Next week I’m teaching a class at the Nashville Jazz Workshop called Soul Song: Setting your Inner Musician Free.

The purpose of the class is to explore the blockages that keep us from practicing and playing/singing from a place of pure joy.  Once those roadblocks are known, they begin to let go of us.

Kenny Werner has a magnificent book on the subject called Effortless Mastery, and this text, along with Victor Wooten’s The Music Lesson, will be our texts for the class.

I also add music exercises involving visualization of the keyboard from Marianne Ploger’s work, and some of Byron Katie’s self inquiry process called “The Work.”

It seems that the most pressing issue we have as a collective species is the matter of evolving into a more mature consciousness.

With the world experiencing so many manifestations of escalating chaos, it might be more imperative than ever to take responsibility for our internal states of mind.  As musicians I believe we have the opportunity to experience presence through the performance of music – because music can only be experienced in the present moment.

Think of music as something that we channel.  If our channel is not clear, or rather we are resisting the flow of the present moment, we cannot fully experience music. Or, share it with others.

When we go back and remember why we started playing music in the first place, we find clues about our BEING which is the foundation of literally everything.  Including music.

In a mind-bending blog post by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits, I’m reminded that instead of trying to reach goals we could just do things out of the love for doing them.  Would Kenny Werner agree with this perspective as it pertains to playing and singing?

Just because you don’t have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing – you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion. -Leo Babauta

Click here for Leo’s full post called: the best goal is no goal

If you play music of any kind, you are welcome to join the Soul Song class.  Even if you can’t make the class, please enjoy Kenny Werner and Victor Wooten’s books. 

Here’s to more allowing, especially as we play and sing music.

“It is amazing what can happen if you force yourself into a limitation.”
Iris Scott, Fingerpaint Master in 60 sec docs

Life can seem like a series of limitations.  We often don’t have what we think we need or want.  (Notice the word *think.*)

But, as it turns out, what we have is exactly . . . what we need.  Because we have it.  In the moment, we can perceive something as a limitation, or we can become friends with it – stop fighting against it.  This is the only way to find peace.  Because peace happens in the moment and no where else.

We all deal with difficult circumstances at some point in life. Money woes, relationship trials, career dilemmas, health issues; the list is long and all too familiar.

What this post aims to address is why giving up the internal (psychological) struggle is worth it.

What’s the Problem?

If everyone experiences challenges, then what’s the real problem here? If our circumstances and stories are played out over and over and over across history (because, let’s admit, there is nothing happening to you or me that hasn’t already happened a million times to a million different people), then why struggle with them?

Why continue to suffer when the story is so utterly stale and boring? It doesn’t make sense! I don’t know about you, but I only watch a great movie 2 or 3 times. After that, I’m cool. Got it, moving on. Right?

Why do we humans keep playing out the same old stories over and over again? Why do we continue to struggle when the story of struggle is SO yesterday’s news? Isn’t there something else to do down here on planet earth to do?

(Take this moment as an opportunity to admit that most of us put up a mental fight with our circumstances most of the time. It’s the normal way of the world.)

Here’s one, small example of how we get stuck in our own mental struggles:
Ask yourself – I am reeeeeallly the only one who has ever gone through this particular situation? (ie, “this problem”)

Then ask yourself:
Can you absolutely know that that’s true?
And how alone and stuck and tired does that make you feel to think that way?
What kind of awesome would you feel if you could let that “problem” go?
Who would you connect with?
What ideas and solutions would you discover if you could “give up” the idea that you are suffering alone?

Sometimes I think that the only real problem is the psychological struggle we humans put up against . . . oh, you know . . . everything and anything. You name it, we will find a way to struggle through it. Even the “good” stuff!

Which is why I think “giving up” is a good strategy for getting through life.

Surrender

Most spiritual disciplines extol the virtues of surrender. Why is this? And what do they mean by surrender? Why is surrender such a key element in major spiritual practices? Is it because psychological and emotional surrender is the only place we can truly experience peace? Why do we need to experience peace?

These are big questions with answers that can only be found inside yourself.

You could say, however, that surrendering to the circumstance at hand is a lovely place to start dealing with any “problem.”

You could say “giving up” is the open field of sunshiny freedom where truly creative solutions and wisdom frolic about and beg us to dance.

That’s a lot to digest. So, take a smoke break here if you need it.