used my mind to make choices and to decide on the beliefs and values that resonate. However, I wasn’t certain that I was effectively putting what I learned into action.

Spiritual contemplation is behind all action

Deng Ming-Dao continues: “By contrast, spiritual contemplation involves no discrimination, no categorization, and no dualism, so it has very little need for scholasticism. It is pure action that requires the totality of our inner beings. It needs pure involvement, not mere study.”

That made me look at how much I enjoyed my mind and question if I’ve learned to live and breathe and fully express what I have come to embrace as truth for me.

Change is gradual

A game of cards showed me that I was learning to be present and flexible in the flow of life and that it is a fabulous way to live. The game requires a series of choices. Pick one card and your hand moves in one direction. Choose a different card and it flows another way. Like life. Each choice is like an eddy in a stream, it swirls around some things, picks up others in its path. You never know which it’ll be until it happens.

As I became more aware of how I was playing the game, I saw that I was choosing in the moment, I was following my intuition. I allowed my choices to lead to a natural conclusion based on the actions I took in the moment.

It felt exciting because I didn’t know where each choice would lead. I could see the possibilities of each choice. If an unexpected card was drawn, I rethought the direction I was going and opened myself up to new possibilities. Each choice gave me the possibility of a different conclusion.

And ”chance” played a part. The number of times I simply reached into the pile of cards and chose the exact one I needed was much higher than for anyone else who was playing the game. All because I was present, listening to my intuition, and making each choice based on what was presented in the moment. I am beginning to understand Tao.

Be present when you choose

“Spiritual contemplation is pure action that requires the totality of our inner beings. It needs pure involvement, not mere study,” Deng Ming-Dao concludes. I have to consciously drop all judgment and simply respond in the moment to how life unfolds. I will learn to drop all expectation and be in the present and allow each choice to be made from the fullness of my being.

I have a long way to go to make an understanding of Tao totally active in my life, but in this small moment of card playing I experienced how incredibly freeing and powerful it is to let events unfold and trust in the choices I make in the moment. I’ve become more aware of the times I’m caught up in my mind, and the times I allow myself to simply flow along the river of life.

Allow your spiritual essence to guide your decisions.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider

Live in the Nowhere That You Came From
Everyone Walks the Same Path
Why Unfolding Works
35—How to Hold the Space for Change
30 – The No Plan Plan

Learn to Honor Your Inner Rhythm

By

drum

I have the leisure time to honor my own rhythm. I can write when I want, walk when I want, do nothing when I want. It’s very freeing. And it’s very revealing.

There is an inner rhythm you need to hear

I started to beat myself up when I didn’t do things in the time line I had decided upon. Once I stopped doing that, I found that when the time was right, it all came together with unexpected ease.

I should/could be doing something else right now. Writing this post is not on my list and yet here I am, listening to my inner rhythm and writing my third post in an hour – all about things I want to figure out, things I need to know. Ideas I’m curious about.

And not being on the list, it sort of added to my burden of the number of posts I wanted to edit and get out the door for proofing. These three new posts are so good that they are going to the top of the list.

Because I waited.

I listened.

I acted at the perfect time.

Getting stuck is about your inner rhythm

This is the second day in a row that I’ve put off the completion of a particular step. If I would just review my two ebooks one last time, I could have the pdf’s on my site. And yet, here I sit, writing about my inner rhythm. Apparently my inner rhythm does not want to do pdf’s at this point in time, it wants to think and write and explore. That’s much more exciting.

So am I stuck? As far as pdf’s are concerned, it sort of looks like it. But as far as my work of exploring esoteric ideas is concerned, I’m on a major roll here!

For me, capturing and exploring an idea is the most important thing I do. As long as I keep doing that, whatever gets put off is simply because of this priority I make of exploring and discovering.

However, there comes a point….

When you honor your inner rhythm the floodgates open

I have learned that I like to work through immersion – several days on one type of project. I feel less pressured, more focused and more productive. So I take steps to provide several days to focus on a project.

I work in batches. Batches of posts, batches of writing podcast scripts, batches of recording the podcasts. Two scripts written one day, two recorded the next, two edited the next and I’ve filled up my podcast schedule for two weeks.

Honoring your inner rhythm holds some surprises

We call it being “in the mood.” My process of getting in the mood is that first I think of something that needs to be done or that I would like to do. I just notice. I don’t act. I’m going to use the example of housekeeping since that’s not much of a priority for me.

I noticed that the meaningful objects on my meditation altar were dusty. I don’t think the objects themselves minded. It didn’t affect the depth of my meditation. But it finally came to my attention that indeed, a little dusting would be a good thing.

But I took no action. The seed was planted. That was enough.

Until one evening, during a commercial break on The Voice, I got up, moistened a cloth and wiped down all the dusty pieces. It may have taken eight minutes. It felt so easy that I went on and cleaned other areas as well. No big deal; I just took advantage of my mood and my willingness.

Value your willingness

Willingness is a sign of an inner alignment. Jump on it! I often wake up with words pouring out of my mind and I rush through my morning chores as rapidly as possible so I can sit at my computer and write.

Notice when your willingness slows down. As I pushed my way though the technical part of the things I needed to learn next, my willingness got less and less until it brought me to a screeching halt.

So I stopped. I let it go. I honored my unwillingness. I listened to my reluctance And I simply did something else that felt easier and more immediately rewarding.

In exchange for that time off, that release of tension, that change of pace, a few days later I was able to return to my learning process with enough willingness to move forward. I honored my rhythm and was rewarded by positive action in due time.

Decisions should come from your inner rhythm

Honor your inner rhythm when it comes to making a choice. When it was first mentioned that the current librarian of our community center was ready to retire, I thought the timing was really off. Two years ago I would have loved the job, but the person who held it wanted it and wanted to do it her way. She didn’t even want me as an assistant.

But things had changed and she was ready to let go. But was I ready to take over?

I had to look at my willingness. I had to think about the years of commitment a job like that seems to mean. I didn’t dwell on it. I just left it alone and let the idea unfold. Until the day came when I was willing and said “yes.”

There was no talking myself into it. There was no big debate on what it meant to do the job. There was a simple waiting for my inner self to quietly come to a decision.

Get to know yourself

Learn to let go of your rational mind and listen to your inner urges, your inner rhythm. Learn to trust your intuition and respond when it simply feels like the right thing to do.

Honor your inner rhythm. Hear it, heed it and you will always be headed in the right direction.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

How to Develop Your Distinctive Voice
The Power of Exploring the Unknown
The Power of Your Personal Path
35—How to Hold the Space for Change.
32 – How to See Your Work As Art
Your Art Must Originate Within Yourself
The Reward is in the Journey