Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

transformational thinking

Expand You Own Power Through Self-Leadership

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Expand You Own Power Through Self-Leadership
An Inner-world Exploration

Being a self-leader means taking responsibility for your own actions, your own power and the impact you create with your thoughts and actions. 

Wow. That’s a lot of responsibility.  

Begin self-leadership with an inventory

You have been given gifts and talents and tools to use in the leadership of your self.  You increase your awareness of those gifts through contemplation. You become aware of the power and flexibility of the tools you have to work with. You become aware of the impact of your thoughts and actions. You become aware of the ripples you are sending out.  Your vibration carries on even when you cannot be seen.  

Your pebbles of participation create ripples into the world wave and will reach a shore you never dreamed of.  

You cannot change the core of who you are but you can change how you share the gifts you have been given 

Learn to share your gifts in many forms. Water is water but it can manifest as a rushing river, a waterfall, an ocean, or a reflecting pool. Water can become steam and merge with the air. Air can be a gentler breeze or a destructive tornado.  

Your gifts are like that. Some are to be in more impactful forms than others.  Look closely at the gifts you’ve been given, see how you’re using them, and identify what’s most impactful – and satisfying.

Use self-leadership to focus your own power

First, you have to recognize your own power.  Then you have to cultivate it into a usable form.  Then you get to focus it where you want to be in service.

Once you become aware of your impact and influence, then you can control it and direct it and offer it in a form that others can absorb. That control, that discipline is part of self-leadership. 

Self-leadership means you have a vision and are flexible in sharing your gifts

Self-leadership means you know your own strengths, your own gifts and you’re inwardly aware enough to hear your own calling.  You guide yourself in that direction. You use your overview to adjust quickly and sometimes dramatically to circumstances as they appear. You’re flexible and make strong decisions rapidly and with a comfortable conviction.   

Stay flexible so you can change quickly and catch the incoming tide.  

Self-leadership means you’re aware of the power of your path

As an aware and conscious being, you’re aware of the general trend of your life and the gifts you have developed and shared.  But as a self-leader, you’re always curious and you’re always open to change. 

As a self-leader, you know your path, but your job is also to notice the small detours or tilts that are offered and make wise choices about how to adjust and what direction you choose to move in. 

Yet even as you explore new paths and opportunities, you keep your overarching vision and process clearly in mind and make choices from that place of power.

You have a vision

Self-leaders have a vision.  They make decisions with an overall objective in mind.  That objective can be flexible because change is a constant, but keep your eyes raised so you can see the new possibilities, the new opportunities and as a self-leader, choose for your own highest good. 

Self-leadership means you know the power of your own vibration even when it’s not visible

Be responsible for your own power!

Although we’re all one energy, in our body suit lives we have a great deal to say about how we live our lives.  Self-leadership means you’re responsible for your own power!  That means you use it well.  You use it wisely.  You use it generously. You are self-responsible and accept all that comes your way as the result of your own thinking or actions or beliefs.  

Deeper Song Affirmation

Self-leadership to me means….

Deeper Song Process

  • Spend some quiet time thinking of the concept of self-leadership.  What does it mean to you?  What does it look like?  How are you doing it?
  • With the concept of self-leadership in mind, what will you change?  What will you do differently?

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Believe in the Power of Your Own Ripple

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning 

Why We Need to Raise Our Vibration   

How to Interpret the Messages from Within 

Individual Curiosity and a Willingness to Change

Raise Your Sails

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

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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 

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.

Do You Keep Sacred Time?  

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Do You Keep Sacred Time?
An Inner-Word Exploration 

In the course of your day, do you take frequent mindful pauses in which you consciously acknowledge the sacredness of the moment?

If we are doing it right, every moment is sacred, but let’s take small steps to increase our awareness. 

Learn to be more aware of the moment

In order to cultivate awareness of the sacred in your life, practice becoming more aware of the meaningfulness of 

something you do frequently. 

Choose an ordinary and frequent action as a reminder to pause and connect with the unseen world around you.  Walk into a room and pause to feel its energy. Sit down at your desk and mindfully pause before you begin your work offering.  Become conscious of how your body moves and functions and offer it gratitude for its service. Use an often-repeated action as a reminder for you to move into mindful awareness. Pause to breathe, still yourself, and experience the energy around you. Let that mindful action serve as a pulse point, a moment to check in with your inner world and become more aware. Create frequent moments of sacred connection, of being mindful of your surroundings and how you feel both within and without.

Several times during my day, I pause to look out the window at nature.  In seconds, my body stills, my breath evens, and I am transported into a serene inner state.  

How will you prompt yourself to remember to be still and aware and feel the sacredness of the moment? 

Turn your work into a sacred offering

How can you remind yourself that your work is sacred?  That everything you do is filled with the energy of your intention?

My writing is sacred to me.  The act of going within, of listening and bringing forward insights and deciding what to share is creative. It’s a time in which I touch my soul, call upon my gifts, deepen my own understanding, and do something I truly love. I bless the work as I begin and offer it gratitude for its emergence when I finish. And when I post it, I send it with my blessing and the intent to encourage change. 

Your exchanges with others are sacred

Interactions with others are always sacred. You are experiencing the vibration of another person and you are sharing your vibration with them.  You resonate with each other and both of you are changed.  

What could be more sacred than a shared vibration?! 

What kind of sacred moments do you create in your day?

If you pause and observe, you’ll find that many sacred moments already exist.  It may be in the pleasure of freshness you feel after your morning shower.  It may be the softness of your cat’s coat as he snuggles next to you.  It may be the sound of rain rapping noisily against the window while you are warmly tucked inside.  A sacred moment may come in a look, a smile, a comment, a thoughtful gesture or a random thought.  When you look for sacred moments, you’ll find them everywhere.

Purposefully create sacred times  

I recently took a damp cloth to wipe a narrow bookcase that holds some of my crystals and it turned into a sacred experience. I was present, I took time to resonate with each rock and shell. We exchanged energy and there was a deep pleasure in wiping their surfaces.  I was cleaning and the experience became sacred. 

The act of feeding yourself is a sacred time. Thoughtfully choosing what your body asks for, preparing it with mindfulness and love, offering gratitude to the farmer who grew the food, the trucker who brought it to market and the shopkeepers who made it available.  

There is a history of service to everything when we pause to appreciate it. 

Sit silently in nature and listen. Watch the sunset, or the moon rise, or the stars twinkle.  Listen to the wind blow, the birds sing, the crickets chirp.  All are sacred moments.  

Everything is sacred when you pay attention

Every moment is sacred when you pause to become aware of the sacredness.  Begin with gratitude.  Notice what you are grateful for and how the mere act of appreciation brings you into a greater awareness of how everything is sacred. 

Walk mindfully.  Notice how one foot touches the floor and your weight shifts. Then notice the other foot. Make walking sacred. 

Create small acts of ceremony

Ceremony creates sacred moments and even very small acts can be turned into a ceremony. 

Greeting someone with hands in prayer position and saying Namaste (Nah-mah-stay – “the Light With me Honors the Light within you’) is a simple acknowledgment of the sacred light within you both.  Ashe (ah-shay) means “The creative in me honors the creative in you”.

I bless my computer each day so the words I write will touch hearts in the way I have intended and people will be uplifted and encouraged to soar higher. 

I take a shamanic journey every day to ask for insights and clarity of purpose.  

There are small ceremonies I have created for my body temple in the form of conscious, supportive, stretching and Qi Gong movement throughout my day.  

When you sit down at your desk to work, set an intention to bless every word you speak, every interaction you have, every idea that you send out.

When you drive home from work, offer gratitude for the day and send a blessing ahead to the night to come.

Your ceremonies can be simple or elaborate.  Some evenings I light a candle, look out the darkened window and play my Indian flute.  Sometimes I just shut off my computer and thank it for its partnership and support that day. Those small ceremonies can grow into contemplation and gratitude, or can simply be a signal to close out my day.  

What kind of ceremony of sacredness do you want to create? 

Consciousness makes it sacred

You can turn every moment into a sacred experience.  It’s a matter of awareness and conscious focus.  Practice that.  Learn that.  Do that. 

Deeper Song Affirmation
I am aware of the sacredness of each moment. 

Deep Song Process

  • Begin by examining your spiritual practice.  How can you make it not longer or more elaborate, but more meaningful?
  • Identify a way you can honor the work you do as sacred. Put that into practice.
  • Identify how you will learn to see your body as sacred and let that manifest in the care you give it. 
  • Love yourself.  Honor and appreciate and offer gratitude to your body suit, your spiritual incarnation in this lifetime and the journey you’re on. 
  • Close your day with conscious gratitude.  It can be a brief moment or it can be the inner musing of a reflective journal.  Close your day with awareness.  

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

How to Walk a Path of Inner Stillness

How Do You Make Your Actions Lasting and Meaningful? 

Create a Releasing Ceremony For Yourself

When I See Myself As Light

Do You See and Hear and Walk in a Sacred Manner?

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.

You ARE Vibration and Why it Matters

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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 

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.

 

To Whom or What Do You Give Thanks?

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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.