Symphony
Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2024 5:04 pm
I wanted to share this , it helps.me to think more clearly sometimes.
Thanks Güney,
Thanks for your opinion Federica.Federica wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 10:00 amThanks Güney,
I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.
For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.
No, I try to exclude all sensory stimuli as much as possible, including sound, eyes closed and as silent an environment as possible. I also try to sit as comfortably as possible, so that I don't get distracted or have to change position.Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 8:54 pmThanks for your opinion Federica.Federica wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 10:00 amThanks Güney,
I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.
For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.
Do you listen to music while meditating or concentrating ?
I sometimes listen peter deunovs music after waking up, then I drink a warm glass of water and focus on prayers.Federica wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 9:27 pmNo, I try to exclude all sensory stimuli as much as possible, including sound, eyes closed and as silent an environment as possible. I also try to sit as comfortably as possible, so that I don't get distracted or have to change position.Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 8:54 pmThanks for your opinion Federica.Federica wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 10:00 am
Thanks Güney,
I've listened to it. It's interesting: though I find this concert to have character, taste and consistency, I would feel dragged down, not helped, if I were to couple it with thinking exercises. It's as if I was listening to someone sharing with me their problems, questions, struggles. I appreciate it, but not as an introduction to thinking exercises.
For me, help to think clearly is provided especially by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. There, I find that I can rest on the music, and trust its objectivity, so it becomes elevating, by contrast.
Do you listen to music while meditating or concentrating ?
But I may listen to music while I am reading the forum, or a book. Recently I have had Youtube videos of Paneurhythmy and other music by Beinsa Douno in the background, and I find it harmonizing and beneficial.
Do you listen to this concert (or other music) while meditating?
I personally take listening to music and meditation (as means of deeper exploration), as distinct activities. And listening to music itself could be of various kinds.
Cleric K wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2024 8:21 pmI personally take listening to music and meditation (as means of deeper exploration), as distinct activities. And listening to music itself could be of various kinds.
One thing I like to experiment with is to listen with the 'whole volume of the room', instead of only ears. In a nutshell, we try to feel how imagination expands to fill the whole space of the room and in a sense becomes like a string on which the sound waves play.
To achieve interesting results, we need to seek that fine balance between activity and receptivity as described in Part 2 of the Phonograph essay. We need to expand our imagination, to fill the space with our expanded thought, but at the same time concentrate at our center. The imaginative space around us is only gently supported as a string which the music agitates.
Initially, interesting sensations in this expanded space are only dimly felt, our concentration breaks, occupies the sensation, and deadens it. The key is to resist this. The more we resist, the more interesting the periphery becomes. And this experiment very well exemplifies the 'splitting of the now'. Instead of trying to inflate and encompass more of the music, we do the opposite - we concentrate into a finer and finer slice of the now. Nevertheless, the temporal dimension of music becomes even more objectively felt.
I don't know if this experiment ties well with the more general goal of inner development. I guess it's more on the amusement side of the spectrum. I'm only sharing it as an observation - how to make music into a 'psychedelic' experience, through natural means, with our own effort. When this concentration in 'splitting the now', centered in the head space, is sufficiently prolonged, the whole imaginative space that fills the room begins to take interesting forms, forming a soundscape as it were. But even if it is only an amusement, this concentration skill is exactly what we use when we meditate on the deeper aspects of existence. In a way, it can be seen as a test to see how strong our concentration is, whether we can resist being dragged by the sounds. Also we may understand more about the way we normally experience music. This is something which is not usually observed but in music our inner being is instinctively active. It nods its head, sings, hums, dances, plays air guitar or air drums. By trying to resist all these inner movements we may discover some of the inner gestures that we perform without noticing and which in fact constitute our enjoyment of music.
Güney27 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2024 12:37 pmI sometimes listen peter deunovs music after waking up, then I drink a warm glass of water and focus on prayers.Federica wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 9:27 pmNo, I try to exclude all sensory stimuli as much as possible, including sound, eyes closed and as silent an environment as possible. I also try to sit as comfortably as possible, so that I don't get distracted or have to change position.
But I may listen to music while I am reading the forum, or a book. Recently I have had Youtube videos of Paneurhythmy and other music by Beinsa Douno in the background, and I find it harmonizing and beneficial.
Do you listen to this concert (or other music) while meditating?
But I didn't try do listen to music while meditating.
I don't know it's effect on concentration maybe I'll try it out.
I realized that music has a very big influence on my Metamorphose trough the day.
If I listen to for example rap or pop music, it feels like my thoughts and feelings are 'low'.
When I'm listen to for example peter deunov or classical music it feels definitely like my thinking and feeling life
becomes more elevated.
Music and prayer have somehow a similar effect.
And I can feel more devoted trough music when I'm praying.
I want to repeat, though, that I don't think this method of experiencing music is something that we should strive for as a goal. Rather, it seems to come as a side effect of inner development.Federica wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 10:49 pm Cleric, I am glad that it's possible to experience music in the way described! For my part this sounds a long way ahead of what I can hope to grasp at this point. I read the words, but I lack the concepts to extract any meaning, already from “listening with the whole volume of the room”. It was not long ago when I was imagining an object of concentration by mentally placing it in space more or less in front of my physical eyes. Then I learnt to let go of the idea of physical space in concentration. So the indication to expand into a given volume in space hardly lands for me, let alone the answer to the question: “Expand what?”, which is: something in between an organ of perception and a musical instrument
To conclude, I lack intuition for the whole idea of permanently resisting the flow of everything that makes music music - like melody, rhythm, harmony - to find real enjoyment in that negation (a temporary resistance, an elasticity of the rhythm, is inherent to what music is, and that I would understand).
Given all these difficulties, I would like to ask: what would be a first small step one can take with music that would orient in the right direction?
RS wrote: We must further consider that when thinking develops into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping, spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an entity in itself. You thrust your consciousness into a place, it seems, where you don't find thoughts that are like those in the physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop — you would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other, separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world, where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts, creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even cause real pain.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19130826p02.html
The 'psychedelic' experience of music is precisely of this anthill type. In a nutshell, these experiences demand that we should be prepared to behold inner soul contents that do not in the least follow our own thinking intents. This can be disturbing at first. Because even if we have intellectually accepted that it is all One Consciousness, this rarely takes the trouble to conceive the intimacy of what it implies.RS wrote: We enter a world that has real things and beings in it, and we connect ourselves with it, we grow into this world. As the beings and things of this world move into us we lose our head thoughts — it's as if we had stuck our head into an anthill. Then we become aware of the elemental world. As our soul life gets stronger through thought concentration and our inner self gets increasingly separate from the physical body, the things of that world appear before our soul's eye in ever clearer Imaginations and visions.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/En ... 05e01.html
Thanks for elaborating, Cleric. I am clearly very far from all this. I was just wondering about ways to help rewire the experience of music in general, in much more basic terms, having in mind that it's soon the end of music that stirs feelings, as you recently said.