The Mysteries of Sound & Creation

The night before last I woke up at 3 a.m. I had gone to bed very early so I decided to stay up for a while and listen to some spiritual discourse. I played a short video- maybe Rupert Spira? I don’t even remember what it was because this video came up right after and stole my mind!

If you want to gain a deeper understanding of the mysteries of sacred sound, I suggest you listen to this over and over. I have read some of the writings on sacred sound by Hazrat Inayat Khan and been deeply moved by them, but this transmission, with the beautiful sacred music in the background, is even more captivating and has the power to open the mind to an expanded awareness. It does exactly what the Sufis are masters at, entraining and elevating the consciousness through sound and breath. There is no need to understand the message intellectually- the fullness of the experience is embodied in the music, the sound of the voice and the words of the Master.

I AM... Happy New Year

I can’t believe I haven’t written a blog post since August! Well, it’s a new year and here I am again. My son Benjamin and I had a sort of brainstorming session today to see how we could inspire and and motivate each other to move forward on some things we both want to accomplish. We have started a group called I AM- Inspiration, Aspirations, and Motivation. We each committed to a 30-day trial period and we will check in with each other once a week via Zoom to see how the other is progressing. My main focus is to work on a book on sound healing I started writing years ago and his is to get a couple of papers completed that he has been working on for a very long time.

One of the other things I wanted to do was to get back to my blog. We are going to read Seth Godin’s book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work together and I am committed to writing a blog post once a day.

I’m done for today. It’s a start.

I AM grateful.

Are You Awake?

Hello my friends. Today is Day 9 of my Restorative Retreat. I am so happy and grateful that I can stay here for a while and not feel like I have to get up and go anywhere else for the time being. When it feels right and I feel ready and well rested I will take a ride up to RI and get some more of my stuff out of storage but I am not making a plan other than to pay attention and follow my guidance on that.

I have been absorbed in sound and music in various forms. I’ve spent quite a bit of time practicing the piano and playing the guitar, trying to break out and explore new possibilities rather than just sticking with what I know- which Is easy to do on the piano because I don’t know much at all other than the notes and basic scales. I do understand the basics of creating chords also so I have a little bit of very basic foundational material to work with.

… And… some time has elapsed since I wrote the above- I am now on day 13 of my stay-at-home retreat! I have completed a painting (see below!), created several very simple short riffs on the piano, painted a couple of stools for the breakfast bar in my kitchen, made homemade pizza (and had Mahesh & Mukta over to help me eat them), explored double drop D tuning on the guitar, taken a two-hour online yoga class on the day of the most recent full moon and been working on whitening the bones of a turtle skeleton and shell found down by the pond on the property where I live. I’ve also made a few short meditation videos intended basically to help my friends end their evening on a good note. I spent hours one day going through pictures from the Sound Body Wholistic Health Center- my old sound healing center in St. Pete- just to pick out a new cover photo for the Facebook page for the center. And I’ve watched a whole bunch of episodes of “Doctor, Doctor” on Amazon Prime- AKA “The Heart Guy”!

I have several plants that Mahesh and Mukta gave me waiting to be planted. Cannas and kalanchoe… and a rosemary plant that I bought at the market. My yard is very drab. Needs some new life for sure. It’s small but there’s plenty of room for some herbs and flowers to brighten things up. The truth is I’ve been nervous about digging around too much in the yard because the one day I did in the spring I was introduced to chiggers- not fun!

Last night before bed I had a teaspoon of honey with cannabis extract in it. It is supposed to help with sleep. It didn’t- in fact it had the opposite effect. I was up til somewhere around 5 a.m. At a certain point it occurred to me that perhaps I should focus on “waking up” rather than going to sleep. I am fascinated by my dream state… isn’t my “waking state” equally as important, if not more so? And what does it mean to be awake? So I picked up Francis Lucille’s book, The Perfume of Silence.

I have only just started it but I can pretty comfortably say that it is on the nature of consciousness and non-dual reality. In response to a question in the beginning of the book he uses the sound of birds and ambient outdoor sounds as a reference point. He says, “Ask yourself, ‘Where do they appear?’ If the answer is that the bird is singing 50 feet from here, see that this is not actually your experience, that it is a concept. The actual experience of the sound is happening at a zero distance from you, not 50 feet away. It is not happening there but rather here, always. Everything is always happening here and now.”

Immediately I tuned into the sound of the crickets “outside” and suddenly felt that i was floating in a sea of consciousness. Everything that “seems” to be happening to me and around me is happening within the consciousness of I AM. I picked up my journal long enough to write “There is no separation between ‘I’ and my experience of the world around me- around the body I seem to inhabit. I am in fact inhabiting everything I seem to come into contact with.” And then drifted back out into the sea of consciousness…

Meditation, Inspiration, Restoration

It’s Sunday. Supposed to be a day of rest- which it was. But it also was a day of creative ideas and the inspiration to start something new. It’s easy to mark the time when I begin anew on a Sunday. I received the inspiration in my meditation yesterday to begin a self-guided restorative retreat today. Minimum 28 days but may go to 40 days. What I’m getting is that the retreat itself will be 28 days but I am going to do a 40-day yoga practice. I have been around people almost constantly for the past 3 months and have hardly been at home at all. In the past few days I am beginning to get reacclimated to being in my own space… by myself. The first two days I was totally exhausted from all I have been doing over the past 3 months and didn’t feel like doing anything, plus there was some personal family stuff going on that was taking quite a bit of my time and attention.

I made some good soups a couple of days ago because I had been traveling and there are so many cases of breakthrough Covid. I wanted to be ready in case I got it so I bought some chicken and made a beautiful batch of bone broth yesterday as well as some delicious cauliflower vichyssoise.

And now it’s Monday… I am looking back at yesterday- my inspiration and activity. It felt like I did so much stuff on Day One of my Restorative Retreat! Here are some of the things that are to be included in my retreat and the forms they have taken thus far. A creative activity- yesterday it was painting. Plus playing guitar, piano and drumming- all of which also fall into the soundwork category which is to be included each day. Healthy food, cleanse, diet plan… am presently preparing to do a liver flush in a few days so eating lightly- although meals are always a creative endeavor for me to some degree- and drinking a quart of organic apple juice each day for a minimum of 6 days to prepare for flush. (I will probably do 9 days.) I also made two short videos- one of me playing the piano which was just for my brother who gave me his old keyboard and a two minute video of me playing the Himalayan singing bowls just before bed- a little kiss goodnight to my friends.

I spent hours looking at some old videos from the Sound Body Center last night and posted one on YouTube, which isn’t really ready for viewing til I put the follow-up ones on there- they’re basically a sort of triptych. They’ll go together in 3 parts. I did about 45 minutes of kundalini yoga and some meditation and photographed butterflies. One of my sons gave me a beautiful digital Nikon camera a few years ago and I have had major trouble getting the settings right. I gave up on it for a long time but I’m back, slowly figuring out how to get the best out of it- another project which I am determined to succeed at.

Today I created a designated workspace for myself, did some more photography, am in the midst of uploading another video to YouTube, played the piano and have been writing. I intend by the end of the day to also have done my yoga practice and worked on my painting.

I also received the inspiration of a body prayer yesterday- combining sound and movement. Once I have completed the video of it I will share it here. It is called The Embodiment of Sound.

Meanwhile, while I have been sitting here writing I have uploaded the other two videos I mentioned from the days of the Sound Body Center. As I said before there are 3 parts to it. I didn’t post the very first one but you can find it on my YouTube channel- the caveat is that the first three minutes are a lot of talk and not much drumming so you may want to skip over some of it! I find it entertaining but you might not! The first one posted here has some great drumming with Fred Johnson and Jay Klein and the second one is Fred and I jamming together. They’re fun. So nice to revisit the sonic space of love and connection that was created there!

Is It Raining With You?

It’s Tuesday morning. I’ve been awake since about 4 a.m. after a pretty intense week and a half- two of my sons in the hospital, one after the other- which has definitely thrown my sleep cycle way off. One of them has a bone disease and had some complications due to that. And the other has Crohn’s disease and had an intestinal blockage which thank goodness has passed without him having to have surgical intervention. It’s now about 6:30 a.m. and I am sitting in bed drinking very bulletproof coffee, listening to the rain come down outside my window. There is something that feels so healing about the sound of the rain- and even though it’s early and I am awake I feel like I could stay in bed all day and just bathe in the sound- soothing, cleansing and purifying. I have written a card to one of my cousins and read some lessons from A Course In Miracles.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how I am going to restructure my business, mostly working on getting the sound worked out to be able to do more events on Zoom. I hope to have this done by the end of the week- in fact am thinking about doing a crystal bowl meditation on Zoom for the solstice as part of the Circle of Sound Global Harmonization Ceremony. I am doing a test later this morning with my sister. If all goes well I will follow up with invitations to the event.

Oooh- hear comes the thunder! This is the first thunderstorm I have experienced since moving to the mountains of North Carolina. It is a different sound than when I lived in RI at basically sea level. I am living in a hollow in the mountains at an elevation of about 2000 feet. The sound seems more contained and in some way more resonant as it seems to be sort of held in the hollow where I am living rather than having an open space to spread out- as if it’s in sort of a container. Very interesting…

Magical Maestro Istvan Sky

One simple share tonight. Two days ago I was decluttering my house as part of the personal retreat I am attending by myself in my home and I let this track play over and over.

If you want to know more about this extraordinary being watch this film. It is well worth the time.

Time For Healing

Cleansing, clearing , cleaning.
Cleansing, clearing, cleaning
On the inside and on the outside.
Watching how I feed my body
Watching how I feed my mind.
Stuff to be healed surfacing
On the inside and on the outside.
Cleansing tears
Cleansing fears
Cleansing laughter
What are the words I use?
How do I talk to myself?
How do I think of others?
Now is the time.
Noticing
Even the occasional guilt around
Taking so much
Time
For me
And remembering
I am not guilty.
I have been given this
Time

The Power of Mantra, The Science of Sound

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, was not a good day in the history of America- the culmination of four years of narcissism, arrogance, intolerance and self-righteousness by a disgruntled employee of the people.

I made a commitment to myself a few days ago- that I would put something out there every day on this blog. I missed yesterday because I was beside myself as the events of the day unfolded. I actually went into escape mode for a while- took a drive so I could listen to the news and not be sitting in my house watching it all on the TV or computer. I needed a change of scenery. When I got back I went up to Mahesh and Mukta’s, my neighbor/friends in the other house on the property where I live, and had pizza and a glass of wine. I was going to stay up there and blow off Day 6 of the 7-day mantra practice I have been doing with Jai Uttal but somehow, after eating way too much pizza, I felt somewhat emotionally revived and decided to go back up to my house and chant. I knew it would be the best thing for me and that I would be really disappointed in myself if I missed it.

Chanting in the time of Covid… I swore I would never do webinars- now I am so grateful for them. Thank you Jai and beautiful Nubia for bringing yourselves to our living rooms!

And of course I was so grateful that I listened to my heart rather than my mind as I knew I would be. As always the chant was perfect for the day - a devotional prayer to Hanuman, the monkey-god whose heart is so big and so full that it overflows with ardent love and devotion for Lord Ram and his beloved Sita. The perfect chant when the heart is feeling wounded.

On another note which isn’t exactly a change of topic- it relates- I am fascinated by the way significant dates repeat themselves. Exactly 15 years ago yesterday, on January 6, 2006 I sustained a fairly serious head injury. I was hit in the temple on the right side of my head by a large speaker. I got a concussion but the miracle was that the flat side of the speaker hit me square in my temple. I am convinced if it had been at the slightest angle the damage would have been far worse. Anyway, that is another whole story but what I want to get to here is how nāda yoga, the yoga- or science- of sound, which Sadhguru talks about in the above video, saved me or at least got me on a faster track to recovery.

About a month and a half after the injury- I hadn’t yet started driving again and could still barely talk, had a fair amount of swelling and pain- my nāda yoga teacher Shyam Bhatnagar offered a 7-day sound meditation retreat in Fort Meyers, FL. We sat with Shyamji and chanted for several hours every day, along with doing a dietary cleanse. Shyamji is a nāda yoga master and uses the voice, mantra and tamboura. After about 3 days I started noticing distinct changes. My mind started getting clearer and there were differences in my energy level. When I arrived at the retreat I already could see considerable improvement compared to the acute stage but with the mantra and meditation practices I could distinctly sense that my nervous system was receiving benefits on a subtle yet very deep level. I also had a lot of emotional clearing during the process and became aware of the deep level of trauma that I had undergone as a result of the injury.

The healing process was long- a good year- but the improvement in the beginning with a week of mantra practice with someone who really understood the science of sound was profound. I had many other helpers during this time who I am deeply indebted to, but the mantra and purification practice with Shyamji certainly helped get the ball rolling.

Gratitude

I woke up extremely conscious of the passage of time yesterday and am feeling directed to make better use of it. There is no shortage of it- as well as the opportunity to spend a lot of said time in solitude. My intention this winter was to focus on immersing myself in the experience and study of sound and its effects in various forms. Of course that has been my path for a very long time but there is an opportunity right now since there is no gathering in groups and I am in a new place and not particularly inclined to promote private sessions right now until the spread of Covid begins to subside.

To that end I have joined a 7-day mantra practice with Jai Uttal as well as a 40-day kundalini yoga practice which begins on January 4. Those are the formal practices I am engaging in. Then there are my personal practices. I am definitely exploring the effects of Richway’s BioAcoustic Mat since I do not have my Soundweaver here. I haven’t been using it as often as I could but that is going to change too! I am using it with the BioMat on top which is a great combination. Yesterday I gave myself a 50-minute session while doing long distant healing for a friend at the same time. The music I used was Nawang Khechog and Carlos Nakai’s recording “Winds of Devotion” which is so beautiful and one that I have always found to be very powerful and effective on the Soundweaver.

Today I went for a beautiful walk in the woods. I found myself filled with deep gratitude… gratitude for time, for beauty, for the experience of being in a body where- because of the apparent separation- we have the gift of appreciation, for my teachers- past and present, known and unknown, for my ancestors, for my family, my parents, my siblings, my children and grandchildren, for all the masters who have walked the earth, for all that is past and all that is to come. It was an endless, expansive and totally joyful experience. From gratitude I moved into prayer. i walked and I prayed and I prayed and i walked. The prayer became the simple mantra from Dr. Emoto, “I love you, I thank you, I respect you.” As I looked at the trees, the water, the ferns, the rocks, the sky, felt the air on my skin, heard the sounds of the running water, thought about the molecules, atoms and particles that all matter is composed of… “I love you, I thank you, I respect you.” And myself, a hand on my heart “I love you”, joined by my other hand on my heart “I thank you”, and one hand then raised to my third eye “I respect you”. Over and over, tears streaming down my face.

I love you.
I thank you.
I respect you.