Patterns and Meaning in Music

[Soul_of_Shu]

It's because some patterns are really frustrating, unproductive, and hard to get out of. But that's for a different thread.

Not surprising then why a chat forum interface named discord has taken off ?

[Martin_]

Cleric said:

In the highest sense, Music is the flowing Word

I resonate a lot with this, because just as we words are the symbols through which we grasp the True Meaning, so is music full of communicative symbols through which we may grasp the same.

Not what Cleric is saying at all, rather he means it is the flowing Spirit (ideational activity) which creates and lights up the phenomenal world through our knowing. But I won't bother clarifying more to someone who clearly doesn't care if he is representing anything correctly.

I wrote a reply to this. i's not showing up. That is really annoying. Anyway. I'll re-write it, but it might not be as clear as my previous attempt:

I like this reply. It's short and to the point and allows for further discussion without generating too many question marks (in Me). Your clarificaitons would be welcome. If you can make them short, i'd appreciate it, but I do understand the challenge in that. However, I am quite exhausted at the moment, so although i will read your clarificaitons with interest, I might not reply at the moment. I need to step back and re-evaluate a few things.

[AshvinP]

Cleric said:

I resonate a lot with this, because just as we words are the symbols through which we grasp the True Meaning, so is music full of communicative symbols through which we may grasp the same.

Not what Cleric is saying at all, rather he means it is the flowing Spirit (ideational activity) which creates and lights up the phenomenal world through our knowing. But I won't bother clarifying more to someone who clearly doesn't care if he is representing anything correctly.

I wrote a reply to this. i's not showing up. That is really annoying. Anyway. I'll re-write it, but it might not be as clear as my previous attempt:

I like this reply. It's short and to the point and allows for further discussion without generating too many question marks (in Me). Your clarificaitons would be welcome. If you can make them short, i'd appreciate it, but I do understand the challenge in that. However, I am quite exhausted at the moment, so although i will read your clarificaitons with interest, I might not reply at the moment. I need to step back and re-evaluate a few things.

Martin,

All I have been saying is that we won't be able to understand Music (or any phenomena) as flowing Spirit i.e. ideational activity until we recognize our own dualistic thinking. This is not a personal critique of you, but a transpersonal critique of the modern age. Dualistic thinking is a potent drug addiction, in a pretty literal sense. An addict is told never to think he has "beat" the addiction. This is also true for dualistic thinking - we have never overcome it with intellectual cognition. Instead we can only remain on guard for its temptations whenever we set out to think through these issues. We can only seek to understand the reasons why the addiction has such a grip on us, and that is done via careful reasoning. Eventually, we can die to intellectual dualistic thinking and our soul can be reborn into higher imaginative cognition, of the sort Cleric illustrates here. Then we can truly speak of overcoming the addiction (at least according to my understanding). Until then, any such sense of overcoming is simply an illusion which makes it harder to actually overcome.


"It is your presumption that freedom is something which you already possess that ensures that you will remain in chains."

[Soul_of_Shu]

Ok, such is the luxury of retirement that after having spent an entire morning looking into the relationship between cymatics and waveform geometry—apparently of the 'sacred' kind—I'm not sure I'm much the wiser as to how it relates to 'In the ever-present Origin was the Word, etc', but this video is entertaining nonetheless ...

[AshvinP]

14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.
15 What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

This surely sings volumes ... Indeed, 'What am I to do?' Being nothing apart from the ever-present Origin, what quality am I originating, singing into existence, that being a clear and present example of what is possible, others may take to heart, and sing along?

The answer to this is contained implicitly within the quote - adopting the Christ-perspective. That is why the Christ-being is held up by Saint Paul as the archetypal example of who we must "bear our Cross" and follow i.e. imitate. And what we must do is nothing easier than being tortured and crucified, except we are afforded the grace and luxury of spreading it out over a longer period of time-experience. We are only deceving ourselves if we think our status as ontically unified with the Origin allows us to snap our fingers and dispel all fragmentation and delusion. That is no more possible than entering into a gym and becoming a bodybuilder instantaneously. The seed of this potential is ever-present within us, but it only grows after much time with careful and constant nourishment.

[Soul_of_Shu]

We are only deceving ourselves if we think our status as ontically unified with the Origin allows us to snap our fingers and dispel all fragmentation and delusion ...

Well, as related elsewhere, it was indelibly dispelled in a timeless instant for this psyche, albeit whatever transpersonal 'fingers' were snapped, I've yet to ascertain. Since then, it's been about unpacking it and learning to render it as one's day-to-day lived experience within the spatiotemporal, corporeal construct, indeed, still a work in progress.

[Eugene I]

Just to share my personal musical journey, with a disclaimer that music tastes are personal preferences, I myself, having 50GB of music library, listened and played music from ancient to most contemporary, my favorite period now is medieval, and this is what I mostly play and listen now (together with ambient and some modern classical). Here is an interesting event - a lecture on the medieval music and a concert by my favorite ensemble La Morra. As the lecturer said - the medieval music bears a very special "finesse and grace" that was lost in later periods. This concert mostly presents pieces of non-sacred music, but the sacred music of this period is a special treat, especially the outstanding genius of Hildegard von Bingen.

A few years ago I had a visionary dream where I saw a beautiful landscape and two men standing, holding strange harp-like instruments and playing/singing music of unbelievable beauty that sounded very medieval yet strangely unearthly. When I woke up I was totally fascinated. How come my own mind could possibly come up with such unbelievably captivating music on its own? Being a player through my whole life, I have never been any good at composing. I still have a strong sense that I was hearing music from transcorporeal realms. Anyway, that dream sparkled a strong call and interest in the medieval music, and I dropped classical guitar and started playing the Baroque guitar and delving into the medieval repertoire.

[Soul_of_Shu]

A few years ago I had a visionary dream where I saw a beautiful landscape and two men standing, holding strange harp-like instruments and playing/singing music of unbelievable beauty that sounded very medieval yet strangely unearthly. When I woke up I was totally fascinated. How come my own mind could possibly come up with such unbelievably captivating music on its own? Being a player through my whole life, I have never been any good at composing. I still have a strong sense that I was hearing music from transcorporeal realms. Anyway, that dream sparkled a strong call and interest in the medieval music, and I dropped classical guitar and started playing the Baroque guitar and delving into the medieval repertoire.

I'm going with inter-incarnational bleed-throughs from a lifetime in some alternate version of now. Perhaps those guys in your dream are having dreams of some strange, yet eerily familiar dude, listening/watching music videos through a small, glowing, rectangular window, with a slab of seemingly random letters and symbols attached to it.

[AshvinP]

We are only deceving ourselves if we think our status as ontically unified with the Origin allows us to snap our fingers and dispel all fragmentation and delusion ...

Well, as related elsewhere, it was indelibly dispelled in a timeless instant for this psyche, albeit whatever transpersonal 'fingers' were snapped, I've yet to ascertain. Since then, it's been about unpacking it and learning to render it as one's day-to-day lived experience within the spatiotemporal, corporeal construct, indeed, still a work in progress.

Well I think Cleric, in response to your experience, made clear what is going on here. I will try to find and repost the comment. The key is that what was dispelled for you in that "timeless instant" was the aritificial division of Reality between knower and known. That is very important realization, but it is only the very beginning of our journey through the spiritual realms. We have not yet discovered the intricate and lawful structure of those spiritual realms, with spiritual beings and their perpsectives which 'interfere' in the most manifold ways to give rise to our phenomenal experience. Until then, we are still only dimly understanding our own spiritual activity within the Cosmic organism. It is indeed an unpacking, but we should be careful to avoid thinking it is an intellectual unpacking, where we are just trying to add more concepts onto the underlying experience we had (or which you had, because I have not had that experience). Rather, moving through the spiritual realms is nothing other than developing higher cognition in the manner Cleric illustrates often here.

[Soul_of_Shu]

We are only deceving ourselves if we think our status as ontically unified with the Origin allows us to snap our fingers and dispel all fragmentation and delusion ...

Well, as related elsewhere, it was indelibly dispelled in a timeless instant for this psyche, albeit whatever transpersonal 'fingers' were snapped, I've yet to ascertain. Since then, it's been about unpacking it and learning to render it as one's day-to-day lived experience within the spatiotemporal, corporeal construct, indeed, still a work in progress.

Well I think Cleric, in response to your experience, made clear what is going on here. I will try to find and repost the comment. The key is that what was dispelled for you in that "timeless instant" was the aritificial division of Reality, between knower and known. That is very important realization, but it is only the very beginning of our journey through the spiritual realms. We have not yet discovered the intricate and lawful structure of those spiritual realms, with spiritual beings and their perpsectives which 'interfere' in the most manifold ways to give rise to our phenomenal experience. Until then, we are still only dimly understanding our own spiritual activity within the Cosmic organism.

No need to re-post it here, as I already read it. Suffice to say all these events are integral to the seemingly never-ending unfolding into an infinitude of novelty of the ever-present Origin, from which one is never actually forsaken.