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THE MYSTIC HEART
May 24, 2007
Om Y’all!
Finally, I have time to write to you a nice, long
newsletter. It has been a busy and wonderful year beginning
with our travels in India. Most recently, I returned from
travels to the east coast.
I began my journey early this month in Nottingham, New
Hampshire, a small town about an hour from Manchester. I
was very moved by my experience there, starting with a
Friday evening concert that I performed in collaboration
with Marty Quinn, a remarkable musician doing remarkable
research in the field of acoustics. Over the last decade,
Marty has been gathering scientific data from various
sources, all reputable, and feeding it into a special
software program that he created using certain specific
parameters. He is a software engineer by profession. This
allows the hard scientific data to be translated directly
into musical forms that we can hear.
Examples of the data are the expansion of ice caps in the
Polar Regions, and, most recently, frequencies generated by
the sun captured by two space shuttles. It is amazing that
he came into this experience without realizing that a lot
of similar research in the last 100 years echoes insight of
the ancient Hindus and Greeks that the world is sound, and,
more importantly, that a lot of this sound is organized in
the harmonic proportions of music that we, as embodied
beings, understand and enjoy. I have spoken of this
extensively in my book The Yoga of Sound. You can actually
listen to the music and read more about this work on the
University of New Hampshire’s website page “Experimental
Space Plasma Group”.
http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/index.html?tof/Outreach/music.html
I also enjoyed the workshop that followed on Saturday and
my participation in the Sunday morning service. People came
from New York as well as from the towns nearby to attend
the programs, all facilitated at this very beautiful church
in the town of Nottingham. The church, built several
hundred years ago by early settlers, is elegantly simple,
and, because of its design, has elegant acoustics. The
minister, Reverend Ben Fowler, was a student at the Doctor
of Ministry program at which I taught in California. He is
an excellent musician who has been playing guitar with a
band for over 40 years and just recently made a CD of their
music. The workshop sessions continued into Saturday
evening and Sunday afternoon after the Sunday morning
service in which I was included.
I then journeyed to Florida, and, after a few days of rest,
began my retreat at the Duncan Center in Delray Beach. All
of our programs for that weekend were in an auditorium
church that has a beautiful indoor labyrinth laid out on
black marble. The high ceiling allows for amazing acoustics
so it was quite rewarding to travel from one acoustic
marvel to another. Our Saturday workshop went deep and I
was amazed at how effortlessly I was transported into many
profound states of consciousness. There was a great turnout
for the Friday evening kirtan, which only propelled us even
deeper and higher into mystical experience. Almost everyone
remarked on the depth and expansiveness of their
experience.
On Sunday, Laura diBello, who organized the whole weekend,
collaborated with me on presenting a special workshop at
the Orchid Recovery Center, a holistic facility for women
in addiction. This extraordinary center offers Mindfulness
& Meditation programs, Yoga, Massage, Acupuncture, Sound
Healing and Art Therapy in their support system. Here women
begin a healing process that builds on an intense sense of
community, with mutuality and compassion as vital elements
of therapeutic enlightenment. They have a beautiful center,
and if you know of anyone who is in need of their care, I
would recommend it very highly. You may know more about
them by visiting their website
http://www.orchidrecoverycenter.com/
On Monday, May 14, Laura and I presented a program at The
Milagro Center, a nonprofit organization that offers an
art-based learning program for economically disadvantaged
elementary school children. The objective of the center’s
programs is to improve the educational performance and
artistic potential of low-income children and they serve
over 140 children every week, bridging the cultural gap
through the arts. The word Milagro means "miracle" in
Spanish.
The children come to the center right after school each
afternoon and, for about 45 minutes, get to play in a small
fenced in yard. Now that recess has been taken out of
regular school time, this is an important addition to their
day’s activities and so important to their health and
well-being. Next, they go indoors, where, for about an
hour, they get to do their homework with some very good
tutoring. A full-time staff as well as part-time staff and
a great set of volunteers assist the children so that there
is a very good ratio between the students and their tutors.
Following this, they come together in a group session in
which local artists from the community share their skills
with the children. That is the time that Laura and I
presented a section on India, telling them a bit about the
rich culture, the languages and sharing some music with
them.
They sang Om Shanti and were curious about the connection
between rap music and ancient Vedic mantras. Many drummed
and there was a request to repeat Om Shanti. I also taught
them a song to honor their parents in Sanskrit. They, of
course, found the strange sounding lyrics rather amusing
and giggled a lot through the chant. What I enjoyed most of
all was the great energy that was generated. After their
daily group sessions with community artists, they work in
small groups, based on their school grade, to develop
knowledge through art. For instance, one teacher teaches
them using hip hop.
You will be excited to know that these kids do really well
on their FCAT scores, (Florida Comprehensive Assessment
Test), which is part of Florida’s overall plan to increase
student achievement by implementing higher standards. This
is a classic example, which proves that art works to
improve education because art and knowledge are
inseparable, and serving to affirm the mystery of Saraswati
who is the goddesses of both, an important distinction.
If you would like to send out a tax-deductible
contribution, you can make out a check to the Milagro
Center and mail it out to 340 SW 6th Ave, in Delray Beach,
FL 33444. Should you want to contact them by phone, their
phone number is 561-279-2970.
The recurring theme of the month, in both of my weekends,
was “The Mystic Heart”: the weekend in Nottingham was
"Opening the Mystic Heart", and the weekend in Florida,
"Awakening the Mystic Heart". The Mystic Heart is the title
to the best-selling book of my beloved friend Wayne
Teasdale who died three years ago. Wayne truly lived from
this hidden heart, that mysterious core of our being where
we are in direct relationship with the very source of all
life energy and love. The Mystic Heart is also a metaphor
for the spiritual heart in which every spiritual tradition
in the world has its source and from which every religion
derives its deepest meaning. It was in this spirit of
inter-spiritual dialog and cross cultural understandings
that I conducted my weekends and it felt very appropriate,
since May 13, the death anniversary of my mentor, Bede
Griffiths, occurred during my travels. It was Bede who
inspired both Wayne and I toward inter-spirituality and it
was our close connection to him that awakened us to the
palpable power and depth that results from living out of
the mystic heart. Not surprisingly, I found my own heart
immensely opened because of the deep work these past couple
of weeks and I felt powerfully awakened as well. In other
words, the titles of both workshops ended up being actual
results that I experienced in my consciousness and I truly
hope that all of the participants in these events felt the
same way.
Jai!
In One Spirit,
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