Mouth Harps and Metronomes

Metronome from http://www.oberton.pro/

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When Nature has the idea to give us a message, it finds a way.

The 'way' can begin by warming the idea in our hearts, where if we are open, it will expand and in time manifest. 

An idea to find 'my' musical instrument started me on a search years ago. Sometimes I touched a transcendent space while playing music, but only briefly. It was like touching my toes to the wet foam on the shore and knowing it is the edge of the Sea.

In this first week of 2017, an urge hit me to search further into musical instruments. I remembered emails about mindfulness and harmonicas, so began there. That led to melodicas, and then to mouth harps. Nature's message reached my mailbox.

Research led me to a bass model on a Russian site and while ordering I saw a recommendation of a metronome to go with it. The metronome page was in the Russian language as the image above shows, and the English translation was intriguing, as it seemed to contain hidden messages for me.

I cannot fully make sense of it as a literal interpretation, but when the heart does the reading it beats faster. The following is unedited to allow the raw feeling behind the words:

Rhythm - the organization of sound in time - is one of the fundamentals of music. The fundamental rhythmic pulsation is present everywhere - and in living organisms, and throughout the world. Every person has an innate sense of time and sees it intuitively - both when listening to music and playing with the self - but in the absence of fitness a few can boast of full control over the time of the commission of any physical or mental action. 

Metronome makes the invisible visible is the main assistant to the general development of the sense of time and self-picking. He - drawn on a sheet of paper cells, allowing to write smoothly. It is often said that the need for any training not because the music comes from the soul, it is - for himself and. But along with these words most often heard continuous rhythmic disruptions and sometimes complete lack of "Music" as an ordered set of sounds. Himself as the player seems, all smoothly and accurately. The more complex executables figure, the more real time crawls by imaginary - that is what makes the metronome and the most obvious, helping to develop the technique and the orientation of the fourth dimension. It was then when the expression has a solid "classic" basis, and there is real magic, called music, and carrying away the audience and performers in other worlds ... 

An intuitive mode as there is a gradual development of rhythmic skills, but the use of the metronome speeds an order of magnitude the process and allows you to concentrate on the content part, providing creative freedom and maintaining the enthusiasm of the game due to the competitive component. 

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Comments from the Collective Evolution Discussion Group

In the Collective Evolution discussion group on Facebook, I posted some of the above. One of the comments received was this from Rod MacKinnon:

RM - 'Mmm... I think you've touched it there Gary... "...an intuitive mode..." yes... that spontaneous, absolutely uncontrived,inexpressible "letting go" of ???....who let go...of what...?? 

It can't be described or explained other than it's often in music that it occurs (but not exclusively)... I think that rhythms may often provide keys into those other places... sometimes when I'm playing my instrument across the rhythms i hear in my head there's a sense of finding an entrance to an infinite space between them...I can't "make" it happen... the music plays itself and if I'm lucky, I'm in the right state of receptivity at the time... 

When the "switch" flips, "I" tend to be absent... there's awareness but thought other than the sound turns off ... there's a feeling of "mental unpowered flight" which continues until either the music ends or "I" start thinking...which shuts things down... there's a sense of "dropping out"of whatever the brain frequency(?) might have been... Your experience(S)?'

G. - I have only touched briefly on this experience, playing instruments such as didgeridoo, steel tongue drums, darbuka, native american flute and ukelele. The Jews Harp came up unexpectedly as I searched on harmonica and melodica. I was enthralled by the sound of the bass JH and descriptions of how the player is part of the instrument, as the mouth is a sound chamber.

You wrote 'I" tend to be absent... there's awareness but thought other than the sound turns off ... there's a feeling of "mental unpowered flight" which continues until either the music ends or "I" start thinking...which shuts things down... there's a sense of "dropping out" of whatever the brain frequency(?) might have been...' 

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Rod's comment sounds remarkably like what a reader wrote to me about his experience of expanded awareness. His was triggered by listening to Eckhard Tolle speak.

When I have had such experiences, they have been triggered by my letting go of such things as control, judgment and fear, which allows the core frequency (which embodies a unit of pure consciousness,) to expand in the body/mind.

​Rod's experience was 'triggered' by his union with the music he was playing. These expanded states are the idea underneath my lifelong exploration and experimentation. 

A Reader's Experience of Extended Spatial Awareness

'Gary,

'Since a quite young age (15-16) I've been reading books about self-help, Buddhism and mindfulness but I never really understood what it was about. On an intellectual level I found that a lot of it, if not all, was very true and aligned with how I chose to think about life and the little experiences I'd had to that date. I guess that the need for this came out of a lot of self-reflection and self-awareness.

'I stumbled upon a book with Eckhart Tolle in 2012, ”The Power of Now”, which for me, had a very clear message with the combination of eastern and western philosophies and also practical ways of using it.

'In 2013 I went to a Vipassana retreat for 10 days and that gave me peace and balance for those days but when I came back to my normal life, nothing had really changed. I had brief experiences of ”higher” levels of awareness of my surroundings, a little bit like being on psychedelic mushrooms which I tried on occasions in my youth (I´m 29 now, still young I guess...)

'What really changed it for me was during an evening in 2014. I was watching a dialogue with Eckhart Tolle and Bradley Holowitz from Google having a conversation about the information technology, mindfulness and how they could work together.

'Eckhart has a very peaceful demeanor and the way he talks and brings his thoughts forward really resonates with me and I was really focused on what he was saying in the video. He mentioned something like ”the moment that is occurring right now is the only moment that ever existed and ever will exist.” There something happened for me, everything in my surroundings kind of came to life, paintings, guitars, the bed I was laying on, my clothes, breathing etc, and I felt an extended ”spacial awareness” of the things around me. I was no longer outside my body, trapped in thoughts, trapped in this movie that was/is my life that´s been going on repeat since as long as I could remember.

'This moment lasted for maybe 2-3 seconds, but that was enough, the light was switched on and I could not turn it off again.

'There is a word in Zen Buddhism that, to my knowledge, is called Satori or Kensho, which I think applies to that moment. It is an awakening, or an insight into one's true nature.

'The day after I felt very peaceful and I had to tell everyone about it! But how could I ever describe this feeling? For me this was the essence of mindful(less)ness, this was the observer, completely detached from my own thoughts, just being in the moment and not putting labels on anything, no judging, no thoughts, just pure awareness.

'No one understood what I was talking about obviously, since none of my friends or family is really into this sort of ”thing” which for me is the most interesting subject of them all since it is primordial to everything, ever.

'I haven´t had that powerful feeling again, but for me that is ok, because if I start thinking about wanting it or needing it would be counter-productive, because in the now there is no wanting, there is no need, it just is. My intellectual ”self” obviously wants to be ”there” all the time ... knowing that I have thoughts and seeing them, observing them without judgement and just letting them pass like clouds on a blue sky, knowing that the awareness in itself is the observer and that is who I am....

Linus'
(reprinted with permission)

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Now my question will be, can the transcendent experience of expanded awareness be consciously triggered by playing a certain instrument in a certain way?

The mouth harps are currently traveling to me.

Ultrabass Brumle from Oberton Pro

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