The joy of living is the best of all medicine.
The word music comes from the Greek, muse. In Greek mythology the nine 'muses' were sisters,
presiding over the arts and sciences, poetry and song.
The idea of music as a healing influence which could effect health and behavior is at least as old as
the writings of Plato and Aristotle.
Music can stengthen the mind, unlock creativity, and heal the body. Quite simply, music is good for you.
It is good for you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Music can relieve stress, and release endorphins,
the body's natural defense against anxiety and pain. Like a Rosetta stone for the 'code' of higher brain function,
music facilitates neuronal patterns involved in brain activity.
It is now known that the ear is the first organ to develop in the embryo, and the fetus hears sounds in the womb.
The mother's voice serves as a sort of sonic umbilical chord for her developing baby.
At birth the baby relaxes little, until it hears the mother's voice. It is at this moment that
the infant leans in her direction in recognition. The mother instinctivly feels
this, and is likely to sing lullabies, expressing her joy and love through tender melody.
Music has a pulse as does everything that lives. The fetus is aware of the mothers heartbeat.
the earth and cosmos are naturally musical, and all life responds to and makes rythm.
The resurgence of drumming, chant, and other sacred music shows that the modern psyche
is longing for the regenerative power of musical harmonies.
And musical harmonies do indeed have transcending powers.
Shamanic drumming has been known to produce expanded states of consciousness and
Church chiors have often reported hearing 'more' music than they themselves create.
It is not just coincidence that angels are associated with harps!
Dance can be an expression of pure joy and a study in grace.
It is a natural expression of life and living,
We can see dance movements in the swaying of trees and the bounding leaps of deer.
Dance is a way to give voice to feelings we are unable to express in words.
With words you can rationalize and hide your deep emotions, with your body moving in dance
you are unlikely to do so.
Thus, authentic dance expressions become a bridge between our consious and unconscious minds.
Through this, dance movement provides an awareness of the mind and body interrelation,
promoting physical and emotional intergration.
Through dance we may discover a wider expression of life,
an expression that is able to guide us into a healthier relationship with our bodies
and tap into our body's wisdom.
Creativity, spontaneity and the arts are transforming ingredients in the search for wholeness,
harmony and balance.
Dance offers these healing aspects in a holistic approach to health and well-being.
Dance can also provide a sense of communion with other dancers,
which of itself is a soulful form of healing.
When we were children we knew how to play.
We understood then that doing nothing or anything, imaginatively, would nourish and brighten our spirits.
But as we grew older, we seemed to loose our ability to play,
and slowly a deep down saddness prevaded our soul.
We began to believe that the magical kingdom was lost forever.
However, all is not lost if only we will fight 'the good fight' to regain our ablity of play.
Real play, play of the spirit, springs from the heart.
It is the triumphant victory of the heart in the joy of living.
It is sporting with your loved one, or loved one's'. It is common ground for all.
To celebrate the creative play of childhood, enjoy something you may not have
experienced for many years: finger painting! This is a creative activity you can enjoy
over and over again. While some people are delighted by this prospect, some scoff, and
others are mildly amused. In the end the experience almost always turns out to be amazingly
rewarding and definitely fun. Those who have never finger painted find it a very freeing experience.
Others find that it brings back important childhood memories buried under the struggle of adulthood.
For some, the rewards come in suprising insights days, or even weeks, after the experience.
Another activity you may not have tried in some time is kite flying, yes, go fly a kite!
Adults tend to deal conversationally with kites in terms of children's fun, but every year when the
weather is warm and the wind is soft, millions of children discover, while watching grown-ups,
that the bigger and older one is, the easier it is to keep the hand on the kite string.
Rediscovering the joy of kite flying can uplift your spirit along with the kite itself, on the gentle breeze.
Love is like cool water in a dry land. And what your heart knows instinctively is now a proven medical fact,
namely, that a companion makes life worth living and consequently, you live a longer, healthier, life.
Making love is one of the most compelling and pleasurable of human activities.
It is the foundation of the continuous unfolding of life.
Every one of us is the product of this coupling.
All of nature reflects this coming together of the feminine and masculine.
These two principles are seen everywhere.
Seen as the two great poles of the universe, they are know to the Chinese as the'Yin & Yang'
This polarity is not an opposition, rather these poles are completely complementary.
They could not exist without each other.
This is obviously true because without both sexes there would be no children.
However, this is also true in the psychological and spiritual sense.
When a man and woman are right for each other; their loving unites the cosmic polarities of Yin/Yang.
Through this both can experience the 'Tao' or the 'natural essence' of universal harmony.
By coming together in love, they find something which is bigger then either of them as individuals.
Indeed, it is possible for them to feel as if they have found the other half of their very soul.
This experience, in which the right lover can awaken parts of our psyche which are usually dormant,
is the basis for the famous psychologists Carl Jung's penatrating insight into foundations of the unconcious mind,
know to us as the Archetypes Anima and Animus.
Mystic poets have expressed the very real experience of union with God as similar to the very real
experience of union with a lover.
These mystic poets used their creative imaginations to express this phenomena,
and likewise you also may come to realize that your lover is the embodiment of love,
and therefore the higher power of love.
Lovers are two hearts meeting in the one great heart of the omnipresent power of love.
It is not only a wonderful emotional experience that you share;
it is also a taste of the most fundamental force of life
Making love therefore can be a high mystic and spiritual experience, for through loving
each other, you are loving love itself.
In the midst of busy lives, it is important to make the time to remember that the senses
are the source of all physical pleasure. The senses are our means of connecting our private inner world of feelings and emotions
with the shared world which we see , hear, taste, smell and touch.
Your erotic life, the expression of your sensuality in every dimension, is the mysterious and lovely vehicle for the intergration
of all that you are as a person and a spirit.
Somewhere, intuitively, we all know that love will make more of us than we ever would have become on our own.
When you fall in love, there is another spiritual entity brought into being.
this is the 'we' and 'us', and altough it is invisable, it is utterly alive, vibrant, vivid and unique.
The 'we' is continoulsy present as a discrete though subtle energetic essence.
You can feel it when you are alone together, it is the constellation of ideas and emotions which is the mysterious unified play of your two energies.
It is the joy, which as a couple you bring to all those around you.
*'You-and-I'* it's one word!
Remain strong in your quest for truth, wether it is sorting through many books, or on your knees in prayer.
When we are sure of our own thoughts and convinced beyond doubt, it will no longer be important to convince everyone else.
Neither will we squander our life's energies arguing with those who disagree with us.
Indeed, we may find those who sincerely disagree, provide arguments that motivate us and strengthen inner convictions.
These arguments, made without attacks, may even liberate us and allow growth in new directions.
Overcoming anxieties and building self confidence are life long tasks, but the process can begin immediately, here and now.
Life must have meaning, value, and purpose, or we die: we die standing on our feet, with our eyes open,
but blind, with our ears open, but deaf, our lips moving but speechless.
We need to become as open minded to conviction, and as willing to listen, as those who are seeking to recover their health can be.
Break the bonds that bind you. It takes courage, but this courage will lead to new insights.
It is up to us to forge a new life as well as a new consciousness for our society.
There will be resistance, and taught perceptions when strained lead to anxiety, both personally and socially. However,
your first duty is to the truth and to yourself.
All of us can take steps; no matter how small and insignificant at the start, in the right direction we want to go.
Every day we should do something that will extend us; we should win little victories over our fears that will widen
the world and our lives. We will gradually learn in this way about the undreamed of potentialities which we had all the
time but never used.
The door you have to walk through is a lot wider than you may think. There is only one key, and it is called willingness.
If we are to love others and to love life itself, we must have a true love for ourselves, a healthy self image, a sense of self appreciation.
Of course, fully alive people will feel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. They will grow into deeper, more sensitive, and more compassionate individuals precisely because they have suffered; but they will suffer.
Our participation in the fullness of life is always proportionate to our vision. Whoever in not living fully is not seeing rightly. However, to give up on an old vision in favor of a radically different perspective always involves the limbo of the in-between, the temporary experience of chaos. This is why there is always an initial period of disorientation of disintegration. It is a necessary part of the growth process.
It is foolish to think that human growth can be accomplished instantly and without pain. There is no painless entrance into a new and fully human life.
Hard, patient, disciplined long term effort is required to achieve the things you desire from life.
Successful people not only have goals, they have goals that are meaningful to them. They know where they are going and they enjoy the trek.
To develop and maintain a perspective on the way you live out your love of self and others, self awareness is necessary. Examine yourself and your life. Moments of silence and reflection are essential.
Complete retirement from the world, clearing one's spirit of all burdens and pressures, so that one's hidden potentials, buried in unconscious processes, will have a chance to come to light.
Otherwise you will be swept along by the complexity of things and run the danger of losing yourself in the world.
Those who practice a personal, solitary, regular discipline for at least one hour per day for several months gain many psychological benefits. One of these is an increase in resourcefulness. This develops the strength or self esteem which is ultimately tied to creativity, love, and worth. Which in turn help guard people from worry and anxiety when difficulties arise in their lives.
We need some version of reality by which we can judge the rationality of our thoughts and to which we can conform our vision or belief system. But who is to say what reality is?
Each of us perceives reality in his or her own way. The qualities most needed for the construction of an adequate and accurate vision are openness and flexibility. The trap to be avoided is rigidity.
Rigid people live fixed and static lives in a small world. They keep their world small so they can handle it. Though they won't admit it, they are terribly afraid to attempt any more.
Fear is a soul sickness in its own right. Fear in turn can generate further ailment within the person or relationship.
These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundation of whatever sort of life we are trying to build.
The only possible way to grow and live more fully requires a change in our perspective.
To understand why many of us stay voluntary prisoners of distorted visions, we must review briefly what a vision does for us. It may shed some light on why we are so reluctant to rethink and revise the vision with which we began the journey of life.
When we human beings first look inward at our own reality, we immediately begin looking for order, patterns, cycles. We learn to relate causes with their effects. We are looking for, in one word, predictability. Knowing what to expect gives us a sense of security. It enables us to make decisions about how to act.
And this is perhaps the main reason why we are so reluctant to change our vision, even when it is a cruelly imprisoning vision. There is a lingering fear that in giving up the old vision, which has provided predictability and consistency, I might fall into chaos. I will be lost without a guide.
The trouble is that there are no guarantees that the new will be better than the old. Isn't it a question of one bird in the hand being better than two in the bush? Who wants to trade in a known for an unknown without some kind of reassurance? Dying to the old and being born to the new is a frightening prospect.
If I give up the old vision, which made some sense of life and provided a source of direction for my behavior, will a new vision keep my life intact in the same way?
We are creatures of habit. We cannot step out of old habits into prefabricated new ones the way we change cloths. The changing of habits, by its very nature, has to be gradual. However, staying in the old ruts isn't easy either. To persist in the old, diminished vision requires that the one must constantly deny all contrary experience and information. One must stubbornly reassert his or her faulty vision in the face of contradictory evidence. This can be strenuous and exhausting. It results over a period of time in considerable inner tension and stress. And the stronger the contrary evidence, the more energy the poor person must expend in the mechanism of denial.
We will become exhausted defending our imprisoning vision. Such an orientation to life must be labeled neurotic. The vision that the victim of rigidity tenaciously clings to for peace and security has become the source of considerable unhappiness and insecurity.
Flexability and not being rigid is a necessary trait for creativity and growth.
The more one sees clearly the falseness or distortion of previous perceptions, the more one will be liberated from former tyrants, and begin enjoying the fullness of life.
When we give up our quest, we shove life's questions into a closet in the back of our minds. Once and a while, a wind blows through our lives, and the closet door swings open. We battle against the wind to close it once again. Frightened by what lies behind the door, we exhaust ourselves in the effort to keep it shut. Unanswered life questions are the real skeletons in our closets. Far more than by our dreadful deeds, we are haunted by these unanswered questions; who am I? And what am I doing here?
Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue. In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible. An assertion of the self, a commitment, is essential if the self is to have any reality.
As we persist, a brand new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable.
The dammed up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish in the light of the sun. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquillity takes its place.
Flexible people are growing people who live in an ever expanding world. They sanely acknowledge that change involves both danger and opportunity. They know they can get hurt by possible miscalculations, but they also know that nothing is ever final or irrevocable. If one continues to review and revise there can be no final failure.
When we are determined to meet life's challenges, we come to see problems as opportunities for creativity, growth and new answers. In this way, we tap a source of knowledge within us that carries us through all difficulties and helps us transcend them in practical ways that actually bring us to places, people and things we need. In this way we can eventually be resourceful and let go of the false idea that we cannot live fruitfully in the world.
Taking a shortcut only because of impatience and the desire to move ahead more rapidly can prove destructive. Any attempt to shortcut growth can result in serious trouble. We often become impatient when we want something. We prefer to rush our goals rather than move at a slower pace, taking one step at a time but achieving greater personal growth. Part of the problem is that our minds move so much faster than our ability to perform. We can think of all kinds of things we would like to do. Thinking takes only seconds, but becoming what we think takes time; a long time in some cases.
The skill of an Olympic star takes years of hard work to acquire because there are no shortcuts to excellence. Such skill does not come with the first try, perhaps not even in the first thousand tries. Like the Olympic skier, you must work and grow before you can solve your problem easily and achieve your goal. And that takes time, patience and persistence. We wish for things to happen fast. But real growth, the kind of growth that happens from the inside out, is far more gradual.
Priority means choosing the thing that in most important to you to do and then organizing your life so that you do it.
Who's setting your priorities? Other people, events, the situation around you? Are you making your own decisions about what you should do first or are you setting your priorities by default? You will never be what you are meant to be or reach your goals until you take charge of your priorities.
The fully alive person travels with the confidence that, if one is alive and fully functioning in all parts and powers, the result will be harmony, not chaos.
When a goal is right, go after it. Take charge instead of accepting indecision and timidity. If you have authority, use it rightly, but use it!
Do not worry so much about whether you please other people or not. That's the most common reason for timidity and indecision.
People tend to respect the person who takes charge and makes decisions. Instead, set high standards and move toward them.
Grow toward your standards.
We need to make our time our own. We need to stop graspping for more time and learn to appreciate ourselves, our life,
and the present moment. We need to slow down, not speed up.
We can begin by understanding that there is no destination in time. The journey is the process.
We can begin by viewing time as a timeless state comprised of meaningful coincidence rather than a maechanical, clock driven entity.
We have all been conditioned to believe that our rewards will come with the future.
However, there really is no other moment in time but that which is happening right now.
Discovering the joy of concentrating on the task at hand instead of time, the power of timelessness becomes a part of everyday life.
If you pay attention at every moment, in a magical way, by slowing down, you become more efficient.
Trusting in the natural flow of things encourages you to rely more on your innate sense of order and less on outer or
conventional scheduling.
The more comfortable you become with clockless nows, the closer you'll move toward your ultimate goal of
eliminating unnecessary time-induced pressure altogether.
We must live in the moment, we must be right here, right now, becuase that is where our life is; right here, right now.
"For thou shall be in league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." JOB: 5, 23
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