These Posts

These thoughts were posted over a few months in a different location. I have liked how they are handled here much better so moved them over. I will continue to post as thoughts enter my head. I find that the idea of growing spiritually is always talked about but never truly discussed. Spiritual growth in most institutions has been for me in my experience impossible as the tenets of faith I 'have to espouse' often just bore me or are to me at least meaningless drivel or nonsense. I have been lucky enough to have connected with a group who encourage me to grow in my own way and are more than willing to help me do just that. The minister Wayne Walder is an intelligent caring individual who has helped me grow and who is wise enough to just point out what I need at the moment without judging or expecting me to believe anything. I find this so refreshing. I have begun to meditate regularly and I run daily. My life is changing for the better I feel and so my music improves as well. I find it still a real challenge to write the words for a song but I have had help and improvement comes slowly. At least now I do not think I am incapable of writing the words. Enough of this I'll put more thoughts up later.

Music & Magic

It occurred to me as I listened to a piece I co-wrote with my friend that magic, prayer, meditation, understanding ones self in the Creator in this life for me is based in music. The power of some of the music I hear lifts my spirit to a new sphere of understanding. Music speaks directly to emotion from emotion, and despite our culture’s attempt to deny our need to feel deeply what we are and to be logical and rational at all times, music enables us to grow in spirit if we allow it to do so. My recent musical experiences have taken me back in memory, and closer to the One. I find that the songs and musical work give meaning to what I am and who I am becoming.

The reason for this out loud thinking of music is to complain about how popular culture is trying to make music into electronic wall paper and remove all but the shallowest emotion from it. Music cannot be rationalised or made logical although logic and rational thought are used to create it.

So for all who wish to write music, or sing and play it, remember that what you do can be sacred if you allow it. Yes even the silliest and funniest tunes have something sacred in them.

So don't be afraid of creating something, the art of creation is unbound spiritually. It is a manifestation of love.

Thoughts On Enlightenment

It occurs to me that the mystics while wise have the approach to achieving enlightenment wrong. We are all flesh and spirit. But the spirit is nurtured along with the flesh. Bodily pleasures like good food and sex all enhance our spiritual lives if controlled and approached with care and intent. After all a medicine man will tell you that a man is not a machine and that when the body is injured or ill that the spirit also is injured or ill. Healing only the body will allow the sick or injured spirit to cause the person to become ill once more till the spirit heals. This is why the medicine man will drum or work magic for the ill patient, to heal the whole being not just the sick body.

Expressing love physically does not necessarily make love more intense. Nor is it needed to love freely. The spiritual aspect of love is a giving without any expectation of return. There is no control of the loved one just a deep affection, pure and given. It is often returned in kind for all things require balance. I think denying our body’s needs and pleasures weaken the spirit we have within us.

This doesn’t mean we should not pay direct attention to spiritual growth, just that good food, having sex with a loved one doesn’t have a negative impact on our spiritual being. If it does anything it makes us more spiritually strong and aware should we allow it to do so.

Think of the Creator when you eat your next meal, give thanks and enjoy it fully. Then examine how you felt and feel about your connection with the Creator having been nourished by the food given you.

Keeping this in mind learn about what you are both physically and spiritually and grow in both together, balanced and at peace.

Time

Time is a strange thing we create for ourselves to be on, to waste, to lose, to be behind but seldom to enjoy. We use it to connect and think of it as a thing we need to manage. But step back and think a moment, does chopping your day into little planned bits that ‘must’ get done by a specific time make you happy. I understand obligation and needing to fulfill promises this is not what I am talking about. I am talking about how you feel with time. Do you get a great feeling of accomplishment when you have dealt with countless bits of tasks? Or do you feel like you have accomplished more after a good talk with a friend?

That talk for unplanned hours and the feeling of peace or joy after it is over is worth more time in my opinion. We spend too much time doing things and too little time living. Physics tells us that there is no difference between moving forward or backward in time. It is all the same no matter how you use the formula past or future.

So why can we not see the future? When you ask a policeman he will tell you people do not see the present so how could they see the future. All witnesses to an event see different things. Is this because of the infinite possibilities that exist till something is observed? When you look at something and make it real does the person you’re with have to see the same thing? Must they choose the same reality? Ask Schrödinger’s cat, because I do not know.

On Prayer

I have been told by people I respect and acknowledge as authorities to be trusted that prayer works. There is scientific evidence that this is true. The question is why prayer works, and why are the results of prayer so unpredictable.

I have a hypothesis as to why prayer works and is unpredictable, and also the reason some prayer has more effect than other prayer.

Examining the mathematics of chaos we discover that very small effects have huge impacts on the environment. There was an experiment run that mapped the weather for a simple world. The experimenter upon experiencing a computer crash decided to re do the last 12 hours of weather in the simulated simple environment. By mistake he entered the wrong number missing a decimal digit. The print out showed only 4 decimal places but the program input 5. Having forgotten this when the experimenter ran the program he left out the last digit of the starting formula. When he ran the program it was apparent within the first few iterations of output that something had changed and changed significantly. In fact the deviation was so pronounced that the experimenter first examined the equipment to ensure that it was not faulty. Eventually he remembered that the printout was short a digit and was able to return to the original output by correcting that number. Another example of this is the Lorenz attractor which can be found at the link below in Wikipedia.

If you surf the net to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect#Illustration there is a java animation of this effect.

Now when energy is released into reality, that place we live in it has an effect on everything. In the film Where the Bleep Do We Come From there are photographs of water at a very highly magnified state that are significantly different because of what it thought at the water. This energy of thought then can have demonstrable and direct effect. Now prayer is thought energy. The more practiced at it the more energy is out put I assume. Now what if there are many people praying for the same or similar things. Wouldn’t that have a direct effect on the person being prayed for?

Well there is evidence that there is actually an effect, it is just that the effect is not predictable. The question I believe is answered in the chaos theory. And the fact that energies can cancel each other out. Now if you pray for someone to get well sometimes they do. And sometimes it feels like your prayer helped. Now there is evidence that prayer works. So why is this, the case in some times but not others?

Well the fact is the energy is uncontrolled, and not actually directed usually without some practice. Additionally I believe that other energies may cancel the prayer energy out, not out of malice but simply because of the nature of energy flows.

Now one of the main points of prayer is that it is directed energy. Also I believe that it is energy that either consciously or subconsciously people know the person being prayed for requires to balance themselves properly. This energy is then directed to the person who is being prayed for. The intent is what sets prayer apart from energy coming from another impersonal source, a battery for example.

To sum up, I believe that focused energy like that of prayer is what makes the prayer work. Especially if there is a group focusing the energy and the intent of the group is identical or at least resonant within the specific intent. The seeming inconsistency of prayer’s efficacy is due to either interference from other energies diluting altering or canceling out the energy released or lack of proper intent. The fact is we are all energy in one form or another and sharing it as prayer to help one another is inherent in man’s nature.

Music & Meditation

Meditation and music for me co inhabit my life. The act of creating music aids me to let go of troubles and to act more whole. Music also helps me meditate and keep myself grounded. I find that I loose my sense of self in the sounds and drift into a different realm with the right music. Gentle calming it helps me to create the stillness of the mind. Upbeat driven it helps me focus on tasks that require doing and to get the energy to do them.

But music by itself is a power that fills space with sound and can give emotion to another. It helps us share our deepest selves safely because even though it touches the deepest emotions within us it still is not exactly the same for another as it is for you or me. This difference creates a needed spiritual distance that we are subconsciously aware of so that we can share deep hidden emotions without linking ourselves into another’s feelings. This unbound sharing is the ideal. It is what we want from a partner, and a love for life.

When I create music I create sounds to trigger emotions in others. When I write songs I try to express myself and be a mirror to another, and when I write larger works I try to touch my soul and in so doing the souls of others. What we feel as people we all feel. There is not a single emotion that is totally unique to one individual. Yet how we feel these things is unique to each and every one of us. So while we have commonality we also have uniqueness and this uniqueness is expressed through music in a very ideal way.

Can we listen and not feel. I doubt it very much even if the feeling is ‘I hate that song turn it off.’

So what music is appropriate to meditation and to aid in spiritual growth depends on the individual. Some love flutes and gentle strings, while others like the piano or organ and others chanting voices. There is no wrong music just your music.

Creativity

I write music, and sometimes words for the songs I create. I say sometimes because although I do put down words to almost every tune I write it doesn't take me long to realise that usually they are not very good words. I am not really a word smith. There are people I work with who are so much better at that type of thing so I prefer to leave it to them. Lately however I have realised that

I improve by doing. My words have more emotive impact and tend to have the ability to force the listener to contemplate and grow.

This then is how I now start to write a tune. I have an image or feeling that I try to describe in words. I take the tone of the words and the rhythm they have and write a tune and harmonies using them as a guide. Often the tune changes a word here and a sentence there.

What this has to do with enlightenment and spiritual awakening is that, for me at least, creating a healthier spirit and being more grounded

is a similar exercise. I find a focal point to start with and go from there into a meditation.

My biggest problem is of course the common one of shutting the committee up, including the radio station in my head that plays tunes constantly.

That then is my take on how I approach my meditations. Find a singe idea to focus on and try to understand that more fully.

Power Versus Love

Consider that we strive to be unbound but more often we connect with power and call it love. This is fallacy. Unbinding power is the best thing to do, releasing the ties created by the urge to control. Giving love does not control. Giving love means you will receive love. Receiving love makes love grow and in growing easier to give. Love never creates a binding. Exchanging love makes for mutual supports and never binds. Power tends to feel like love at first but the binding of power creates conflict in the end and can destroy relationships. The real problem is distinguishing when the connection is love or power.

Recognizing the difference requires effort and care. Ask yourself these questions.

Do you tell your partner what to do rather than express an opinion about what should be done and allow them to choose the course of action?

When they choose actions you do not agree with do you support them anyway?

When together do they tell you what you should do?

Do they support your choices no matter what?

If there is power binding then you will be telling each other what you want and trying to make them conform to your wishes.

By loving you will grow by linking power you will interfere with each other. It is difficult to be free and allow another their freedom. But if you can achieve this goal of loving, mutual support and care then you will be able to discover more of yourself as the other your partner mirrors you.

Life should be like art, interconnected and mutually supporting but spiritually unbound. We should not worry about what things we produce but rather the ripples we create into the cosmic stream. These ripples have a large effect on the people and places they touch.