Mayan Dream Musings

This weekend I had the privilege of going to Chicago with Walt to cheer on Jason and Leah as they ran in the Chicago Marathon. Jason and Leah are my son and daughter-in-law. They ran 26.2 miles in cold and wind. When Leah and Jason run together, it is an awesome sight. They fly along effortlessly, heads high, long strides, smiles…and so obviously supporting one another. This was what we saw during 3/4 of the marathon. Then Jason had major leg pain and had to drop his pace back a little. Leah did not want to leave him, but they had a prior agreement that if this happened to either one of them, the other one would go on. As Leah passed us late in the race, she yelled out that we should check on Jason. A few minutes later, he ran buy, still running in spite of the pain. As Leah passed us at the end, she said “Wait for Jason”.

What a remarkable thing to witness. The love of these two runners for one another, and the courage to complete the race in spite of all obstacles. For Jason, it was extremely grueling at the end.

They both completed under 4 hours, and Leah is close to qualifying for the Boston marathon. Go Leah!

Jason and Leah carry this spirit of completion, even when things get pretty tough into their physics work. They are both on track to get their PhD’s soon. But it’s been a long process, with times when things just did not go well, and times when they weren’t sure WHY they were getting physics PhD’s. However, they both gave successful speeches on high energy physics in London a few months ago. It was very scary for them to fly to London and speak to the professionals. They were the only grad students. Everyone else was post grad, or employed as physicists.However, THEY DID IT. Because of their love, and their courage they will be successful in anything they try.

Two weeks ago, I visited the Universal Light Expo in Columbus. That was a fascinating experience. So many people are having awakening experiences in their lives all over the country. This can’t be a coincidence! Then, I met Xavier Quijas Yxayotl who is a Mayan musician. He makes all of his own instruments and has created flutes which make wind and birdsong, and drums which make the ocean waves. He talked with me and played some music for me. His original CD is one of my favorites . It’s called “Mayan Ancestral Music”, sub-title: Healing Music for Mother Earth, and his website is: www.yxayotl.com. GO BUY HIS CD! Also, he now has my CDs, and gave me a copy of his CD. It was a great, life changing encounter. For those of you who know Ann Beeching, Mona Will, and Ilene Satala…..their booths, which were right next to Xavier’s booth, were alive with energy. They glowed. It was so obvious that these three women have a passion for their art, that they live their spirituality in their physical bodies, and that they wanted to be in interaction with people. It was wonderful to see.

Now, I am focused totally for a few weeks on my music and my performance. As I approach my 60th birthday on the winter solstice, it’s very important that everything moves and changes to support this next time in my life. How lucky am I…..I get to be a full time musician of my own music for the very first time in my life.

Today the skies are SUPER dark. The air is thick with possibility. Will we have storms? Will we have high winds?
Will we have….dramatic pause here…….snow??

For everyone who read yesterday’s blog…thank you! To answer one unspoken question from those who care about me…..No, I’m not on the verge of financial or emotional breakdown. Life is good!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU: I would appreciate any information you have regarding search engines, i-tunes search capability and how to make my own music more visible in the midst of millions of songs. Thanks for any expert help you can give me.

NOW, ONWARD: It occurred to me that fear is a good indicator of movement and of stepping outside of my comfort zone and the predictable. I love to be in a comfort zone. It is so cozy! But then, being a fire sign, I get bored and ask for the unknown. Conrad Satala has written a paragraph that I read every morning and make my own. It goes like this:

“I allow a world view to emerge that is totally unknown and where the direction of this takes me into the unknown and unexplored aspects of myself and weaves together a totally new and unknown relationship of myself to others and life in general. I am 100% out of my comfort zone in order to incorporate a way of living life that never before existed for me, and one that is larger than the life I experienced before.

What emerges is a new cooperative system between the unseen and seen world and the calling upon the support of the unseen world into a world I now perceive as my outer sensory world. These perceptions were neither experienced nor ever existed before.” (Copyright 2005)

Well…..with all of that asking for the unknown within myself, with my relationship with the unseen world, and asking for new ways of being……it’s not surprising that fears come up pretty strongly. They are a part of the old me, and need to be released because a new me, and thus a new Mayan Dream Productions International, is emerging.

The great thing about fear is that it acts as a signpost. If I don’t ignore them, or act out of fear, my fears tell me a lot about what needs to be let go so that I can be the emerging ME. Releasing fear is a great house cleaning for my interior. In my perception, facing the fear, walking through it, and releasing it, is sort of like cleaning closets that haven’t been touched for a long time; looking at everything, throwing away, giving away, vacuuming the dust and dead bugs, etc. It’s hard work, but then you have a sparkling new opportunity and living (and finding stuff) is much easier.

I am learning that ignoring my fears distorts the natural timing of everything I try to do in my professional and personal life.

I have a marvelous symbol of this in my house: My washing machine started to act up at the end of last week. It would take the clothes through part of a cycle, or through four cycles, or refuse to spin them dry for 6 hours.
I sort of hoped that it would fix itself. Of course, I ended up calling the repair person on Monday because everything just shut down, leaving me with soggy, dirty clothes in the washer. We will be replacing the timer this week!

So….all of the emerging fears are just a sign that my timer needs to be replaced with an updated model that works! ……allowing me to create, perform, teach, distribute….all in the proper timing according to the synchronicity of the unseen world and the weaving that we all create with one another.

Have a great day!

Hi to everyone! Today I want to share my journey of walking through fear. I know my fears about creating, and about self-employment are not unique to me. Probably some of you are going through the same thing, and could tell me your own stories about how you are handling your own fears. I would love to hear them. Look at the left side of this page and scroll down a little. You will see the home page link under links. Hit this, and then go to the contact section of the Mayan Dream website. Click on the underlined link near the bottom of the page that says mayandream@comcast.net. This will give you an e-mail form to fill out. Then hit send. You may have some answers to my questions!

This week was the week to come face to face with my fears of being self-employed. It has been almost three months since I received a paycheck from an outside employer. I guess it took three months to fully realize that my income now relies totally on who I am and what I do. If I have an off day … if I get sick . .. if I take a vacation … if I decide to hibernate inside my house for a week….no one pays me for that privilege. Mayan Dream Productions International is ME. It is my teaching, my performance, my music composition and recording, and my distribution of music which supports me now. All of this is ME. And it is a very public display. Pretty scary! Am I up to this awesome and somewhat intimidating new life??

My own beliefs about my ability to perform, to teach come to the front with a vengeance. (Usually in the middle of the night!) Do people want to hear me? Is my music good? Is it worthwhile? Do people just roll their eyes when they find out I have released yet another CD? Or are they excited that there is more Beverly music in the world? By the last estimate, I have sold more CDs than most independent artists sell in a lifetime, and actually more than some with major record labels. This should tell me that people do want my music. I don’t know most of these people because they don’t buy directly from me, but rather from distributors. But…they had to reach out in order to buy my music. However, in the middle of the night, when my demons are the most active, this doesn’t mean a lot. I know that I am not the only artist/musician in the world who has to face these kinds of powerful doubts and fears.

Performing in public means opening myself up to music critics. Will I be destroyed by a bad review in the newpaper?
Will I be seduced by the power of a good review? Or will I have the courage and fearless to say “so what” to either kind of review, and continue on in my life purpose?

Then there is the unknown of process. In my former Office of Worship position, I taught large numbers of people, and organized events of up to 15,000 people. However, it was within the structure of the Church. So much was in place and known to me. The same thing was true of performing classical or church music. There is a structure in place and a venue with a built in audience. That is NO LONGER TRUE. Yikes! The thought of performance of MY OWN music and teaching MY OWN material, is pretty frightening because the venue and audience is unknown. Also, everything is ME and depends on my being my most authentic self and in my spiritual/wisdom essence.

Many practical questions arise.

How do I break into the larger market of those people who do not know me and have never heard my music? According to Sweetwater Sound, i-tunes music store has exceeded two billion downloads. My music is in i-tunes and 27 other electronic sites. However, no one is downloading MY music. How do they find me in such a massive structure? There is a way!! but it is unknown to me.

My website is really good and has a great website designer/administrator. It has a dynamic feel to it, and a blog which I love. Also, a person can download directly from my website. Pretty awesome….except no one is hitting on my website. So I have to learn the search engines and how to direct people my way. It can be done!! but I have to ask the right questions of the right people.

My music is not rock or blues or country or jazz. Where do I find the venues for performance? They are unknown to me at this time. In my experience, people do not come to coffee houses, or bars, or restaurants to hear sacred world music. Where do they expect to hear this music? The answer is unknown to me. However, other people have done it! I read the most amazing stories about unconventional musicians and their success in the newspapers.

Amidst all of these questions, I know some truths. I came into this world a musician. Music has always been effortless and it seems that I could hear music from a written score almost from the time of birth. Accessing the place where new music comes from is also effortless and a true joy for me. Therefore, it’s obvious that I am meant to be a musician and it is only my mind which gets in the way. Understanding this is not necessarily ego-enhancing. I would love to say to all of you that I have this new life totally under control, and that nothing frightens me. SO not true! However, in the midst of fear, I am still totally glad that I have this opportunity. I love to create music and to perform music. I love to teach.
These are passions for me, and I’m not going to let fear get in the way. I am so lucky to have the support of the unseen world, of my family, and of my friends. Thank you!!

On a lighter note…..Indiana is going from 75 degrees yesterday and sunny through a few tumultuous days and possibly severe weather, into snow on Thursday. It’s hard to live in Indiana and NOT understand the process of change! We may not always like it, but we have to accept it.

Well, everyone…..the end of this week I went from blissing out in nature, to focusing intently on all things electronic.
Like almost everyone in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s I did not grow up with computers. So, everything has to be learned.
Luckily I have worked in positions that required computer literacy for the last 15 years or so. However, the technology is changing SO rapidly that I could probably work 60 hours a week just on computers and still not even begin to keep up with what is happening.

It was surprising to me, but computer work is very creative. Musicians seem to have the kind of brain and intuitive skills that allow them to connect with computers. As long as I don’t tell myself that I am terrible at computers, or any of the other standard excuses, I can usually get excited about learning new computer stuff. However, I’m also the world’s worst procrastinator.

I won’t bore you with all the gory details in my happy computer-land.

Our local meditation group uses the music of Kiva by Michael Stearns, Steve Roach and Ron Sunsinger for our Tuesday meditation time. I finally got around to downloading the album for my own use here in my office this week. Downloading is such a fascinating process and I’m always amazed at how easy it is. I have i-tunes music store on my computer, and I have an account set up. So, all I have to do is search for the CD that I want in i-tunes and hit purchase. It automatically downloads the music into my i-tunes library, and automatically charges me. Then I can listen to the music of Kiva anytime I want to from my computer. I place the Kiva music into a playlist marked Kiva. Then I can burn a CD by simply hitting burn CD on my Mac, putting a blank CD into my computer, and letting it burn. A CD that would cost me $15-20, is only $9.50 or so. What a deal and SO EASY.

Every day I appreciate more what the computer geniuses of the world have given us regular people.

Blogging (blog from “web log”) has exploded onto the computer scene. It is certainly a great vehicle for communication. With the hundreds of thousands of blogs now up on the internet, free speech is flourishing. For me as a small business and an independent musician and writer, it is an important and dynamic way to stay connected to the outer world. It also helps me explain who I am and what the music that I am offering to the world is all about. An ongoing description of my music helps the listener interpret my music for him/herself. It deepens the experience.

This whole next week will be computer learning week. I am looking at podcasts which requires that I learn garage band.
I also want to get WAY BETTER at digital camera photography. I’m pretty pitiful right now! That should take me through most of the computer learning part of next week.

THE WHOLE NATURE walking and absorbing part of this week happened so that I can begin to play out the next new piece of music. That is the other part of this next week…to create new music and to spend time on my drums, flutes and of course the Kurzweil keyboard. SO exciting because I LOVE creating music and performing music more than almost anything else.

There is a full moon and it is so beautiful out. The air is super clear. I can hear a train whistle from far away. Today in Indiana it will be absolutely gorgeous with blue skies, trees of yellow, orange, green and red, and a temperature outside of about 75 degrees. No wonder Indiana has been designated part of the heartland of the US.

The last few days have been full of outside exploration. Saturday, I visited Salamonie State Forest. Sunday, I drove to LaGrange. Monday I walked the pathways in Chain of Lakes State Park. These trips into the forest are important to me. They feed my creativity. I can feel new music, and want to compose a piece that brings out the essence feeling of tree and of forest. How do you describe trees and forest in their deep green stages of growth…. in sound?

I have always been so connected to nature that when I was testing in High School to see what my career should be, one of the top three things that I tested for was “forest ranger”….never mind that I was already obviously a musician!
(No kidding, this really happened).

In my grade school years, I spent my summer days roaming the fields and sitting by streams. No Barbies for me!

I already have music that is totally connected with nature, and that takes the listener into the experience of trees and grass, and sacred temples. The music is Mayan Dream, the first movement (Awakening). It’s powerful strings open up the land for the listener. When I play Awakening in concert, I will have video showing the beautiful green of Palenque and the sacred temples which were built there to compliment and complete the experience of this awesome, vast music. Awakening is absolutely evocative of nature and of Palenque.

However, this new piece belongs to my next album and it is focused totally on the depth of tree life, and our relationship to tree. I know that photographers and painters also go through the same process in this work. They and I must connect with whatever it is that we are photographing, painting, writing music about, etc. What is the essence?

So…what music will bring about the essence of tree/forest? I’m beginning to feel the harmony and the texture. I suspect I will be playing the music out on my Kurzweil this week.

Today is a beautiful, sunny, warm day. I will be back outside soon, letting myself soak in the green and the beauty and the feeling level of forest. What a blessing it is to be self-employed and able to feed my creative soul in these ways.