… and loving, compassion and the like, are the realizations of a free mind.
The highest function of reason is to reason itself out of a job. My mind is like the captain of a ship, pouring over charts and logs, always plotting. Alas, it miss-takes its ability to observe and describe for steering, when perhaps its best just to batten the hatches sometimes, or catch some rays on good sunny days. It misses out on the one big observation worth having: that it is but a passenger, and in truth, there is no boat.
A friend once asked me, “What’s your favorite thing in the whole world?” It took me a year to come up with my answer: A Song That Moves. Moves my body, my heart, my… yes that too, but also… whaddayacallthat feeling… soul? Being? In the fantastic documentary Bluegrass Journey, songwriter Tim O’Brien comments something like, “Music gives people the chance to take some time and think about the really important things in life.” Ya know that feeling? Maybe when your mind is quiet for a while and suddenly, gradually, you may notice feeling lighter, easier, and the whisper that somehow all’s right with the world. Well, brain? What do you call that? Can you scheme me there?
In the end, yes. In 2003 I graduated from the four-year program at the Wakepoint School of Energy Healing (www.wakepoint.com). I used to tell people that in some ways it was like I had believed beyond certainty that aliens didn’t exist, then was one day abducted, and now spent life resolving the dizzying fact that somehow something I was sure wasn’t possible, was. Whaddayagonnado? Let go of a lot of junk! And uncover what it seems like every romantic knows, what every child knows, every mystic and shaman, passionate scientists at the top of their game, snowboarders on the perfect run, artists and musicians at the height of their craft, et al: there is something unseen and hard to name that is very real and nearly incomprehensible that stalks us all the time, that can be leaned on and counted on. Among its hallmarks are a feeling of compassionate connection to all things, a reduction of stress, a sense of well-being and freedom, and an opening and emptying of the mind, to be renewed with fresh possibilities. How did Miles Davis’ legendary ‘Rhythm Section’ know to change tempos so wildly and spontaneously, how does prog-blues virtuoso Jim McKeon (who I get to play with, beeyatches!!) know how to let notes fly like that? Some call it mystical, I call it natural, and for a lack of a better word, I call it LOVE!
Music itself is an artform that comes from and heads right to this kind of transcendence, like the arch of a solar flare. It can be reasoned down into all of its component parts – instruments, notes, rhythms, melody, etc – but in the end its the near magical sum of its parts that result in whatever that wonderment it is that makes it so enduring. For me, its where I let go of understanding, where my mind works itself out of a job, where reason meets love.
- Lincoln
