Music Is The Strongest Form Of Magic
“Music gives a soul to the universe, flight to the imagination, and life to everything” – Plato
When you are having a really bad day, do you ever turn to music to shift your mind off whatever is happening in your life? Isn’t it amazing how music even without any lyrics can clear your head so that you stop spinning in the endless anxiety loop? Lift your spirits? Heal your broken heart? Do you have a play list that speaks to your inner world, one that you play when you are sad, or happy, or depressed, or in unspeakable joy? A playlist that expresses where you are and a playlist that expresses where you want your vibration to return to; a playlist that expresses who you are as a person in your inner world, your soul being authentically real?
“Music unwraps the heart, sings out the prayer, dances the Spirit, and opens the Soul” – Mary Davis
Music is used in so many ways. There are lots of musical therapies out there with sound healing. They play music at events to pump people up. They have religious music that simply takes you into heavenly places. Listening to a movie soundtrack you can feel the drama even without the visual scene happening. Music can take you up on a emotional roller coaster, from laughing hysterically one moment and then down into the depths of sadness and despair the next. It can be sexy, religious, militant or patriotic. It can raise energy up and have you dancing across the room to a primal beat or soothe you to dreamland.
Commit To Your Dreams!
I invite you to join us on April 4th for a purposeful gathering. Our intention is to create moments of life-changing conversation on how to make 2020 the year of achievement.
Chances are that what you’re struggling with, others are too. What life questions you have been asking yourself, others are asking themselves too. Get clear on what you want and how to obtain it. If your 2020 dreams and goals are already stalling, get recharged and refocused. Learn how to pivot to success. Join us for a gathering that no one will forget.
“Music makes us want to live. You don’t know how many times people have told me that they’d been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That’s the power music has” – Mary J. Blige
Music is the strongest form of magic. Every culture has it. No matter your situation in life, no matter how poor you are, you can find a way to make music in your life. You can create a drum set from buckets or pots that you hit with a stick. You can fill water glasses with different levels of water to create sound variations. No matter what – your soul demands that you have music in your life. Have you ever sat and listened to a street musician that plays on whatever is around him to make sound? The pipe on the building, the concrete, the bucket – all make a different noise and the street musician knows how to tap each one to make a unique sound that he blends into music.
“Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us” – Martin Luther
One of my favorite bands Pentatonix, is a great example of music being created without instruments. When you hear their songs, you would swear that instruments were being played. They use the voice box, tongue, teeth, and lips to mimic the sounds of a drum, a guitar, and they create the music. They take the idea of music being the sound of movement to a whole new level simply with their voices. Listen to their version of “Hallelujah” and you will hear what I mean.
“Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black show sadness. But as you go through life’s journey, remember that the black keys also create music” – Shinzoo.com
Life can’t be all rainbows and lollipops. It gives you both happiness and sadness, the full emotional range of experiences. You appreciate the good days because you have experienced the bad ones. You also get a chance to see that even the sad, bad experiences, have good moments wrapped up inside of them. With music the sound creates the canvas for the musician to color with the lyrics. I think that is what drew me to the quote for the photo. Sometimes it is the music that reaches inside your soul to expresses your emotions when words just don’t seem to cover it. Sometimes it is the lyrics that express perfectly what your hearts music is trying so hard to put into words.
“Whenever I have a problem, I sing. Then I realize that my voice is a lot worse than my problem” – Unknown
It is hard to tell someone in a way that they can hear, how much you love them. How much a friendship has meant to your life. I have these special girlfriends that I have known, some for just a few years and others for decades. I know that I could call them right this second and say – I need you here right now, and they would jump in the car or book the flight within minutes. And I would do the same for them. It is such a blessing to be able to call someone and the first words out of their mouth is, how can I help – what do you need, and I know they mean it. I am in gratitude that I have this in my life, both that I would gift it to them and they would gift it to me.
The lyrics of a song can sometimes convey what our minds and heart can’t think of to say. The best lyrics help you smile through the tears. They bring you to tears. They give you goosebumps, or as we call them Godbumps. The best lyrics help you realize answers to questions you didn’t even know you had. Music can teach you things about how to live life. Lady Gaga’s music may have conveyed to you that it is ok to be different, and to be proud of it. Taylor Swift has every bad boyfriend song there is. Michael Jackson taught us to look at the man in the mirror. All of the music genres teach you something about life.
“Music is a world within itself, it is a language we all understand” – Stevie Wonder
When my mom was in a good mood she was playing Neil Diamond. When she was in a bad mood, the opera was playing so loud the people in the next town could hear it. If the opera was playing, you either stayed outside or went quietly to your room. If she was just humming, it was the best time to ask her for what you wanted. My mom was totally into expressing her moods with her music.
Today I wish you the happiness of a Bob Marley song. And make sure your hear that Reggae music in your head as you read it. It makes it even more magical.
“Don’t worry about a thing. Every little thing is gonna be alright” – Bob Marley
Commit To Your Dreams!
I invite you to join us on April 4th for a purposeful gathering. Our intention is to create moments of life-changing conversation on how to make 2020 the year of achievement.
Chances are that what you’re struggling with, others are too. What life questions you have been asking yourself, others are asking themselves too. Get clear on what you want and how to obtain it. If your 2020 dreams and goals are already stalling, get recharged and refocused. Learn how to pivot to success. Join us for a gathering that no one will forget.
Grace Whispers To Our Soul, Lighting Our Way To Our Destiny
In a recent notes from the universe, Mike Dooley wrote,
When life hurts, when it baffles and confuses, when it doesn’t seem to work, these are just signs from me – as if I were tapping on your shoulder or whispering in your ear, trying to point out that something really, really important, is being misunderstood.
Warm hugs,
-The Universe
This is when we need grace to come into our life. When we need to shift our thinking. When we need reminding that life isn’t happening to you, it is happening for you. When we realize that we haven’t been listening to the whispers of the soul. When we finally notice that we are holding onto the present so hard, that we are preventing the future from being able to move in.
There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.
– Ralph Marston
Imagine that you are driving down a long flat desolate desert road. You see nothing for miles and miles but desert scrub brush and more road. It is late afternoon and the sun is nearing sunset. Every time you think you must be nearing the end of it, all you can see is more miles of unending road. Then from the backseat you hear for the hundredth time, “are we there yet?” Those sweet darling children that are hot, tired and hungry, whose constant refrain for the past two hours has been, “are we there yet?”
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way, becomes the way.
– Marcus Aurelius
Obstacles in our path are actually a sign that we are making progress. Obstacles are not road blocks, they are stepping stones that confirm you are on the right path. They are like mile markers on the long desert road. The numbers get higher and higher telling us how many miles we have actually traveled. They are proof of progress.
Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know everything happens for a reason.
– Albert Schweitzer
What we forget is that it is necessary for things to fall apart, in order that they can be shifted into coming back together in a new way. Think of the Rubik’s cube. The goal was to get each of the colors solid on each of the six sides of the block. They actually called them stress relievers. Are we in resistance when we are throwing the cube against the wall? Or are we in acceptance that we can figure it out ? Are we there yet? Do we have the vision to see obstacles as opportunities?
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad.
– Eckhart Tolle
The road being unending is just an illusion, just like the illusions of water on the hot desert road that disappear as we get close to them. How long the journey takes us is neither good or bad, it just the illusion that we attach to it that makes it seem that way.
We are like those children, with our journey of self improvement and personal development. We are constantly asking the divine, “are we there yet?” This is because we are constantly in resistance to our journey. We are resistant to transformation and change. This is where grace comes in, as we stumble towards the light. Grace is seen in the power of letting go and the power of moving on.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
– Socrates
Let the heat of the hot desert burn away all resistance. Let the hot winds of the desert strip away all of the excuses. Let the grace of a gentle healing rain restore your soul. Give up the need to know or understand.
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us.” Grace changes everything.
– Anne Lamott
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We Are Victorious Over Fear
We crash. We burn, and we get back up stronger, more resilient, and more determined than ever before. We are not victims, we are victorious.
– Garrett Paknis
With each step we add something to our life or, we release something out of our life. That is how change and transformation works. It is taking that step. That step towards our dreams. We don’t look behind us and waste our energy in feeding our fears. We just keep taking another step. Each thing that we release out of our life is something that no longer brings us joy. It no longer serves us. It might be that it is something that we have outgrown. Or it may be made up of disappointments. Something that feels like a failure or setback. We take out the lesson we needed and we release the rest. It is all the parts of the illusion that we are burning away. Those so called losses do not define who you are in reality. Only in fears illusion do they hold any power.
There is no illusion greater than fear.
– Lao Tzu
When we don’t release the illusions we can become frustrated with our life. Frustration is like damming up the river. It tries to keep flowing, but it gets stopped by the dam. At some point the water rises up to the top of the dam. Then it starts to trickle over. It isn’t yet free flowing. We start to realize that the dam is the problem. It is at this point of recognition, that we can at last redirect the energy of the river, to burn away the illusion of the dam, and begin to flow freely again to the sea. When your passion and your purpose are greater than your fears and excuses, you will find a way.
Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient.
– Dr Steve Maraboli
When we can at last see through the illusion of fear, we begin to get bold enough to use our voice to speak our truth. We can be brave enough to listen to the voice of our heart, to our intuition, our souls voice. And we can be strong enough to finally live our life’s purpose with full out passion. We are willing to be vulnerable enough, to be split open and let all our insides spill out onto the table. We are strong enough to be who we really are. To fully expose the parts of us that we had hidden away from fear of being seen. The phrase “do not be afraid” is written in the bible 365 times. A daily reminder to be fearless. So start everyday with this reminder to be fearless, breathing in the faith of walking with courage and fulfilling your divine purpose..
Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of, it is, however, something to be dealt with.
– Elizabeth Gilbert
It is not letting our dreams be deferred to “Someday Isle”. Someday I will have the time; someday I will have the money; someday when the kids are grown and through college. Instead we trace our stories to their roots. We liberate our soul to fulfill our dreams. It isn’t about “what happened to me” (see my pain and feel sorry for me), it is what we choose to do with life’s experiences. It is about look at who I have become, what I “chose” to become. What treasure we found within the experience, the hidden gem. It is about how it has exposed the better me that was hiding inside of it.
The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and the rains and scorching sun.
– Napoleon Hill
It is pausing as you inhale the breath. To pause listening to the question in the space of the pause. To hearing the answer with the exhalation of the breath. There in that space, is the creative spirit. It is waiting to take you by the hand. To walk the road of fulfillment of the dream. There in that space is the taste of possibilities. It is how that creativity bubbles to the top when we take the time to just breathe and listen.
We get a glimpse in that space of where we are heading. It invites us to plunge into the river and flow to the sea. To learn to dance down life’s road. Be curious, make great discoveries. Observe how the unknown can become joyful.
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The Question
Quoted from Insight of the Day: “Dan Kennedy said, “The failure to act is much more often the product of inner, emotional resistance than external resistance. To move forward you must give up your story, whether it is excuses about your childhood, lack of education, your ‘bad luck’, your unsupportive family, your low metabolism, where you live, etc., etc.”
Ask yourself “The Question”:
“Where you would like to be and have known you would like to be but aren’t?”
You must identify the causes of your internal resistance. Ask yourself “Why?” you want something but refuse to act in congruence with achieving it.
Identify what is holding you back.
Release the brakes.
Change a life today – starting with yours.”
If your personal purpose, professional purpose, and global purpose are not aligned, then you will have resistance. All three need to be congruent, running alongside each other in order for you to successfully accomplish your purpose. Just like the rowers in a race, the oars all need to be in unison to make any progress.
The stories that we adopted as children can show up in surprising places as an adult. I had an experience when I was a young child where I walked into my moms room and surprised her in bed with another man. Shortly thereafter my parents divorced. My story was that it wasn’t safe to be noticed or “seen”. If you drew attention to yourself bad things would happen. So every time I became successful in a job, I would sabotage that job and run away to a new one. It took me years of work to finally put all of the pieces together and figure out why I was doing this.
We all have these variations of stories that we cling to, because they are known and our ego tells us they keep us safe. Some are from what was a major event to a child, and some are from something so minor that as an adult it astounds us that we have this belief formed out of misconceptions and the misunderstanding of what was happening around us. Some are just mantra’s that we heard as children that formed a deep seated belief internally that we may not even realize that we have.
What I know is that if we ask the question and just sit with it, surprising beliefs and thoughts will surface. And if we keep sitting with it asking why, and going deeper into the well, we will discover the incongruency and once we do, we can release that emergency brake and go full speed ahead to our destination.
Resistance
“Any action we may take that’s created by resistance within us to something unwanted in our life ensures only the continuation of a nature so asleep to itself that it can’t see the difference between always trying to escape a prison, and not entering into one in the first place.” – Guy Finley
This reminds me of the saying,” we have seen the enemy and he is us”, which came from all things a comic strip. I have come to appreciate that whenever I am resistant to something, it means that I am in adrenalin and I need to stop and step back. The resistance means that I am either pushing for something to happen or pulling away from something that I am afraid will happen. Either way, the resistance is an indicator that I am going in the wrong direction.
When I am creating from a space of ease and grace there is no resistance. It doesn’t mean that life is always easy with everything flowing into place, or that life is never hard. It just means that I am not painting myself into any corners, or putting myself into a self created prison.
Any resistance is a sure sign that I am not on purpose with something in my life. When this happens I go back to the foundation, which is my personal life. If my foundation isn’t correct, it will mess up my professional life and my global purpose. My professional life is based on a balanced personal life and fuels my global purpose. In other words, if my personal life is screwed up, it follows that everything else I do comes from trying (unsuccessfully) to escape a self created prison (my personal life).
When my personal life is on purpose, it causes my professional life to be on purpose. When what I try to create comes from being in touch with my life’s purpose it always flows strong from that foundation. A successful professional life is what creates fuel to achieve my global purpose and which in turn fuels me to have a successful personal and professional life. I believe that it is absolutely all connected.
Whenever something is wrong in any part of my life, I go “back to the beginning” (one of my favorite quotes from Princess Bride from Inigo Montoya – since I started from the comic strip it is only fair to end with a great fantasy movie) and look to see if I am coming from the adrenalin lifestyle and if so, I need to go back to basics. Take a deep oxytocin breath or two or three, and look to see where I have allowed drama and static back into my life. I pull those cords, release the tension and rebalance back to a state of ease and grace.
That is the really cool thing about the essence of our character, once we realize how the trap is created, we can refuse to enter the self created prison cell in the first place. And we can end with the GI Joe quote, “knowing is half the battle”.
Flames of Resistance
“Agreeing to walk into the “flames” of resistance is the only way to find real and lasting freedom from their illusory nature.” – Guy Finley
Smoke and mirrors – that is what resistance is. Our mind is putting up the things that we are afraid of, to keep us in the same comfortable space. Whether we would be successful or fail, it doesn’t care – because either way we will experience change. And our mind hates change – period.
You are shown a wall of fire, which is the fear talking. As you psyche yourself to walk through it, the flames expand from a small barrier to take up the whole hillside and your mind is screaming to run. You can feel the intense heat, hear the crackling of the flames as it races down the hill towards you and you start coughing from the smoke being blown towards you. You know it isn’t a real barrier, but to our limited vision at the moment, it feels all too real.
But if we can take a hold of courage and walk through the illusion of fire, on the other side of the “fire” is flow, fresh energy and the knowledge that you need to succeed. Want to go on a “firewalk” with me?
Resistance
“Resistance always bites the hand that feeds it.” – Guy Finley
What are you being called to do that you are resisting and why are you resisting? Negative thoughts or reactions are fueled by resistence. It is you not only listening to the negativity but it is also you accepting its judgment. Don’t listen to the negative voice. It is just a road block – walk around it and keep going towards your dreams.
Become aware of the calling. Listen intently. It is your soul calling to you. It is your hearts desire calling out for consumation. Instead of running away, meet your limitations and walk right past them. Answer the call. It not you, then who?
Resistance
They say that what you resist persists. Resistance to what is happening in our life, makes us attached to what we don’t want and it drains our energy.
I thought of a practical example being a rip tide (current). It you try to resist the current and swim back to shore the tide will fight you and it will win. However if you allow the current to take you and you swim parallel to the shore eventually you will swim right out of the current and the ocean will take you back to shore.
Resistance to what is, like a rip tide, wears you down and doesn’t change what is. Resistence is the drama, it stresses you out, so you become an emotional wreck. Resisting what is can actually escalate the pain and frustration that you are feeling.
Instead stop resisting, stop the drama, and drift with what is happening, and keep looking for the break that allows you to “make a change in yourself”. When you change your response, you stop resisting,and then what you are resisting will change. It’s making tiny small course correction changes that keep you angling towards the shore looking for the break, that allows you to break free.
Bad Experiences
“Pain only exists in resistance. Joy exists only in acceptance. Painful situations which you heartily accept become joyful. Joyful situations which you do not accept become painful.There is no such thing as a bad experience. Bad
experiences are simply the creations of your resistance to what
is.” – Rumi