Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

Self Mastery

Take Time to Explore Your Talents

By

Dancer

There are big “in-your-face” talents that sweep you along with them. And there are gentle, subtle talents that will add great meaning to your life once you uncover them.

What are your in-your-face talents?

I’ve been writing since I was the editor of my high-school newspaper. It was an interest and skill I’ve used in many forms in my life – copywriter for radio and television, a variety of organizational newsletters, ebooks, posts. Writing is how I sort myself out, how I figure out how to apply interesting concepts to my life. It’s how I share my ideas with others. It’s an ingrained part of me.

A major talent often shows up as a skill that’s so easy to use that it doesn’t even seem special. You may have no idea that not everyone can do it or that you are particularly good at it.

Music, art, mathematics, logistics, organizing, leadership, connecting with people, nurturing others, enthusiastic participation in whatever you do – these are some of the ways your major talent is recognizable.

What are your subtle talents?

It was always clear that I’m a good organizer. What took me years to figure out, though, was that I’m also a good organizer of ideas. I can see the overview, the complex, and explain it to others in easy-to-understand terms. That is an obvious talent with a subtle use.

My enthusiasm is a gift. It’s infectious. It’s also inspiriting, because it helps me get a lot done. Who would have thought of enthusiasm as a talent!

You may have a physical attribute that’s a talent

It turns out that people like my speaking voice, so I enjoy using it in videos and podcasts.

Take a moment to look for the subtle gifts and talents that you might find more ways to use.

Make your talent distinctive

Finding how to make my writing distinctive took some time and practice. Now I automatically think in the subhead style for a post. It’s how I organize my thoughts. It’s how I share my ideas. It’s my distinctive version of writing. And it simply evolved.

How many ways can you use your talents? Because I write like I talk, it’s easy to create narrative podcast scripts. My ability to organize ideas allows me to see connections and curate pieces of posts into the backbone of a new ebook. My enthusiasm keeps me exploring new platforms – like videos and audiobooks.

Look at your talents and find other venues where you can use them.

Explore your talents

When you find a little-used talent or desire, go exploring. I’m not a particularly good artist, but in my senior year in college I had space for some electives and I took two art courses – 5-minute sketching and composition. Though I wasn’t very good at composition, I got an A in the sketching class simply because I went from stick figures to a decent quick sketch.

I have taken other art courses along the line – Chinese brush painting being a favorite. There’s something magical about taking a blank space and filing it with your imagination, whether this is through drawing, or writing, or composing music.

Explore different media and see what new experiences, opportunities and insights appear.

Use your talent as a conduit to your soul

When you use your talent enough so it becomes second nature, the next step is to make room for the flow of your unconscious. I used to be surprised at what showed up as I typed. It felt like it was coming from outside myself. Now I know it comes from deep inside, from my thoughts, my interpretations, my soul.

Practice your talent until it becomes only the vehicle for your innermost expression.

What talent would you like to explore?

As long as it’s something creative, as long as I can explore what calls to me and interpret what I discover, the conduit doesn’t really matter. I’ve started to record an audiobook because I know I have the skill set for that. I’ve done lots of courses, but not with as many videos as I want to now. I’m a spiritual philosopher and I want to explore what that means to me and discover new ways to express it. I’m also a mapmaker because I explain to others what I figure out.

Look at what you’re already doing. Look at what talent you’d love to expand, and go exploring. Take some classes. Simply go practice whatever it is. Give thought to how you’ll bring that talent into your life. And just do it.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

What to Do When You Are Between Teachers
Lose Your Attachment to the Outcome
The Art of Mastery
Your Art Must Originate Within Yourself
How to Develop Your Distinctive Voice

35—How to Hold the Space for Change.
34- Use Labels to Expand Your Possibilitieses
32 – How to See Your Work As Art

Stoking the Fire Within

By

fire phoenix

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

Listen

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

Listen within

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

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

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

Listen without

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

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

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

Allow fire to clear the space

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

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

What do you plant in the new, cleared space?

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

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

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

Follow the fire of your passion

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

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

What if You Broke the Mold?

By

celebration
A mold is a funny thing. It’s meant to turn out things that are shaped the same way. There’s a mold for being a wife, a mother. There’s a mold for being a corporate worker, or a farmer, or a student. There are molds for everything and we shouldn’t strive to fit into any of them.

You may not be aware you are trying to fit into a mold

And yet, we often see someone we’d like to emulate, their hairstyle, their type of clothing, their ease of manners. It’s easy to spend a lot of time finding ways to make yourself “better.”

You are perfect just the way you are

When you’re true to your own uniqueness, you express your true self. When you accept your unique version of being and doing, you’re celebrating your own truth. Adopt something if you like, but always know that it’s your unique take that’ll always make you stand out.

“Mold” also means “to shape”

“To shape” is much more appealing. The only way we change our own world is to change ourselves. We can change how we see the world. If we look for positive, we’ll see positive. So, if you feel you’re being confined in a mold, ditch the mold and simply shape your life as you need and want to.

I was reading a novel in which a wife of 19 years was getting a divorce. She had been operating in the mold of “good wife and mother” for a long time. Suddenly the wife part was gone and she had to redefine herself. Had she allowed herself to become hardened in the mold? Or was she still capable of assuming a new form – and if so, what would that form look like? Don’t let yourself get hardened in any mold.

Take your time changing

I’ve never identified with being old, or even aging. But it’s taken me seven years living in a senior community to figure out that not only am I not like the other people here, but I’m going to do everything I can to not fit that expected mold!

Breaking the mold means I have to take a little heat

If I’m going to not be like the majority of old people, what am I going to be like? There’s only one place I can go – deep within to see the unique mix of all that is me, and shape it into whatever I need to be right now.

I’ve had to make it OK with myself to not participate in this community. I have to look deeply within to see what I need to learn at this point in my life. I examine my skills and my knowledge base; but most of all, I follow my heart.

I’m alone in my immediate environment but through the Internet have discovered strong, supportive, warm, incredible friends all over the world. I founded the Deeper Song Community to gather like-minded people together. This new “mold” is fluid and ever-changing.

You shape your own destiny

The choices I make are based on what I need right now, at this point in my life. It’s not about what I should do, or am expected to do. It’s about what is calling me next, what I have to do.

That’s what I’m doing. That’s how I’m shaping my current mold.

If you are caught in a mold you don’t want, break it!

Look closely to see if you have conformed to things in your life that aren’t what you want, that don’t honor who you are and don’t make you happy.

Then reshape your life by changing how you think and what you choose. Break the mold you’re trapped in and shape your life with free-flowing, in-the-moment choices.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

How Do You Nurture “Different”
How Do You Define Success?
The Length of Your Reach
Are You An Independent Learner?
What Do You Do for People That They Can’t Get Elsewhere?
35—How to Hold the Space for Change.
24-How Not Fitting In Helps Your Be Extraordinary
27 – Why Have You Been Chosen

How Do You Define Success?

By

top-12

If you do not define success in terms of money or clients or sales or followers, how do you define it? What values are important to you and how successful are you in making those values stand out in your life?

Success may be doing your best work

I was so proud of myself when I got my books up on Amazon. Although the writing part was easy, figuring out the formatting when I was brand new to Scrivener took perseverance and consistent effort. And I was successful.

Success may be “getting it”

I had a major important shift because of some webinars I was on. Through the shared vision and words of others, I deepened the direction of my work. I “got” the next level my work was to take. That was an enormous shift.

Success may be figuring something out and acting on it

It doesn’t take much to figure out that if I want my body to be stronger I need to eat better and move more. My success is in the acting on it.

I have actively searched for and found new triggers to create new habits that are reversing my physical decline. Figure it out and take action.

Success may be felt when you are an inspiring example

It’s hard to be aware of how we inspire others. I was recently reminded that I am an unusual and motivating version of 83. It never occurred to me that my enthusiasm and my outpouring of content could be inspiring – not just for the amount of content but because I’m an old lady doing her thing.

A friend pointed out, “Success is when people can look at you as a beacon for how they want to finish out their life or to simply live now.” That’s huge! That’s letting your light shine through by being you. It’s an example of success you may not even know you have.

Success can be “inspiring people to be different”

Finding out that I’m a Rainbow Mother, the one who sings and dances and writes and doesn’t fit in, was a huge release for me. There are two sides to our feminine energy and I only knew the nurturing, make-things-happen-for-others role. Now that I know there are other ways to express our femininity, I can offer people inspiration and ideas about being OK doing what they feel inside, with no need for permission or validation from others.

Success can be following your calling

The more I allow myself to move more deeply in the direction I’m being called, the louder and more urgent that call becomes. I’m practically sprinting down my inner hallways to talk to my inner voice. So, for me, success is about listening, and about interpreting and map-making for others what I discover.

How do define success for yourself?

Let’s not, for the moment, measure success in physical-plane results. Let’s talk about what’s going on inside. What are you changing within yourself? What values are you standing behind? What qualities are you encouraging within yourself? Inside is where the real work is done. How are you measuring up? What work do you need to do next?

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

The Many Faces of Your Calling
The Length of Your Reach
Message from a Rainbow Mother
How Do You Nurture “Different”
44 – How to Define What You Do So Others Get It
41 – How to Make Decisions When Your Let Your Life Unfold
37-Self Mastery As a Choice

The Willingness Day

By

old people jumping

What would happen if you spent the day being totally willing – willing to try something new, willing to simply be? What would that look like? What would that feel like?

Why is willingness important?

If we’re not willing, we’ll never try anything new. We will miss everything! There are often reasons why we are not eager. We may be afraid, we may not know how, or we may not have the self-confidence to even try.

When you’re willing, the world opens up to you.

Willingness is being eager

Curiosity leads us to the most exciting places. When we take a moment to look, to explore, to consider, we begin to see how the opportunity fits into our life and we move eagerly forward into the adventure.

Wiliness is being flexible

Practice being more willing in your interaction with others. Go along with what the others want – as long as it’s in line with your values, of course. Allow others to lead the way. It can lead you to fascinating places you might never have considered.

Willingness is being amenable

Be open to suggestions. Listen to the others’ ideas and viewpoints. New worlds of adventure and opportunity open up when you stay open to the natural flow of events.

Willingness makes you ready, eager and prepared to do something

A willing person is curious and eager to go exploring. She is the person who is ready to expand her ideas and prepared to do whatever it takes. Wouldn’t you like someone like that on your team? Wouldn’t you like to be like that?

Is that you?

Or do you need a little work? What happens if you decide to have a Willingness Day?

Today I’m willing to listen and absorb what the other person is saying before I respond. I listen to the concerns that are hidden behind the words. I will be open to hearing things I didn’t expect.

Today I’m willing to try something new. I will simply allow an idea to emerge and go exploring. I will even push past my apprehension and uncertainty. I will go two or three steps further than I though I could.

Today I’m willing to trust. For the whole day I will trust Tao to provide exactly what I need, whether I think it looks like it or not. And I will trust that I have the wisdom and self-knowledge to make the right choice.

Today I celebrate my willingness. I’m going to dance and play throughout my day in celebration of my open, receptive willingness to immerse myself in the natural flow of the day.

Happy Willingness Day!

To Sing a Deeper Song:

Why Unfolding Works
The Power of Non-Action
The Power of Exploring the Unknown
Allow the Right Action to Emerge
Just Chose
The Reward is in the Journey
34- Use Labels to Expand Your Possibilities
29-Are You Wiling to Move Beyond Your Comfort Zone?