A Question of Taste

Music is without a doubt a question of taste. Some people only like listening to one type of music. Others have broader palates and enjoy many types. Still others have an ear for all kinds of sounds, hearing music in everything, while others remain very sensitive to the abundance of auditory stimulation in the world doing what they can to protect themselves from it.

I have been working with Visionary Music's DNA Activation music for many years now and am just beginning to work with their second series. The fourth in that series is a very dissonant, difficult piece for me to listen to. I actually get nauseous and headachy at certain parts when I listen to it. It makes the entire world move under my feet like an opposing sliding floor of a fun house and causes the molecules of my body to rise up and float off. So why do I listen to it?

For some of us, sound is our path. We use sound as a tool, a practice, and a challenge in our spiritual growth. If this is your interest, then you may want to consider acquiring a taste for the strange and dissonant. We can certainly filter sounds through our limited perception, thank God, but we can't always pick and choose what we are exposed to in life. Life is full of dissonance just as it is also full of harmony. But can you hear the harmony within dissonance? Can you get past the challenge of a sound and move into the silence that contains it? How willing are you to expose yourself to something challenging and uncomfortable...not just for the sake of doing so but for a higher purpose?

A master I revere, Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote:"...in order to open the doors of his heart, to keep its sensitiveness, the one who communicates with life within and without is open to all influences, whether agreeable or disagreeable, and is without any protection. His only escape from all the disturbances of life is through rising above them."

In some ways, that is what I think this Level 2 #4 CD is training me to do...to be open to all influences and to rise above them all into soundless sound.

I have interfaced with Shapeshifter's music enough to know that pockets of it unfold and present themselves when I am ready and not before. There are CD's that I didn't like at all at first that have become my favorites because now, I can actually hear them.I know that passages I find difficult are moving something in me that I cling to and offer me support in moving energies that I have been resisting or suppressing. I have faith in the process.

Don't get me wrong here. I would never sit and listen to just any old music that made me sick to my stomach. I would never purposefully subject myself to noise. There are those who have chosen plant medicine as a path. To me, the idea of taking Ayahuasca and throwing up all night just don't appeal. And yet, I don't doubt that people with that practice experience amazing insights. I don't doubt it's value. But I also don't think they would then go around ingesting e-coli contaminated foods for the thrill or endurance-testing. Some things really are toxic and/or devoid of Life, whereas other things are sacred instruments that help us evolve. Like medicine, it might taste bad when going down, but these instruments can change and heal us. Shapeshifter's music is my medicine, neither better nor worse than any other medicine, just the best medicine for me.