Your Future Self
Deeper Song Insights and Applications
Ashe
(“Ah-Shay”)
The Creative in me honors the Creative in you!
This week take some contemplative time to write a letter to your Future Self. You can pick a specific number of years ahead or an age you will be. Write with encouragement, appreciation, perhaps describe the life you are living in that future year.
It’s part of creating your future. To imagine it.
Years ago when I was a practitioner in the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, California, at Thanksgiving we were each asked to write a letter to ourselves listing what we would be grateful for at the next Thanksgiving. The church collected them and mailed them to us the following year.
I think I might begin by writing a letter to myself to be read the following year on my birthday. It would include gratitude for what I had received and accomplished during the year, acknowledgment for unexpected insights and opportunities I had received, and the future plans I had in mind to see how well they manifested. It could be as easy as putting in on my computer and making a note on my calendar to read it the following year.
Remember, our thoughts create our reality. We get what we believe we deserve and what we think is possible. Are you thinking big enough?
We have a very unsettled year going on. What is your cornerstone? What are you establishing in our life that holds you steady? How do you see yourself next year? Be open to the unexpected and stay flexible.
I might make one document for these birthday letters and actually write a letter to myself ten years ahead. I can’t even imagine this world it will be so changed. But I can imagine me so I will write to encourage her – my future self.
Will you write a letter to your future self? What will you say?
Deeper Song Affirmation
I find ways to send energy and affirmations to my future self.
Deeper Song Process
- Write a letter to your future self – a year ahead, ten ears ahead – your choice.
- Figure how you want to remind yourself to read the letter you send to your future self. It could be on your birthday, at the year’s end, or any date that has meaning for you.
- My suggestion is to start a folder to hold all your letters. My plan is to do this on my birthday, read what I wrote to myself a year ago, write what has unfolded and write to my future self, all in one document.
- Does writing to your future self resonate with you? How will you do it?
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Inner Work
JUST LISTEN
It was not on any list I had made of things to do but suddenly it is important to post these newsletters so new Deeper Song Community members can browse them if they are called to do so. You will continue to get them in your email, but new people can explore what has gone on before.
I know why it happened, a lovely email exchange with a new member, Noralee from Toronto. So with the help of Thuy Phan a few things came off and the menu on my web site was rearranged and I updated the Podcast Page.
So now I share some of this newsletter with whoever comes browsing to see if they wan to join the Deeper Song Community.
I did not plan this. I did not even spend any time considering it. The need to take this action was not only immediate but how it would look was also very clear.
I love my inner voice. The more I listen the more I hear.
Are you listening?
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Outer Work
TALK TO YOUR BODY
It sneaks up on you if you don’t keep aware. Your body loses strength if you don’t use it and it is harder to regain that to keep.
I can no longer get myself off the floor. I have fallen three times in the last 12 years. Each time it was an unexpected fall. I guess they all are. The first time I suddenly found myself face down on the floor. I crawled, which I wasn’t sure I still could do, over to a chair, and got up. A few years later I fell in the shower, again I have no idea how, but there I was sitting on the floor of the bathroom on a very hard floor. I scooted over to the carpet and found leverage on a chair to get myself up. The third time I slipped on the end of a bungee cord on my kitchen floor I had out to help secure the trash I was going to take out. I scooted to a chair but what kept me from even trying was that I knew my legs would hurt a lot since I had not been moving those muscles much. My phone was, of course, at the other end of my apartment. I kept scooting and finally got to it and called 911. When they arrived I assured them I was fine, I just couldn’t get off the floor. Two of them each took an arm, counted one, two, three and I was upright.
Here’s the message. Don’t lose your ability to do basic things – like get up off the floor.
I’m working to regain that strength which is a lot harder than keeping it. I have begun to do leg lifts again. There are stairs to the second floor I used to take up and down each day when I went to get the mail. I used to walk to the other side of the building and bak. I used to walk up a few blocks down the street. “Used to” is often a sad phrase.
What are you going to do to keep your body flexible and strong? Perhaps you turn 15 minutes into gratitude to our body by moving it and stretching it and strengthening it. There are gentle strength-building activities like yoga and Qi Gong. I used to do yoga leg lifts on my bed since floors were no longer an option. I sort of left that one behind too. I should get that back. Leg lifts on your back, hip lifts on our back, leg sifts from each side. Lie on your stomach and push up with your arms to flex your back. You also can do that back flex while standing facing a wall.
And don’t forget dancing. Let the rhythm suggest the moves and have a good time.
As I began my “recovery” program I could only do 8 leg lifts while holding on to the footboard of my bed and the cat tree near it. Now I do a whopping 12! Not a huge gain but a gain with more to build up to. I have a Queen Ann chair with a high back that is great to hold on to stretch. The fastest strength-building exercise I found was the chair sit-ups, a straight chair with your arms crossed and get up and sit don’t 10 times to start. It got my core stronger very fast. I now do 12 and really focused on standing up straight when I stand.
How thoughtfully you do the movements is important. Can you get a little bit more strength out fo that position? Can you do two more reputations, take 8 more steps? Your body will give you more when you ask it for more. Keep asking.
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BRING YOUR OWN VISION
In the coverage of John Lewis’s funeral, watching his funeral procession move over the Edmond Petis Bridge, I found myself sobbing – at what so many have gone through, how much still needs to be done. I feel great sadness at the resistance to do what is right, to be more inclusive.
One of the commentators on the CNN panel said John Lewis said we were to “bring your own vision but stand on the shoulders of others.”
I stopped to see what my own vision was. If I even had one. How deeply I believed in it. What I was doing about it.
I used to say I was going for 120 because that seemed far enough away. I’m in an odd position because of being 87. My future does not hold earning a living in a rapidly changing world, or raising a family or planning my future. What is your vision?
Stop and think a minute before you read on. See if you can identify your vision for the future. See if it needs adjusting. Expand what you believe is possible.
I like to think I am healing others with what I write. I want to keep doing that. I want to keep learning and discovering.
I am identifying with those of us who are working at a higher vibration, who need to continue to raise our light energy, to hold high watch for the world. My vision is more esoteric than material. Give yourself room to make your vision whatever it needs and wants to be. Then work to fulfill it.
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THE NEXT 30 YEARS
In 2014 I wrote to Chris Brogan that at 81 I wasn’t sure I had any impact. He wrote back and asked me what I wanted to do in the next 30 years. (How Chris Brogan Changed My Life)
That was six years ago. It’s time to ask myself that again.
That certainly is a loaded question with the world in such a state of major change. But in 30 years (I know, 117 is an interesting number) I want there to be a major change in the world in which those of us who are working to raise the vibration to be more inclusive and to raise the consciousness of the world have done a really good job. It is a challenge to visualize that world when there is so much change that needs to happen.
There is a great “next” coming and I want to continue to explore the Unseen World and share what I find. I want to continue to touch lives and offer insights that help others create change in themselves and our world.
I want my body to support all that activity (especially my eyes). Support that activity, support that vision. Support the actions I take. My body is a launching pad that I need to take good care of.
I have only journeyed a few times to my future self, and only ten years ahead. Perhaps I will journey to see what the planet will be like and how my role has evolved That would be very interesting.
What do you want to do in the next 30 years?!
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HOLD A HEALING SPACE FOR YOURSELF
That was the name of a free webinar this week that I did not take but as I often do, I resonated with the phrase and wanted to explore what that meant to me.
A healing space to me is giving myself permission to falter and pick myself up again and move forward.
A healing space for me is a day when I listen to my own inner urges and follow them
A healing space for me is when I take a shamanic journey, or write, or figure something out. It will also be the space I give myself to play my flutes in conversation with nature and move my body in rhythm to music.
What I’m not sure I do is consider those things as Healing Spaces. But they are and perhaps seeing them as such will take me deeper into the experience.
I am going to begin to look at an activity as a Healing Space and open myself up to – well, heal.
How do you create healing space for yourself? What does it look like? How often do you do it? Would you like to give yourself more healing space? Do that.
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CARA’S CORNER
I got my third flute this week. It is a pocket flute small enough to be carried on hikes. Now I’m not going to hike anywhere, but it is in the Key of G and I wanted that lower key. My Earthtone A 432HZ is in A and her name is Serenity. My Nova Double Flute in G is also called aa drone flute and her name is Tranquility. My new Pocket Flute is in G just came this week and she told me her name is Healer. She is only 12 inches long and her song is much higher than the others. She makes great bird calls. We will go adventuring tougher.
You’re talking to a woman who has 8 drums but I’m pretty sure I can stop at 3 flutes. I am taking this awesome flute class with Christine Stevens on the shift Network and she is teaching us to listen to and then play the sounds of nature. We can play the skyline of a month range. We can play the ebb and flow of the oceans, and we can echo the bird calls. Several times a day I sit and look out at nature and play the rhythm of the swinging branches of the weeping birch. If I go outside I can play to the birds and clouds. My flutes sit close to my desk which is by a window so I can pause anytime and play.
So I have added vibration to my spiritual practice, I have added nature, and intentional pauses to contemplate.
What will you add to your spiritual practice?
A DEEPER SONG
“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”― Kahlil Gibran
Keep singing a deeper song.
Namaste,
Cara
Come Sing a Deeper Song
I help Transformational Leaders
deepen our relationship with the Unseen World
and expand our role in the New Consciousness
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