When I was a young piano player, about 14 years old, I used to sneak out at night
to after-hours jazz clubs. One evening I went back to a friend's place to listen to a
piece of music. I heard the first 1/2 minute or so and the next thing I remember was the
end of it. In between I had experienced something like a lucid dream, with all my senses
involved. It was as though the music had carried me to another place as real as
"right here." And that got me wondering what music really was.
I've talked with other people who
have had similar experiences: traveling on music to another time/place and then returning
feeling refreshed and renewed.
During such musical travels, we
have all been given insights because music has the ability to transport a listener to a
different state of awareness.
New ideas and viewpoints appear
when the usual thinking process is bypassed. It's as if the insights are hidden inside you
and the music gently guides you to those hidden places of wisdom. Ideas are often revealed
as full-blown and complete concepts.
Music is a language of imagery,
motion and form that can speak to you on all levels. When a friend's uncle lay dying in a
hospital, she went to pay her last respects. He was in a coma. She touched his arm and
sang to him with as much love as she could muster. The jagged spikes on the hospital
monitoring equipment calmed down, and as she sang, tears rolled down his cheeks. He never
came out of the coma before he died. But on some level, music spoke even to him.
Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist
said:
"Music is the voice of the
universe... Good music is the harmonization of all the vibrations of which matter
consists, and it restores us to ourselves and to our universe. It is the bond that we have
between our own frequencies and those frequencies which vibrate millions of light years
away."
When the world is whirling about
you at a frantic pace, music can offer the calmness of the eyes of a hurricane. It can
center you when you need guidance from your own innate wisdom.
Hazrat Khan in his book The Music
of Life says we are drawn to music because our whole being IS music. Because everything is
made of vibrating atoms, we are surrounded by musical rhythms.
Khan says:
"Music interests us and
attracts our attention and gives us pleasure, because it corresponds with the rhythm and
tones that are keeping the mechanism of our whole being intact."
It's therefore important to pursue
anything that gives you harmony, so you can be "in tune" with your own universe.
If you've been so busy you've
forgotten what makes your heart sing, take a few minutes to listen to some music you love.
Let your mind know it can temporarily stop its concerns, so your attention can instead
follow the harmonies and changes within the music.
When you finish listening, take a
piece of paper and write down the first thoughts that come to you. These thoughts may be
in words, images or symbols. Practice for a few days, and you'll be amazed at the wisdom
you have inside you, and what a wonderful tool music can be to connect you to that wisdom.
Copyright @2000 Al Harrris |
