Hitting the Right Note

[changing]

I am learning how to approach and live my life anew with the wise tutelage of brave and generous masters of the art of living that I have encountered here. For me, it can be strange and scary at first to try each new step. I experience it much as a vocal student does a difficult piece of music- one practices, imperfectly, until one "gets it". Then you recreate the "feel" of hitting the notes, and connecting the phrases fluidly. Eventually, the mind doesn't control things so much as the "feeling" becomes natural. This is the place where the music happens.
The guidance, fun, the creativity and the hard work and scrutiny- all have their rightful places in learning and being. Thank you for listening to my off-key attempts, and for your generous examples, of getting it right, as well as of getting it wrong and picking it up at the last measure, and doing it again!

Hugs,

Changing

[Certain Hope]

Aha!! 

((((((((Changing)))))))))

That's it!  "Learning and being"... as opposed to fixing. Can't explain it yet, but that's it... and it's 100% in the perspective.

Thank you!

Love,
Hope

P.S.  I was just explaining to my daughter the method, in practicing piano, of picking up at the last difficult measure and then retracing steps backward before moving forward. First the difficult one, then the last two, then the last three in succession... and then move on. Ahhh... the simple satisfaction of effort rewarded!

[Ami]

Dear Changing,
   Thank you for the inspiration that you bring to others. I think that that is one of your ' reasons to be". You  inspire people who are hurting. You  take small things and make joys from them.
  I think that you will be in a position to touch people when you are a lawyer.
   I think that God has you in a special  place in his heart. He is watching over His  child as she climbs the hills and crosses the rivers---- little and sometimes alone,but eventually picking herself up and going forward-- with hope and triumph .
                                                                                          Love you, Friend        Ami

[lighter]

Changing....

You're in my heart......


Hope....

yup yup yup.....

Learning and being....

instead of fixing.


Ummmm..... Ami....


You think too much, lol. 

[Poppyseed]

Changing,

Love your warmth. You sound so patient with yourself.  Such an important example for me, as I am queen of the "impatient with self" club. 

So glad you are finding your mastery.


Hope,

Love the learning and being thang!  No more fixing!  Growing and expanding and loving the place where we are!

pop

[WRITE]

I experience it much as a vocal student does a difficult piece of music- one practices, imperfectly, until one "gets it". Then you recreate the "feel" of hitting the notes, and connecting the phrases fluidly. Eventually, the mind doesn't control things so much as the "feeling" becomes natural. This is the place where the music happens.

it's interesting changing, I am a musician and not only has life come full-circle with me returning to my original career I gave up in my late teens because I didn't think I was 'good enough', but it affects me differently to be the musician now. I used to think each time was about getting better and better and reaching for an unatainable perfection...and that it was down to practice and that 'getting it' was mechanical.

Having mainly seniors and alzheimer patients to sing for gave me a space to try singing with the spirit, for I have so much love and admiration for these people, most of whom I am watching get sick and die whilst continuing to sing themselves...

I once said to one of my directors 'I wonder when I'll really be able to sing out' and it's taken years even from then, but hasnt been about training or even practising so much as connecting my spiritual self to the voice and just letting myself be there in that moment and share it perfectly with the people around.

It doesn't matter of my voice breaks or I miss a note, for every now and then an angel sound comes out of me and I know now- that is perfection, noticing those wonderful sublime moments when they arrive, not trying to make them happen on demand on automatic pilot!

I used to think there was a formula for life and everyone else got it, at least more than I did, like with mathematics or chemistry. And I got the same mental block as with those things- like it was mystery and not for me, I'm no rocket scientist or concert pianist so I should step back and leave it to people who can do it. A whole symphony shut down in me for a long long time. Now I realise the music was going on in and around me the whole time, I was just numb to it, just like when I see quadratic equations and hear the laughter and strictness of my various math teachers echo in my head 'you can't do it'.

Can! And will!!!

[changing]

Oh Write!

I love your singing to patients- what a fabulous image. So much electronic "music" everywhere, it is horrible and a blight on the earth!!! Your singing gives true healing vibrations, physical, mental, and spritual.

I had to laugh when I thought about your allusion to math... I enjoy working out the puzzles of equations, etc sometimes, but I have to work at it. I had one professor from Ethiopia who was famous for making errors almost every time he would write a problem on the board, or explain something. It hardly mattered, since his odd tone of voice, somewhat like a gutteral  hissing sound emitted by an angry Komodo dragon, and impossibly thick his accent, rendered him almost unimtelligible (his ratemyprofessor.com profile backs me up!). He was always angry and confrontational, and appeared always on the ready to "go postal".

I had been working on a problem (I think that he had not written all of the variables). He asked me to stand up and said, "You have committed a crime against mathematics!" I  walked out, went into another class and did well, but that odd fellow was a nutcase of the first water, and funny as could be!!!!

WE HAVE TO SING OUT WHILE WE CAN!

Changing