My first attempts at meditation were heartfelt yet clumsy. I was very determined and knew it was going to work. A couple of friends were practicing Zen koan meditation and asked if I’d like to join them. It seemed like a great place to start as Zen Buddhism was a fresh and keen interest of mine at the time. Koan meditation utilizes the internal repetition of a short phrase akin to a riddle. This riddle acts like a mental formula that focuses one’s attention internally and through deep and balanced concentration on this phrase, the answer would emerge. I took to this willingly and practiced for 30 days straight, meditating at night for about 25-35 minutes.

By the end of the month I felt more agitated than calm. This was confusing so I abandoned this method and over the next few years experimented with a variety of styles. I tried following my breath, internal mantra or japa, and even creating my own phrases that would start and finish with the same word to create a kind of phrase loop. There were moments of deep connection and stillness of the mind, yet developing a consistent relationship with any of these methods never took.

Then one day I introduced music into the practice. They were gentle pieces typically ambient in nature and often drawn out with no percussion. It was like deep mental massage, something wholly different. The music absorbed me into its sound waves and I was no more. My visual imagination and innocent love for outer space would cause a never-ending expanse in my mind, and finally it seemed a long-lasting connection was made. Back then, I recalled my teenage self thinking about what it would feel like to not be conscious, and to clarify, this is not the same as being dead. This stemmed from my first exposure to notions of hypothetical physics like string theory and other hard to conceptualize ideas. So when pondering the absence of a bodied consciousness, I always imagined being far off, deep into the realms of outer space. And honestly, it didn’t go any further. I really didn’t know what else to think.

Several years later, there I was back in outer space seeking a bodiless consciousness. Music had become the invisible rocket ship flying me way beyond the moon out to the stars where there were no limits. Not surprisingly, stars are a fairly common subject in my own songs. There is a deep yearning to rejoin from whence I came, a humble disparate indiscernible collection of dusty particles from the far reaches of our Universe. Dissolving oneself completely into the sum of all that is known and unknown may be closer to a dream, yet with music there are moments where one can merge with everything. As energy and time progress, music will continue to gently guide and assist me in letting go of all that I know and once more completely dissolve into the absolute.

Open Third Eye Chakra: Sleep Chakra Meditation Balancing & Healing, Mediation Music