Music, a portal to you

You may find this title strange, since what you usually do, like the vast majority of people, is go from one side of a portal to the other, which is where we want to go. It is what we know, from a very young age ...

The adults in our lives rooted us in the importance of one day being someone, who is not who we are today. That is why they teach us different ways to get there.

As babies still, they determine the hours at which we have to drink milk, then porridge and then solids, to become healthy and strong, even if we feel hungry at other times than those. Depending on the case, they took us to nursery school when we were 4 months old, then to kindergarten, primary school, etc. To acquire knowledge that other adults chose was important and we should learn, according to our age, not according to our interest. Every so often, we had to go through portals called "exams", which, if we passed them, would take us to the next school grade and if we didn't, we would stay where we were, which was not what we wanted because we had to become that someone on the other side of the portal exam.

I don't have to continue with this story, which I suppose you know because it will resemble yours. You will have already recognized the number of portals that you have crossed in your life, to become the one you are today. And you still have portals that you think you have to go through, to be that someone, that you are not yet. True?

Today I want to talk to you about a portal that does not take you, like the ones you know well, to a place more or less distant from the one you are at today. Although the title says "... a portal to ...", it does not take you anywhere ... And what do I mean by "... you ..." where does this portal take you? I tell you based on my experience:

Since I was a child I have been passionate about the arts, especially music and from it, singing, because whenever I sang I had the experience that my mind stopped generating thoughts, or commenting on what I was doing. I felt as if a part of what I considered to be myself disappeared, and the only thing left was consciousness being aware of the pure presence of the act of singing.

Many years later, I found that this experience had a name: meditation. The definition in which I recognize my experience is this:

Meditation occurs when you are contemplation of that which contemplates, when you are the experience of non-duality, which is absolute presence in the eternal here and now.

What do I mean when I say "... you ..."? The same as when I say you and also I: to this pure presence in the eternal here and now. In my life, the portal that reveals to me, the fastest, that which I am and you are, has always been music. Over and over again, I made the experience that it expresses a single essence that has always been, is and will be in me, continuously, and that this essence has many ways of expressing itself. This is the healing potential of music. Depending on the effect you want to have on yourself and who is listening or singing it, you choose a specific combination of sounds.

My experience while singing is what led me to learn, for 10 years now, about how to create and express and thus release something that I observe in myself, in the form of music, and also about how to use it to guide me to a desired internal experience. Currently I am delving into the tradition of Naad Yoga according to the Sikh Gurus.

Have you tried music as a portal to you?