Unfolding

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning

May 29, 2019 By Cara Lumen Leave a Comment

The Packed Potential Before the Beginning
An Inner-World Exploration

Wuji means “no limits.” Wuji is at the center and the beginning of our pilgrimage. Wuji is essential stillness, the packed potential before the beginning. It is the beginning of the beginning. – I Ching, Deng Meng Dao

Imagine yourself in deep, deep stillness. No ideas frolic through your mind. No emotions nudge you for attention. You are simply there. At the beginning. Filled with packed potential. “Packed potential!” What a fabulous idea! What does that look like? Feel like? Can I truly be so still and present inside that I can feel the wuji, the center at the beginning of the next step of my personal journey?

I would like that. I would like to be so present and still and centered that I am like a bird sitting on a branch prepared to fly but not yet doing so. Simply being present and filled with the potential for movement.

How else can I experience wuji? How might I think of packed potential? How might I cultivate it and use it to move into whatever form I take that creates change?

Part of wuji is about waiting

Wuji is how you feel before you take action. For instance, I wanted to write this article in order to figure out how to apply this concept of packed potential. There are, as I write this, organic pauses that allow new thoughts to emerge for consideration and clarification. But underneath it all is that deep, deep, deep sense of permanence, of a part of me that is always present, the wuji, the packed potential that is me. Here in my body suit. Living my body suit life.

“Wuji means “no limits.”

I have to get out of my body suit in order to understand the concept of wuji – no limits – because my body suit is full of limitations. I have to journey to the unseen world of my inner knowing in order to even begin to conceive of “no limits.” That’s not a body suit concept. It’s an inner world concept, an unseen world concept. That unseen world is within us, open to us, beckoning to us to come explore. We can simply close our eyes, turn off our minds and fly. With no limits!

When we use our body suit minds, we cannot conceive of limitless potential because we can’t get there in our body suits. But our inner self knows and can take us there.

Perhaps all we need is to know wuji, “packed potential”, exists and that it is possible

If I sit here at my desk and go within, there’s a stillness. My body suit disappears and I’m left as an energy floating in the present moment. When I release my body suit, my inner self moves softly into the Great Nothingness where everything is potential, where everything is evolving and changing and shifting shapes and direction – constant unfolding and evolving movement. I become part of that transforming energy and I, too, change. I become presence. I become potential. I simply am.

And that’s where we begin to let our lives unfold.

Make time to unpack your wuji, your packed potential

You may find this wuji awareness of packed potential in meditation. You may find wuju in nature. You may find it in an action that you take.

I am changing my spiritual practice to include smaller but more frequent moments in my day. That gives me the opportunity to be still and silent and present more often. I pause to examine and evaluate where I am and where is calling me, deepen my spiritual connection and then make an aware and aligned choice. I will expand my midday shamanic journeying to include meditation with a crystal and more drumming and singing of power songs. I will pause again as the sun sets to be with nature and to begin to close the cycles of my day. At night I will drum my power songs to guide my dreams in the night. You get the idea. Create small moments of spiritual practice and inner awareness at various points in our day, then make that a habit.

How will you unpack the packed potential that awaits you?

Wui means “no limits.” Wuji is at the center and the beginning of our pilgrimage. Wuji is essential stillness, the packed potential before the beginning. – I Ching, Deng Meng Dao

DEEPER SONG AFFIRMATION

I sit in perfect stillness and experience the packed potential
that awaits me at each beginning.

TO SING A DEEPER SONG CONSIDER:

Another Part of You-The Unseen World

How to Interpret the Messages from Within

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

Unleash the power of your Sacred Garden

How to Be Nothing

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 Newsletter
with Insights and Applications,
join the Deeper Song Community.

How Do You Make Your Actions Lasting and Meaningful?

March 13, 2019 By Cara Lumen Leave a Comment

How Do You Make Your Actions Lasting and Meaningful?
An Inner-world Exploration

We would all like to feel we have value, that we contribute. How do we make our actions lasting and meaningful? I pose a question to which I have no immediate answer. I just really like the question.

When a phrase like this asks me to explore it, to understand what it means to me and how to apply it, I usually begin with the dictionary to expand my awareness and interpretation of the meaning of the words. “Lasting” means enduring, permanent. “Meaningful” means significant, consequential. I want my actions to be all of that.

To make my actions lasting and meaningful, I begin by working to identify my purpose, deepening my own understanding of my unique gifts and what’s calling me from my core. Then I figure out how to express that in my life.

What is calling you? Find the form

You know what’s calling you. Put it into descriptive words, a label perhaps. I am a ….

I see myself as a spiritual philosopher, an explorer, a map-maker and messenger. Only lately have I realized that I am still a teacher.

How do you express what’s calling you? How do you see your role?

When you have passion behind what you do, it deepens your impact on everyone you meet. Your enthusiasm and excitement is as effective as the work you do, the service you perform. You affect all who come across your path.

My initial actions can be very subtle. I can be sitting here doing whatever, and suddenly a thought comes barreling into my awareness and I’m deeply called to explore the meaning behind that idea.

I want to understand the concept and if it resonates deeply, I try to figure out ways to add it to my life. And I need and want to share what I discover.

The initial call is incredibly powerful to me. The need/desire/calling to figure out is imperative. And writing it in a form to share with others not only helps me complete my inquiring process, but offers my insights to others as well.

The form of your offering begins with what’s calling you.

Action – Take your calling to the world

Our actions create our life experience. What we think, say, do, and believe are reflected back to us in our lives. We are to learn to choose actions that are in alignment with our highest good.

Our actions impact what we receive. What we put out, we get back. Anger brings back more anger. Love brings back more love. We get to choose what we receive by being conscious of the energy we put out.

Our actions also impact what others receive and absorb from us. Just as we are affected by the vibrations we put out, so are those around us affected by the level of vibration we emanate. Do you have an idea of how your presence is perceived by others? This is not about pleasing others, it’s about being aware of how you walk in the world. How your mere presence affects others.

The choices and actions we take are vital. How we conduct ourselves – the words we use, how we interact with others. Just the simple act of being present is a meaningful action that has deep impact.

The focus of our actions affects our impact. What we choose to do with our lives, in our lives, leads us on a path of our own making. It’s not about what we achieve, it’s about how we go about our lives – our attitude, our consideration, our compassion.

The form our work takes is revealing. We may be a leader, a team player, an individual stand-out or a steady support person. That’s the form our action takes. How we take that action is key not just to our physical-plane success but to our inner, spiritual development as well.

Action is in our deeds, our behavior, or conduct and our endeavors. It is also in our thoughts, beliefs, and expectations.

What is a “meaningful” action?

What is meaningful to you includes experiences that feel significant, impactful, important, relevant, important, and worthwhile.

Spend some time considering what is meaningful to you. Begin there. That will dictate your calling, your actions, your focus, and your development.

We are talking about how to make your actions meaningful and lasting. But to whom? The world, others, your family? Who do you want to impact? Who do you want to see your existence as meaningful? Who do you want to reach?

You will know about some of your impact. Much of it, you will not. A simple smile may be enough to have a meaningful and lasting impact on a person who needs it at that very moment.

A less tangible impact may be something someone said to you a long time ago that you have based a lot of your life upon. That could be a parent, a teacher, or a friend who encouraged you and that led you to steps to build on that encouragement. Words of encouragement are very impactful.

We may not have to look very far afield to understand the many ways our actions, both large and small, can be meaningful and lasting.

We want our work to be lasting

Lasting means “abide or able to endure over a long period of time.” It has a deep vibration, a profound effect.

To be lasting means that the action you took created change. It created change in someone’s outlook. It created change in someone’s understanding. It created change in what someone thought was possible or what they thought they deserved. It changed them. It changed what they thought, or perceived or considered or chose.

A very simple action or thought can make a lasting change.

“Lasting” means a change at the core

This phrase “make your actions lasting and meaningful” came from something I read. I don’t even remember what. But look where it’s taking us. I feel this exploration shift me as I compose this piece. It has made me stop and think and consider and wonder and question and … That’s a lot of impact for a few words.

And whoever wrote them will never know the adventure those few words are taking us upon.

You won’t necessarily know who and how you affect others.

“Lasting” means inner work

Just as we don’t know who our actions and words will impact, we don’t know how.

But lasting change begins within.

My work is to identify ideas and concepts that lead me into greater clarity and incorporate them as an actual practice in my life.

That purpose will impact what I choose to write in my posts and newsletter to share with others.

That purpose will impact how I interact with the people close to me and the people not so close to me.

That choice is certainly going to impact my spiritual practice. When I start holding up each action I take to the measuring stick of “meaningful and impactful”, I will leave a pile of ideas on the floor and choose the ones that are – yes – meaningful and impactful to both me and those I serve.

Choice and your measuring stick

I rely very heavily on my inner voice. It hollered at me to write down that phrase. It immediately demanded that I write the first draft to begin to figure out what it meant to me. It was clearly important to my inner self that I both understand this concept and figure out how to absorb it into my life. And as I live with this idea of wanting my actions to be meaningful and lasting, I have set up a new measuring stick to help me select the next steps I take.

Sometimes we don’t know what will be meaningful and impactful

A long time ago, I remember walking across Central Park in New York City with a friend who said, “We are rocks. People depend on us.” I was a bit startled at the idea, but I recognized myself in her statement. I asked, “Where do rocks get help?” “From other rocks,” was her reply.

That was 45 years ago. And that idea, that image has profoundly affected my life and how I live it.

We simply do not know and may never know, how we help to change the lives of others.

So besides raising our own vibrations, expanding our spiritual exploration and consciously trying to serve others, we have to simply be true to ourselves. The more we deepen our own spiritual awareness, the stronger our light becomes and the more attractive and vital and meaningful our light presence becomes to others.

We may never know

I can have an intention to have my choices be meaningful and lasting but I’m not always going to know if they are. But I absorb this idea and look for ways to raise my own vibration, to be of greater service in the world, and I hope, I intend, that what I offer, what I provide, will be both meaningful and impactful when it moves out into the world.

Deeper Song Affirmation

I choose to make my actions lasting and meaningful.

Deeper Song Process

List what you think makes your life and work meaningful. To you. To others.
Of those things you have listed, what do you think may have the most lasting impact? To whom? Why?
Do you see any changes you would like to make?
Do that.

Deeper Song Affirmation
My life is meaningful and impactful.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Does Your Work Stir Your Heart?

What Are Your Weaving in Your Reality?

Life Messages from a Potter

When I See Myself As Light

How to Interpret the Messages From Within

To receive our weekly
Deeper Song Insights and Applications

join the Deeper Song Community.

Do Not Conform to the Ways of the World

January 23, 2019 By Cara Lumen Leave a Comment

Do Not Conform to the Ways of the World
An Inner World Exploration

We are so much more than our body suit. That is why we must not conform to the ways of the world. It’s too limiting. We have to honor our vibrations of wholeness, listen to our unique calling and stand up tall in our own light, taking the actions we’re called to take by our gifts and passion.

Only we can do that for ourselves.

We are to evolve consciously – purposefully – actively

Each day, in every choice, in every action, in every thought, you need to celebrate your uniqueness, your individuality, and you have to have the inner belief that you are uniquely distinctive and are to serve in a uniquely distinctive manner.

It means you are not to conform to the world around you. You are not to be like everyone else. You are to be self-aware and conscious of the personalized nudges and unique opportunities given you by your inner self. You listen. You heed. You step out into the world as your own unique light.

Join with similar uniqueness

The more deeply you cultivate and honor your distinctive calling, the fewer fellow travelers you’ll find on your particular path.

However, when you take your individual, unique distinctive light out into the world, you’ll find other aware lights shining in their individual uniqueness. You join together and your combined vibrations make major changes in the world – for the well-being of all.

Don’t conform to the ways of the world

Don’t limit yourself to our body suit ways.

This doesn’t mean you have to rebel, but you can quietly and calmly disengage from what’s not aligned with your awareness of your collective oneness and move along the specific path that calls to you.

The more individualized your path, the more closely you’ll have to look to find fellow light travelers going in a similar direction. Walk with who shows up and see where it takes you both.

We’re not our body suits. We are light – the whole, complete vibration of light and that means that so much more is possible than we can imagine from our body suits.

How do you step away from the ways of the world?

Do not allow yourself to become simply part of the herd, a lump in the collective human race. You are beyond that. You are aware of yourself as light. Be aware of your own uniqueness. Notice what gifts you have been given, what passions are calling you, and where circumstances have placed you.

Raise your sights. Examine each opportunity as a gift and gauge the degree of its calling and its potential to help you create change – for yourself – for others. Then follow your heart and step into the place of service that calls to you.

Live your life however you have agreed to do it. Show up however you need to. Just keep coming from your spiritual heart, your inner self and you’ll never conform to the ways of the world.

Deeper Song Process:

Deepen your awareness of yourself as the vibration of light.
See who else around you seems to be aware of the same thing.
Hang out with them.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Know the Power of Our One Light

Who Needs to Give You Permission?

What Are Your Weaving in Your Reality?

Expand Your Spiritual Heart

The Power of Being Different

Can You Let Your Life Unfold?

January 16, 2019 By Cara Lumen Leave a Comment

Can You Let Your Life Unfold?
An Inner-world Exploration

Periodically during the year, we make grand plans. Sometimes it’s because there’s a new year beginning, sometimes it’s a new quarter, or a new month or even just one week at a time.

The most productive, aligned way to manage your life is to simply to let it unfold. See what shows up, check it out in the moment and decide if this is the time to explore and develop that idea.

Otherwise we run the risk of being overwhelmed.

It helps to follow the seasons

There’s an unfolding flow in nature that we would do well to align ourselves with.

Winter: Contemplate and explore the possibilities in the seed catalog. Close what to plant.

Choose only the things you really want to do and the things you realistically can accomplish. How many plants can you grow in your personal garden of self?

I’m exploring new ideas and they’re currently in sort of a book format because that’s how I’m organizing my own learning process. However, the idea of working on a book while doing all this inner exploration/discovery work is overwhelming.

So, since it’s winter, I’ll contemplate the choices and experiences before me and go exploring to better understand what I’m being called to do. I place my order from the idea seed catalogue. That’s all I do – choose my priorities.

I may have different criteria for my choices – income, most effective use of time, greatest impact, easiest to do. A full seed catalog can be tempting. Do a reality check before you place your order.

Spring: Choose how many seeds you will plant based on what you can realistically care for, want to harvest and how much is needed.

After choosing what we want to plant, we have to do a reality check on how much we can physically and emotionally care for. How big is the garden plot (your available time). We have to prepare the ground. What skills and equipment or help do you need to produce this crop? Then you have to decide how much to plant based on how much you can care for and harvest and, better yet, use.

These are the decisions of spring. How much to plant. Where to plant. And make certain not to overprint or underplant. Give careful thought to what you actually need to produce.

I seem to have a second book that’s much closer to completion than this one I am creating from my new work. Hmmm. Can I harvest two crops? Oh yes, and there’s a niggle that I might record some guided meditations. Be careful here that you don’t choose too much to plant because there’s a lot of work to be done in the cultivation and care and bringing to harvest of whatever you choose.

Summer: Do the work

This is the part I love – the growth and development of an idea. The unfolding of a book. It’s a time for deep creativity and introspection as I pull together all I have learned in a form that others can understand. I put what I’ve been learning into a form I can share that will help others move along a similar path.

What will be required of you to tend the crops you have chosen to plant? Can you bring the crop safely to harvest?

Fall – Harvest what you sowed

I dread this part. We are talking technical stuff. Not hard, I just don’t do it very often. Get the book out the door stuff. But if that’s all I do for the fall – complete and publish – that doesn’t feel so daunting.

See how working in seasons makes the task less daunting?

There’s another step here I tend to not do well – let others know what I’ve created. So perhaps I can devise practical and realistic ways to do that.

If you found a stumbling block in your projected harvest, what solutions can you explore and what choices can you make earlier in the year to help you move through this challenge?

Completion time is made for giving gratitude for the gifts you have harvested and been encouraged to give.

Fall is also the time to notice what your work produces. What is popular and what is not? What did you run out of? It’s time to evaluate what action has called to you the most. Where did you receive the most satisfaction? What was the easiest part to do? Then set those ideas aside to be contemplated in the planning that takes place in the winter cycle.

Do your inner work

Before you begin a new cycle, do your inner work. What new skills did you develop? What do you want to do more of? Less of? What are the needs of the people you serve? How has the world changed? What is needed that you could provide?

What has changed in you and how will you honor that?

Then it’s time to begin the cycle again.

Deeper Song Process:

Write down what you would like to accomplish in the next year, quarter, month, whatever you choose.
Put a mark by the one accomplishment that would be the easiest to do.
Put a different mark by the one that would make your heart sing.
Use a different mark to identify the action that would bring in the most income, or whatever value you are working to achieve (personal growth, relationships, etc)
Choose one project that you marketed and apply the seasonal steps to it.
Winter – Contemplate the future possibilities. Order seeds.
Spring – Plant what you can care for and harvest.
Summer – Produce. Do the work. Get help if you need to.
Fall – Take your harvest to market and see how it’s received.
Repeat each season.

To Sing a Deeper Song, Consider:

Make Work Your Offering

How to Weave the Sacred into the Ordinary

Are You Sacred Space?

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

What Core Beliefs are Guiding You Today?

The Destructive Power of Negative Thought – on Others

November 28, 2018 By Cara Lumen Leave a Comment

The Destructive Power of Negative Thought – on Others
An Inner World Exploration

Like many metaphysicians, Shamans believe that thoughts are things. Sometimes part of their work is to transform the negative thoughts that are causing illness in their body.

Where do negative thoughts come from?

If negative thoughts make you sick, where do they come from? The first place to look is within yourself, the negative affirmations you’re giving yourself.

But what blew my mind, what sent me rushing to write this article, is that my negative thoughts can cause illness in someone else.

Wow. Bummer. I need to monitor that.

How you see others affects them

I’ve just gone through a rather judgmental period of watching my sister move and finding her ineffectiveness annoying. She is very harmful to herself with phrases like “I’m scared, I can’t do that, I can’t learn that, I don’t know how to do that.” All of these are extremely damaging.

But what struck me the most is that my thoughts of seeing her as ineffective were helping hold her in that place of ineffectiveness as well.

Now, I don’t run around thinking negative thoughts as a rule but… Well, I’ve had to work hard at looking for my own feelings of inclusiveness (we’re all one light) and eliminating my own negativity (we’re all one light).

If you look at someone with pity, you hold them in a place where they feel themselves as deserving pity. When you look at someone as being wrong, you increase the separation you both feel. When you see someone as sick, your thoughts help hold them in the place of sickness. How you see others is very, very powerful.

We need to examine our own thoughts in order to encourage positive change.

I have to transform my thoughts

How do I do that? How do I change my thinking? I’ve begun to look for and see love and light and illumination everywhere. In the troubled places. In the scared places, in the desperate places, in the angry places. I need to choose to see light everywhere. Radiant light, the light of wholeness, the light of oneness, the light that is all we each are.

It may take some practice.

I can transform negativity with my mind

I have to make some decisions. I get to monitor what I allow myself to focus on.

For instance, one newscaster seems to put more drama and angst in his reporting. I now listen to the one who calmly relates the happenings of the day. I love PBS news because they clearly report both sides so fairly. However, I also love to watch the late night shows. Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers are my favorites. Their jokes are relevant and intelligent and right on – for me. I have to look at what that focus does with my version of spreading light into the world. It’s not that it’s dark humor, it’s that they focus on what is not working in the world.

What we focus on, we get more of…

If I just sit here radiating light, I will not know what’s going on and what to focus light on. On one hand, that’s just fine, because light to the planet is light to the planet, it goes everywhere and heals what is open to be healed.

Are they open to be healed?

What if someone doesn’t want to be healed? What if someone is just fine with being angry and judgmental?

Well, that’s their choice.

What I can do is shine my light so that anyone who’s looking can see it and bring it into their life. No judgment. No anger. Just healing, wholing, radiant light.

Change your thinking, change your life

If you begin at this very moment to monitor and destroy all your negative thoughts, your life will change. Clear out the sabotaging beliefs you send yourself. Look closely at what thoughts you send out into the world.

There’s a television news host in my area who invites “rants.” It’s really the worst idea I’ve ever seen because it helps people focus on being judgmental and critical. It’s very negative energy to put out into our world. (Maybe I should write a rant about the… No, see, my negative input would simply add negative input. Light. I have to radiate light and let it go where it’s needed.)

See the goodness

If you can find some inherent goodness in a situation or a person, focus on that. It’ll change you, and it’ll change their reaction that comes to you. Instead of spending time in your day talking about what does not work, spend more time focusing on a discussion of what does work.

Change your focus, change your life.

Feel the energy of negative thought

I can literally feel anger. When I’m around people expressing anger, I have to leave their company because it physically hurts my body.

I wonder what negativity I unconsciously allow into my life that’s harmful and non-supportive. I’ve got to look out for that.

Think of your thoughts as light

If you begin to think of all your thoughts as beams of light, then you’ll also notice that some are brighter and more luminous than others. That’s what you want to send. Not dull, negative thoughts. They do not help our world raise its consciousness. They do not help us heal ourselves.

Notice your thoughts. Monitor them. Change them.

Positive thoughts will change you.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

Expand Your Spiritual Heart

Are You Sacred Space

Light and Darkness Cannot Exist Together

Do You See and Hear and Walk in a Sacred Manner

Our Defense of Non-Existent Boundaries

Unleash the power of your Sacred Garden