self-awareness

Nurture the Garden Of Self

August 21, 2019 By Cara Lumen

Nurture the Garden Of Self
An Inner-world Exploration

Our strength comes from within. Our ideas come from within. Our entire life expression comes from within. Within you, accessible by your imagination, there’s a Garden of Self and we are each responsible for planning, cultivating, and harvesting our own crops.

Intention plants the seed

Starting your Garden of Self is as simple as setting an intention.

Today I plant the seed of Serenity in my Garden of Self and I will water it with patience, nurture it with silence, and harvest it throughout my day.

Well, wow! Let’s do more of that.

Today I plant the seed of Wisdom in my Garden of Self. I nurture it with contemplation and mindfully harvest it throughout my day, picking one succulent berry at a time and savoring it.

More?

In my Garden of Self, I planted an acorn called “Cara” and it immediately grew into a giant oak complete with a bird’s nest, a rainbow parrot, a squirrel and a bunch of acorns that are future Cara trees.

It’s a mature tree, as I am mature, but it has a lot of life and a great deal still to offer. Insights, wisdom, hope.

What will you plant in your Garden of Self?

The Fountain of Love

In your Garden of Self create a water source. In the Sacred Garden where I begin each shamanic journey, I have three separate water sources: a reflecting pond, a bubbling brook, and a waterfall. So I was surprised to find a different water source in my Garden of Self, which is down the road from my Sacred Garden. But a fountain showed up, a happy, bumbling, spray-sharing laughing fountain. It is from this Fountain of Love and Joy that I am to nurture the crops I plant.

Build the support you need

You may need to provide a trellis for some of your crops. A support system that encourages growth and the space to expand or elevate above the ground. What in your life needs support?

You may need to prune a plant in your Garden of Self in order to encourage the growth of one strong central plant. Don’t be afraid to prune and let go. It will make the core stronger.

My Cara tree has obviously been around for a while. Do I need to prune it? Support a branch here or there? Drop a few more acorns of wisdom?

Cultivate, encourage and support whatever you grow in your Garden of Self.

Share your harvest

In the Garden of Self, you plant the things you need in order to elevate the vibration of your Body Suit.

At some point, you are going to share your harvest. Perhaps you will share a little. Perhaps you will share a lot. Who will you share it with? How will you take it to market? Who needs what you have to offer?

I’m dropping acorns of wisdom like a wild woman. Sometimes the wind helps me and carries them farther afield. Sometimes they just drop to the ground and take root. Sometimes they go to feed a bit of nature like a squirrel. I just keep dropping seeds of Insight and Wisdom and let them fall wherever they may. What seeds are your sharing from the plant that is you?

Allow the cycles to unfold

Gardens go through cycles. Their needs change. Sometimes they take. Sometimes they give. It’s all part of the process of nature’s cycles. Know where you are in the cycle and what you need to do/provide next.

You may need rest in order to restore. You may be harvesting the best crop you ever produced. You may be simply looking over the seed catalog to see what you want to plant. Each stage is perfect. Immerse yourself in it.

Plant some experimental crops

You won’t know whether you like the crop until you harvest it and put it to use. You don’t have to grow a lot of an experimental crop, but do plant enough so you can understand its needs, its demands, its preferences and how the final harvest nurtures you. Even planting one seed and following it through its process can provide the information you need to make a decision on whether or not to plant more.

Keep the Garden of Self nurtured

What does our Garden of Self need right now? Where are you in the cycle? Not all crops will be in the same stages of readiness. Give them what they need. And remember one cycle leads to the next. So while one field is allowed to lie dormant in order to restore and replenish, another will provide multiple harvests. Be aware of the difference and honor the process and the cycles.

Intention provides direction and growth

Each day, pause to consider the intention you have for your Garden of Self. That pause to balance and gain awareness will help you set an intention that will carry you forward in the most positive and productive manner. Set an intention and let it unfold. Then follow the path that opens up.

Deeper Song Affirmation

I tend my Garden of Self with conscious intention every day.

Deeper Song Process

In a state of meditation, journey to find your Garden of Self and begin to explore.
See what crops need to be planted. What do you want to grow and encourage in your garden of Self?
Plant some staples, but perhaps start a few experiments crops.
Tend your Garden of Self every day.
Harvest when ready and share what you have grown.
Look over the seed catalogs and plant some experimental crops….!

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Unleash the power of your Sacred Garden

What Seeds Do You Allow to Grow in Your Garden?

What Seeds Do You Plant for the Future?

What are the Foundations Stones Upon Which Your Build Your Life?

The Power of a Releasing Ceremony

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.

Individual Curiosity and a Willingness to Change

July 24, 2019 By Cara Lumen

Individual Curiosity and a Willingness to Change
An Inner-world Exploration

How unaware we were when we were young. How much we didn’t know. How much we have learned. Just how willing have you been to let go of how it used to be or how you thought it used to be in order to deepen and broaden your experience of life in the present moment?

When I think of the really unaware choices I made along the line, it makes me cringe. When I think of the brave and unusual choices I made, I am a bit in awe.

What makes you do what you do, make the choices you do? Is it the lesson you need to learn? The opportunity you need to take? Both the opportunity and your choices are lessons and guidance from within.

Don’t focus on the less than clear choices

There was so much I did from a lack of awareness. And so much I did out of not thinking of the consequences. Sometimes my choices worked out. Sometimes they didn’t.

What we have is now. What we have is the opportunity facing us and the choices we make – in this moment.

It doesn’t help to look back because the past is long gone. No regrets. No should-haves. What is left are the lessons learned – the wisdom, the ever-increasing self-awareness. Use that accumulated wisdom to recognize, examine and make the choices offered to you today.

Choose from the place of who you have become

You can’t go back. You only have now, so use what you have learned along your journey.

Become aware of your current choices and how they are working out. What is the place of illumined service you are cultivating for yourself? What actions inspire and motivate you? How do you feel about the choices before you? If what comes up is an emotion or belief you don’t want, see what needs to change – you or the choice.

Where will this choice lead me?

What will this choice teach me?

Who will this choice affect? How many? How deeply?

Make the choice that resonates deeply within you in this moment that will guide you further along the path you have chosen to travel.

If it’s a sheer joy and pleasure to take the action, repeat it. Become aware of how your choices resonate within you and let that be your guide.

Expand your level of curiosity

I stay open to where my mind leads me. I am constantly surprised and excited about where I’m taken. I journey to the 95% that is the Unseen World and get ideas that stretch me here within my body suit. I bring those ideas, experience, and lessons back and work to figure out how to apply what I’ve learned into my life and take time to show others what I’ve discovered. I explore, I share. I explore more – and am always surprised.

Encourage your willingness to change

What I discover in my inner journeys raises my vibration, gives me new insights and I always return from these contemplations with ideas on how to change and a desire to change. That’s why I keep seeking these inner insights.

Question everything

Question your choices. Question your motivation. Question the opportunities that present themselves. Be curious and be willing to change.

Deep Song Affirmation

I am curious and
I am willing to change.

Deeper Song Process

Look at an area in your life where you are stuck.
Close your eyes and picture that area becoming unstuck – floating away or dissolving.
What takes its place? What idea floats gently in?
Consider that.
If it calls to you, do it.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Have You Raised Your Sails?

Believe In The Power Of Your Own Ripple

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning

Life Messages from a Potter

How to Weave the Sacred into the Ordinary

Raise Your Gaze

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.

Raise Your Sails

July 10, 2019 By Cara Lumen

Raise Your Sails
An Inner-World Exploration

We are sailing along on the sea of life. Sometimes we have a destination. Sometimes we’re simply flowing and allowing ourselves to be taken wherever the current takes us. And when the winds are calm, we may even paddle a bit. But when we raise our sails, when we catch the wind, we determine the speed and direction of our journey.

We have only to raise our sails.

You set your direction through intention

Sometimes we steer. Sometimes we drift. But even when you are casually drifting, it is good to have a general direction to move in.

Your intention will also determine your speed – it tells you how many sails to raise. How full you let them out. It may be a lazy slow-moving day or it may be an all-out race. Your intention will determine your actions.

Use a mudra as your compass

There are many ways to center yourself before setting sail. A mudra hand position is an easy one. Experiment and find the ones that call to you.

One of my favorites is the Buddhist Walking Meditation mudra – simply close your fingers around your thumb. Do this with each hand. Notice how your energy shifts. It’s amazing what a single hand gesture will do to focus your mind and your intention.

Fill up your sails and center your compass with your breath

Use your breath to begin this inward journey. A mindful breath in, a releasing breath out. Create a steady rhythm that keeps you moving increasingly inward.

Merge with the “I AM”

Lose yourself in the experience of gradually sailing inward. Allow your body suit to disappear. Allow your awareness to disappear. Simply be the vibrational energy that you are. That is your destination – to be aware of simply being One.

Heal with colors

On this inward journey that you take with your mind, you can use colors to balance your body suit and your earth-bound world. Fill yourself with whatever color comes to you and simply feel it, experience it. Don’t interpret. Let the color move through your body to release and rearrange and heal any part that calls to it. Let it tidy up. Let it clean and clear things out. Perhaps you even change colors.

Rather than see and feel the light energy coming through your crown, let it come from within you as a sphere, and simply change colors at your core. Let it radiate out. If there are blockages or stuck places, they release themselves and leave the circle of light that you are.

Expand your vibration

On each slow exhale, feel your sails unfold and expand and begin to pull you forward. You are a golden sailboat, shining in the sunlight, sailing smoothly atop the waves. It is a happy day, a positive day, a fulfilling day. Fill your sails and feel yourself fly over the surface.

Allow the experience of being limited to your body suit to disappear

Become one with the wind. Become one with the sun. Become one with the water. Disappear your body and then finally disappear even the pinpoint of you as your mind.

Now that you are still, expand your vibration

Feel yourself as a circle of light. Feel the energy radiate out, first in inches, then feet, then yards and then miles until you are radiating out energy that covers the planet, energy that moves to the center of the earth and reaches out into unknown galaxies. You are radiating as Everything-That-Is, as The One All, the Everything.

Hold the expanded energy that is All-There-Is in your heart and feel its power expand into an all-encompassing vibration.

Lift your sails

You are safe, you are expanding, you are raising your vibration. Raise your sails and fly across the surface of life. Experience and accept. Accept the serenity. Accept the healing. Accept the guidance.

There is trust involved in sailing

When you set sail, you have to trust that the wind will be there, to trust that you know how to set the sails.

A slight shift in the sails, in their tension, will slow you down or speed you up or change your course. Adjust your sails to keep you on course.

What to do if there’s a storm

When the ride gets bumpy, take down your sails and ride the storm out. Withdraw into yourself. Trust yourself. Heal yourself. And wait. The sun will come out again. It will soon be a great day for sailing.

Awareness + choice = change

When you are ready to set sail again, become aware of your desired destination, set your intention and you will head in the direction of your choice.

Hold the feeling of Oneness within your heart

There is only one All-that-Is. There is only one Emptiness-That-Holds-Everything. There is only one Cosmic Soup. Once you have released your awareness of your body suit and have moved into the sacred space within, allow yourself to sink into the feeling. Deepen that feeling. Remember that feeling so you can return to it immediately on a single mindful breath.

You are One. We are One. All is One.

Deeper Song Affirmation

I raise my sails and journey inward.

Deeper Song Process

Decide where you want to go, what you want to accomplish. It may be a small goal or a large one.
Plan the best course.
Raise your sails and go for it.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

How to Walk a Path of Inner Stillness

Believe in The Power of Your Own Ripple

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning

Why We Need to Raise Our Vibration

Build a Launching Pad for Your Inner Work

Broaden and Deepen
Your Personal Journey

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

You ARE Vibration and Why it Matters

June 26, 2019 By Cara Lumen

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

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

To Whom or What Do You Give Thanks?

June 19, 2019 By Cara Lumen

To Whom or What Do You Give Thanks?
An Inner-World Exploration

If you believe, as I do, that we are all one energy and you are feeling grateful, to whom or what do you offer thanks?

I realized that I was not offering gratitude as much as I would like and then I released that I didn’t know who to offer my gratitude to. I’m working with concepts like The Emptiness That Holds Everything, and The Void, and All That Is.

They/it/whatever probably doesn’t need thanks. But I need to give it. Me, in my body suit, wants to notice the good stuff that shows up and say “thank you”. But that’s tricky when I think there’s only one energy and we are all it.

My Helping Spirits began to offer some insights. I do shamanic journeying every day and in those inner visits to the invisible world, I’m joined by helping spirits in the form of a metaphor that only I am to interpret. (Just as your metaphors are only for you to interpret.)

Sometimes those helping spirit metaphors make more sense to me than others. I have a big black snake named Charlie who lives in the Lower World and whose primary gift its to give me hugs….go figure. As I continue to study shamanism, I identify more and more levels of being-ness. However, some of those are based on the experiences and studies of others, and who actually knows what The Void is like? I realized I had to figure this one out for myself. Just as you will have to also do.

You ancestors are helping you

Fairly recently it was suggested I journey to talk to my ancestors. There seem to be several ways to interpret the ancestors. I like the idea that they live on a parallel universe rather than a linear one. The consensus is that they are actively engaged in our well being.

My ancestors showed up as a rabbit.

Well, hey, I can offer thanks to a rabbit. I was on a roll.

The Divine Feminine

Then I found myself having trouble with the idea of a Divine Mother. I can’t do an old white man in the sky Father figure and I have a similar problem with the idea of a Divine Mother. But I sure can embrace the idea of Divine Feminine. It’s interesting how a name can hang you up.

Who is guiding you?

I actually have several guides that have evolved as I have continued to take various shamanic journeys over the year. I finally figured out that a metaphor I call The Director is a primary guide for me. But I had a hard time bringing in the Angel with the Golden Wings. Again because I had a hard time with the idea of angels. She came in slowly in my journeys – almost one wing at a time. And I was resistant. Now I realize that for me, she is the metaphor for the Divine Feminine.

Back to giving thanks

Those helping spirits do not need my gratitude, but I need to offer it. And since they are consistently active in my journeys, they seem like a good place to begin.

I am thankful for my gifts and talents. Where do they come from? Who do I thank? Perhaps my ancestors (Rabbit) and my major guide (The Director) who helped me choose the form of this lifetime.

I am grateful for the adventures my mind is taking me on and the doors that are being opened in the Unseen World for me. Can I just toss that gratitude up into The Void, the All-That-Is? I think, that since I am currently in the form of a woman, I might offer gratitude to my ancestors or to the Divine Feminine.

Do you see my problem? Offering gratitude is a body-suit need. I know the ancestors or the Divine Feminine don’t need gratitude but I have a feeling they would appreciate it.

I can thank Nature. Sophia, the soul of the earth or Gaia. I can thank the elements of Wind, d Fire, Air, and Earth. Those seem tangible to me. And yet their spirits are very intangible.

But who do I thank when a particularly good idea comes through? And I write about it and it changes others? That’s not me. That’s the Energy of Oneness. Ah ha. A new metaphor. The Energy of Oneness. I like that. That puts my gratitude back out into the Vibration That Is Everything.

I don’t ask for help – I am responsible

There’s one other major consideration. I believe I create my own reality. So there’s no supplication or asking for help because I’m it. The buck stops here. I attracted it. I can send it away. That doesn’t mean that the Helping Spirits don’t shower me with ideas or insights or even courage, but it’s me doing my life. Me being my vibration. Me living in this body suit and figuring out how to do it well. The outcome is my responsibility.

Self-responsibility is challenging

Self-responsibility is all we have. There is no “other” doing it to us. It’s us manifesting whatever we’re manifesting because of our thoughts and words and actions. We change. Our life changes.

Does that mean I thank me? Hummmmm. It might. Not in praise but in acknowledgment and gratitude for the choices I make. Thank you, Cara, for recognizing this idea and exploring it. Thank you, energy known as Cara, for exploring and considering that great idea for a new project today. Thank you, Cara, for experiencing a shift and being willing to reach out to others more.

Who do I thank? Who do you thank?

There is something bigger

Of course, there’s something bigger. I just don’t know what it is. 95% of the world is unseen. But since everything is vibration, I think we communicate with whatever it is through our vibration. I’m working to raise mine. I know we communicate with whatever it is through those unexpected thoughts of insight and encouragement that make us climb higher on our path.

Why do you offer gratitude?

Who do you offer gratitude to?

Deeper Song Affirmation

I ask my inner guides to help me understand
how and to whom I am to offer gratitude.

Deeper Song Process

I think I win a prize for advanced spiritual philosophy on this exploration.

Who or what do you offer gratitude to?
Go beyond any religious or spiritual teaching you have received and see what your inner voice says.
If you journey or meditate ask for a deeper understanding of gratitude – its purpose – where it is to be directed.
Figure out how you want to offer gratitude in your life.
Do that.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Another Part of You – The Unseen World

How to Interpret the Messages from Within

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning

When I See Myself As Light

Raise Your Vibration Through Visioning

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.