We are the music of God

Some time ago, I was at a concert and listening to the orchestra beginning to tune up. It was the most discordant sound I've ever heard. Each instrument was playing in its own way, in total disharmony. Then the oboe, a quiet little instrument, began to play and all the other instruments turned in on its note. And gradually, all the disharmony began to calm down. Then there was silence, and the concert began. It seems to me that the mantra is very much like that little oboe. In meditation, the mantra brings all the parts of our being, one by one, bit by bit, into harmony. And when we are in harmony, we are the music of God.

How one cultivates silence

One cultivates silence not by forcing the ears not to hear, but by turning up the volume on the music of the world and soul.

As if all notes were contained in any single note

The first three notes -- the root, the fifth, and the minor third -- seemed entirely magical. In their simplicity he heard the implication of the whole piece itself, and from that, from his awareness of the fugue, came an awareness of all-of-music, as if all notes were contained in any single note. The perception was evanescent, but so powerful as to wipe away thoughts of himself. Music is here! Music has been here forever and always will be here! It was so much larger than life, so ineluctable strong, so potent an indicator of a kind of heaven on earth, that all else was swept before it. He saw this in a flash. In a nanosecond.

June 1997 (Vol. X, No. 6)

BLESSED BE, dear friends, as we journey into a new season. May we remember to pause and listen to bird-song: a reminder that each one of us has a soul-son deep within the silence of our hearts to bring forth into the world.

We can be played by the wind

We can be played by the wind, and what we speak will be the sound of the moment, bringing with the word the possibility of real change rather than the apparency of change. We all know this somewhere deep within ourselves, and although God gives us everything, it is up to us to be so finely tuned that the music that is played is of Truth itself.

~ from REASON IS POWERLESS IN THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE by Reshad Feild
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The origins of music lie far back in time

The origins of music lie far back in time. It arises out of proportion and is rooted in the Great One ... That from which all beings arise and have their origin is the Great One ... When the world is at peace, when all things are at rest, then music can be brought to perfection.

~ from THE SPRING AND AUTUMN ANNALS OF LU BUWEI by Di Jiangyue
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Silence burst into song

At a certain pitch of religious experience, the heart just wants to sing; it breaks into song. Paradoxically, you could say when silence finds its fullness, it comes to word. As the Book of Wisdom says, "When night in its swift course had reached its halfway point and deep silence embraced everything" -- when night was at its darkest and deepest -- there "the eternal Word leaped from the Heavenly throne": silence burst into song.

~ from THE MUSIC OF SILENCE by David Steindl-Rast
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We each listen to a different music within

We each listen to a different music within, one uniquely our own. A special joy is finding and refining the creative spark which leads us to follow in rhythm to the pace and tempo of our God-given talents.

~ from JOY by Beverly Elaine Eanes
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Praying without words

BACH gave us God's Word
MOZART gave us God's Laughter
BEETHOVEN gave us God's Fire
God
gave us MUSIC that we
might pray without words.

~ from a German Opera House
Unknown music

A distant melody

In total silence he perceived a distant melody. It could be coming from the stars, from the bottom of the sea or from the night itself... It was not like any other, not even like the purring of the sea on tranquil nights before the storms... Juan sang drawn by the music that reached him, and, like the night, his song made him brother to the trees, the seagull, the mollusks, the wild flowers that spring up in the sand. "This melody is the murmur of the sea that covers all humankind."

~ from THE HOUSE ON THE DUNES by Roberto Viola
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The infinite musical variations of wind

The infinite musical variations of wind, water, and bird summon differently, but each is woven into delightful textures of notes, tones, and silences.

~ James Mahood
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Without music no discipline can be perfect

Without music no discipline can be perfect, for there is nothing without it. For the very universe is held together by a certain harmony of sounds, and the heavens themselves are made to revolve by the modulation of harmony. Music moves the feelings and changes the emotions... The very beasts also, even serpents, birds, and dolphins, music incites to listen to her melody. And every word we speak, every pulsation in our veins, is related by musical rhythms to the powers of harmony.

~ Isadore of Seville
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Those who know the music

There are those who know all the notes; and there are those who know the music.

~ Sam Hamill
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I did not hear the anthem, I was it

One night, as I kneeled beside my bed and prayed, I gazed through my window at the starry night. I thought of how God was THROUGH, and yet BEYOND, all space. Suddenly, I had the sensation of being surrounded by a musical harmony like a great anthem, only inaudible to the human ear. Then I just seemed to evaporate until I too was THROUGH and BEYOND the stars.

I was completely filling space, and the musical harmony was completely filling me. I did not see the proverbial Light, I experienced it. I did not hear the anthem, I was it... I understood that everything was part of God, everything in the universe was one.

~ Janice in "Re-Visioning Childhood Experience" by Edward Hoffman
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Silence is a symphony

Silence can contain within it all the music that can be played, for all of it emerges from silence. A word is a note. Silence is a symphony.

~ from IN SPEECH AND SILENCE by David J. Wolpe
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Adding our separate voices to the song

We are part of the tremendous through
Forever surging in transcendent flight,
Perilous though the journey be long.
And all, it is ordained, will earn the right
To add our separate voices to the song
Rising triumphant from the chorus of the light.

~ from SONNETS OF THE ANCIENT TEACHING by Reginald Winder
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We are the music of God

Some time ago, I was at a concert and listening to the orchestra beginning to tune up. It was the most discordant sound I've ever heard. Each instrument was playing in its own way, in total disharmony. Then the oboe, a quiet little instrument, began to play and all the other instruments turned in on its note. And gradually, all the disharmony began to calm down. Then there was silence, and the concert began. It seems to me that the mantra is very much like that little oboe. In meditation, the mantra brings all the parts of our being, one by one, bit by bit, into harmony. And when we are in harmony, we are the music of God.

~ Laurence Freeman
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How one cultivates silence

One cultivates silence not by forcing the ears not to hear, but by turning up the volume on the music of the world and soul.

~ from MEDITATIONS by Thomas Moore
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As if all notes were contained in any single note

The first three notes -- the root, the fifth, and the minor third -- seemed entirely magical. In their simplicity he heard the implication of the whole piece itself, and from that, from his awareness of the fugue, came an awareness of all-of-music, as if all notes were contained in any single note. The perception was evanescent, but so powerful as to wipe away thoughts of himself. Music is here! Music has been here forever and always will be here! It was so much larger than life, so ineluctable strong, so potent an indicator of a kind of heaven on earth, that all else was swept before it. He saw this in a flash. In a nanosecond.

~ from BODY AND SOUL by Frank Conroy
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To dance through life

To dance through life
we must listen to the
music within.

~ Alan Fischer
Alan Fischer music

So shall I sing my song

So shall I sing my song. The melody winds through creation and forms the Name of the deepest Mystery and Being ... is unspeakable and as simple as the bee and the hummingbird and flower, is as constant and as changing as the cosmos. The Name is Now. With each moment the song is new. Each call of the Holy in and to me releases a surprise of melody I never knew I knew before. I didn't. Awareness. The Holy One makes all things new -- always, all ways, now. I must be attentive to my singing. I am new. I can always be a song fuller than could be imagined yesterday. I sing my life and I sing creation. Your Name is the song.

God tuning the great musical instrument of creation

Old illustrations show God tuning the great musical instrument of creation... We all vibrate sympathetically like different octaves of the same tone, our human hearts pulsing in the same rhythms as those of the material and spiritual worlds... We know we are well on the way toward soul when we feel interconnected to the world and the people around us and when we live as much from the heart as from the head.

The final reason of all music

The aim and final reason of all music should be nothing else but the glory of God and the refreshment of the Spirit.

We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence

All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song -- but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.

The fundamental music accompanying the entire dance of the spirit

The discovery that God is as close to us as water in a sponge, or that God is in our body's veins and arteries as well as in the veins and arteries of our lives, is the fundamental music accompanying the entire dance of the spirit... Through every movement and every gestures, every turn and return, every leap forward and every silent rest, the music remains -- not only beneath and over and under and next to and within. In the trees and in the lakes, in the laughter and in the tears, in the animals and in the sun, in the soil, the fire, the air, the water. In the lure and the invitation ... the responding, the searching, the finding, the remembering. And in every one of us.

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