A Life of Miracles

A few years ago, when the movie "The Secret" came out, a group of us got together at my sound healing center in Florida and watched it together and then stayed for a few hours to make vision boards. I created a vision board that I have always felt represented the essence of who I am on all levels- from the physical to the spiritual. In fact I discovered after I had completed it that it was almost like a road map- at the left hand bottom corner was "Walking the Earth Path". Moving diagonally up and toward the right, in the center of the collage was "Journeys to the Self" and continuing toward the upper right was the section entitled "Journey to the Heart of God". I also found a poem in one section as I looked at the clippings of words that I had included. This was not planned. It goes like this:

     I am the dreamer,
     Arise and shine
     Fully human, fully divine
     O thou invisible spirit!
     Awaken my world
     A life of miracles
     Beyond bliss...

That is my life. That is who I am.

Recently I found a frame for it and today I have finally hung it on the wall. Someone said to me not long ago that I could revisit who I was at the time I made it, but I truly feel that I went into my core when I made it- into my heart and my soul and that it represents the Truth of Who I AM. The reason I decided to hang it where I can see it every day is because I am now engaged in looking for the perfect place to live- a place that I can call my home and not feel like it is a temporary fix until I find THE place. 

It is time for me to have a place where I can live and do the work that I love unencumbered by lack of space and/or any other constraints that could limit my self-expression. If I have that then the only self-limiting constraint I have is me and my own mind!




Grounded in a Sound Reality

I have been practicing sound healing for about 20 years now and studying the effects of sound for considerably longer than that. Today I have been looking over past posts, writings and events I have done over the past ten years. I am as obsessed with sound as I ever was. One thing I notice is that the more I do this work, the longer I stay with it, the more grounded I get. The general perception is that it is "New Age", "woo woo" or just plain "out there" when in fact it is well-grounded in science and physics and deeply affects our physiology and bio-energy. I have people come to me sometimes who are relatively new to the field and very excited and say things like, "When we start playing they won't know what hit them!"

 Okay... I WANT YOU TO KNOW WHAT HIT YOU! That is why I practice, I write and I teach. I want you to know that this is real and much of it is replicable. It is accessible. You do not have to be a wizard, a magician or even a musician. You simply have to be sensitive to how specific tones and frequencies affect you. You learn this by listening- deeply- and observing your own response to what you are hearing; not only learning what sounds in particular make you feel "good" but also those sounds that perhaps make you squirm a little bit or bring up some level of emotional discomfort. You can learn just as much from these as the ones that make you smile, bring warmth to your heart, stimulate your left brain, bring tears to your eyes or make you feel solid and grounded.

We are frequency. All thought is frequency. Our emotions are frequencies and we can use sound to change our frequencies- to give us more energy or to slow down our nervous system. One of the most straightforward ways to do this is by using beat frequencies which affect our brainwaves. Tibetan bowls and certain combinations of tuning forks set up beat frequencies (heard as a pulse) which correlate to specific brainwaves- beta, alpha, theta and delta. Generally the Tibetan bowls will correspond to alpha (8-12 cycles per second), theta (4-8 cps) and delta (0.5-4 cps) which are optimal for learning, deep relaxation, meditation and healing. Brain Tuners, a set of 5 tuning forks, also correspond to brain waves and include a "Beta Tuner" which in combination with the fundamental tone corresponds to the Beta brainwave (13-30 cps) for heightened awareness, maximum brain power, focus and concentration.

Here is a link to an informative article on Brainwave Frequencies and some other ways to access the different brain states: http://synthesislearning.com/article/brwav.htm

Tomorrow night I will be joining my friend Peter Blum for a sound healing event at Santosha Yoga in Cranston, RI which I am really looking forward to. He has a large collection of bowls, gongs and other instruments, pictured below. I will be bringing some crystal bowls, metal bowls and flutes of my own and it should be quite wonderful. We have never worked/played together before but we definitely speak the same language and I think we will be quite in synch with each other.

Yes, we are in synch- he just called me, right after I wrote that paragraph, and said essentially the same thing on the phone as I just said here!

Link to event: http://yogaatsantosha.com/santosha_events/ceremonial-sounds-for-healing/

Five Minutes of Mindfulness (Step to the right...)

I am almost finished reading Jill Bolte Taylor's amazing book My Stroke of Insight. (Click on the title to watch her Ted Talk video.) I first saw it about 5 years ago, made a copy of it and have watched it several times. It is the story of her personal experience and simultaneous observation of herself, a Harvard-trained brain scientist, having a severe stroke as a result of a massive hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain. She observed the left brain function of her brain shutting down over a period of four hours while she drifted in and out of a state of deep peace, euphoria and oneness- which she now believes resides in the right brain and is accessible to all of us if we choose to make a conscious effort to access it.  Over an 8-year period of recovery she consciously chose what parts of her left brain activity she wanted to resurrect and those aspects of its abilities and tendencies that she wished to leave behind (nit-picking, replaying negative tape loops, holding on to anger, etc.). It is a powerful and illuminating story.

In 2006 I had a head injury, a severe blow to my right temple. I am grateful to be reminded of what I learned during that time. The primary lesson for me was that I had a choice about how I thought and what I thought about. I did not have the mental energy to step out of the present for several weeks if not longer, and it was an incredible gift. My head hurt so badly in the beginning and it literally was too exhausting for my brain to think so my mind became very quiet- the deepest quiet and strongest experience of presence that I can remember having in this lifetime.  The defining moment that stayed with me was a little over two weeks after the initial injury. I was receiving an Ayurvedic treatment called shirodhara. I lay on a massage table with warm herbal-infused oil streaming onto my forehead and I had a thought. Up to that point my mind had been silent for some time- not unaware, in fact very present, but very quiet. So in this moment, as I observed myself having a thought, I saw in my mind's eye a water strider on the surface of a pool of water. The water strider represented my thought and I knew in that moment that I could follow it as it skittered across the surface of the water (the pool of my mind) or I could dive beneath the surface to where it was completely quiet and peaceful.


That awareness stayed with me for a long time and in fact became a practice as my left brain began to reengage more and more. I could either follow a thought and engage in it to whatever level was comfortable or, if it was uncomfortable on any level, I had the option to simply dive beneath the surface and let it go. As time has gone by, although I always remember this, I would say that I have become to some extent lazy in engaging the ability to make a conscious choice on how I expend my mental energy and I am so grateful to be reminded of the possibility- adn as Jill Bolte Taylor puts it, the I can "step to the right and bring my thoughts back to the present moment." It is a conscious choice.

It makes me think of how many times I have heard myself and others say, "I can't stop thinking about..." blah, blah, blah- whatever it is. Yes, in fact I can. It is a conscious choice and it requires a certain amount of exercise. 

Which takes me to the next point. Yesterday I heard a great interview on NPR with Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head... Basically he is a proponent of a simple meditation technique: 5 minutes... sitting... bringing the attention to the breath... and every time you notice the mind wandering, bringing it back to the breath... again and again and again. And, as he puts it, every time you do this "it's a bicep curl for the brain"- which I love! Between listening to his talk and reading My Stroke of Insight I have decided to turn to a practice of 5 minutes of mindfulness at least twice a day and preferably more. We'll see how that goes. I already know from past experience (years when I did a lot of meditation) that meditation on the breath is one of the most powerful meditation techniques there is because the breath is always available to us and every time we notice the breath in that moment we are present.

In Jill Bolte Tayor's book she talks about how she changes her mind if her left brain activity is not being cooperative (that voice that is like a petulant child who sometimes just refuses to be quiet!)...
1) remembering something that she finds fascinating that she would like to ponder more deeply
2) thinking about something that brings her great joy
3) thinking about something she would like to do

I would add to this list "listening to music." Music immediately engages the right brain and pulls us back (or forward!) into the present. It can drop us into a state of peace, joy, motivation with no effort on our part- all we need is to remember that we have a choice

The bottom line is- we have the power to change our minds, to choose what we engage in. We simply need the willingness and the discipline.

True learning is constant, and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because, by changing his mind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him for change.
                                
~A Course in Miracles, Text: Chapter 7, Section 5 (Paragraph 7)~








Norah Jones - Rosie's Lullaby





Yes, this is definitely my lullaby.



My good friend Will told me a few weeks ago that I had to listen to this song. I found this video of it that same day and soon began sobbing- heartfelt, gut-wrenching tears. The video itself is exquisite.

For me, the song touches such a deep place that I have no words for it.  I listened to it over and over that first day, singing with it and weeping. I don't know if it brought up some grief over my mother's death that I was unaware was sitting quietly in a space in my heart waiting to be released- or if it was something much older, deeper, the longing for Home. I only know that this song is one of a very few that I feel has really tapped into the deepest part of my Self.

I immediately ordered the CD and the studio version is so rich, full and poignant. I typically listen to it at least once a day and most of the time it still makes me weep. I figure they are tears of a grief and a longing that need to be released so I have been letting them go. The funny thing is, I don't feel sad- more just a pulling on my heart.



I am posting this one- a live version- rather than the studio version because the imagery is so beautiful. Whoever put together the visuals did a beautiful job.

Awakening to Music

In my aerie this morning, woke up and lay in bed... and for some reason I did something I never do these days. I plugged in my cool little iSound speaker and lay in bed listening to music. Random selections from my iPod... From Jai Uttal to Billy Bragg to Van Morrison to Ray LaMontagne to Robbie Robertson to Shyam Bhatnagar to Andrew Bird to Silvia Nakkach to Tinariwen to John McDowell to Fleet Foxes, on and on and on. That was about 7 hours ago. I got up after about a half hour of listening to one track flow into another. I thought I might have to skip tracks occasionally because I knew it would constantly be changing genres- from meditative to rock n' roll to shamanic to folk- and I thought it might be too jarring or weird at times, but every change has been a totally pleasant surprise. The biggest thing that hit me very quickly was that this music was waking up parts of my Self that have been sleeping- on all levels.

Coming from a sound healer that may sound funny- but I spend so much of my time immersed in sound and music that I really don't listen to it recreationally much at all anymore. I give people individual sessions with my voice and tuning forks, I am surrounded by singing bowls, I perform healing sound journeys and lead kirtan, I teach sound healing workshops, I practice singing and chanting on my harmonium and guitar, I spend hours researching and listening to all kinds of healing sound and music from all sorts of arenas.

I enjoy the silence in between all these various sound immersions. They are all deep and meditative for me in their own different ways. But today music woke me up and reminded me of another whole side of the experience which I can't necessarily put into words. My response to it? I have gotten a tremendous amount done, moving easily from one task to another- organizing my apartment, going through old photos and letters of my mothers, sat and cried understanding what a life of love she lived and what a lover of life she was, got still as a stone listening to Shyam Bhatnagar chanting, sang, danced- and some beautiful freesia that I thought I was going to have to heave suddenly started blooming again and filling the air with a heavenly fragrance which I attribute totally to the music!

The only thing I forgot to do was get dressed- I'm still in my pajamas! Too busy, having too much fun- and flannel is just so warm and cozy.

(Amazing... I just realized that I started with songs that began with the letter "T" at about 7:30 am. It is now almost 3:00 pm and I am just on the "W"s. I guess I have a fair amount of music on there!)

Here are some of the people I have listened to today, just in case you're interested in a more thorough overview!
Jai Uttal
John McDowell
Emily Lou Harris
Shri Shyam Bhatnagar
Andrew Bird
AA Bondy
Robbie Roberston
Rosie Warburton (!)
David Chandler
Van Morrison
Tinariwen
Bon Hiver
Fleet Foxes
Ray LaMontagne
Marjorie de Muenck
Venerable Choesang
Tito La Rosa
Silvia Nakkach
Greg Brown
Devendra Banhart
Devil Makes Three
Trampled By Turtles
Billy Bragg & Wilco
Jeb Loy Nichols

Back At It!

Happily, I have begun working on a book that I put on a shelf back in 2005 when I opened my sound healing center in Florida. Literally- I put it on the shelf of the desk where I worked every day when I was not actually doing sessions and hosting events. I thought I would have time to write so I kept it close by where I could see it every day; but in fact running a center was much more than a full-time job- especially a center for a modality that was so far out of the mainstream. I advertised it as a sound healing center because otherwise it was just one more wellness center and that was not my mission. Lots of people could run a holistic/alternative healing center. My passion was, and is, sound and music. Bringing that to the public was work, work, work- and love, love, love- no time for anything else as it turned out.

Now that I have closed the center (for the time being) and have relocated and am in a beautiful third floor apartment- my nest, my aerie- I have the time and space to write. I had no shortage of material when I began, but now, after running a sound healing center for 7 years, I have even more to write about- not to mention the growing science behind an age-old technology. Science is slowly beginning to catch up to the wisdom of the ancients- at least in some fields- which is very exciting!

In light of recent research, here is a really interesting article by Dr. John Beaulieu discussing the use of tuning forks to stimulate nitric oxide production on a cellular level.

And here is a picture of the tuning fork man himself. From the mirror image pose it would seem that he is merging with his subject matter!
Dr. John Bealieu, Bahamas- 2014
(Photo taken by Rosie Warburton)




The Revelation of a Quiet Waterfall

As much as I wish to write every day about sound there are so many things that come along that seem to grab at my attention- which is feeble to begin with! And then there are so many topics in the arena that I want to write about that I flounder and often derail myself. I have resolved however that each day I do something to spread the word, how powerful the Word is- the sound, the primordial vibration, shabda- how powerful it is. Nada brahma- the world is borne of sound and is sound.

Today I write. Maybe a paragraph, maybe a chapter. We'll see where the current takes me.

When I was in the Bahamas at the Yoga of Sound & Voice workshop with Silvia Nakkach and John Beaulieu, Silvia asked us each to write about our journey and how we came to be there. A memory surfaced in the asking. I have thought about this, talked about it and written about it innumerable times; certainly the question comes up in almost every group or class I facilitate- but in that moment a very early memory came to me and it carried with it the gentle impact of a sound that soothed me as an infant.

My story, how I got involved in sound healing, stretches further back as the years go by and I begin to understand the subtleties of powerful moments that I once took for granted. For a long time the story began when I attended my first nada yoga workshop with Shyam Bhatnagar about 25 years ago.  Then, as I began to study and explore sacred sound, I was taken back to my father talking about the power of sound as a means to control the masses both in ancient and modern civilizations and as a tool for healing and enlightenment. Examples could be given but I will save those for another day! I think I was about 11 years old.

With a growing understanding of music and sound therapy I went further back to receiving my first transistor radio. I was 7 years old. That was the ultimate music therapy for me at the time. I loved music and wanted to listen to it day in and day out and this way I could. I was 5th in the line of 6 children- in classic codependent family dynamics I was the "lost child", the "quiet one." I was introverted, shy, fearful and hypersensitive. What better way than to lose myself in music? If I was unhappy or scolded I would retire to my room and listen to my radio. At night I hid it under my pillow and played it so softly that no could hear it but me. For years I went to sleep with music on in the background.

There are some gaps but that was in essence my story- those were the big events; but when Silvia asked the question two weeks ago, unbidden, another memory came forward. I was an infant, lying on my stomach in my crib, rubbing my hand back and forth on the sheet. In the past the memory of this was all about the sensation- the tingling in my hand that spread through my tiny body, but now what I remembered was the transfer of sound that I could both hear and feel, the sound of a gentle whooshing like a quiet waterfall that both soothed and fascinated my infant mind. This was the sound, the feeling and the action that lulled me to sleep as a very tiny child and, to my conscious awareness, my first experience of sound medicine.

Wow- and in writing this and reading back on it a revelation comes to me. This was the sound inside my mother's womb! When there was no arguing or fighting going on, this was the sound that I heard- the ancient rhythm of blood and water, a gentle whooshing; and I was safe there, soothed by the rhythms and the tones of the quiet waterfall within my mother's womb.


For a fascinating video on the development of hearing and the effect of sound in utero click on this link!


Music to Disappear Into...

Just a quick update.

I am sitting in my "tent hut" at Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island, Bahamas. The reality of being here has been very different than my expectations- which involved "retreat". The schedule is extremely busy and full and there are MANY people here who are for the most part overworked, overtired and moving fast. Up until this morning not much of a sense of serenity but today I blew off the ashram schedule and slept until 8:30 which was perhaps the closest experience to the divine I've had since I've been here!

Okay, that's a little cheeky I know, and not entirely true because I had a total out of body experience yesterday during one of our practice sessions with Silvia Nakkach.  We were chanting seed sounds and I went completely into a different reality. I truly had no sense of body or being "here". Occasionally my awareness would touch in enough to know that I had not heard what she was singing although somatically my body must have picked it up because I would find myself repeating the sounds. And that is not entirely true either because I got to the point where I was in total silence and no longer singing. I entered a still point. After we were done I had no memory at all of what we had been doing.

From the seed sounds we flowed into a mantra practice that was more along the lines of a bhakti practice and I "came back" with that. We did a call and response practice singing "Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha" with different people leading it and when we were done the room was bright and shimmering. I felt clear, energized and grounded.

Oh, the reason I am here by the way is that I am attending a week long workshop with John Beaulieu and Silvia Nakkach followed up by a two-day practicum with Silvia- very exciting! And my daughter Angela decided to take the workshop too which makes it doubly wonderful!

Speed of Sound

Yes, I know. I haven't written in months even though I think of it every day. Still moving through many transitions- from Florida to Rhode Island, caring for Mum as she moved through the end stages of her life, shifting out of a long-term relationship, moving into a new apartment after Mum died- and I have been in a bit of a funk moving too fast for so long and losing the sense of moving from my center. Feel more like I am being thrust out on the edge of some kind of centrifugal force.

Time to stop.

So today I am wandering around my apartment trying to figure out what to do first and finally remember... MUSIC.

Yes, MUSIC...

So I put on AA Bondy because it is the first thing that comes up on my iTunes- and rapture, sweet rapture! As quickly as the speed of sound hits my consciousness I am dancing in my kitchen. And I feel like myself again instead of some odd piece of driftwood floating on an unfamiliar ocean.

That's the beauty of MUSIC.  Thank you. Sometimes the answer is so close, so familiar, so simple, that we forget altogether. Sort of like looking for your glasses when they're on the top of your head- or better yet, you already have them on!

New Life

Margarett McKean Vernon
November 2, 1921~September 8, 2013

My last post was dated September 5. When I wrote it I was in Massachusetts at my mother's house where I have spent the better part of the last year.  I didn't write much during that time because, at the age of 91, my mother's health began to decline and she was moving toward making a transition. I wasn't living there but was there almost full-time, living an hour and a half away. She passed away on September 8- just over two months ago.  During the last two months I have spent a lot of time at there house, going through "stuff"- the stuff of a lifetime- as well as organizing her memorial service and celebration of her life which were held on November 2, which would have been her 92nd birthday.

The winter before last I lived with her for almost 3 months and after that decided I needed to be nearby on a permanent basis as I knew we didn't have much time left together.  So the truth is that I have spent the better part of the last two years with her, although in 2012 I did have more time to myself.  This year her dimming eyesight really failed her and her arthritis had gotten to the point where she was more and more physically uncomfortable.  I felt the need to be with her more and more. Although I have 5 siblings my life also was in transition having just moved up from Florida so I made myself available as much as possible.

We had had a challenging relationship for most of my life and when the healing came in the late '90s we really fell in love with each other and it became a very warm cozy intimate relationship- not without its challenges but they were minor and ultimately quite insignificant compared to what we shared.  I always felt that the miracle of the healing of our relationship far outweighed the length of time that it took and that, in a way, the fact that we had gone through such a long period of separation made our relationship that much more special.

After her service last week I moved into a beautiful spacious apartment in an old Victorian house with gorgeous high ceilings and for the first time in two months have had a chance to begin to reflect- to have moments of missing my mother, letting myself cry and feel the loss of her physical presence and then to get quiet and feel her true presence, to bask in the warmth of it and feel the continuing deepening of our relationship. What an extraordinary thing!

I could just end this post there but I can't, in good conscience, leave this page without putting something about wholistic sound! So I will tell you about how I have the most wonderful spiral staircase that goes up to a loft- an eight-sided room in which I can play music, meditate, or throw down a futon for a guest! Last night was the first time I played music up there. I brought my harmonium up and sat and had my own quiet sargam practice and meditation time.  What a beautiful sacred space.

I have always wanted a spiral staircase, I have always wanted a loft and I have always wanted to live in this house having walked by it hundreds of times in years gone by! Wow, I got everything all under one roof. I am filled with gratitude and am so looking forward to the emergence of whatever is the next thing I am to give birth to in this beautiful new space.

Sound, Biology and Synergy

This is a really interesting video- presented very well.  He has a lot to say and he says it without going into a bunch of conspiracy theories which I really appreciate.  I have been working with these frequencies for many years. They are, as he says, the frequencies of the Tibetan singing bowls as well as the frequencies of the Solar Harmonic Spectrum tuning forks that I use in my tuning fork sessions and are based on the Pythagorean scale. I choose to work with these frequencies because they are aligned with the mathematical matrix of the biology and physiology of the human body, nature and the cosmos. Conspiracy theories are irrelevant here.  Whoever came up with the tempered scale, whatever their reasons, I attribute it more to ignorance and it's really not that important. What's important is what works and how we can assist bringing the body-mind-spirit back into balance and harmony.

One of the things that is so beautiful about using sound to heal is that it works instantly because it is transmitted directly to the brain/central nervous system.  It is not like an herb or a pill where you have to wait anywhere from several hours to several weeks for it to get into the blood stream or the digestive system or whatever to begin doing its work. I have seen people have profound and permanent healing, both physical and emotional, from a 5-minute sound healing demo. Yes, the body can also shift right back into its old patterns of dis-ease just as we sometimes slip right back into our old stories after what seemed like an unforgettable awakening at a powerful workshop. So we continue to give gentle reminders to the patient, or ourselves, with the sound tools available to us so that the body becomes entrained to the new pattern of harmony. Over time the reawakening of harmony will become the normal frequency and sometimes even thinking of, remembering, a song or a frequency can be all that is needed to help make the shift when the physical, mental or emotional body starts to feel a little off.

We can gently nudge the body with these frequencies- we don't need to bombard it- which is another facet of the beauty of its effect. Using music to heal is wonderful and can be especially powerful and effective when working with the emotional body, but using these pure frequencies, pure tones, without a rhythmic or melodic structure can be even more powerful, subtle and deep because of the synergistic coherence to the biological matrix of the body.


 

Pyramids as Resonant Sound Chambers

I haven't written in over two months. I have spent the majority of my time very close to my mother who is in the last days of her life. The rest of my life has been pretty much on hold.  However my brother sent me a fascinating article about the theory that the pyramids were actually built as giant sound chambers. I have been aware of this for a long time- also the theory that sound was actually used to move the stones that were used in the building of the pyramids. That being said, in the interest of furthering the knowledge of the amazing potential of sound and the awareness of the possibilities of its use- past, present and future- I am posting this article.


Richard Hoagland is a fascinating guy.  I had his film on the Face on Mars and watched it several times almost 20 years ago but my boys were all teenagers at the the time and recorded over the video! Eventually I will have time to sit down again and write more of my own words but in the meantime there is lots of interesting information that I can share with a simple link or insert! Enjoy...



source: The Hieronimus & Co.
Newsletter #15-16

Filmmaker Boris Said and Researcher Richard Hoagland Agree and Disagree
Both Richard Hoagland and Boris Said are vocal about their suspicions that others in their field of interest -- Egypt -- are hiding what they know or have discovered, and for a variety of reasons. Boris does not conclude the cover-up is a conspiracy, but believes instead the Egyptians are most interested in the new discoveries being made by Egyptians and any delay would be caused by pride.
Richard, on the other hand, is convinced that certain officials in charge of granting permits for excavation and study and releasing information on discoveries are deliberately hiding or blocking some of the most extraordinary possibilities. They joined Dr. Bob Hieronimus together on March 8, 1998 to discuss both the areas upon which they agreed and where they disagreed.

Richard Hoagland is a former science consultant to Walter Cronkite, CBS News, CNN and NASA, and an advocate of the artificial creation theory for the anomalous Face and "pyramids" Mars. In August of 1993 he received the Angstrom Foundation Medal for Excellence in Science. His Mars anomalies research led him to the study of the ancient mysteries in Egypt when he noticed the striking similarities between the Face on Mars and The Sphinx. He says there is "a real set of connections that we now can prove connects this extraordinary complex on Mars at Cydonia with an equally extraordinary complex on Earth at Giza."

Boris Said has a very unusual biography beginning with an education at Princeton University and a fluent knowledge of several languages including Russian, French, Italian, Spanish and English. From 1953-1980 Boris was a sportsman and attained several automobile racing speed records. He was a member of the U.S. Olympic Bobsled Team in 1968 and 1972, and in 1980 Said began the transition to film work as he both drove the four-man bobsled at the Lake Placid Olympics and worked on TV interviews for ABC.
Since 1983 his credits have included writing, producing and directing documentaries on bobsledding, dolphins, a Zulu witch doctor, and other varied topics. The 1994 NBC TV feature documentary that he produced with John Anthony West, "The Mysteries of the Sphinx" hosted by Charlton Heston, was awarded an Emmy.

Boris first learned about the mysteries surrounding the monuments in Egypt and the questions about their origins from John Anthony West, when in 1990 West asked him to help make this documentary. West was working with Boston University geologist Dr. Robert Schoch whose ground breaking work indicates that the age of the Sphinx is thousands of years older than the Egyptian civilization itself.
"I came to it with no opinions whatsoever," says Boris, regarding the controversial debates on the new findings.

"I mean, I didn't know. I had just about figured that Egypt was spelled with a "y" and Sphinx was spelled with an "i", and I had those backwards for a while.... I listened to Robert Schoch the first trip explain why the Sphinx was older than 4-5000 years, and it just made perfect sense to me, I mean, nothing could have been more obvious. The marks were there, it was in the stone, and so I got interested right from the start in... an alternative viewpoint to the age, and perhaps the meaning, of those monuments."
In his bio, Boris states his life goal is to prove the existence of ancient, highly advanced civilizations on our planet, perhaps our true ancestors. It's a new life goal for him, he says.
"My life's goal used to be to go faster than anybody else, but now I'm doing something a little headier, and it came from my initial exposure to Egypt, and I've got to thank John Anthony West for that."
 
WHO BUILT THE PYRAMIDS?

To this eternal question, Boris says,
"they were Egyptians, they lived in Egypt. I mean... we've called them variously "Atlantians" and, I suppose, "Little Green Man from Mars", but that was Egypt, and so therefore, to me, they're Egyptians."
He says there is no way the pyramids were intended to be tombs for Pharaohs.
"They've never found bodies in them. There's no single mark that identifies the pyramids as the tomb of any particular Pharaoh and, to the extent that in some of the pyramids bodies were later found, I think these structures were probably used as tombs by people who came later. I think that whoever created these structures used something that we don't know [about]."
Robert Bauval revealed how, at the dawning of the Age of Leo, the air shafts in the Great Pyramid point directly to the stars of Orion. Boris continued to point out how the Sphinx looks like a lion, "its got to give you some indication that the people back then knew something we don't know."

Richard adds that we are the descendants of these architects of the Egyptian monuments, whoever they were. He notes that when he first began his research into the Face on Mars in 1983, he remembers the almost unanimous reaction of archeologists when they were shown unidentified pictures of the Martian anomalies.
"The answers ranged from Hanuman, the Indian monkey god, to an aerial view of some pyramid complex in Egypt.. Initially looking at these things, I was thinking in terms of aliens, in terms of other, in terms of visitors to the solar system who had erected a stunning artificial complex on Mars.... Over the ensuing 15 years... my thinking has come perhaps 180� and in good measure because of... John West, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval."
Richard began wondering about the possibilities that the anomalies an Mars perhaps could indeed be related to the monuments in Egypt.
"Which really got me to thinking," he said. "If this stuff on Mars was not alien, if it wasn't somebody else, somebody from way out there, then the comparisons between the architecture we find at Cydonia on Mars and the ancient enigmatic architecture, bits and pieces of which we have found now all around this planet, maybe make the case for a previous high civilization epic on planet Earth, in which case we could be looking at our stuff, the human race. So I think Boris is very perceptive when he says, ultimately, it's Egyptians that did what we see in Egypt. The only question is, how ancient, ancient, ancient were those Egyptians?"
 
WERE THE PYRAMIDS ON MARS BUILT FOR THE SAME REASON AS THOSE IN GIZA?

Richard says to answer that, one has to examine what the pyramid complex in Egypt was used for,
"By tracking the numbers, the geometry, the specific angles, the relationship of these things to each other, and their relationship to the sitting of the things here on Earth, particularly the Giza Plateau, we have gotten on the trail of what I call, an old/new physics, which we term hyperdimensional physics. It turns out its the same physics that physicists like Maxwell and others in England were attempting to launch about 100 years ago.

The numbers at Cydonia, the numbers on Mars, the numbers at Giza, the numbers of many ancient sacred sites all over this planet, are the same numbers that Maxwell and Kelvin and those colleagues back in England 100 years ago were deriving as the basis of the physics of the 19th and 20th century.... The usage of the pyramid complex at Giza appears to have been in service to this physics. These were not tombs, not temples, but potentially, machines, huge machines built of limestone as the working substance, the working material, at a specific site on a rotating planet, such as Cydonia is on a rotating Mars."
The positioning of the structures was of the utmost importance, having to consider the physics and the interaction of the "pyramid machines" with the planet itself when they were turned on. According to Hoagland, this is all part of
 "a technology which we are just beginning to glimpse again, incredibly ancient, incredibly sophisticated, incredibly arcane. We can only now see the empty shells of what might have been a functioning complex whose purpose we are also just beginning to dimly grasp. But it was light years beyond providing tombs for some egocentric Pharaoh."
Boris Said agrees, saying,
"It's very difficult to find fault with Richard's logic," noting that Bauval's concept suggests the pyramids were placed in a position representing the stars of the Orion constellation. Boris is now working with Tom Danley, sonics expert and consultant to NASA, to explore the air shafts leading down into the King's and Queen's chambers, "which have been described by Bauval as lining up with the stars of Orion. Quite recently a fellow named Gantenbrink sent a robotic camera up the end of one of those shafts and he found a door with hinges and apparently some space underneath it. What we've been doing is, we've been approaching this problem from a completely different scientific viewpoint.

We've been testing the sonics of the Great Pyramid. We've known for a long time that if you lie in what they call the sarcophagus, which is that stone box in the King's Chamber cut from a solid piece of granite, and you hum, you hum a scale, for example, there will be certain notes that sound louder and more resonant to you than other notes. And recently we had an opportunity to put sensors all over that pyramid, including the five chambers above the King's Chamber, which I guess we're going to discuss in more detail later, and we found that when we activated the pyramid with hugs speakers and amplifiers in the King's Chamber that all of these sensors resonated, leading us to believe that the entire pyramid was some sort of huge sonic machine."
Richard equates the pyramid to a pipe organ. The openings of some of the recently discovered air shafts from the King and Queen's Chambers are open now and wind is blowing across them like a pipe organ. When you blow air across an organ pipe you get a certain resonant frequency. Richard Hoagland says the builders of the pyramids created hyperdimensional machines, placed at certain latitudes on the spinning planet to excite certain acoustic resonances when the air passed through the open passages.

Boris adds that even if the passages were closed, if you had an internal excitation mechanism, the pyramid as a whole will resonate with certain fundamental tones. The more power, the more energy, the louder the tones.
"What we proved," says Boris, "was when we got back to the laboratory and analyzed our recordings, we found that there were sounds present in the King's Chamber even when we weren't making any sounds. They were below the audible range, below 20 Hertz, below 20 vibrations per second.... Down as far as half a vibration per second, or half a Hertz.

We found that these lower scales had the same five peaks, and when you plotted the peaks on a graph and raised them three or four octaves to where you could hear them, low and behold, it was the same notes. It was the same chord... an F sharp chord, which the early Egyptian texts suggest was a harmonic of Mother Earth. And I might tell you, coincidentally, and we bring this out in our tape, a lot of Native American makers of sacred flutes, tune their flutes to F sharp. Why? Because it's compatible with the harmony of Mother Earth. Now that's just too big a coincidence."
 

THE PYRAMIDS WERE USED FOR SONIC RESONANCE

Boris continues,
"We're right now working on a program to replicate the Giza pyramid in a virtual reality state with virtual sound, which we believe will restore, in theory, restore the pyramid to the way it was when the sides were smooth. You know if you think about the wind blowing over the aides of the pyramid, it's like blowing across the mouth of a pop bottle. It makes a hooting sound, it makes a toot, right? You blow across a Coke bottle? Well, we think that's what used to happen with the Great Pyramid.

And we believe that if we can replicate the pyramid, make it smooth, and get rid of the incursions, all of the tunnels.... We believe that maybe the entrance to the pyramid was from the bottom, from down underneath somehow, a long series of tunnels. Because clearly, there was no intrusion into the grand gallery, and we believe that was all part of the giant echo chamber that enhanced the vibrations.... We're gonna try and compare this condition to other pyramids around the world and see whether perhaps that wasn't what they had in mind."
Richard explains that in resonance theory,
"it's really the mass and the length of the cavities or chambers that determine the ultimate tones that a structure will produce."
He says Boris and his NASA colleagues are on the trail of a theoretical model that Stan Tenen and I have been working on for about ten years relating to the model that the pyramids really were machines designed by an extraordinary physics, much older than the classical Egyptian model, designed to do something interacting with the planet.
Now, if you excite these things acoustically, meaning with sound, not from the outside but from the inside, with technology which is now missing because it was all taken away, you got the same effect that Boris is talking about.
"The very structure of the pyramids is calcium carbonate, limestone, which has a certain molecular configuration of the crystal. It's a little tetrahedron made of calcium and carbon atoms, over and over and over again in six million tons of this stuff stacked up in a perfect geometry of the crystal itself called the Great Pyramid. Now if you excite this, if you basically create a tone inside with some kind of huge loud speakers or huge system powered by some energy source... the result is the entire pyramid, all six million tons, will vibrate. It will resonate. It will sound a set of tones, the tones that Danley and Boris are now tracking, in a very faint way."
Richard envisions the builders of the Pyramid designing it so the amplified tones would literally twist the calcium carbonate crystal back and forth in a rhythmic pattern in such a way that you could also twist space and time itself and potentially create extraordinary changes of consciousness. He goes on to say that,
"because the pyramid, through the plateau, is anchored to trillions and trillions of tons of this limestone stretching a quarter of a way around the planet to Indonesia, you literally could change the resonant characteristics of Planet Earth itself if you pumped enough energy into the pyramids [serving] as machines at their precise latitude".

 
ALL THINGS ARE VIBRATION
Boris says be doesn't know about hyperdimensional physics and space time travel, but he,
"loves the work that Richard's doing and I think it should all come together.... What I'm saying is that if you lie in the pyramid and you hum or you chant it's conceivable that you could put yourself into an altered state... There is a very easy way to establish the logic of this argument, and that is to try it out, and that's what we're trying to do. There are sounds .... that tape, you know, that were made inside this King's Chamber, and if nothing else, they're spooky."
He says they are something different, something we haven't heard, or been exposed to in a long time, although researchers like Don Campbell, a former guest on 21st Century Radio� are showing how vibrations and classical music can be used to assist healing in surgery and in analysis.
"I think that we're getting to a point," says Boris, "where all of a sudden we're going to find out that vibes is not just a colloquial expression for the New Age.... It's where healing is, it's where altered states are, where awareness is."

NOTES:
For more Information on Richard Hoagland's work visit www.enterprisemission.com , or send an SASE to Planetary Horizons, P.O. Box 1130, Placitas, NM 87043. For an autographed copy of his book, The Monuments of Mars, call 1-888-338-8581.

You can learn more about Boris Said's work on the web at
www.magicaleye.com , or send an SASE to 1906 Smugglers Hill Rd, Friday Haror, WA 98250. To order his video, "Behind The Scenes At The Giza Plateau", call 1-800-243-1438.

Hieronimus & Co., Inc., P.O. Box 648, Owings Mills, MD 21117 USA
Voice Mail: (410) 356-4852 Fax: (410) 356-6229


Healing Sound Journeys


~The Sound Journey Experience~


I began doing Healing Sound Journeys in the mid-nineties as an introduction to my sound healing workshops.  I felt that it was much more beneficial for participants to start right off with an experience of a variety of instruments and see for themselves how they were affected, rather than having me sit there and talk about them and how they affect us. There are some distinct effects that can definitely be talked about and understood on the physical body as well as the subtle bodies but we are all different and in fact are changing every moment so we are always going to respond to sounds, music and vibration in our own unique way. 

I quickly began to see that these short meditations had a more profound effect than I could have imagined. It wasn't long before they began to take a life of their own and evolved into a sound healing event unto themselves.  The fifteen minute meditation expanded into approximately an hour long sound healing event after which people often reported healings on different levels- physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, visionary experiences and journeys into altered states of consciousness. It was clear that the word "meditation" did not really describe the experience- the description of a "journey" was so often talked about that I adopted the descriptive phrase "Healing Sound Journey".

Some of the instruments used are Himalayan and crystal singing bowls, flutes, percussion instruments, gongs, didgeridoos and more.  The combinations of instruments create rich harmonics and the layering of tones, rhythms and frequencies create a magical and deeply relaxing soundscape that often have a profound effect on the listener.

Rosemary Warburton, Summer 2013



~What is a Healing Sound~

Making any sound with a loving intention will produce a healing effect.

The sound of the simple little 4-hole flute with vibrato talking to the didgeridoo of love brings a healing.

The sounds of love and healing.

Perfect rhythm or perfect pitch is not necessary. Only the intention of pure love is necessary to produce a healing.

It sometimes happens that a Sound Journey will produce profound effects. Remember, always remember, whatever the experience is, we are here together. We are all connected together, and we are all helping each other. And we are all truly subjects of love. Love is always free flowing among us and between us and through us. Love is everywhere at all times and no times. Within without, surrounding all of us, all of who we are.

What is a Healing Sound? That’s easy: it’s a sound you hear with your heart. It sounds like Love. And in fact it is in every sound. It is only more or less perceived. But it is there--in sound always!!

And the question What’s that sound? Becomes the statement--Feel that sound!!

We are frequency.

Henry Steffes Jr




Go to "Workshops and Events" for schedule... 

First Unity Church, St. Petersburg, FL 2010

Performing Sound Journey with visionary artist Alex Grey while he read his Art Psalms
First Unity Church, St. Petersburg, Florida- 2009

Henry Steffes, sound therapist,  playing crystal bowl- Global Harmonization Ceremony-
Sound Body Wholistic Health Center, St. Petersburg, FL- 2011

Sound healer Julie Horvath plays bowl during Global Harmonization Ceremony-
Sound Body Wholistic Health Center, St. Petersburg, FL- 2011

Rosie Warburton & Henry Steffes performing healing Sound Journey at the Longhouse, Gulfport, FL.- 2009?
Performing Sound Journey with Laraaji Naradananda at Temple of the Living God, St. Petersburg, FL- 2010
Henry and Rosie recording Sound Journey CD, St. Petersburg, FL 2003?

Healing Sound Journey in Eastham, Massachusetts, 2012

Suzanne Benton's house, Ridgefield, CT. 2012

My dear friend Suzanne Benton, blissed out after a Sound Journey!

Gettting ready to do a Healing Sound Journey at Villari's Studio, Middletown, RI- 2013

Joined by orbs at Villari's- they like sound!

Sound Journey with Tibetan bowls, Largo, FL, 2013

Preparing for workshop opening with Tibetan Bowl Sound Journey, Utrecht, Netherlands- 2012

Creating From the Inside Out

Well, it's taken me over a year but I have finally learned how to use iMovie and upload videos from there to Youtube! I feel so accomplished every time I make it over another techno hump! That being said, here is a video of a sound healing session I gave my dear friend Paul Goudsmit during our sound healing workshop last year in Utrecht, Netherlands. Really his smile at the end of the session is absolutely worth the price of admission.

What else is happening? So much stuff! Had a wonderful evening at Doris Duke's house ("mansion" would not be inaccurate) presenting a mini-workshop on Mantra Therapy and leading a short kirtan a couple of weeks ago. It is said that there are 330,000,000 mantras- no, that is not a typo. Three hundred thirty MILLION. That's crazy!  There are 87,000 mantras just based on the seed sound "Ah". Where do you begin? Ommmmmm... Ommmmmm... Ommmmmm... 

Anyway, as you might be able to tell from the pictures below it was a huge beautiful room with incredible acoustics. A lot of times I feel like I really have to push to be heard over the harmonium but not this time.  It was just lovely and very well received. Plus I saw some people I hadn't seen in many years and that was pretty sweet too.  So I am reconnecting with old friends and making lots of new friends and wonderful connections lately.

I know I already wrote about the wonderful weekend in the Catskills with John Beaulieau and Silvia Nakkach (remember to smile when you say her name- "Seeeeelvia"- so you pronounce it correctly!) I have been reading her book "Free Your Voice" and working with the downloads that come with it as musical lessons- FUN musical lessons and also recorded some of the lessons we had in the Catskills so I have been singing a lot! That has been wonderful.  I sometimes wake up in the morning singing, as per Tina Turner's instruction on her beautiful CD "Beyond."
 



























Finally seem to be getting a groove going on here in Newport. We had a great turnout at Jesse Harding's martial arts studio about two weeks ago which has led to more openings as well.

Am also taking an Expressive Arts Intensive at Salve Regina University which has been absolutely amazing. I had no idea what I would do with it- how I would utilize and incorporate it into my practice but I trusted that it would reveal itself. Now I am definitely getting ideas about I might integrate some of the practices into sound healing workshops with groups.  I definitely see it as being particularly beneficial for the oncology groups I am starting to work with. I have started a monthly Community Sound Healing Group for oncology patients through Women & Infants Hospital Integrative Care Program which is really exciting.

There is something about processing using visual art that is very exciting to me.  It feels like the missing piece in all of the art, music and healing work I have been doing for so many years. It is like creating art from the inside out, which is exactly how I do my sound healing and the energywork and bodywork I do. I don't know why I never got this before- it's sort of astonishing to me and it just makes so much sense. As much as I loved doing art it was never satisfying to me because I was always looking on the outside for my inspiration.  It never occurred to me to try to put on paper how a tree budding in the springtime makes me feel, rather than just trying to draw or paint the tree.

Our Expressive Art group meets 3 times over the course of 5 months. Our last module we spent some time working on mandalas and I have fallen in love with them!  Again, I have always loved mandalas and looked at pictures of them, studied them, had coloring books of them but somehow it just never occurred to me to make my own. I am so happy! Today I made one on the beach as part of my Mandala Project.

 Beach Plaid Prayer Flag Mandala with Tobacco Offering
(cigar holder in center on rock is the tobacco)




Observing Gratitude

The other day I was driving down the road and started thinking about something stressful- no idea what it was. I just remember that my whole body began to feel uncomfortable and constricted so I said, "Thank you for this moment" and immediately I took a deep breath.

Try it. Just say, "Thank you" quietly to yourself- you can even whisper it. And see what happens.  It was so obvious, that deepening of the breath, that I have been practicing this whenever I feel any tension- physical, mental or emotional- ever since.  I don't always remember right away- in fact I rarely do.  But the moment I do I just say "Thank you" and everything shifts. I have been amazed by how powerful it is- and how simple and natural.

I have had a practice of gratitude for quite a few years but it's been more like a prayer or a meditation- a deliberate time to remember all the things I have to be grateful for- which ultimately always come back to my breath.  This, however, is very spontaneous and in the moment and it is changing things for me in a profound way.  Maybe it is an offshoot of my practice- that there is a trigger and a resonance in those two words for me now that has developed over time but really I don't think so. I think there is something inherent in the simple remembrance and expression of gratitude that brings us back to our life force, back to the breath. Our whole being is grateful for the experience of gratitude and we breathe into it deeply and naturally. 

    Thank you for this moment.
   
        Thank you for this breath. 
       
            Thank you for this life.
       
                Thank you.


A Brief Sound Update!

I have been away from my blog for far too long.  And it is very late at night so I will have to make this short and sweet!

It's been a wild ride lately.  My mother has been quite sick so giving her as much time as I have available has been taking up any free time lately! I am so grateful that she is only 1 1/2 hours from me so I can see her quite often.

Aside from that I spent two weeks in Florida, ostensibly to teach one workshop and spend the rest of the time packing up stuff in my old house where my boyfriend Henry still lives. As it turned out I taught FOUR workshops and did a sound journey in someone's home so there was very little time left for packing.  I was so exhausted by the end of the week that I left some of my Tibetan bowls down there because I just couldn't handle taking an extra suitcase even though I could have on Southwest Airlines.

Here is a picture from one of the workshops. This is one of the therapists just after they had received a session with Tibetan singing bowls.


After I got back I spent a few days with Mum, moved back into the little cabin where I spent last summer and then zipped off to the Catskills for a 4-day workshop with John Beaulieu and Silvia Nakkach.  I am feeling that meeting Silvia has changed my life! What a fabulous weekend!
Silvia Nakkach leading a Medicine Song
From the Catskills I went straight to my mother's and spent 5 days there and today I finally got back to my little cabin this afternoon.  I feel like my life is steeped in sound vibration. I have spent most of my day today either talking about sound with other sound healers, singing my heart out, playing my tamboura and tonight sitting on my bed playing planetary tuning forks which are amazing! 

I am obsessed with sound!

Sound and Synchronicity

It was a wild and busy week last week.  Tuesday I did a workshop at Child & Family Services for some oncology patients from Women & Infants Hospital.  I really only expected about 3 people but instead there were 11 and they all loved it.  It was an introductory program for the purpose of bringing awareness to sound healing sessions being offered at the Integrative Wellness Program. However, since it was so well received I am going to offer it on a monthly basis for the community along with the individual sessions. I happen to have a very soft spot for CFS because when I was in recovery for substance abuse in the late 80's that is where my children and I went for counseling.  I feel like I really got a lot from them and am grateful to be giving something back.

I'm also giving an old friend a series of Tibetan bowl sessions which is wonderful because I hadn't done any since I got up here- only for groups.  So that is a pleasure along with the fact that I am reconnecting with a dear friend who I've known since I was a teenager which makes it even more fun! I give her a session and then we yak yak yak, catching up on all kinds of stuff after being pretty much out of touch for the better part of 20 years! Here is a picture from her last session.

There was actually a ton of synchronicity around this. I was in the health food store a little over a week ago , when I heard a voice say, "Rosie?!" I turned around and it was my old friend Alix.  She said, "I can't believe you're here! I just dreamt about you this morning- I saw a picture of you giving someone a session with all those bowls around them and I dreamt you were giving me one- and just now as I was driving over the bridge I was thinking to myself that I have to get your number and call you as soon as I get home! And here you are!"

That on top of the fact that I had just started reading a wonderful book- "Healing With Tibetan Singing Bowls" by Suren Shrestha- so the sudden arrival of someone wanting to have a series of sessions was especially timely. Suren teaches techniques that have been passed down from healers and shamans in his village in Nepal for centuries. It is a short simple book with some very useful information in it.  I am so grateful to have found a book that actually has the teachings from an authentic lineage.

Up until now I had been able to find very little information about the use of singing bowls as a healing tool. It was my intuition and common sense that told me they must have been because they have such a powerful effect on consciousness, but pretty much everything up to that point had been hearsay, or flat out denial that they were ever used for healing- the much repeated phrase being that the history of the bowls has been shrouded in secrecy"- which I love! What Shrestha says is that the teaching has been passed down orally.

So the last session I gave Alix I used a series of chakras bowls and placed them in the order of the cycle of 5ths starting with F for the root chakra. That is also how Fabien Maman teaches the placement of crystal bowls so I was very familiar with the protocol before but had never used it with Tibetan bowls.  In fact it was the first time I even checked the frequency of the bowls before using them.  Usually I simply walk through the room and pick up whatever bowls call to me and then place them around the body as I am guided.  This time I was very thorough in tuning the bowls first.  Which is not to say that one way or the other was better- but this was good in this case and I would definitely do it again, just as I would do it totally intuitively again. I do not want to get attached to one way of working with them.  There are too many wonderful possibilities and his book opened me up to quite a bit more.

A lot of other really exciting stuff has opened up as well.  I have been invited to play the crystal bowls in a salt cave in Ridgefield, CT in June which I am very excited about! I'm so crazy about that Himalayan pink salt- I can't even believe that I am going to get to sit in a cave of it and play my bowls- too freaking cool!  Then someone called and offered their space for me to do another two day workshop while I'm in Florida in May, so that whole scene is shifting. A few days ago I was panicking that only two people had signed up for the one workshop I was offering and now I am teaching actually two more- one day on tuning forks and one day on healing with Tibetan singing bowls.  Also the place where I just saw Shyamji in Newburyport has invited me to do a Healing Sound Journey there, which is great because it means there is a network opening up near my mother which is wonderful.

Lots of great stuff coming up- my first weekend of the Expressive Arts Therapy Program next weekend and at the end of next month a 4-day workshop with John Beaulieu and Sylvia Nakkach which should be pretty amazing.

Oh.... AND my Facebook webpage has reached over 5000 people in the last 6 days! Woohoo!!!



Perfect Vision

Last night I led a kirtan at my friend Karen Kuzminsky's house in Middletown, RI.  What a wonderful evening!  I have to say before I go any further how grateful I am to Jai Uttal for all the wonderful kirtans and workshops of his that I have attended in the last 8 or so years- but especially for the weeklong summer kirtan camp that I was at two years ago in California.  What a blessing. The greatest gift that I got from it was COURAGE- knowing that it didn't matter if I didn't have a fabulous voice, if I wasn't a virtuoso on some instrument or another- if I could just lead a simple chant and sing from my heart, that was good enough.

As it turned out I was sort of put to the test.  I brought my instruments- guitar, harmonium and tamboura- and was just about ready to go when I realized I had forgotten my music! Since I am a beginner on the harmonium I wasn't too thrilled about that.  But I figured that I knew enough chants on the guitar and at least one chant that I could do with the harmonium that it was probably okay- and it was. We had about 20 people and a few kids which really added so much.  Karen's 6 year old son  was so fascinated by the harmonium he practically had his head in it!

But the best part was connecting with a number of people I hadn't seen in 20 years or more.  I knew that the daughter of an old friend of mine was planning to come who was best friends with my oldest son when they were very little.  Now she's a beautiful woman in her late 30's with a daughter of her own. Her mother used to live next door to my ex-husband and me and little Amy would come to the window every morning and call for Sparky.  They lived on the third floor and we were on the second of the house next door.  I have such a strong memory of her precious voice and seeing her face in the window of their 3rd floor apartment looking down to see if Sparky was out on our porch so they could play together.

She hadn't arrived yet when I began. I sang a couple of opening prayers in Sanskrit and was deep into the first chant when I looked up and there was beautiful Amy smiling at me!  I felt such a welling up of emotion that I was quite overcome and tears began to come- I suspect people thought it was because I was so moved by the chant but really I was just so knocked out to see Amy there smiling at me! I actually thought about stopping right then and getting up and giving her a hug but instead I closed my eyes and went really deep and was able to drop into a place beyond that level of emotion to carry on with the music and just let it flow. We saved our hugs and shared our tears after the kirtan and that was such an incredible blessing.  I don't even know yet what it means, what it was for or what it is leading to.  I just know it was, and is, profound.

The grace of the kirtan was that it allowed me to go deeper and deeper- and maybe also that emotion was a catalyst that really somehow carried the kirtan to another level as well. Who knows? It was what it was. The next one will be different.

Every moment is an expression of perfection- every note, every breath. If it isn't perfect, it is our vision that needs correction- not what we're seeing or experiencing, but how we're seeing and experiencing.
Thank you Jai!!!


One Self, Two Birds

Today's Course in Miracles lesson: "I am one Self, united with my Creator, at one with all aspects of creation, limitless in power and in peace."  I have stayed with this lesson for the past 4 days. The practice is supposed to be 5 minutes at the beginning of each hour.  I set my timer and then remember one time, re-set it and then pretty much forget about it for the rest of the day.  Since this series of lessons emphasizes self-discipline I've decided to stay with it until I feel that I have improved a bit more on that side of things.  Given that I've been studying this for over 20 years and am still in the dream I figure it's time to give it a bit more effort. After all, what is the purpose of the Course? And what is my purpose? On March 28, 2006 I wrote in  my journal that I had realized that the purpose of Henry's and my relationship was to help each other wake up. That was 7 years ago almost to the day... At this point being by myself seems to be a better way to work to try to wake up.

Meanwhile, in my waking dream, I am sitting in my room in Middletown and I meditate on my morning lesson.  As I contemplate the words "I am one Self" I begin meditating on all the sounds around me.  The closest are my breath and the heat coming up.  But outside is a conversation between a crow and a cardinal- the crow calls loudly and repeatedly, "Caw, caw, caw" and the cardinal replies with one whistle that rises in pitch. Back and forth they go, never interrupting. There is a cluster of bells from Arco Santi which ring occasionally, producing melodious arrhythmic tones.

Sound is a good meditation. It is always there.  The rhythm of the breath, the pulses of the body, the blood, the beating of the heart; beneath that the inner sounds which can be heard with deep listening- a quiet white noise with some high frequencies, a steady stream of sound; on the outside, the sounds in the room, in the house and then the sounds of nature from out of doors which cut through everything and delight the nervous system.