Day 4

today i waited until the house grew quiet late in the evening to do my practice. this was not intentional and probably not the smartest decision...because of this i felt self-conscious, like everyone could hear me including the 2 house guests staying in different rooms on either end of the house. i chanted with the shruti for a few minutes and then decided to explore what it would be like if I just chanted with no drone the entire duration of my practice. so i did it. i chanted the gayatri mantra for the rest of the time.  The mantra:

Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ

tát savitúr váreṇ(i)yaṃ

bhárgo devásya dhīmahi

dhíyo yó naḥ pracodáyāt

 

The meaning according to http://www.sathyasai.org

We contemplate the glory of Light illuminating the three worlds: gross, subtle, and causal.

I am that vivifying power, love, radiant illumination, and divine grace of universal intelligence.

We pray for the divine light to illumine our minds.

 

 

 

The most powerful insight I got while chanting this was that at all times we can chose to not be in resistance with reality. We can approach our lives with a full yes to absolutely everything that we feel, hear, touch, taste, experience, etc. What if I were to make this my moment to moment practice, to say yes to it all? This is, after all, the true path to awakening yes? Living in the reality which is actually occurring rather than the one the I is willing to have happen but continuously gets disappointed because it's not happening it's way hardly any of the time.I practiced this the other day when I was driving and it helped me feel such a deeper state of peace and ok-ness with the decisions that other drivers were making instead of feeling like each "stupid" decision made by others was a personal assault on my being. wow, it took so much pressure and energy off of me to do anything extra than just driving. so this practice is something i intend to do more of. being in agreement with the ultimate reality that is happening and has always been happening whether I like it or not...

thank you Gayatri...

Day 3

Buddha nature pervades the whole universe
existing right here, right now
I dedicate the merit of this practice to all sentient beings
together we realize liberation...(adyashanti)
Halleluja.
noticing how much more open my voice is later in the day, after doing a workshop that i did a little toning and chanting at when singing higher notes, my jaw gets more tense
the first half of my vocal meditation practice consisted of chanting a medicine melody that i don't actually know the words to because its in another language i am not familiar with... so i just sang the sounds like i remember them. i changed my shruti box today to b flat. days 1 and 2 were to c major and g (perfect 5th). the perfect 5th created a sound spiral vortex which is the same auditory version of the spiral found almost everywhere in nature, called the golden mean, or fibonacci sequence. when we consistently play or sing the c and g together we come into more coherent resonance with our natural vibration and into alignment with right path. one of my teachers, John Beaulieu, teaches this thoroughly in his trainings. his tuning forks tuned to certain octavized notes of c and g have a profound calming affect on the nervous system and can immediately center and ground the nervous system in an immediate way. i have not experienced anything more effective than his tuning forks. http://www.biosonics.com/
He says that you can tune the body just like you can tune any instrument. when you are tuned you are living from a higher functioning vibration and from this place we can be more authentic and be able to course correct more effectively when we come up against challenges and adversity. i have also found this to be true. being soaked in the sounds of the perfect 5th i am able to hold my own frequency with more clarity of my own boundaries, feeling the sense of being a differentiated human being in relation to others that i come into contact with all day long.

Day 2 Vocal Meditation

throat chakra was blocked tonight and it took me a while to be able to make a sound...today my ass got kicked by the universe. testing my resiliency, my ability to stand in the face of stressful news and adversity. tears came before sound. i started chanting home over and over again. where is home? where is my home spirit? with hand on heart, more tears continue to fall. praying through song, for clarity, peace, and then ended up singing "it's all gonna be ok" until some part of me really believed that. i am right here love. come and find me. open arms, open heart. where is my home? it's all gonna be ok. making minor notes, i noticed that there was a distinct vibrato quality that was happening between my voice and the shruti box. because I was holding a note that wasn't in resonance with the tones from the shruti, there was some sort of dissonance and dischord happening in my throat. when i stopped after about 23 minutes my hearing had heightened significantly and i could hear with a new sensitivity that wasn't there before. it's all gonna be ok. i pray for clarity. i pray for abundance. i pray for clarity. i put my hand on my heart, tears fall. we all could stand to have more compassion for ourselves every moment of every day. i want to feel more compassion for myself. i am just spirit in form wanting to realize itself so i can go back to spirit without form...but for now, i am flesh and blood and bones and tears and teeth and muscle and fingers and toes. i am heart and soul and i am innocent and i am guilty of not feeling enough compassion for myself. i pledge to remember that this gift is always available to me, from me. compassion. hand on heart. open arms. open eyes. i sing you into being and you find me...ready to leap.

Day 1 of 40 days of Vocal Meditation practice

Today I started what is the beginning of a 40 day vocal meditation practice that I will be blogging about daily, documenting the transformation that occurs from a daily practice. Initially there was no set intention or goal for this other than to be an open and receptive channel to messages, visions, insights and transformations that come through a consistent practice of opening the voice. I am using a shruti box as the drone for my voice. The shruti lays a steady foundation in which the voice can play and weave in and out of. Explorations in mantras, affirmations, prayers, words, made up languages, and ultimately losing the sense of any permanent "I" is part of what I will be looking at throughout this process. Establishing this practice is a way to become more connected with the shruti box as it's own magical instrument, and a vehicle to feel more deeply connected with my voice and inner experiences while singing and chanting.  I am holding the potential of global and individual healing as the foundation for doing this practice.
I am also in the beginning stages of finding a producer to work with on reconstructing my songs into an electronic/folk hybrid album. The daily vocal meditation practice is a means to singing/expressing to the universe that I intend to keep singing on the front burner for the rest of my life. The form that this takes will change daily and I am meaning to make peace with it looking however it looks for me, acknowledging that my way is unique, and starting to remove the comparison trap that has caused me to not move forward in any significant way for many years. I am giving myself the PERMISSION. Permission to sing, permission to authentically express my truths, and ultimately permission to share anything of value to anyone else who wants to listen and is interested in honesty, humor, creative expression and truth.

I will be blogging daily to share what happened during the meditation.

Notes from my 1st day:

- Spirit of my Granny Jones (my mom's mom's mom) unexpectedly appeared and was sitting on my bed behind me (whoa, don't think I have ever had a visit from her spirit!)
- I could feel the lineage of woman and my ancestors in a row behind me
- the sound "ah" opens the heart
- the sound "om" seals and grounds
So chanting ah - om is a way of opening and then sealing the energy in a way
- chanting and singing the pain of woman who have come before me
- started singing in "someone else's" voice, my facial position and jaw placement changed and I was making some form of crooked opening with my mouth. felt like it was relieving pain and tmj issues I have had for over 3 years in my jaw...

Ok - more tomorrow : )

Love, Light & Play

Visionary Music- Songs from the Void...

Recently I have started thinking about what makes music "visionary". in the festival circuit i have started noticing how there is a revolution of "visionary art" on the rise. but what about visionary music? what does it sound like? i know its happening right now but what makes music visionary? what are the components? music can help us increase our levels of consciousness and it seems that this is part of what I am here to do in this lifetime. to sing and create "visionary music" (or maybe it could be referred to as evolutionary music). to help facilitate the process of awakening through movement and music. there are many doorways to the divine and the one i am stepping through is composed of harmonies, raw vocal improv, laughter, and wild uninhibited dance. what are the things that create a sense of space internally for you? what are the things that allow for being in presence with no hint of leaning towards the next thing?

new ways of putting sound together, languages from other galaxies, sounds transmitted through the ancient knowledge of plants, compositions comprised of fusing electronic sounds with nature, digital remixes of timeless wisdom, there is a precipice of sound that we are surfing on the edge of...

as we shift and evolve so does the music that we create. BUT i am not convinced that we are informing the music. rather, maybe the music is informing us. it appears that we are creating it but during the process a symbiotic relationship forms where the music isn't entirely of our creation. something else is steering the ship that we call "me", so what is actually making the music, creating the songs? is all creative expression coming from the void (or source)? yes! (i would think so) so if the void is where everything is being created from and the music is shifting and increasing in consciousness then does it follow that the source is asking us or rather playing us to wake up???

there are so many directions that i could go with this. it might be better left to explore as my thesis than on my blog but i needed to get it out there. this concept of "visionary music" is the next wave that i am sensing is going to make a huge impression on the world. maybe it won't be recognized in pop culture (yet) but it will be among the indie scenes, the festival goers, and individuals all over the world who are ready for a new sound to be present in their lives. i know i am ready for a new sound to explore and sink into, to be enveloped and swept away in, knowing all the while that i am on the wave, the precipice of opening to ultimate truth through these sounds. can liberation be found in a single note?

i am starting to write for my next album. inspired by nature, plant medicine, my process of awakening, among many other aspects of life. it is my intention to write from the evolved aspect of myself, to sing from the depths of my soul, and to release the old coils that once binded me to being small. it is a musical chord cutting. a sound of letting go and singing in the next step in my/our evolution. i look forward to sharing these songs as they come out...