So there I was…
sitting down in my daily meditation practice, a loud jive rocked my body from the other side of the room.
This sonic groove engulfed my personal vortex, oscillating my chakras. My roommate and I shared very close quarters. He told me he was worried that the music was disturbing me. I appreciated his concern. He was delighted when I remained unperturbed. Surprisingly… more than it NOT bothering me, it added value to that experience. I went into a trance state and connected to the sound waves. Delightfully I remained focused on my oneness with ‘source’. Immersed in a subtle sonic sea.
Do you have a meditation experience where sound coursed through you on all levels of your being? Tell Us about it in the comment section below.
That roommate always turned me on to excellent music. Opening me up to new sonic expressions. I am grateful to him for sharing these different ideas.
As I went deep, the sound waves tantalized my senses. It effected me on a physical level. Sometimes the purpose of meditation is to get away from the physical. I am sure that some of the monks I studied with would say that this experience was moving further from pure ideation. Some might think that this was counter productive to the goals of that meditation. Connection to crude things distracted my connection to the subtle, blah blah blah etc… I have found there is always someone, even ones with credentials, who may poo poo anything. So I choose to enjoy… If it is not hurting me or anyone else… it is good. Also… most importantly… God is the essence of all phenomena.
I feel that if everything is ONE, then we have to be very careful when drawing the line between crude and subtle, or bad and good. Oftentimes when something is very powerful it can be used for good or bad. It is up to the person wielding the tool. Music falls into this category. It is a very powerful force and can inspire people to do great things or awful things.
Our oneness can be broken up into different subdivisions. These subdivisions serve to help our puny mortal minds understand. The common three are mind, body, spirit. Some go even further to subdivide these. Astral, karmic, conscious, unconscious, subconscious, elemental, causal.
Anyways back to sound. Sound is a wave. It moves with a frequency. There are peaks and valleys. Although all things vibrate, sound is a vibration, in and of itself. It is not a solid thing that also vibrates. It is pure vibration. Actually that is not entirely true because sound cannot exist in a vacuum, but that is a whole other blog post. So that being said it can cause other things to vibrate. The reason that we experience the sound is that the wave causes tiny bones in our ear to vibrate and thus the sound is registered by our brains through neurons etc… A singer can hit a high pitch which breaks a wine glass. When your at the dance club you can feel the bass in your bones because it is physically vibrating your body.
We were attending MICA, Maryland Institute College of Art and I suppose my roommate had as much right to noise as I had to quiet. I know the feeling. It is always nice to jam out to some fresh tunes while you work up your latest painting.
I was sitting on the floor in front of my closet. I had my altar erected at the bottom of the closet. I sat where my bed once had been. I convinced the dorm manager that I didn’t need it and it was moved elsewhere, to storage or another room I suppose. This is the point in my life that I began sleeping on the floor. All of the monks that I studied with were required to sleep on the floor, so I adopted this practice, and have found it preferable to a bed ever since.
I often followed the monks rules better than some of them. I was so focused on this path that many of them were convinced that I would become a monk. I remember little children at the meditation retreats confusing me for a monk. I remember them calling me ‘Dada.’ This is what we called the monks. The male ordained were Dada while the female ordained (nuns) were called Didi. I never took vows to become a monk. My little joke is that I like coffee and sex too much to be one of the celibate ordained. 😉
When I was sitting in my half lotus in my dorm room I chose to experience that vibration and remain focused on the most subtle supreme consciousness. The essence of the universe. In a way if you focus on any one thing long enough, with enough intensity, it will lead you back to source because everything sprang from that pure essence. So I swam downriver, in the stream of sound, and let it take me to the sea of pure consciousness.
Want some music to stimulate your chakras? Click here.