Music Opens Perceptions

Performance at Thorncrown Chapel

Music ​opens our ​mind to things we may have forgotten​,​ or​ ​perhaps​ have​ never known. I love to sit with ​a ​symphony orchestra, opening my mind to only the music, until at some point I feel there is nothing else in the world. I recall Wayne Dyer talking about muscle testing using different items. ​Holding an organic banana ​near his heart ​allowed full strength in his son, whereas holding a CD of raucous music left him much weakened. ​We all enjoy music in many forms, and ​on multiple​ levels. Something we would ​like with friends at a party may not compare to the quiet strains of Bach, which take us deeper within ourselves prior to meditation or writing. Find the music which opens you to hearing the messages which  Life, Truth, and Love are offering you. Surround yourself with this river of salvation and see where it takes you!

“Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He was a musician beyond what the world knew.​ ​This was even more strikingly true of Beethoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart. Mortal mind is the harp of many strings, discoursing either discord or harmony according as the hand, which sweeps over it, is human or divine.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 213:19-29

Solution is Love

It can be quite depressing to watch the lengths people are willing to go in order to justify evil actions. As long as history has been recorded, we have heard irrational words being used to excuse bad behavior. Politics, religion, bullies seeking importance — well, I’m preaching to the choir here, and so I won’t go on giving examples. Also, the quote attributed to Einstein about only wanting to hear about a problem as an identifier, and then only being interested in solutions — that speaks to my heart. The solution is Love. Anything which is abhorrent to our sensibilities is a product of fear — false evidence appearing real. The guiding force of the universe is Love and this recognition is ours to claim. 

“This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 96:12-20

“It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an ‘enemy,’an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are. 

If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source, for it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.”

 A Course in Miracles W-170.3-4

We Are All Sculptors

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

The first thought we have in the morning shapes the way our day develops. I’ve visited this topic more than once in past writings. Having spent years training myself to stay away from worry and busy-ness, it’s disheartening to find myself waking up in the morning to wandering thoughts. For a few weeks, I've been having vivid dreams and I wake up thinking about what they mean. I've forgotten to bring thought to Spirit, instead allowing a wandering brain to slog through a maze of odd events featuring people, animals, and places which are well-known to me. This seems to be affecting the way I think about things all day long. It doesn't matter how much I try to push and pull my thoughts in other directions, they insist on making judgments, comparisons, and searching for hidden meanings. And so I’m going to return to training tools I’ve used in the past, insisting that my brain repeat well-loved verses from Mary Baker Eddy, pondering their meaning, and taking a stand for Good even before I get out of bed.

“The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your lifework, and adopt into your experience the angular outline and deformity of matter models. To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 248:12-29

Abolishment of War

“The man of imagination, maintaining the absolutely neutral position of Principle, with no pro-this or anti-that, is the one who will discover steps and techniques for communication leading to the abolishment of war.” 

We Are the World We Walk Through (or Christian Science, Re-explored) by Margaret Laird 

“The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.” A Course in Miracles - T-23.I.1:1-9

The Body Cannot Contain You

 

Grotto spring - Eureka Springs AR

Photo credit: Aaron Springston 

What do you think of when you hear the words, "There is no death"? You may think of someone living on in your idea of heaven, continuing in much the same way as we knew them. We find it comforting to think we will see them again, continuing our lives as before they left us. I, personally, think of the change we call death as a grand adventure. Who knows for sure what this change will bring? Some even have an idea that the afterlife is whatever you think it is: if you believe in a traditional heaven and hell, so it is; if you see everything as eternal energy, so be it. You probably have some ideas and intuitive feelings about this, too. I’ve been examining these concepts lately, and I'm comfortable with what I’m feeling.

“When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life.” A Course in Miracles - The Lessons of Love

“If the belief in death were obliterated, and the understanding obtained that there is no death, this would be a ‘tree of life,’ known by its fruits. Man should renew his energies and endeavors, and see the folly of hypocrisy, while also learning the necessity of working out his own salvation.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 426:12-16

The Solace of Music

 In times of trouble, people turn to music for solace. You may have seen the video of a little girl singing "Let It Go"in the Ukraine. It was wonderfully moving when Yo Yo Ma played Ukraine's national anthem at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Then there is the man who moved a piano into a German train station to welcome refugees. There's a video of a woman joining him in "We Are The Champions" as she is fleeing her country. Music expresses joy, sorrow, elation, or horror. We use music to celebrate or console. We all have individual needs for soul soothing these days. Reach out and embrace the music which provides you solace and joy...

"Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 213:24

Peace on Earth

 Peace on Earth - by Renie Britenbucher

I read a letter from Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein, wherein he wrote to him asking if there was a way to free humankind from the threat of war. Mr. Freud has quite a bit to say about this subject, but one phrase which brought pause is, “...the lust for aggression and destruction”. I had never thought of it that way, and it caused me to take notice. Part of his conclusion is as follows: “The upshot of these observations, as bearing on the subject in hand, is that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity's aggressive tendencies. In some happy corners of the earth, they say, where nature brings forth abundantly whatever man desires, there flourish races whose lives go gently by, unknowing of aggression or constraint. This I can hardly credit; I would like further details about these happy folk.” In our world, we see famine and harsh conditions in many places. I question whether this is the way creation is supposed to evolve. I’m pretty sure when we follow the laws of nature, life as we know it would become Life as we wish it were! Namaste ...

"Heaven: Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality, bliss, the atmosphere of Soul." Mary Baker Eddy, Science & Health, Page 587