Tag: zen

BEING SELF – MUSIC FOR MEDITATION

(A  SIMPLE EXPERIMENT – PLEASE JOIN IN)

How the idea emerged:

I’ve been experimenting with quite a few things during past few years – music, meditation, spirituality, self, psycho-acoustics and also mind and thoughts!

Gradually, I started noticing how exploring sounds and music, knowingly or unknowingly, heals me in difficult situations. Again, another observation associated with this was that when I am balanced and joyous, music and sounds are my ways of expressing and enjoying. These are, as if, indicators of my health and joy. This time, when I was calm and balanced and was playing around with sounds, I thought let me just record one of these sessions while I explore sounds and try and use the recordings to achieve the reverse – i.e. to get some assistance in entering meditation by listening to this recording. And it did work 🙂 Then I thought of experimenting this further with a few friends and found that it did work well yet again!

This is the first such recording and I intend to keep recording such meditative moments and may be make a compilation out of these tracks. Let’s see..

About this audio track – Meditation1:

This track is composed of various organic ethnic instrument sounds as well as nature sounds. There also are chants and some other sounds which various faiths across the globe use to invoke the divine- bells, ethnic humane voices and more!

How to use this meditation music and be a part of this experiment:

Since quite some time now I’ve been feeling, rather realizing, that the state of meditation is rather our own very nature. We don’t need to acquire it from outside of us – rather we return back to it by undoing and un-cluttering and effectively it is these efforts to un-do and un-clutter that are termed as meditation. Probably, you’ll be able to correlate once you experience this yourself.

The nature of our mind is to be engaged in some thought or the other. In fact the mind just ceases to exist if there is no thought. It’s just like a dancer – dance and dancer exist together. As soon as the dance vanishes, the dancer also ceases to exist – he/she just returns to being a normal individual..but not a dancer. Typically, our mind is engaged in external thoughts about our profession, relationships, needs, and other desires. When we get stressed with all this, often, we realize that we need to meditate or we need to get engaged in something creative, something cathartic to get rid of all the clutter! Now the mind gets busy in getting rid of all those thoughts. But, basically it is still working overtime, running fast all the time.. just the direction has flipped this time. Rather a vicious circle it is!

By means of this recording (and more similar music), I intend to use the mind itself to get rid of it! I intend to create a bridge between these two extremities of the mind and bring it between these two ends -the middle path! Also, most of us are busy with our usual lives and some of us take up de-stressing involvement like yoga, various meditation workshops etc. with professional help from healers, mentors etc. However, not everyone is able to drift away from the usual set patterns of life and also not everyone opens up to a mentor with ease. I always wondered if there could be a DIY (do it yourself) thing to help us come back to our balanced state! So, in a way ,I’ve intended to make these audio tracks in such a manner that seekers can use it anywhere and anytime and without having to involve anyone else. All they have to do is listen to the tracks and use their minds as suggested in the guidelines below.

Given below are some simple ideas which might help in making this meditation-music a little more effective:

• You can download the track (mp3) from the music-player embedded above using the Download button.
• Whatever you are doing, office, home-tasks, etc. do that with full involvement and dedication .. and often there arrives a time when you are fed-up and stressed with the never ending tensions! At such moments, when you naturally yourself feel an urge to unwind, to dance, to meditate etc. ..it is now that you can try this experiment – for maximum effect!
• Take out just 15-20 minutes of free time, to begin with, for this meditation. Sit in a place and posture that is pleasing for you. Often, having a light incense/aroma in the air helps and also a cool temperature around ..early morning in a park, or your own living room ..the idea is to be in a pleasant surrounding.
• To listen to the track use comfortable headphones or any good audio-system preferably with big speakers for bass (laptop and phone speakers aren’t good enough for the purpose..we need a deep sound).
• Play the track ..may be over a loop a couple of times. Sit or lie down comfortably and do any/all of the following one by one:
  • BEGINNING: Just let the music play and let the mind run wherever it goes! Don’t try to stop the thoughts. Also, don’t try to think.. but just let the mind do it’s own running. Usual thoughts will occur – about your work, food, anything that you love or hate, even about sexual attraction and relationships – these are quite usual subjects for the mind.. just accept them and let the mind be.. don’t recall all those social taboos associated with these words… remember, all this is happening within you.. no one is seeing inside you.. so don’t worry .. you are not bad if you think like this 🙂 All this while the music just plays on and on.. and you just watch the mind fly from one thought to another.
  • EXPLORING SOUND: So here comes the next step. Now that you have let the mind play on it’s own.. it won’t mind of you give it another subject to explore 🙂 But this time we don’t give it a subject that is created by societies and civilizations! We give it something very simple. Now, as the music progresses use your mind, gently and slowly, to observe the sounds that you hear in the track. There are several sounds happening in the track around your ears in the stereo-space – in simple words ..several sounds are dispersed around between left and right extremes of the space.  You can’t observe all at a time.. make it simple by picking any of the sounds first and noticing how it progresses in the track ..how loud it is.. in which portion of the space do you find it (left or right?) ..how it travels from one side to another.. when it goes totally off.. when is it loud.. and so on. Now as the track plays back again, in a similar manner observe the other sounds one by one. Do this for as long as you like. The sounds in this track are so designed to keep you gently engaged and to heal… and for those who love exploring about energies and all, trust me, there’s a lot of good and healing energy in the environment where this music was created 🙂
  • BEYOND THE MIND – STEP BY STEP: After each step discussed above, I hope you will feel relaxed and calm. Once you have chased and played with all the sounds..for as long as you liked.. you can easily ask the mind to try this final step now 🙂 All you have to do is .. just BE.. and LET THE MUSIC PLAY ! It is quite likely that your breathing patterns would be gentle and at ease by now… just start observing your breath as it touches your nostrils and fills up in your body ..and then goes out. ..cycle after cycle.. just watch the breath ..and you can even try and feel how the air around is touching your body.. which parts of your skin are touching another object… all this while the music plays and you simply watch the breath. If you start falling asleep, don’t resist!
• Hopefully, you will feel calm and at peace after experiencing this musical experiment.
• It’ll be great if you could please share your experience of this experiment with me. You can mail me at adityapathak.music@gmail.com or you can also simply comment below. Your feedback will help me design future music. Thanks in advance.
• If you found this experiment useful, please also share the same with more like minded friends 🙂

Blessings for one and all 🙂

– Aditya (www.adityapathak.net)