The Thread

Although I've listened to thousands of sets uploaded by others on Mixcloud, re-posting and favoriting many, this was the first set of my own I've uploaded.  I have no musical talent, can’t read music, play an instrument, and I sound like a dying donkey when I sing.   However, this doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate and value music.  You don’t have to be Rembrandt to appreciate his paintings.  Each song to me is a piece of art.  I read on Facebook recently that art is how we decorate our walls and music is how we decorate our time.  To me, this is a superficial understanding of what music can and does do.  I’ve been pondering for a couple of years now why I’m drawn to this music, so alien from the music of conventional reality with which I grew up.  From an astrological perspective, it’s very Uranian.  If you can entertain the possibility that each planet in our solar system is a living being, conscious, although not self-conscious as human beings are, you can begin to have a relationship with each of these bodies in the sky.  Uranus is the great awakener.  Its effect is electric and electrifying, sudden, unexpected, freedom loving, and iconoclastic.  All qualities that can be found in this music. For me one of the greatest gifts of Mixcloud and the music found there is the freedom to listen to whatever I want, whatever resonates with my soul in that moment, and is not limited to the music of consensus reality.

This music, however outside the bubble of conventional music it may be, to me, is art.  The songs here are unique jewels, objets d’art that spoke strongly to me.  Together, they tell a story.  I chose the title “The Thread” due to my long inquiry into the nature of the soul, consciousness, and time.  As a child I pictured the soul as a spool of thread floating in a vast, black space.  I’ve done deep inner spiritual work for many years.  I’ve come to understand that the soul is our individual consciousness, a focus or spark in an ocean of all pervading consciousness.  This soul, this spark, what Vendantists term Sutratman (Thread-Self), has continuity.  But how is one spark differentiated from another in an ocean of consciousness?  It is discriminated by the continuity of identity of a particular spark, the form series to which we are related, our series of incarnations.  On the physical level your yesterday is strung on a different string or thread than mine.  On a different plane, I think, the same applies to our series of lives.  But this doesn’t mean that what we are is an unchanging eternally separate ego which passes from life to life.  This focus is not a thing, an entity in and of itself, but a focus in and of experience.   The focus is individual, the experience is not.  We are not separate from each other.  If consciousness is all pervading, where does “your” consciousness end and mine begin?  And, if I understand that I am not my body, that it is a vehicle, though a sacred one, for this consciousness, then I am not limited, not defined, by the boundary of my skin. Consciousness does extend beyond the physical body.  The matter of my physical body is one, and even in a sense continuous with yours.  It is only differentiated by points of references, yours or mine.
   
I read a fascinating book by Lynne McTaggart, an investigative journalist called “The Field”.  She interviewed many cutting edge physicists and other scientists.  What quantum physics is showing us is that we live in an ocean of microscopic vibrations in the space between things.  The universe is a vast heaving ocean of energy, a sea of light, a vast quantum field, The Zero Point Field.  In this field everything is connected to everything else, connected in an invisible web. 

I think music can help heal us; music vibrates through this invisible field and touches us, connecting us all.   As an individual focus of consciousness, I am not my body, not my mind.  Yes, the physical body and brain die, but who I am at my core, my essence, was never born and never dies.  Part of the healing gift of music is that it can open us, open our hearts, dissolve some of the walls, the boundaries we put up in trying to defend ourselves from what we fear, and perhaps one of our greatest fears is of death.

One of the definitive qualities of human beings versus other creatures is our vulnerability.  This can be seen as both an asset and a liability.  Other creatures are not nearly so vulnerable, especially physically, as we are.  We have the capacity to know we exist, and also know that we will die, at least the physical body.  A bird does not have this capacity, and so doesn’t have this fear of death that lurks in the back of our awareness no matter how hard we try to hide from it. But this vulnerability is also our greatest asset; it makes us open, permeable to all sorts of impressions, including music.  And when we are so open that we allow whatever is presenting itself in our awareness to happen, having no preference because we trust in the benevolence of a loving universe, then we truly realize that what we ultimately are is unborn and undying, and then we are truly invulnerable.  Music has helped me to understand this on a gut level.   Yes, my physical body will die, but who and what  I am at my core, my essence was never born and never dies. 

Music, like everything else, can be approached from various levels.  Perhaps all my ramblings about consciousness, the soul, and invisible fields don’t interest you.  And that’s ok; I think the music needs no words from me to support it. But, I feel strongly that music, especially this music, offers so much more than just entertainment.  Music can engage all three of our centers, body, heart, and mind.  The body is enlivened when we dance.  The heart touched and expanded by a particular piece of music.  The mind lit up and made more spacious; alight with the fire of understanding. When all three centers are engaged and aligned, our life can be experienced as a flow, a creative unfolding.  Music can enrichen a spiritual path.  I always loved the quote from Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge”:

Para mi solo recorrer los caminos que tienen
corazon, cualquier camino que tenga corazon.
Por ahi yo recorro, y la unica prueba que
vale es atravesar todo su largo.  Y por ahi
yo recorro mirando, mirando, sin aliento.
 
For me there is only the traveling on paths that have
heart, on any path that may have heart.
There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge
is to traverse its full length.   And there
I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.