Practicing “The Gig” vs. Practicing “Guitar”

In Jack Canfield’s “The Success Principles” he describes two olympic athletes who at each training session would do a “mock olympics”. The coach would call out their names exactly in the format that would go down in the real olympic competition, score them perfectly and award them the gold medal.

Of course the reason it appeared in Canfield’s book was that they did win the gold medal in the real competition. When they were in the competition they felt like they were back at their gym with their trainer.

This is a very deep lesson actually. It’s about bringing yourself through sensations – auditory, visual, and kinesthetic – into the feeling of the ACTUAL moment that you’ll be in. It’s a fast forwarding of sorts, and actually you can take yourself from the 4th dimension (time) somewhere else in the 5th dimension (all possibilities starting from now). By living in the end result, you find your way to get there….auto-magically!

I didn’t readily see how I could use this concept with music performance until last week.

Today is Feb 6, 2010. In about 3 weeks I start an 8 week tour through Germany, Austria the UK and I finish off in Belgrade, Serbia. That’s my “olympics”. I gotta kick butt, but practicing at home is so different from being on a concert stage. (Or is it?)

At home, I can just sling the guitar on and walk around in my pajamas and play a tune 100 times until it feels good. I can have a coffee, chat with a friend on a break, and go back to play some more.

The concert stage is totally different. (Or is it?) In concert…

I need to entertain for 90-120 minutes.
There’s no going back to fix mistakes and no playing the same tunes 3,4,5 times.
There are lights shining brightly in my eyes so I sometimes can’t see the frets.
Playing through a PA presents a new sound problem – all of a sudden I need to adjust to a new sound.
Jacket buttons hit the guitar unexpectedly.
I get thirsty, I sweat and I gotta make people happy!
I have to get the vocal mic (for beatbox) and the guitar to behave together sonically.
I have to play a tune or two that may be a bit rusty, and play it like I mean it.
It’s a jungle out there!

Doing the first few concerts is disconcerting if I have been off the road for a month or two, to say the least.

Then I realized the meaning of this story about the athletes. As well, after listening to videos and audio programs of great speakers like Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, Esther & Jerry Hicks, and others – I realized that a SERIOUS amount of prep work goes into what they do. It’s no accident that they pull off their seminars and workshops with total finesse.

I had my AHA! moment. I decided I’d “do a concert” here at home by myself instead of my usual “practice routine”. Of course I’ve done many concerts before but I saw a new opportunity to improve my show and up my game! I could do exactly what the athletes did. For many this would be a “nice idea” but I decided to follow through and really do it, so that I could report back to you.

I set up my PA system here at home (my neighbors got a concert I think…) and wrote out my concert program. I got dressed up in my suit, and even shone my desk lamp in my eyes to simulate stage lights. I set up my mic, set a glass of water nearby, and everything. I put cologne on, and set up the video camera. I tuned up in the bathroom (my dressing room) and came out, announced myself the way most emcees do, and tore up 2 hours worth of music.

Unfortunately the only groupie in sight was my cat, Brina.

All I can say is WOW. I actually got so many of the “head trips” of playing a concert I saw that this is truly great performance practice technique. Duh, some people call it a dress rehearsal, but once again – this is something not generally “taught” to solitary musicians.

Solo musicians run their “pieces” but rarely “run their show” I didn’t think that it was possible in this habitat (my studio apartment) to access the difficulties of the concert environment, but it actually was!

My biggest goal now is to forgive myself for mistakes on stage and continue with the music, and to be more and more “in the moment” while playing. Great performers “flow” and it can only get better and better. I’m curious to report back from the road and say if this practice technique was in fact helpful.

It’s also interesting to feel the pacing of songs as they fall between other songs. I’ve done this now 2 days in a row, and the “flow” of the set felt much more natural today. Damn, I wonder where this will get to after a week, 2 weeks, etc.

In watching the video (I only caught the first hour, my flip cam hard drive got filled up) I was surprised, as I suspected I’d be. Songs I thought were “B” level were “A” level, and vice versa. I also caught some serious flaws in my presentation, realized I need a wardrobe and especially need hairdo upgrade.

I am sure my mind will churn for days on this, but heck I’d rather start this thought process now than after the first few gigs! Seeing one’s performance as an outsider is totally different than the inner experience of doing it.

Yes, it’s important to be a great musician, and a great guitarist or instrumentalist – but performance “chops” are a whole other set of skills. If you are performing anywhere as a public speaker, reader, comedian, magician or musician – set up a performance environment for yourself and try this NOW.

“Great musicians can be sucky performers and great performers can be sucky musicians.” That’s my quotable quote of the day. And, guess who gets the bigger money at gigs?

If you are a performer of any sort, do try this at home! You’ll be amazed at what you experience.

Meditation, Affirmation, Vibration and Groove

In quantum physics, the very very – teeny weeny (the scientific term) small stuff is examined. When we see how the very small behaves – we discover new ideas about how the big stuff behaves. When we see that a photon behaves according to the “observer” we then see that life around us does too, and so on.

Many quantum physicists turn to meditation. Through the study of physics, they actually arrive at similar conclusions that eastern religions, particularly Buddhism, have.

Since I was as young as I can recall I always saw the “time” problem – that clocks do not measure time and that we are in a constant “now”. The idea of time being a string or thread belongs to one mode of our thought. I can recall seeing a second hand move and just thinking “now, now, now” and that the clock was not saying anything real at all.

Imagine if we looked at units of time the way we look at the big and small of the universe and quantum physics. What happens in the smallest moments happens in the biggest moments too, and vice versa. What can we observe?

Did it ever occur to you that if you clap your hands, that sound itself is thousands of moments in time? Don’t believe me? Record it and look at the sound. You can chop it up a million times! Think on this and you’ll see that our notion of what a “moment” in time is is really impossible to measure and is totally relative to our minds.

Did it ever occur to you that you can look back at years and years of time in a single moment? Thousands of people reporting near death experiences indicate that they reviewed their entire lives in a single brief moment.

The measurement of time is strictly part of our apparatus as humans, and has no real absolute value. 15 minutes seems like a lifetime at the post office. A fun activity makes time vanish! And so on.

I am practicing meditation, use affirmations and I set goals. Suddenly I have “peeped” or noticed a thread which binds them together, beautifully. They are the same, when the measurement of time is eliminated!

Meditation as I am practicing it now is a “coming back to the breath”. When the mind wanders and I notice it, I come back. Eventually I hit a flow state, outside time. The main thing to note is the focus of the mind.

Affirmations are something I do daily. Yet the idea is the same, is it not? No matter where my mind is, I am bringing it back to a single point of focus just as I did in meditation – only on a daily basis as opposed to a moment by moment basis. The allowed interval of “non concious focus” is 12 hours (if I say them 2x a day) Isn’t this a sort of meditation on a spread out scale? A regular rhythm and coming back to a mental focus.

Someone once pointed out to me that a musical tone, when slowed down starts to sound like a pulse. When you start a lawn mower you hear the pulse, and as it speeds up we hear the tone. We call these 2 sounds something different, but they are not really different. A high frequency on down to a cycle of thousands of years can still be a groove. “Frequency” is a term relative to our human experience and apparatus but there are high and low frequencies out of the range of our perception. Hearing someone sing an in tune “pitch” is in fact – perfect rhythm.

This is all just food for thought. Just as the quantum physics point to a new idea of behavior of the very large things, maybe we can look at short, fast vibrations of time to understand longer cycles in time, and vice versa.

Maybe in fact meditation, affirmation, vibration, rhythm and groove are different words for ultimately the same thing – just with different frequencies and intervals of time. Even in our regular waking state we often talk about “staying focused” to accomplish things. We set goals and come back to the vision of completed goals to choose our actions of the month, week, day – and down to the moment.

Meditiation is a focus in the moment. Affirmations, going to the gym, practicing an instrument etc are a daily focus. Church, laundry and other things of that nature are a weekly focus. Holidays are a yearly focus. Take time out of the picture and you have focused activity on a regular basis.

Until next time….

Love, Eternity and Watching Life Flow By

Greets Friends.

Just yesterday I got word that my beloved little cat Brina, is diabetic. Ok, no sobbing out there, stop it! I had a cat years ago who was diabetic and yep, it sucks and eventually they die. Most importantly, I’m gonna make sure this little critter gets a lot of love and comfort for her remaining days here which could be weeks, maybe months.

This brings up a lot of feelings of course, and I start to know what I am made of spiritually. It’s easy to say the words “we are all one, we never die, time does not exist, there’s no real losing or winning in life” and so on. But when things do in fact happen in life, the “rubber hits the road” and then we know what we are made of. Words go out the window, and it is time to “walk the walk”.

And now, I am standing on another peak of my spiritual landscape.

I look back and see that a woman with whom I was very serious for 3 years (we’ve been apart for sometime, no worries) is leaving NYC in a few days. My God – my marriage to my ex seems like a lifetime ago. My little kitty will leave soon, as my others have. Goals which were wild dreams but a year ago have been accomplished and are yesterday’s news. Where did it all go?

But….

I look ahead and of course there are new things coming, new relationships, new music, new experiences as well. Vibrant relationships, joys, music and more experience awaits.

What’s constant is the eternal “flow of life”. The flow never stops. There is this process of watching it all flow by, and as I watch I know this – when the “stuff” of life appears and dissapears, the only real thing left is love. That which remains after all the “Broadway Show” of life is simply love itself – a colorless, invisible essence that is a delicious, essential vibration and the basis of all that we do and strive for.

By seeing what changes, you then can see what doesn’t change and what is eternal. It then becomes clear that Love and Eternity are intertwined, and maybe even perhaps 2 ways to describe the same thing. Maybe they are other ways of describing and/or knowing God. They are certainly closer to knowing the Essence or Source of life than words or imaginings could be because they are an experience – not an idea.

When everything rises and falls, we see that Love alone is real.

Until next time…

Adam Rafferty – Message to UK Fans & Free Cd Offer

Greets Friends!

This is a big thank you to friends and fans worldwide, but a message especially aimed at my UK based fans. I will be doing some concert dates there April 2-15, 2010.

I get emails constantly asking when I am going to be on tour there and am eager to play there.

This is part of my “full court press” to get the gigging, touring and most importantly – friendship – going full steam ahead there.

Free Autographed CD Offer to UK fans

Just send an email to the email address ukfans at adamrafferty dot com and you’ll get a “secret passphrase” immediately. Of course I will also personally answer your email and we’ll have a nice dialog!

Be the first person at any UK gig to tell me the secret passphrase and you get a FREE autographed CD.

This seems like a fun thing to do. As well, by sending me the email I will get to meet YOU and at a glance see my UK fan base.

Dates are on the itinerary page at adamrafferty.com

See you on the road! 2 minute video message to UK fans below…

Adam

Diving Back Into Life

Greetings Friends!

Upon returning from my last tour, I felt oddly disconnected when I got back to NYC. Yes it was my apartment – just as I had left it, yet it felt like a memory. Relationships with family, friends and everyone here felt distant as if they were a memory from a past life. I had been away almost 2 months and went from daily European trains, planes, automobiles and people 24/7 to – total silence! AHHHHH!

When I got back I thought – that’s it. I’m gonna be “the monk” of Jackson Heights. I meditated a lot and looked at the contents of my mind. I didn’t want to go back to the “old life” of running around NYC and the b.s. drama of people, family, and egoic pursuit of anything wearing high heels. The quiet and calm felt great and made me feel very in control.

I then had a good taste of the waters that demonstrate “life is not outside it’s inside”. It’s weirdly and beautifully true when you see without a doubt that you, we, I create our own reality.

We assemble pictures in our minds, an add meaning to them. Even if something out of control happens, we create our story and mental organization of what hits our eyes and ears and we are 100% responsible for the story we tell ourselves. (This is a tough one to swallow.)

I realized that many people don’t get the chance to have this quiet experience that I was having – to sit on top of some kind of peak (which felt a bit lonely) and able to look at life in this quiet, still way. I am not saying it was “deep” or even pleasurable. I am just saying it was quiet and clear(er).

I have no kids, no pressing drama, no madness that I am caught up in the way most people are. Most of my friends and family are caught up in the drama of work, the non stop noise of raising a family, psychotic behavior in their interpersonal relationships, the drama of debt, and so on.

To be honest, the quiet and spaciousness was delightful at times and very disconcerting at other times. I’d feel “now I am free and my spirit can now soar into the heavens”. This would be swiftly complimented with waves of lonliness and wanting to also “have a story”, have human interaction and contact. It was equal parts of pleasure and pain.

It’s a helluva lesson to see that everything is okay in one’s life and negative feelings can still bubble up. It’s the cure to blaming others and blaming circumstances. I had to take a look at this and had to admit that I am not done developing and learning.

The little jolts of pain and lonliness were not something though I just wanted to “squelch” and look away from, repress or escape from. “What is this quiet? What is this lonliness?” I thought. Then I’d see how just with my own thoughts I could change feelings. I could make lonliness vanish without actually having other people involved!

I saw one night that a state of “seeking and wanting” rather than a state of “having and loving” was my own responsibility and that the latter would be an attitude of joy, the former resulting in lonliness.

I noticed also – and amazingly – that all these sensations were all inside, and that I was 100% responsible for my reality. Thoughts and pictures led to emotions, and I get to choose the thoughts and pictures. (Another hard one to swallow.)

Unlike most people whose life feels like a runaway freight train of outer circumstances and blaming other people, I got to take a quiet peaceful and sometimes lonely look at the whole picture. It felt sober and healthy to wake up on some chilly sunny winter mornings by myself and simply “be”, and reduce my “thinking and spinning”.

At that point in my spiritual readings the passages about relationships being “the basis for our growth” started speaking to me and making sense. The next biggie to see is that others (YOU) and myself stem from the same source, and that we are truly “one” in nature and not separate. Thus, having others in my life just allows a deeper inquiry into who I am and why I am here. And, relationships with others will surely show me weak spots the fabric of my personality and psyche.

The joys of giving and receiving, the birth of new friendships, and the sometimes gritty dealings with family and close friends are something I am not done with just yet. I felt it was time to dive back in and saw that the perfect situations for spiritual growth can actually lie in everyday relationships.

Straight ahead! Until next time….

Vision Boards – Tapping True Spiritual Magic

Greets Friends, and Happy New Year.

It’s 8:30 am on New Years morning 2010. I am happy to say that I had a delightful night last night at home, popping in tablature in my computer for a new guitar project. I feel wonderful now, while many are dragging home after a night of partying.

I have had a story in the can for some time, and been wondering if I should put it on my blog, so here goes.

I know that the “religion / spirituality du jour” is the Law of Attraction stuff. It is a pity that so much of it on the net is bastardized to be packaged up and sold as a money making trick – “learn how to be spiritual and you’ll get rich!”.

That’s a pretty shabby and shallow way to look at a binding law of the universe and how we as humans function. I happen to enjoy the more heartfelt teachers of these principles – like Esther and Jerry HIcks. Check them out!

This “Law of Attraction” and visualizations becoming materially real is a law on this plane, just like gravity. You and I use it always, constantly throughout our lives. Allow me to illustrate.

- You want a cup of coffee, and envision it. In minutes you have it.

- You pull up the Google homepage and do a search. You find what you are looking for, and call up a webpage that matches the picture previously in your mind’s eye.

- You see an article of clothing, maybe on someone else that you like. Soon you have a similar article of clothing, but prior to that it was only an image.

- You have an idea to exercise, and find yourself exercising.

The same holds true for big items, and even unwanted items. As Lester Levenson said, the mind is an oven. Put a shoe in the mind, you get a shoe. Put a million dollars in the mind and you get a million dollars.

I have a story for you.

After being inspired by John Assaraf in the hit movie “The Secret”, I started to work on a vision board. At the time, I had just discovered the great guitarist Tommy Emmanuel and been very inspired by his playing. It was a dream of mine to share the stage with Tommy one day.

I went to go see him perform at a venue called “Highline Ballroom” in New York City on June 8, 2008. When I came home, I had the ticket stub in my pocket from the evening.

I had bought the ticket online so along the edge of the ticket, my name was printed on the ticket with the same font.

I then had a silly idea. What if I cut out my name and carefully pasted it over the opening act’s name, so it would read “Tommy Emmanuel and Special Guest Adam Rafferty”. So I got my scissors and tape and got to work. In about 5 minutes I had my new ticket stub.

This felt like the silliest thing I had ever done. After years of playing professionally, making CD’s, and touring – to reduce a huge goal career move to some voodoo just felt crazy and dumb. I dared not tell anyone.

I then tacked it up to my vision board and glance at it every day. (Cork boards at Staples cost about $10)

Adam Rafferty creates Tommy Emmanuel Ticket for Vision Board

Little did I know that feeling silly is a great symptom, in this case. It sets up what’s called “cognitive dissonance”. The concious and subconcious mind start to disagree and the subconscious mind then works 24/7/365 – even while sleeping – to resolve the dissonance between “what we think it should be” and “what is”.

Plus the mind responds to images – not words. To see my name on the ticket with his was something that sank deep into the mind, more than saying “I’d like to play a concert with him”.

About a month later a friend urged me to go to the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society yearly gathering in Nashville TN. I had no plans or intention to go and on a whim followed his advice and bought a ticket for a weekend in Nashville.

I knew no one there when I arrived, but was quickly greeted by the world of friendly guitar players. They knew me from Youtube. Then one guy approached me and requested that I play him my version of “Chameleon” with human beatbox, so I did.

After a friendly pow wow with him he told me that he had organized concerts for Tommy Emmanuel in Finland and that he’d like to help me by getting me on the gig as a special guest.

The excitement of all of this was wonderful, and the last thing on my mind was a vision board. I thought “No, this was happening because of youtube, my wonderful personality and playing skills and my perseverance.” The vision board was not even a consideration!

As a result of this meeting, I got to perform with Tommy the first time in Helsinki in April 2009. As I was there I had to pinch myself. “Am I living reality or is it all a dream?” I thought. I then went on to do some concerts and touring as a soloist after that.

Upon arriving home in New York City, my eyes glanced at the vision board. I saw the ticket hanging up there. “Oh my God, the vision turned real!” I thought. I started weeping at the awesome power that was demonstrated. This was an awakening.

Every decision along the way started with planting the seed in my mind of that ticket on the vision board. From flying to Nashville right on through to being on stage with the man himself, the cognitive dissonance HAD to get resolved.

This is much deeper than “willpower”. Seeds don’t sprout from willpower.

To know that this is law is powerful, exhilarating and frightening at the same time. I know now that without a doubt I create my reality. Now the question is “what do I want?” because I know that without a doubt, it will all manifest exactly as I envision it.

We are all unbelievable glorious creators that do this constantly, every day, all day. Just like a dog or cat is unaware of gravity, many of us are unaware that every idea, thought and word propels us into what we call “reality”.

Don’t try this because you’ll “get what you want”. Do this and behold the delectable sweetness, magic and majesty of the Creator.

Happy 2010!

The Magic of Yearly Goal Setting

Greetings friends!

I am writing you from a freezingly cold December afternoon in New York City. Christmas is a week away, and I have not bought a single gift yet. Tomorrow, I’ll start shopping, I promise!

With each blog entry I try to describe something of benefit to you, and I try to see a principle operation in my life. And it’s not about me being a teacher at all. It’s more about you the reader and I beholding a piece of “real magic” and hopefully learning and observing together so that you can improve your life as I improve mine.

One thing that was a huge turn off growing up was and teacher, advisor or advice giver who didn’t walk the talk. In between the words and the sentences lies the feeling and vibe of truth, and you know if someone is full of bull or not.

I try to make myself the guinea pig before writing or speaking. Whether it’s a musical principle or a life principle I test and observe. Then I speak or write.

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I am reflecting on this past year 2009 and it’s had ups and downs – but I gotta say, truthfully it has had more ups than anything. I attribute this to weekly “mastermind” / accountability meetings with a friend and bassist extrordanaire Paul Beaudry. (our duo album is coming soon fyi…)

I had an awesome streak of goals that I met – I released the Stevie Wonder Guitar Instructional DVD, the Chameleon CD, the Christmas Guitar Celebration CD, I toured for several months non stop, and appeared 3 times in 3 continents on stage with Tommy Emmanuel.

Whew! (How did he do it all? Read on…)

On a weekly basis (when off the road) Paul and I met over morning coffee and acted as “accountability” partners. Each of us would get an hour for our “stuff”. We would advise eachother, tip eachother off to resources and encourage one another. We’d each leave the meeting committing to action that must be taken the following week.

After accomplishing “things” and seeing principles in action you see that the most powerful thing you can do is visualize. You already do, as a matter of fact. If you are envisioning what groceries you’ll buy and find them in your fridge ours later – you used visualization!

Humankind has known this for centuries, and devoted to the power of prayer and belief since ancient times. Now that us humans are going deeper and deeper into the mysteries of quantum physics, it gets more and more mysterious.

What we see in our minds eye, and what we believe is what we get.

It’s very fashionable to talk about this stuff these days, all the LOA and “The Secret” stuff. But doing it – really doing it – and seeing it, is breathtaking.

Paul and I used a system this year by success mentor Raymond Aaron called “annual backwards goals”. The idea is that you envision yourself at the end of the year, going to a New Year’s Eve party and thanking yourself for the goals you have achieved. That’s right, so on Feb 12, 2009 I wrote myself a letter but dated it December 31, 2009 thanking myself for achieving the goals of 2009 that at that time – had not yet been achieved.

What’s super cool about mapping the year’s goals out is that it adds a new dimension to your monthly goals, then to your weekly goals and of course daily goals.

The result? Well this process sets up a picture in your mind, and every action, discussion, email, phone call and breath end up being directed towards the accomplishing of those goals. No, not in a pushy conscious way but in an automated, sub-conscious way. It is as though the goal was a vortex whose gravitational pull you can’t escape. Your mind functions as as a success seeking mechanism.

This works equally well for anticpating bad events and worrying – so one needs to be strong and envision the good stuff. A mental couch potato has no problem seeing the bad in life or worrying. It takes strength to keep one’s vision positive and productive!

I very much hope to somehow empower musicians and artists (and everyone else) to harness this awesome power. These principles for many years were written off as feel good mumbo-jumbo, but what you start to see is that faith, vision and creativity are far more important than what lies in front of you. What’s in front of you physically is already the past, but your vision and ideas are the future.

Quantum physics is proving that the outcome of experiments changes depending on the “observer”. The observer is co mingled with matter and energy and is part of the experiment. If this is the case, know that your observation and vision manipulates the matter and circumstances around you too.

Happy Holidays! More to come on this fascinating topic….

A Glimpse into Attachment and Aversion

As a musician, returning from a tour can be tough. After nights of gigging, seeing new places, meeting new people, being the center of attention – to come back to the mundane existence of the same old neighborhood and dusty apartment can feel very dissapointing. It stirs up huge amounts of attachment to the “exciting parade” of touring, and aversion to my “boring life back home”.

As they say, it’s always darkest before the dawn. How true. Allow me to share the rays of today’s sunrise with you.

Whether it’s love one wants, or money, or security, or an object – the feeling of “being incomplete” until the object of desire or situation is acquired is itself the source of misery. How many of us walk around feeling incomplete all day long? Maybe your job is not good enough, the car, the house needs fixing, I want a new gadget, etc. It goes on endlessly until the madness is seen for what it is. Must we walk around feeling incomplete? We often do so automatically without inquiring into this feeling.

For about a two weeks an intense feeling of wanting has come over me due to the ending of a relationship. Being the spiritual seeker that I am, I decided to use this situation to look deeply into the nature and causes of my pain and suffering. It’s one thing to do it in the abstract – but to really apply knowledge and insight when the emotional rubber hits the road is quite the test!

By knowing the feeling of “not having” this person in my life, it follows logically that I know what it feels like to “have” her, right? Both feelings are accessible to me, right? If I know the pain of being without something, then I know the love of being with it, right? Could I somehow find harmony and oneness in this duality of having vs not having? Is there one big reality that contains both feelings? Can I discover the “coin” that these 2 sides belong to?

I started doing this inquiry on the plane ride home from Europe, and at the same time found myself contemplating how we were chasing daytime around the globe. I observed that it is always day, and it is always night somewhere on earth. There’s always part of the globe illuminated and part not. These 2 are linked, like yin & yang. One can think it is night yet it is day somewhere else, right? It’s not day or night – it’s both!

Aha! From an earthbound standpoint it either has to be day OR night – but stepping back to a more cosmic viewpoint, one sees it is equally both at all times. Could I see that feelings of having and not having are also aspects of one unified, non dual reality as well? Could I “go cosmic” in regards to my feelings of wanting versus having?

Much to my surprise, I easily called up the feeling of the “having” the love I yearned for – and let go of the lacking feelings for a brief moment. I fooled myself by asking if I could allow myself 30 seconds of relief to feel the “having feelings”. I felt it not as a memory, but a present moment feeling of “I have it now” – much like what is prescribed in visualization books. In an instant, I entered a whole new place through letting go of a lacking feeling.

Just think of all the things you have had in your life, toys as a child for example. You may no longer have them, but you might not feel that you need them to be complete now. You can feel that you have them even if you don’t, right? Can you see that the feeling of having is not necessarily based on the physical presence of an object? Like wise, you can have something and feel that you don’t have. Look at the person with the 5 million dollar house who wants a 20 million dollar house – they feel they don’t “have”. Crazy but true.

For example – I feel that I have my beloved Grandmother in my heart, with no longing to have here on this plane. The same for the beloved pets I have had. They are with me, and I feel that I have them despite their not being here. On the flip side, I have been on international tours and still held onto the feeling of “I need to get more gigs”. Crazy but true.

Can you see now that the sensations of having and not-having are ONLY feelings? I repeat – crazy but true. But sane to investigate this!

Lester Levenson laid it out simply. Want equals lack. Give up the lack feelings, and have it all. Simple and profound.

A shift in my viewpoint started a deep sense of “everything is ok”, “it is all given”, and peace emerged. Things still are what they are, but the feelings of “I’m incomplete” and “I want” transformed into “It’s all ok” and “I am at peace”. A shift in perception! Now that’s a true miracle.

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Here’s a little illustration you might enjoy:

“Christmas is coming and it’s time to get a tree. A feeling of incompleteness settles because we want but don’t have a tree. It’s urgent and necessary – we gotta have a tree. We get the tree and have to decorate it. More wanting, we gotta do it and won’t feel complete until we do. We do it, and sit back and ahhh…we feel complete for a little while. A week later – hey the tree is getting old, we gotta take it down. We gotta put all the ornaments away and sweep and dispose of the tree properly – more wanting. We’re incomplete until we do so. We do it and feel complete again now that the house is all cleaned up.”

Ok – nothing wrong with a Christmas tree, of course! But what I am looking at is the thread of “incompleteness” sewn through the experience and the relatively few moments of feeling complete woven through this whole scenario. Isn’t the feeling of completeness accessible to us more than this? I think so.

This example is just a microcosm of how we live life. I know there is a happier way. The feeling of completeness is always accessible to us, just the same way silence sits behind noise, waiting patiently.

Happy Holidays! I hope Santa brings you everything you want

Tour Diary – Dukkha in Cologne

Friends, I write almost at the end of a 20 concert tour in Germany.

I walked around Cologne all day today, in the lovely grey rainy weather. My heart was rather heavy today. Why? I got dumped. Yes, a wonderfully lovely lady decided that having a guy on the road was not right for her.

After months of saying “hang in there, I’ll be back soon”, she couldn’t stand the wait. I can’t say I blame her either. Heartbreak once again.

Tommy Emmanuel himself told me “the road is where it all breaks down”.

The temptation to suppress this pain today with either having a drink, a cigarette or to eat myself blind coarsed through my veins. Yet somehow, I just wanted to be as intelligent and semi-enlightened today as possible. I know from my Sedona Method / Release technique that a healthy thing to do is actually welcome the emotion – which allows a release to happen easily.

As I walked around the Cologne Dome I contemplated people who are REALLY suffering to start and get perspective. A good friend’s daughter was recently murdered and I cannot begin to imagine his pain. My own mom is aging and in physical discomfort. One of my best friends has no family left, and very much needs his friends. There are people suffering daily, feeling worse than me, maybe due to a political or economic situation….I think I will live through my small discomfort.

Upon arriving home, I googled the term “life is suffering” and stumbled upon on an about.com page on what the Buddha called “Dukkha”. It was interesting to see that it is not really “suffering” as much as it is a certain type of phenomena and idea about the scope of pleasure and suffering, without so much of a negative or positive label. That’s my dummy explanation. Read for yourself:

Article on Dukkha

One type of Dukkha is impermanence. I have seen it myself…how success wanes and fades, people pets and places come and go – anything we think is a “given” is sure to change. As it is not exactly suffering – and the writer of the article urges us to grasp “Dukkha” as a new word in our vocabulary.

With no claim to anything scholarly here (I am just a dummy looking for a little inner peace) I simply watch the fading in and out of events and people in my life. The newness of creative bursts come and go, gigs come and go, friends move out of town, parents age. Places I have called home change into other places. Cats who have been my loving companions age and die. Businesses that were my lifeblood seem less interesting. Love affairs change, grow and maybe dissolve. Whether they dissolve or not, they are in constant flux…

On the other side of the coin – there’s always more, there are new friends coming, tomorrow’s a new day, bodies heal and things change for the better too. New tunes appear, new business ideas and creativity simply “appears”. People appear in one’s life as if by magic. This is not meant as a positive pep talk – it is an observation of the principle of “it never stays the same”.

For now I’ll watch, listen breathe and try to find peace in this moment and contemplate what little I understand of Dukkha.

Quantum Physics and Music: Upward and Downward Causation

Greets friends. As I am wrapping up my November 2009 tour, I am actually feeling a sense of relief, and finding space to dig deep once again into creativity, meditation and life’s meaning.

While touring, I have to pay attention to mundane aspects such as driving, soundcheck, and playing the gig.

A thinker who I am very much enjoying lately is Dr. Amit Goswami. He was interviewed in the hit movie “What the Bleep” and has been a professor of physics at Oregon State University for 32 years.

He shares a view of history with us as to how, why and when a purely mechanical / material view of our universe came into being.

Apparently for scientists to have freedom they had to separate “mind and matter” so as not to step on the church’s toes. These are just a few of the insights and perspectives he offers into understanding our current thinking.

The big question of course is where does “consciousness” come into our life picture. Is it in the material universe, is it separate, and are events and things we see in fact solid and real?

Part 1 of 3 parts:

But that is only the beginning. I can’t possibly explain in detail what he talks about – so check it out for yourself.

What struck me in this series is his description of “upward causation” and “downward causation”.

Essentially the “upward causation” idea is evident in our universe that particles make atoms, which make molecules, which make elements and ultimately make our brain. So small particles build bigger bigger bigger – from the bottom up.

But what about the consciousness we experience? Where does it come from? Is it separate from the materials composing our brains & bodies? Does it precede it or follow it. Duh. Religion & philosophy 101, I know

Downward causation suggests that there is a higher reality, consciousness or God which precedes matter and that maybe the matter is even within that consciousness as a “possibility” that only seems real when we observe it. The idea of a God on a throne up high giving orders is a primitive idea, but scientific evidence is in fact showing that downward causation is real.

I considered what he was saying to see if it somehow applied to music.

What struck me is that music is more than the “assemblage” of notes built through upward causation. An unforgettable melody for example, is a perfect example of “downward causation”. Great composers regardless of genre experience this. That’s the melody being whispered in the ear, not a clever mind thinking of a melody.

“Groove” comes through downward causation too. Groove is an essence and feeling and come down from a higher, intuitive realm. You can’t build a groove that touches the soul through sheer mechanics, or metronome practice. And you can’t slap pitches together and hope that a good melody will be the result.

This also perfectly explains how a performance that touches the soul need not be technically perfect. With downward causation in music – even the simplest, least correct music can be a vehicle for emotional communication. Likewise, a technically perfect performance built through upward causation can lack the consciousness and communication that we wish to experience in a piece of music.

It is fascinating to see my musical ideals corroborated by quantum physics. It’s just so cool.

The expression “follow your bliss” now makes even more sense than ever.

Until next time…