When You Come To A Crossroad
Living Our Deeper Song
Ashe
(“Ah-Shay”)
The Creative in me honors the Creative in you!
A crossroad is filled with the energy of unpredictability. It is an exciting time. It is a scary time. And it is a time filled with potential and possibility.
A crossroad is the time to evaluate, to examine exactly where you are and to give serious thought to where you want to go next.
During the course of my long life, I have made three sudden decisions to make large moves across the country. There was no debate. They were sudden decisions made in seconds. And they all worked out well. But not all decisions are like that. The decision to move into long-term care at Evergreen was filled with angst and uncertainty and dread.
In the case of my moves from Kansas City to New York City and from New York City to Santa Rosa California, the energy of not knowing what to expect gave me the power to create my own vision.
A crossroad is a time to pause and see where you are and give a lot of thought to where you want to be. Then you examine the many paths before you.
I have made many instantaneous choices in my life and they worked out well. The first time I went to church in the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, I knew I wanted to become a practitioner and five years later I was a member of the clergy. In New York City, the minute I discovered reiki I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Sometimes an unexpected path simply opens up for you. This move to Evergreen long-term care is absolutely turning my life around in a totally unexpected manner as I respond so positively to being around younger people who are caring and in deep service to others. They have active lives and are interesting to talk to. I never thought I would be able to be with that group again because I had been living in senior living. You just never know what wonderful adventures your decision will produce and where it will take you. But it sure is fun to go exploring.
When it’s time to make a new choice, it is a good idea to pause and see what beliefs brought you to where you are, what actions brought you to where you are and see what you might change within yourself to produce a different outcome. Then you might try a few choices on for size. If I do this it will take me over here. If I do that it will take me over there. Where do I want to go?
Allowing time for a major change to unfold is interesting too. Once I submitted an application to Evergreen I had absolutely no idea how long it would take or if I would qualify. But I began getting ready to downsize by selecting the things I wanted to take with me or could take with me because of the size of the space I would be given. So it was a major time of releasing, and letting go of how it had been and selecting how I wanted it to be.
Now that I have made the move, I’m leaving a lot of space for how it could be.
A crossroad is a place of power. It is the time for you to embrace your ability to create the life you want to live. Approach it thoughtfully.
DEEPER SONG AFFIRMATION
I treat all new opportunities with respect. I take time to explore the many options before I choose.
DEEPER SONG PROCESS
- Identify what is important to you at this moment in time
- Look thoughtfully at all the choices you can make and consider the benefits of each choice.
- Identify possible destinations in various parts of your life and do some visioning to try them on for size.
- Make your choice and send positive energy to the path before you.
- Then enjoy the ride.
===INNER WORK===
Deepen Your Inner Awareness
Send Energy Ahead
We had just learned that the time of the reiki exam we were to take had been moved up. “I sent energy ahead to the exam this afternoon,” I said to a fellow student. She replied, “Don’t worry the energy will find you.”
When we send energy outside time and space, we literally do just that – send energy outside of time and space. It will go wherever you intend for it to go at the perfect time and you need to trust that.
I have been sending energy ahead to my first hip replacement next week.
Send energy ahead to a job interview, a date, a meeting, or anything you want to ensue with poised, balanced, whole energy.
Use your intention to send energy ahead, use your intention to set up protection. Then trust the results.
Trust Your Inner Power
What do you consider your inner power and what would you call upon it for? I call upon my inner voice for insights and guidance and clarity. It speaks to me through sudden knowing or an amazing idea that solves the problem or sends me in a new direction, or a thought or unexpected circumstance that I experience. It warms my heart or gives me insights about where I need to be in service next.
My inner voice speaks to me anytime and anyplace, sometimes in a fairly loud voice. It’s as if the universe just dropped a big sign in front of me with this idea, then took the sign away and I got only a second or two to get the message. But it was enough to grasp the concept. Then I explore it in my conscious mind.
How do you listen? How do you absorb the many messages the universe continues to offer you? Practice listening and observing. Then put those ideas to work and see where they lead you. Your inner wisdom just needs to listen. The idea is already very powerful. Just do the work to give it space to come into being.
Are You Stuck In Your Past?
I have made some very bold and dramatic choices in my life and I do not regret any of them. They kept me moving along a powerful and fulfilling path. Some of my choices affected my children. But you can’t go back and change things, you can only continue on and learn the lessons the choice provided, both positive and negative.
Let it go. Learn the lessons provided by the experiences and build on them. Don’t spend time on regret.
I believe we choose our lives partially for the lessons it provides but also for the lessons and insights we give to others. You never know when your mere presence has impact.
Approach each day as a clean slate and draw upon it the best that you can. Learn the lessons, absorb the insights and give generously of yourself. The past is over, keep looking ahead.
===SELF-HEALING===
Take Responsibility for Healing Yourself
Raise Your Sights High
I am only 40 pages into Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza and I read this: “Something as simple as moving into an elevated state of joy, love, inspiration, or gratitude for five to ten minutes a day can produce significant epigenetic changes in your health and body.”
I am up-leveling my expectations for creating change in my body.
By moving to Evergreen, I have eliminated isolation, depression, and struggle to do physical things and have catapulted myself into being extremely well cared for physically and into an environment of kind, supportive, loving new friends on the staff. The social interaction, mental stimulation and friendship is making a distinct change in me physically and I hope it continues on and brings me even greater changes.
Examine how you spend your time and see what needs to be changed. Focus on the positive and draw more of those experiences to you.
I am discovering a wise-cracking, friendly, kind, curious, smart woman in myself that I have not seen for perhaps as long as seven years. I am welcoming her back with open arms.
Look closely for the subtle insidious changes that slowly damage your life and make changes to eliminate them.
Imagery
I have barely begun Joe Dispenza’s book Becoming Supernatural but I’m going to start doing the work.
I am going to begin to envision two things – that I can stand up straighter and sleep for longer periods at night. Up until this moment I have done neither. My expectations had not been for things to change for the better.
I am not going to explain the book but I have long known that when we change our thinking, we change our life.
I have expected that I sleep only 45 minutes at a time during the night except that has recently organically changed to cycles of over an hour during the night. So my expectation has changed. I want to change it again by expecting even longer periods of sleep.
I’m going to change my expectation for not being able to stand up straight. I’m not waiting for the book to find out what Dispenza suggests, I’m just going to visualize my back standing up straighter. I will visualize how that feels and see what I can create. Here I go adventuring again.
Self-Care
It’s a good idea to periodically pause and examine your choices, and make some adjustments. Obvious areas are diet, amount and quality of rest,
emotional well-being, relationships and spiritual enrichment. Examine them one at a time.
For instance, I am being well fed but I like how I’m feeling better by adding the Garden of Eden Meal in Vanilla Almond Milk to one of my meals, usually the evening meal. Since I’m eating other foods, I’m using a half scoop but I used to make a whole meal of a full scoop in Vanilla Almond Milk.
My relationships are greatly improved since I moved to Evergreen- like from 3% to 80%.
I need and want to up my physical activity so I get to get creative and busy and my hip replacements will help that. But I recently went from 20 to 25 minutes on the recumbent bike.
I am enjoying having one of my big drums back for my spiritual practice. I want to spend less time on the computer but I don’t know what I will put in its place.
Do some re-thinking and re-arranging and see how you can up level your self-care.
The Altar of Potential
“And when we are at the altar of infinite potentials, when we change our energy, we change our lives.” In reading Joe Dispenza’s book Becoming Supernatural he asks us to imagine what we want in a detailed way.
I realized that I have set up a very low bar for myself and I set about to raise it.
I choose to reverse my dry macular degeneration.
Now here’s the rub – modern science does not know how to do that. So this has to be totally metaphysical.
I walk easily and effortlessly.
When I chose this, I realized I was not imagining myself doing that. I realized I needed to raise my vision. I envision myself walking the halls with no walker. I see myself outside doing a little gardening or meditating by the koi pond. And as I sit here writing this, I sit up straighter at my desk.
Do you see how easy it is to limit ourselves?
My circle of friends increases
I like the trajectory I am on for creating friends on the staff so I will let that unfold. I have a pretty high vision set there.
Those seem to be all physical plane things.
I want to contribute to the rebalancing in the world and the establishment of women as world leaders and guides.
As you create your new vision for the coming year think wider and taller and immerse yourself in how it feels when it exists. Hold that vision before you and step into the vision and experience the change you are creating.
Use your imagination to create the life and world that you want.
What do you want? Get busy visioning and expect it to happen.
===OUTER WORK===
Explore New Potential and Possibilities
Endless Possibilities
A person who is trying to invent something new or discover some new way of doing things has to experiment. They have to keep changing directions and trying out new ideas.
They trust their intuition and the whispers and nudges and the seemingly crazy ideas that show up. They explore and experiment and look at all sort of possibilities in order to find a new way of doing things.
Do you do that in your life? Do you often look for new ways to do something you already know how to do? Are you open to new possibilities?
Always keep learning. Always keep experimenting with new ways to do something you already do. There are endless possibilities when you look for them.
How Do Others Do It?
We can learn a great deal by observing how others approach a problem similar to ours. So if you’re beginning a new project you might want to look closely at what others are doing that resonates with you and that you might adapt to your own use. I don’t think we ever have to start from scratch on every problem we face because if we look, we can find a similar parallel path from which to learn.
Learn from the experience of others. Look beyond people that you know. Look into the autobiographies of people who have gone before you with similar challenges and gather strength from their strength and their unique approach to the problem. You’re not starting from scratch as you face a new problem. Look for the parallel situations and learn from how they were solved by others.
Change The Format Of Your Day
They have some structure to the day here at Evergreen just as you do. Meals are served primarily at certain hours here and showers are given to us by the staff on certain days. Nurses check our vital signs several times a day. Our vitamins are brought to us and watched to make certain we consume them. There are many routine structures that are built in. If you have a job, you have a built-in structure. But I’m talking about the free time that is yours to structure. What do you do with the gift of time?
If your spiritual practice is in the early morning, you might experiment with an evening spiritual practice to see how it is different and if it is something to consider.
Actually both are good. The morning one centers you for your day, an evening one is reflective and full of gratitude.
If I were preparing my own meals, I might eat later in the summer so I could be outside in nature longer. If you shower in the morning, try showering at night and see what that changes for you. If you have been doing your shopping on Saturday, perhaps try stopping on the way home on a weekday to do your shopping so you have the whole Saturday free.
Even if you have a schedule that seems to work for you, mix it up sometime and experiment. Change the format of your day and see what else changes.
Your Life Is What You Make Of It
I think we have a choice about the quality of life we experience in our old age. I certainly hope so because I do not want to end up simply existing. I want to be productive to the end.
What does that mean? I want my mind to remain curious. I want to keep learning and turn to share what I learn. And I have to be responsible for making that happen. I must hold a vision that that is possible even though I am surrounded by old people who are merely and barely existing.
How do I do that? I do the work and I hold a high vision of what is possible.
In reading Joe Dispenza’s Becoming Supernatural I realized I have been expecting too little of myself. My vision for aging was too limited. Now I’m not visualizing running a marathon, but I am visualizing walking the halls with a fair amount of gusto.
Do not buy into the images of aging you may have and don’t look at the results of the choices you see around you. Create your own vision of aging that includes being a strong productive light being before you leave the planet. You can make that happen. Change your vision. Change your expectation. Change your life.
===DEEPEN YOUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE===
Self-Healing Spiritual Practice and Deepening Awareness of Our Cosmic Oneness
The Thoughtful Gesture
How often do you make a thoughtful gesture? Sometimes it is organic – we were taught to be thoughtful and polite. But I’m going to start looking for thoughtful gestures I can make.
I’m going to make certain that I thank each of these wonderful people who make my bed and bring my meals and vitamins and have the skills to take care of me. Those are people I see.
I have a handful of close friends that I will make certain that I acknowledge their important role in my life.
I could go beyond that. I always thanked the delivery people who brought my groceries.
I could write an email thank you to someone whose work I admired or benefited from.
How many thoughtful gestures will you make today?
Guidance of The Moon Cycles
Nature gives many gifts, including the waxing/waning cycles of the moon. Perhaps you would like to create a ceremony of closure at the New Moon along with resolutions for the new cycle that is beginning. Or create a ceremony of acknowledgment and gratitude at the full moon for what has manifested.
Let nature help deepen your gratitude and awareness.
===DEEPER SONG DISCOVERIES===
Insights and Resources to Explore
Reading for 2023
Do you have a reading list for the coming year? Here are some ideas:
This is going to take me on a great adventure:
Joe Dispenza, Becoming Supernatural
I am also beginning to re- read these favorites from Deng, Ming-Dao as part of my daily spiritual practice.
Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony
And I have several books recommended by a friend that I plan to explore.
I’m also on the look-out for new podcasts and audio books to try.
Where will you go intellectually adventuring this new year?
===OUR EVOLVING FUTURE===
Support and Encouragement for our Unfolding Role in the Future
The Overview
It’s not that I want a road map but I would like to give some thought to how I’d like my life to unfold. I would like to add the qualities of laughter and friendship and I have made a good start on that with the staff here at Evergreen. I love to learn but how I learn will have to change – there is no longer money for online classes but I can easily go review the ones I took. There are always free summits and I am going to explore audio books and podcasts other than my own.
My physical overarching objectives are hip replacements and warding off the dimness of dry macular degeneration.
What do you want to learn this coming year? It may be something specific or you just might want to go adventuring! And of course, we must leave room for the surprises!
If I were to pick a word for my overarching focus for the coming year, it would be “adventure’. I want to learn things that deepen my understanding and broaden my view and experience new things and make new friends. And I would like my body to self-heal.
What overview are you holding for this coming year for yourself?
Time Well Spent
I don’t know how long NASA’s InSight Mars lander was on Mars but the robot reentry sent its last message: “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” NASA said. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene.”
What a wonderful thing to be able to say at the end of your time here on earth: “My time here has been both productive and serene.”
The Next Ten Years
What will you have accomplished in the next ten years? How will your life have changed by then? What goals have you set?
I’m 90 so that poses an interesting question – who deserves to be here at 100? I am very clear that I am on a brand new path that is going to be very exciting with lots of opportunities for new places of service. That will be fun.
Many of my friends are in the vicinity of 60 and therefore deciding what to do with the next 30 years of their lives which often means starting their own personal business. That in itself is fun – to take the classes and courses you need to deepen your understanding of the topic you want to share and then making plans to actually become an entrepreneur with your own website and your own outreach format to draw people to your work. I already identified some ways to be in service in this long-term care facility but I also know that the world is changing and I understand astrologically that 2023 will be a big year of major change. My newsletter reaches all over the world so I want to help us keep making positive, impactful changes and live our lives more deeply.
The world around us will change. Technology will change. New opportunities will be created. Are you ready to go exploring? Perhaps change your life in a new direction? What beliefs do you need to change?
Do you have the same beliefs that got you where you are now and what do you need to change to get to where you want to be? Then make that happen. What are you going to accomplish in the next ten years?
===REFLECTIONS OF A DEEPER SONG PODCAST===
Spiritual Practice
How to DeepenYour Cosmic Consciousness
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===CARA’S CORNER===
Infinite Possibilities
We must never give up. We must keep looking for new ways to serve, new insights to acquire, new roles to undertake. Look around you for inspiration. Then step forward and do the work.
===SING A DEEPER SONG ===
The Infinite Portal
I stand at the beginning of the Infinite Portal ready to set sail on my own.
I stand at the beginning of the Infinite Portal ready to set sail on my own. My sails are raised to catch the Winds of Change.
I stand at the beginning of the Infinite Portal ready to set sail on my own. My sails are raised to catch the Winds of Change. I set sail as Light.
– Cara Lumen, January 31, 2022
We create our future with every thought we think, every action we take. Move forward mindfully as you sing your Deeper Song.
Namaste,
Cara
Come Sing a Deeper Song
I help adventurers who are ready to explore the new possibilities in the emerging energy of the Divine Feminine to align their dreams and choices with what is emerging as possible today so that they go beyond their own expectations.
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