Mayan Dream Musings

At the winter solstice, I will have completed 60 years of my life. Probably I have completed two thirds or three quarters of the time I have on this earth. So…I find myself looking at magnificent old trees and pondering that they existed before I was born, and will continue to exist long after I have died. I look at the Mayan calendar which counts one million, 800 thousand + days since the calendar began counting. My own life will be a mere 32,850 days of that almost two million day calendar and still counting (if I live to 90). That kind of reflection certainly keeps things in perspective!

What does it mean to have lived 60 years on planet Earth? It means I am a baby boomer….one of those who came into adulthood in the 1960s and were forever changed by that time of revolution and experimentation. My challenge was to mature and yet not lose my sense of what I was meant to do in this lifetime. Baby boomers were meant to become the artists, musicians, business leaders, presidents of the United States, healers, writers, mothers and fathers of the generation which would become, in turn, the leaders of the new millenium. They were meant to be visionaries.

So my question to myself is….am I on track to accomplish what I was meant to do in this lifetime? Certainly, my years given in ministry to the Roman Catholic Church, and in teaching various musical instruments, gave back to the people of this world a large portion of my musicality. Now, I am the musician of Mayan Dream Productions, Int’l and actively playing and composing the next part of my own music. I will be teaching again…but something new….as yet unknown.

I remind myself: we who are baby boomers have a responsibility to hold a vision that is transformative. We also have a responsibility to lead in the healing of planet Earth.

My celebration of 60 years of life will be a joyful one! I will celebrate my opportunities to be with people, and to love and laugh. I will celebrate my journey of service, and of musical creation. I will honor my physical body which has come through 60 years of service to me, and is still strong and vibrant.

Will I have 20 more years….or 30 more years? Maybe….and maybe not. Maybe only one more day! Completing 60 years certainly puts me in the frame of mind not to waste any time or energy on the things that don’t matter. Retirement from my creative life is not even a consideration.

Thank you to all of you who have shared this journey with me.

We had a great time on Saturday and Sunday with an early family Thanksgiving. Laughter and love were everywhere…four generations represented. It was wonderful!
NOW a reflection on the CD The Beloved as it has been lived out in my life.

The music of The Beloved CD has been a central part of my life since 1989. I have experienced 17+ years of exploring this music for my own meditation, creativity, healing, and transformation.

The first music of The Beloved emerged for me after I had traveled several times in the sacred lands of the Maya, and after I had composed and released my first album, Mayan Dream. As I was driving through rural Indiana, I began to hear the melody that is the mantra of the opening movements of the Beloved album: The Beloved one and two. The mantra expresses my opening into the energies of the heart center, awareness of The Beloved archetype, and my connection with the attributes of the heart: loving kindness, compassion, unconditional love, joy, forgiveness, courage and fearlessness. The music of the first movement brought my first level of transformation, and it supported me in a very transitional part of my life. Then, the second movement began to take shape a year later as a further emergence of the energy. Using the same mantra, my soul asked me to play the music in the Key of D flat, the energy field between the root and the sexual centers, and then in F Major which is the Heart Center. This second movement is a dance of life lived as the lover of the Beloved. Its joyful expression of life lived in the heart with full passion in the body challenged my own limited perceptions of the essence of the unconditional love of the Heart Center.

The Beloved CD continued to come into existence over the next two years as I traveled extensively throughout the Mayan lands. I experienced sacred portals opening themselves for me, and the veil between this world and the next became very thin. My expanded awareness of the unseen world and the sacred directly influenced the music of movement three of The Beloved CD, The Watchers. This is my personal favorite of all the music that I have been given to compose. It is a glorious, inspirational hymn, similar to the hymn sung in Chariots of Fire, celebrating the love of SOUL and the unseen world for us. The drum is the heartbeat of the earth…the choir is the voice of our guardians in the unseen world, the pipe organ is the hymn and the opening of the portal between worlds. The music of The Watchers encourages me to live my purpose with excitement and joy, steadfastness and courage.

Stille Pointe is movement four of The Beloved CD. This beautiful music allows me to rest into my own center and sit with the SOURCE of all life, in profound inner quiet. The downward melodic movement of the strings brings me deeper and deeper into union with SOURCE. Chilam, the fifth movement of The Beloved CD, follows Stille Pointe, because I can take the energy and revitalization from time spent in communion with SOURCE, and have the strength to walk and speak in the world with sacred walk and sacred speech.

Sixth movement, Walking the Labyrinth is my continual journey through many issues and cycles of life….I walk into the center, leave my old self there, and then bring the newly emerged self back out into the world. I love the steady drum beat and the gentle support of Walking the Labyrinth. Finally, Mayan Portal completes The Beloved album with my own personal experience, translated into sound, of what I see, hear and feel when the portal between this world and the unseen world opens up….bringing me into dreamtime…that very special space where we are dreamed into existence.

The Beloved is an album of TRANSFORMATION because it has allowed me to explore and experience the vibration of the heart center as it continues to bring my entire energy body, my deep body and my soul into one harmonious system. The vibration of the heart center has allowed me to emerge over and over again from one self into a more loving and aware self in all aspects of my life. It has allowed me to have a deeper relationship with the unseen world. The music of The Beloved CD, in it’s seven movements, has been an essential, transformation part of my life journey. Blessings to all.

Throughout my years of formation in the energy system of the human being, and also in the physics of sound, I have learned to be very careful about my own state of being when I create music. This holds true whether I am composing, recording, or performing music. Music carries a vibration to the listener from the composer/recorder/performer. This vibration has a profound effect on the energy system of the listener. In turn, the body is configured to reflect the vibration of the energy system.

SO…..it matters that I consciously connect with my soul, the unseen world that supports me, and that I center myself in my heart center, allow my energy centers to be aligned as is needed for the creating of a particular piece of music for what is needed at a particular time, and that I am fully in my body. All of these things matter a lot! Do I always do it perfectly? Nope! There is no such thing in the creative world as perfect.

People ask me “Where does your music come from?” “Do you write it down?” “Do you think it out before you go into the recording studio?” The best answer is that it comes from the unseen world through me into our physical world as sound. Most composers will give the same answer. You cannot take credit for the origin of your music and most often you are amazed at the result.
Composing music is not a matter of applying principles of music theory. It is not an intellectual “thing”. It comes when it wants to come, demanding to be composed.

The fact that a composer does not know where the music comes from, or what it necessarily will sound like when it is finished, causes some difficulties. If I am in my ego or in my mind, I might not compose again because I won’t know how I did it the first time. I might never perform again because how could I possibly recreate what I did in the recording studio….if I don’t know how I did it. Many composers, artists, writers quit for just this reason. However, the other side is that it is awesome to be able to co-create music. The feeling of going into that space of silence and finding the music, is so incredible and I am so very grateful that I have been allowed to experience this. I am supported totally in this space. I am The Beloved.

So now Ihave been fully self-employed for 4-1/2 months as a publisher, composer, recording artist, teacher and performer. How wonderful! Yeh!!!