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Do You have the Willingness to find Common Ground?

April 26, 2018 By Cara Lumen

Do You have the Willingness to find Common Ground?

There were great articles on where and how to create peace in The Shift Network newsletter.  I didn’t read them.  I couldn’t read them because…I don’t know.  I didn’t want to read about people doing cruel things to each other or systematically destroying our planet.  I feel helpless in the midst of the current chaos and friction in the world and, well, I don’t think I am really willing to compromise. And compromise we must in order to find the common ground that will bring us peaceful coexistence. 

I don’t even want to be around people who are slightly angry – their negative energy physically hurts my body.  So I avoid conflict.  I avoid disgruntled people. I avoid anger.

But that isn’t going to really make things better.  I have to participate. I have to compromise. I have to find common ground. 

We are all totally interconnected

My action here affects your life there.  If we both don’t raise our consciousness, we will neither one improve our level of participation, our level of life experience.  

For instance, if I am not consciously recycling trash, it may end up in the ocean affecting the fish you need to catch to feed your family. 

We each have different priorities, but we’re all connected. 

Can we have one core focus?

When we each decide that our primary concern/focus is sustaining our planet for ourselves, for our children, for our descendants, then we immediately identify specific steps to take. No pesticides. No GMO. More organic food production, no plastic wraps for food, positive emission steps to help slow climate change.  When we think of our future, our consciousness shifts and we make different choices. 

If you and I lived in a community built around a central garden that provides all our food, we would each do our best to make it the best, most productive garden we could.  We might try different methods.  And we would probably have an argument over organic versus genetically modified.  And I bet it would be an animated conversation, depending on what we each thought was more important – quantity or quality.  

We need to find common values

Let’s say everyone in our small community that has gathered around this one garden primarily wants to be healthy.  Finding common ground, common values is where you begin. But do you know how many versions of how to be healthy there will be?  One for each of us. 

An important awareness we must each develop is to know that we’re free to do what’s best for us according to our own knowledge and understanding – as long as it only affects us.  

As long as it only affects us.  So you really can’t put pesticides out anywhere near my organic vegetables because they will drift over to my plants and I won’t eat any of your genetically modified produce.  We have to grow our own food separately because our viewpoints are so opposing.  And yet our fundamental, common goal is the same.  Feed ourselves and our families. We simply have different ideas on how to make that happen.

I’m not going to change and you’re not going to change because our beliefs are very, very strong and it’s our survival we’re talking about, what we eat.  

That’s both a terrible example and a good example.  I’m a vegan so I have lots of strong feelings about what I eat.  But it does highlight just how core our opposing viewpoints can be and how difficult it can be to find common ground.

Fortunately, in today’s world, you can buy what you want and I can buy what I want.  Although here we go again, pesticides are killing the bumblebees and genetically modified food puts the entire food chain at risk of being totally eradicated because it is not diverse and if it goes, our entire food supply will go. 

Learn the facts

If you never thought about what’ll happen if all crops were genetically modified, it might be good to do some online research. Who is pushing for it (one chemical company) and what are the repercussions? One new blight, one adverse organism could wipe out our entire food supply.  

The dying, pesticide-poisoned bumblebee population is important to remedy because they are necessary for the cross-pollination of our crops.  Before we dig our heals in on a particular position we owe it to ourselves and to our world to educate ourselves about the degree of repercussions our choice would/could make.  We need to keep up with the latest discoveries, the new solutions, and be open to changing our views. The old way is obsolete nearly as fast as we figure it out. Change is a constant and we absolutely must be willing to keep up with it.

Live and let live only goes so far

We don’t live on the planet alone.  Every action we take affects everything, everyone. We must learn to live as globally conscious, flexible, innovative members of a planetary community.  I have no idea how to get everyone to do that.  I can see how a group of like-minded people would choose to live around a cooperative organic garden.  But what about the rest of the people in their community?  If they are doing things we see as destructive to our planet, what do we do?

We each have to give up something

We have to find common ground.  We will each have to compromise, give a little.  Maybe give way a lot.

But wait.  If I mess up my food source, I’ll die. That’s pretty basic.  I can see a “live and let live” approach to a lot of things – free choice about a lot of things – until it infringes on my clean air, my organic garden, my fresh water.  Then I dig in and refuse to budge.  That’s my survival that’s being messed with. 

If I were starving, I’d eat pretty much anything.  But we don’t have to get to the starving stage to find agreement. 

It’s when we come together to build something that conflict arises because compromise must be the core of collaboration. 

Let’s say we, in our community of both organic and non-organic believers, come together to organize and expand our town. 

First, we have to decide between short term and long-term planning. What is our over-arching goal?  Then we have to examine the repercussions. Everything is tied to everything else, so if I pull a string here, something unravels or tangles up over there.  Are we exchanging one knot for another?  What is best for the highest good?  How does filling this need now impact our children’s lives?

The first step is to agree on our over-arching purpose 

What is our over-arching purpose for this planet?  Survival would probably get everyone’s vote.  How we do that starts the discussion and referee the arguments. We may have to compromise because of cost.  We may have to prioritize because of pressing need.  We may have to forgo immediate results in order to take active foundational steps because they create positive long-term results.  We have to see the overview and hold it in front of us as we plan. We have to see the connection, how this move here will affect that situation over there. And we have to hold the same primary goal and keep moving toward our agreed upon end goal as we move forward together. 

Oh yes, and we all have to be flexible as the movement unfolds. We have to make adjustments for new discoveries, and new entanglements. 

So I’m going to join with other organic gardeners and have a plot to grow my food.  I’ll share some of my organic produce with those who have made other choices.  I may or may not point out how much healthier and stronger those of us who eat organic are, but maybe that will simply become noticeable.  That gradual awareness may cause others to make more conscious choices for their own well-being. 

That works unless I am forced to eat genetically modified food with pesticides on it.  

Then we’re back to core conflict.  

We must each learn to see the overview

If you’re in survival mode only, you can’t raise your gaze to see the long-term.  You don’t see the water table lowering or the seas rising or the glaciers melting. You can’t look that far beyond today’s survival. Therefore, you can’t or won’t be able to see how your actions of today affect the future.  Your focus is on the ground before you, one foot of survival at a time. 

But those of us who can see the overview must take steps to protect us all.  We can begin to do that by example.  If an organic diet makes us live longer, then others will see it.  If I carry my cloth grocery bag to the grocery store, others will see it and may think to carry their own.  If I’m very careful to recycle what I can, perhaps I need to offer to carry my neighbor’s recycling out for her to make certain it’s done.  

What can you offer to do for someone else that moves the world a little closer to wellness?

I can network.  I can tell my neighbors that when I order my groceries delivered, the drivers will take the plastic bags from the last delivery back and the store ships them to a special place for reprocessing.  They may not know that.  They may not choose to do that.  But I have passed forward the information of some positive, environmentally supportive choices they can make.

Raise your consciousness and the consciousness of others

I didn’t know the water table in Cape Town, South Africa, was so low it was at crisis level until I watched a PBS news report, which also informed me that California has a similar water table problem. I have no idea how a water table works or how to protect one. I’m in the mid-west so I’m not certain what I can do about either of those particular problems, but I can educate myself to figure out what that means and how my community is caring for our water table.  

If it turns out we need to make changes, I could go so far as to report what I find to the local government.  Maybe I have to do some educating.  And find like-minded people who are concerned. And be pro-active in helping to find a solution.

We cannot just sit around and let it happen to us

Many people will do nothing.  It’s simply not in their nature.  They’ll accept whatever shows up.  Others may find one particular cause, like animals that are nearing extinction, and donate money or join groups who are being pro-active in saving public lands. 

Whatever you’re called to do to preserve our planet, do it.  Make it a positive participation. Make certain it moves the cause forward.  Even if it’s in your small corner of the world.  Let others know what you found. Give them the information they need to make informed and more pro-active choices. 

Raise your sights. Raise your values. Be an influencer

Do not settle.  Be an influencer.  Make others aware of their choices and the repercussions of their actions through education and actions.  Don’t force.  Just do. Be an example. Raise the level of consciousness in your corner of the world and when you look up, you’ll find there are others around the world doing the same.  Meet each other’s gaze and keep going. 

FOR DEEPER EXPLORATION

How Modern Mysticism Will Save the World 

Live in the Center of Your Being

What Is The Foundation StonesUpon Which You Build Your Life?  

We Are Responsible 

One Powerful Way to Change Our Future 

Filed Under: Our Luminous Legacy, Spiritual Heart, Transformational Community Tagged With: Spiritual Expansion, transformational thinking, world peace

Build a Transformational Community to Heal Our World

May 25, 2017 By Cara Lumen

cosmic

A Transformational Community emerges from the spiritual awakening that results in people gathering together to envision a world of conscious, aligned, peaceful energy. This spiritual consciousness has the power to change our world and our life experience.

To be a contributing activist in the Transformational Community requires personal awareness and a willingness to expand your thinking. You need to become more “transpersonal”.

Transpersonal refers to states or areas of consciousness that are beyond the limits of personal identity – beyond yourself, encompassing the whole. Moving from yourself into the whole is the basis for building a Transformational Community.

We come from everywhere, drawn by the belief that when we focus our group energy toward the positive it will raise the collective consciousness and create positive change. Call us what you will: spiritual explorers, agents of change, light workers, mystics, visionaries, metaphysicians, explorers of the Great Mystery. We all seek to experience a direct connection with the vast part of the unknown, the All-That-Is.

We use all manner of techniques to connect with the Great Mystery, the collective consciousness, the web of life. Meditation, shamanic journeying, prayer, dreaming, and any manner of altered states can take us out of the limitation of our mind and the physical plane and open ourselves up to experience our deepest inner self.

The Transformational Community covers our planet

The internet is instrumental in helping us find each other. We  gather in group meditations or participate in coordinated demonstrations in our community that coincide with a worldwide movement. Earth Day, World Peace Day, Woman’s Movement Day, Science Day.

We join with others who are passionate about the same things and add our wholing energy to group visualizations that are focused on raising the vibration around that cause.

The Transformational Community has been emerging over the last 40 years. It is national and international. We are greatly concerned about the material environment and have a deep desire for peaceful coexistence.

Looking back, I realize I have been a part of the Transformational Community since my 40’s when I moved to New York City in 1997 and immediately began my holistic training through many venues. Today I pass forward my eclectic viewpoint in hopes of adding insights to the experience of others.

Consciously connect with other transpersonal workers

You are a visionary member of the Transformational Community the minute you decide you are. Begin by expanding your own spiritual practice to include sending energy to raise the group consciousness. Join with groups who are supporting causes that call to you through group meditation.

Transformation work is energy work

Transformation work is about wholeness. It’s about intention. It’s even more powerful when we gather together to focus our spiritual energies. We are one energy, each of us the same, each of us connected.

When we join our hearts with others, this expands our own spiritual awareness; and together that light, that love, that wholeness moves out into the world and into the lives of others. Together we raise the group consciousness to embrace more inclusion, more empathy.

Find and connect with the people who share your values, people who inspire and motivate you and with whom you can join to support change in the world. Learn what they’re doing, go where they’re hanging out, discover what they’re learning and thinking and join them in the adventure. When you cast your net and allow yourself to resonate with what you find, you will have many choices.

We must offer positive energy to the collective dream

The current collective dream is changing. There’s chaos and uncertainty because there’s change. That means people are still holding on to the old, are reluctant to let go of the familiar, and fear about what’s coming. Our job as members of the Transformational Community is to expand our personal and group work and focus our thoughts and intentions on over-arching values, like feeling and honoring our oneness with each other, with the planet, with our vision.

Where there’s negativity and chaos, our job is to focus on peace, serenity, and awareness of our collective unity. That’s the impact and input we want to have on the collective dream.

The shift begins with the expansions of our personal inner work. Your focus, your expectations, your beliefs, your actions. Transformation begins within you.

The View from the Transformational Community

Members of the Transformational Community are inclusive and empathetic. We’re open to change. We seek creative ways to help others express their highest potential. We’re environmentally aware. We’re spiritually focused creative people who are deeply in service. We come together in a world of consciousness, and of aligned, peaceful energy.

Transformation comes from within.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

The Great Collective 

I Am You

We Are Part of a Larger Spiritual Order

Our Work in the World 

How to Hold the Space for the New Vision to Emerge

VLOG: Insights of a Deeper Song 

PODCAST: Reflections of a Deeper Song 

Filed Under: Self Transformation, Spiritual Expansion, Transformational Community Tagged With: transformational community, transformational thinking, world peace, world service

How To Write a New Life Story

April 13, 2017 By Cara Lumen

Night-day seasons

Some of us are now called to join together in a conscious focus on wholeness. Wholeness of the planet. Wholeness for its inhabitants. Peace, wisdom, understanding, empathy, inclusiveness. Whatever we feel is missing, whatever we feel called upon to change.

We manifest this wholeness with our minds and our intentions.

Are you being called to serve?

Whatever you feel called to protect, or change, or help manifest, you can do it in your own spiritual practice, whatever form that takes for you. Change is in the intention. Change comes from the vibration of focused thought.

We have work to do.

Alone or collectively?

I’m very busy sending positive energy to the negative news I hear, to the people who are making the news, to the safety of the planet and the people, and… I’m very, very busy.

I actively join in worldwide group meditations focused on peace and balance and planetary well-being. That strengthens and supports my individual work and increases the power and reach of the focus of our collective work.

We can change the world

Each thought we think, each word we speak, each action we take has impact. For better or for worse. Check yourself for anger and judgment and clean your inner house. Look for the core value of inclusion and see how well you’re doing that. There are many ways we can help change the world. Inner work is a powerful place to begin.

Our inner and group work will help write a new story. There’s a reason all these strong emotions and dramatic changes and feelings of being off balance are emerging. We’re in the midst of major, major changes. That means we have to look within ourselves. And we have to study and acquire a broader more global viewpoint. How do we do that?

We have to understand, connect and then proceed.

But first we have to create balance

We have to create balance in our own feelings, our own responses. No fear. Just a deep knowing that we are light workers and we are here to hold the light so the darkness in the corners can be uncovered and that new insights and ideas may fill them.

As the change begins to unfold, we’ll be an active presence participating with our strong spiritual awareness to help write a new story, create a new world, to heal and nurture and balance with an ever-deepening awareness that comes from our continued energy practice.

It begins with the work within.

What new story do you want to help write?

Something that is now unbalanced calls to you. What is it? Where do you want to focus your “enlightened energy”?

Energy workers are a small percentage of the world’s population but we’re everywhere on the planet. Even if we come from different spiritual practices, our common connection is for the greater good. What new story do you want to help write?

I, for example, am very concerned about the planet. How would I rewrite that story?

My story would see an increase in the acceptance as true and awareness that global warming is vitally important to everyone and there are things we humans can do to slow it down.

No planet, no home, no life on earth. And in my story, no one kills for food. Ever.

In my story, we become so attuned with nature that we live in organic, naturally unfolding cycles and all striving and struggling ceases.

You get the picture. What story do you want to write and what would it look like?

Focus on directing your energy toward that cause. Do it by yourself or join with likeminded others. But do it regularly. Your consciousness can change the world.

As spiritually conscious inhabitants of our world, we are very, very important in the rebalancing that is necessary and for the creation of the new story that’ll be told.

Do your inner work.

To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

The Core Value of Inclusion
The Shedding of Your Skin
Clean Your Inside Home
Accept Yourself as You Are
The Move From Inner to Outer Work
Change Your Expectations

Filed Under: Positive Change, Spiritual Expansion, Transformational Community Tagged With: positve change, Spiritual Expansion, transformational ideas, world peace

The Great Collective

March 7, 2017 By Cara Lumen

galexy NASA

Isn’t it phenomenal that we can so easily get to know people from other parts of the world thanks to the internet! As I join group-energy-focusing calls, I meet incredible people in the break-out groups. I am on several Facebook forums from courses I have participated in and interact with people from everywhere.

The websites of the world peace calls often show photographs of some of the participants and suddenly I’m connected with a diversity I do not experience in my walking-around life. It’s expanding, it’s energizing, it’s empowering to know there are spiritually focused, globally conscious, action-oriented people like me all over the world.

We are one energy

When you find so many people gathered together to focus on one common purpose, the world seems smaller. As you tune into the focused group energy, you feel an amplification of your own personal power. As you focus your energy on a particular need, it is no longer yours alone to do, it is a group effort, a combined flow of focused power. And this makes a difference.

Believe we can make a difference

Know we make a difference. Feel the energy of those who are rising above the pettiness and criticism and opposing positions. Allow yourself to rise on the collective gathering of light and lose yourself in the folds of oneness.

Absorb this oneness. Fill yourself with it. Energize and replenish yourself with it. And when it’s time, return your replenished and restored self back to your personal space.

You can join the group energy any time. Someone, somewhere, is holding high watch for the cause you support.

Go deeper within

In a quiet place, allow your body to simply disappear, until there you are, floating in nothingness and everywhere, absorbing, accepting, contributing, exchanging, and simply being the energy of all that is, the nowhere that you came from, the village of nothingness, the uncharted block.

Allow the voice within to speak to you. Trust it.

Disappear you

Let go of your Body Suit. Leave your human mind and its limitations behind. Merge with the wholeness. Heal with your wholeness.

And when your work is complete, return to reside in that sacred place deep within. The “you” of you. The All-That-Is. The energy of the whole.

That’s our work. That’s our calling. Be the wholing energy you are. Share it with the world.

And so it is.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider

What is Self-transformation?
Our Work in the World
How to Hold the Space for the New Vision to Emerge
The Emergence of Collective Individual Spirituality
How to Manage Your Subtle Energy
What if You Broke the Mold?

Filed Under: Positive Change, Service, Spiritual Expansion Tagged With: self-awareness, Spiritual Expansion, world peace

How to Manage Your Subtle Energy

February 9, 2017 By Cara Lumen

Earth with cloud

We are beings of energy and how we manage that energy affects our experience of the world.

If you embrace anger and hostility, your negative energy radiates from you and will affect those who come near you. It may serve as a magnet to draw some people who are also angry or it may serve as a repellent to people who don’t want to be around anger.

A being of energy, you have a choice about what kind of energy you send out!

Use a directed and focused vibration of wholeness

“Directed” means we pick a cause or a situation we’d like to change for the better. We want to raise the consciousness to a higher plane.

“Focused” means our intention to bring into wholeness. Our focus on the highest vibration, the deepest connection with the voice within.

Pick a cause and decide what to send it.

The kind of energy we project onto a situation or person can affect the probability of something emerging or not emerging.

That’s very powerful.

We can direct our own subtle energy and affect the outcome
— for better or worse. So we need to choose carefully.

The bet between the sun and the wind

There’s a story of a bet between the sun and the wind over who could make a man take off his coat. The wind blew and blustered but the man only drew his coat tighter around him.

The sun simply began to shine. It offered warmth and nurturing. And the man quickly shed his coat.

That’s how powerful our personal subtle energy can be. Are you blowing or shining?

Manage your own energy field

We can all learn to cultivate a positive energy flow around ourselves. We do that by consciously cultivating a positive outlook, releasing fears and energetically building our own subtle forms of energy filters around our energy body.

Keep your thoughts, beliefs and expectations both positive and inclusive.

Work where you are

This work as a light-bearer can be done privately on the physical plane. Whether you are concerned about a person or a situation or the planet, look creativity and positivity at the opportunities for action right where you are and get to work.

Begin with daily energy work. Create your own system of directing focused positive energy. Work face-to-face on the local level.

Our focused energy work can transform our world.

Monitor your own energy field

Before you walk out the door, monitor your energy field. Monitor it too before you pick up the phone or begin to write an email. Cultivate an energy that encourages a positive flow around you and all those persons with whom you share your day.

How to shift your subtle energy

Check your expectations of what’s possible. Do I believe we can reverse global warming? I should. Although my human mind would settle for slowing it down, my inner voice says “reverse it”. What do you expect to happen because of your vibrational work? Think bigger!

We are one energy

I used to like metaphors such as “the web of life”, as in “we’re all part of the web of life”. But that still makes me feel separate. I have to know and believe that there’s only one energy and it’s me. Just as you must believe there’s only one energy and it’s you. We must find ways to feel our oneness, and focusing group energy is a powerful step.

According to the Sufi poet Rumi, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the ocean in a drop.”

You are the whole. The whole is you.

Take care of it with positive awareness. Use your focused subtle energy for wholeness.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:
How to Hold the Space for the New Vision to Emerge
The New Wave of Powerful Purpose
The Emergence of Collective Individual Spirituality
I Am You
We Are Part of a Larger Spiritual Order
Hold the Space for Things To Change

Filed Under: Positive Change, Service, Spiritual Expansion Tagged With: positve change, Spiritual Expansion, subtle energy, world peace

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