Woke up this morning from an interesting dream. Actually the second day in a row that I dreamt about four-fold structures (and one of many as this theme keeps haunting me in general, if it’s not four, it’s octaves). Yesterday’s dream was about how the four are folding into each other and how the first stage is already enveloped in the fourth stage. Have had images of superstrings in my head since…
You are a Rockband
Today’s dream was about looking at the four-fold being of body, emotions, mind and energy as a rockband. Body being drums, emotions being bass, mind being lead guitar and energy the vocals – spirit, of course, as the fifth element holding it all together. Similar to the exercise of hearing music separated into individual tracks, we can then listen to our being in each of the separate parts, knowing that all play together, and that we are both their totality and each of them, none solely. It allows us to focus on being spirit and using our band to express ourselves fully.
The Instruments
The body keeps the rhythm, ensuring that we tread along in this reality one step at a time, beat by beat. It is the grossest, loudest, and could easily be most dominating. So it’s particularly important to refine its use making it more and more subtle, learning to actually play it melodically instead of just making noise with it.
The emotions, the bass, give us our general funk, creating together with the body our rhythm section and the foundation for our song. Depending on our emotional state, this might be an upright which we bow, or an electric bass we pluck. It might be staccato mirroring our drums, or it might play off the drums and create a flow on top of it.
The two alone could provide sufficient drive to keep things going, and many times people prolly don’t have more than those two instruments playing at the same time. As someone pointed out once, even most of the time when people talk, they are not really expressing thought, but are rather simply emoting.
The mind, as the lead guitar will introduce ideas, wrestle with notions, elaborate and create more and more of our personal individual energy. We now have a trio, which in itself could create interesting music already. On some levels, this could actually be sufficient, was it not for our interactions with the field around us and the question of purpose.
Purpose is expressed in the vocals, in the direction we give our energy. How we chose to relate, how we chose to integrate with the world around us. Taking our individual energy, and not just expressing it, but elaborating on it, giving it meaning, taking position and projecting ourselves into the world around us.
Getting good – The Art of Rehearsing
The study of each instrument in isolation can then help us play together in concert. Training our body, keeping that instrument clean, allows for a steady beat. Exploring our emotions allows us to create interesting and dynamic baselines instead of Hallmark co-dependent flat emotions. Furthering our mind allows for evermore intricate personal expression, and exercising our voice allows us to continue to refine our personal meaning.
A good reminder…
Most importantly, though, by focusing on these four as instruments of our expression, we remind ourselves, that we are all and none of them, and that the concert master, our spirit, is using the band, but is not the band. In a way, it is a reminder that we are not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body.
Still a somewhat immature metaphor, but I think one might be able to elaborate on it 😉 Have fun!