I was twelve years old when I started performing onstage professionally. A group of us put together a benefit concert, educating the public on their choices: to be happy, to be at peace in themselves and in the world, to accept the responsibilities of their actions, and to protect the earth. Our mission, my mission, was to heal the world with music.
Since, I've incorporated spiritual practice into my work. It's been more than ten years since I began training as a yogi and meditator. I remember when I was young hugging trees and touching the earth. I was born with an innate sensitivity to energy, to the energetic body.
The integration of music and spirituality is essential. Music is that unseen energy that affects us so profoundly, that stays with us, that touches our heart, that is so much a part of our lives even when we are not aware of it.
Spirituality is such an individualized thing--the way we get in touch with our spiritual nature is unique to our experience. To know the truth of who you are you must live that impalpable you. When you live that thing, you become real, and that experience, that holy experience becomes something you can touch.
I've put online all the beautiful spiritual orations from Tuesday Night Mindfulness Group as well as retreats we've offered in Las Vegas and Southern Utah. Please feel free to listen to the clips offered on my web-site. And let me know how you feel.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET A REAL JOB?
TO THE ARTIST WHO LISTENS TO THOSE VOICES...Tell them to GET REAL!
Music is as close as I get to having a 'real' job. This work requests my full attention twenty-four hours a day. I give it about sixteen, particularly when I'm cutting an album, laying down tracks and mastering. This is an indie's work–relatively quick turn around. I don't expect to sound as well as the pros, but I do expect to get more out of my listeners than any Top 40 recording artist would. I ask for your time, your love, and your commitment to life, healing and recovery. What are we to recover from? From forgetfulness, from running on auto-pilot, and from sinking into despair, anger, hatred, ignorance and greed. Simply, WAKE UP! Make a shift in consciousness that will liberate you, and will bring you back to love, where all beings and the earth can benefit.
The most challenging part of music is putting into practice the message of the music. I can talk about enlightenment all I want in a song, but it is another thing to bring that enlightenment into my way of life.
Music is as close as I get to having a 'real' job. This work requests my full attention twenty-four hours a day. I give it about sixteen, particularly when I'm cutting an album, laying down tracks and mastering. This is an indie's work–relatively quick turn around. I don't expect to sound as well as the pros, but I do expect to get more out of my listeners than any Top 40 recording artist would. I ask for your time, your love, and your commitment to life, healing and recovery. What are we to recover from? From forgetfulness, from running on auto-pilot, and from sinking into despair, anger, hatred, ignorance and greed. Simply, WAKE UP! Make a shift in consciousness that will liberate you, and will bring you back to love, where all beings and the earth can benefit.
The most challenging part of music is putting into practice the message of the music. I can talk about enlightenment all I want in a song, but it is another thing to bring that enlightenment into my way of life.
HOW TO FILL THOSE EMPTY SEATS
To Audience Members and Performers,
I can't deny-emotion plays a huge role in the decisions I make in life. Especially my career. Where is the heart of the matter? Where is the gut feeling taking you?
I've been practicing yoga and meditation for many years. It has brought me to levels of awareness I'd not thought to reach or open to. All the more difficult to apply the practice to my daily life. How much of it to bring into my work--that work I present to audiences and to myself?
How much of it to let stay at the monastery or on the cushion? I wish to bring all of it to you. When I began healing with music I attempted the safer route of touching one person at a time...creating a ripple into society, into the world. But as I look at the empty seats filling the theater or the meditation hall...I wonder, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I shooting for what I believe to be the power of this work? Can I do more? Can I push the envelope a little further? Let's see!"
Approaching the release of a new CD I'm a bit scared. What to do with it? I've got the notion that spiritual practice and spiritual fulfillment means less, doing less, and receiving more. It doesn't always work. Sometimes to get more we have to work harder to get the message out there. To send it out through light waves and through effort, right effort. What is right effort? It depends on the circumstance. Where do you wish to be?
We author our own destiny. Our actions of body, speech and mind sing multitudes. Our every thought can transform our universe. The thought of love can transmit harmony on this planet. Even in anger I appoint myself to transforming that anger into compassion. What am I really angering for? Anger is a habit. I'm so accustomed to getting angry. When I don't get what I want, I quit, reserve the right not to communicate, and destine myself to fueling the anger inside, tormenting myself and others who happen to be the victims of my anger.
A simple thought--communicate. Not only to the person who is the object of my anger, but also to myself. Communicate what I desire. I have been angry because by now I thought I would be famous. I thought my albums would have sold millions, and that my talent would inspire many many people to transform their suffering into radiance and joy. How have I succeeded? I'm only twenty-seven. I've been performing for a little over a decade. That's not always enough, but it doesn't mean I have failed.
It means just what it is. I've come this far. I've chosen the best way. Everything I've done so far has not been in vain. Time and time again I've engaged in the struggle with the spiritual and material worlds, both require my time and energy, both are one, entangled, enmeshed, inseparable. How can we separate, how can anyone separate the spiritual and material realms? They need each other.
We talk about what happens after we die...but what is death? What is life? We talk of all the things we need to do in the life to fulfill the next life? But what if the next life never comes? What if we are born again right into the moment we left off? Then what? I will be stuck in this same situation, not quite the same, but not quite different either. The only thing that may have change is change. How to be complete with everything that is here now? That is the surest way of being fulfilled, of fulfillment spiritually and other.
Right now is the perfect time to be free. Right now is the perfect occasion to desire what we have. Oh Lord! What a beautiful life. This moment is the best moment of my life. There isn't any other moment I wish to live in.
I can't deny-emotion plays a huge role in the decisions I make in life. Especially my career. Where is the heart of the matter? Where is the gut feeling taking you?
I've been practicing yoga and meditation for many years. It has brought me to levels of awareness I'd not thought to reach or open to. All the more difficult to apply the practice to my daily life. How much of it to bring into my work--that work I present to audiences and to myself?
How much of it to let stay at the monastery or on the cushion? I wish to bring all of it to you. When I began healing with music I attempted the safer route of touching one person at a time...creating a ripple into society, into the world. But as I look at the empty seats filling the theater or the meditation hall...I wonder, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I shooting for what I believe to be the power of this work? Can I do more? Can I push the envelope a little further? Let's see!"
Approaching the release of a new CD I'm a bit scared. What to do with it? I've got the notion that spiritual practice and spiritual fulfillment means less, doing less, and receiving more. It doesn't always work. Sometimes to get more we have to work harder to get the message out there. To send it out through light waves and through effort, right effort. What is right effort? It depends on the circumstance. Where do you wish to be?
We author our own destiny. Our actions of body, speech and mind sing multitudes. Our every thought can transform our universe. The thought of love can transmit harmony on this planet. Even in anger I appoint myself to transforming that anger into compassion. What am I really angering for? Anger is a habit. I'm so accustomed to getting angry. When I don't get what I want, I quit, reserve the right not to communicate, and destine myself to fueling the anger inside, tormenting myself and others who happen to be the victims of my anger.
A simple thought--communicate. Not only to the person who is the object of my anger, but also to myself. Communicate what I desire. I have been angry because by now I thought I would be famous. I thought my albums would have sold millions, and that my talent would inspire many many people to transform their suffering into radiance and joy. How have I succeeded? I'm only twenty-seven. I've been performing for a little over a decade. That's not always enough, but it doesn't mean I have failed.
It means just what it is. I've come this far. I've chosen the best way. Everything I've done so far has not been in vain. Time and time again I've engaged in the struggle with the spiritual and material worlds, both require my time and energy, both are one, entangled, enmeshed, inseparable. How can we separate, how can anyone separate the spiritual and material realms? They need each other.
We talk about what happens after we die...but what is death? What is life? We talk of all the things we need to do in the life to fulfill the next life? But what if the next life never comes? What if we are born again right into the moment we left off? Then what? I will be stuck in this same situation, not quite the same, but not quite different either. The only thing that may have change is change. How to be complete with everything that is here now? That is the surest way of being fulfilled, of fulfillment spiritually and other.
Right now is the perfect time to be free. Right now is the perfect occasion to desire what we have. Oh Lord! What a beautiful life. This moment is the best moment of my life. There isn't any other moment I wish to live in.
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