Hello and welcome.
I'm Phil Hathaway,
A London-based life coach,
Self-published author and self-confessed lover of life.
The title of this short talk is Listen to Life's Music.
Listen to Life's Music.
And I've based that title on the German philosopher Nietzsche and he said those who danced were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
Those who danced were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
Now when I first heard that quote it sent my head into a tailspin.
It sent my heart into a dance because I knew that it was speaking to a truth that I'd already seen.
A few years earlier I'd come across,
I should say stumbled across,
A way of looking at the world,
Of perceiving the world,
Of being in the world that dramatically changed everything for me.
Now this change,
This understanding,
This total shift in direction,
It didn't reveal itself and become apparent to me immediately.
But after a while I came to see there was a deep sense within me that was dancing.
There was a sense within me,
A feeling,
A sensation,
A knowing that was solid to its core that I'd heard something new.
I'd heard something that was true and that I'd heard something that I knew was going to change my life forever.
I'd heard the music.
I was dancing.
But I also knew that those around me,
If this doesn't sound arrogant,
Mostly hadn't heard that music and mostly weren't dancing.
So what is that music?
What is it that I've heard?
Well my first talk was titled Life Through the Lens of Understanding.
The music is what's coming through the lens.
Now one of the things I've learned over the years that I've been working as a coach is that it's usually not helpful just to tell people something,
Just to lay it out and hope that they take it on board.
Far better to encourage an environment where the other person has insight for themselves through self-reflection,
Through a quieter mind,
Through a reflective state of mind.
And in order to answer the question what is the music,
I don't think I could do justice to that in one talk or maybe in five talks.
It's going to be a gradual process.
The image that just came to mind was a huge jigsaw puzzle with thousands and thousands of pieces.
And over time this jigsaw gradually unfolds and the image reveals itself as the fragmented pieces become knowable.
You start to hear the music.
You begin to dance.
Now it is true that throughout history there are many that have seen the whole picture in one second.
We tend to refer to those lucky few as enlightened,
But for the rest of us mere mortals we're all in this gentle slow boat to realization.
One jigsaw piece after the next.
A movement towards freedom,
Towards the music.
One soft note after the next.
Now allow your mind to wander,
To imagine a world completely surrounded by dark,
Thick clouds.
And for hundreds of years no one has ever seen the Sun.
And then one day,
For one brief moment,
The Sun shone over the whole world.
Now even if that was for just a few seconds,
That would give everybody hope.
You would know that the Sun is still there.
And that's the hope in this understanding.
That no matter how dark,
How bleak,
Or even how wonderful,
The Sun is always there.
The music is always playing and we can always dance.
Imagine that I ask you to step into the tiniest of streams,
Less than ankle deep,
And I ask you to reach out to catch one of the tiny waves in the water.
Impossible.
Impossible to catch a wave.
A wave is the stream.
The music is life.
The notes are truth.
In my role as a coach I'm often asked how?
How do I hear the music?
And to me that's the wrong question.
The question isn't what do we have to do to hear the music.
The question is what are we doing that's taking us away from the music that's already there?
Or more precisely,
What are we doing that's feeding the illusion that we can't hear the music that's always there?
So I'm unable to answer the question,
How do you hear the music?
That's a little like asking,
Hey Phil,
Can you tell me how to feel a gentle breeze?
How should I appreciate the beauty of nature?
And besides,
Who am I anyway to be answering such questions?
So,
In truth,
I don't even want to attempt to answer that question for you.
But what I can do is point in a direction in the hope that you have a shift in consciousness.
That your mind settles and you see something for yourself.
But what I'm about to say,
As I point,
Is counterintuitive.
It goes against the grain.
Because let's face it,
Accepted wisdom is that in order to move forward,
In order to grow,
We need to push and pull.
We need to focus and strive.
And we need to fight to free ourselves from our anxieties and our stresses.
But what if there isn't an ounce of truth in those statements?
There's nothing wrong with wanting to succeed.
With wanting to free ourselves from stress and anxiety.
The state of mind that we're in when we do those things,
And the understanding that we're coming from,
That's the binding agent.
It's that understanding,
That state of mind that determines how much freedom we have,
How much clarity of mind we have,
How much music comes through the pipeline.
It's these ingredients that come into play when we look to succeed,
Or to free ourselves,
To be at our best,
And to hear the music.
So in this final few minutes of this talk,
I ask you to drop all preconceived ideas and play in the counterintuitive,
In the unknown,
In the yet-to-be-understood.
Allow me to ask a question of you.
Who do you think is most in their mental health?
A person who is struggling,
But they have an inclination that it's got something to do with their thinking.
It's got something to do with their state of mind.
Or is it the person who's successful,
And they believe the feelings they have around that success.
Has got something to do with the outside world.
Has got something to do with the business,
Or whatever it is that they've created.
Which of those two is closer to their mental health?
Well,
I can assure you that the answer is the first person.
The person who's struggling,
Or has an inclination that he's got something to do with their state of mind,
With thought.
Rather than blaming the outside world,
And circumstances,
The environment,
Or the people,
The business,
Relationships,
The weather,
Finances.
None of those things have the power,
Have any influence whatsoever,
Over our state of mind.
Unless we think it.
So the truth that I'm pointing to here,
That's true all of the time,
For all people,
Without exception,
Is that our state of mind has absolutely nothing to do with anything,
Other than thought.
In that,
That can be a hard pill to me too.
And even today,
After years of looking in this direction to see if that's true,
I can still get tripped over.
I can still get upset by the outside world.
I can still be anxious about the future.
I can still get wound up by what somebody has said.
But the more I know this to be true,
The less likelihood that that's going to happen,
The less that it will bother me.
And therefore,
The more I will be in clarity.
And when we're in clarity,
That's when we hear the music.
That's when we dance.
We're no longer blaming the outside world.
We're no longer a victim to other people and circumstance.
Number three,
Even if you just take this on board as a hypothesis,
Even if you just allow yourself the time to see if there's an inkling of truth in these words,
That is a perfect starting point.
That is how you start to turn up the volume of the music.
And related to what I'm saying,
And I know this is true to my core,
We can take any person on this planet that is living at this time,
That has ever lived or will ever live,
And in whatever way we thought appropriate,
We could help them to have a different relationship to thought,
A different relationship to state of mind,
A higher level of consciousness that understands that the outside world is not the cause effect of state of mind and has nothing to do with thought in the moment.
They will come home.
They will be free.
They would have clarity of mind.
They would have more intelligence,
More loving,
Free.
They would hear the music.
They would all be dancing.
And hopefully as we commune here and you go out to live your life,
My wish is that you test the things I'm pointing to.
See for yourself in your own life if they're true.
Witness these things for yourself and then see how you can awaken to a life well lived.
Those who danced were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
Go out into the world and dance.
So I've now come to the end.
I hope you've enjoyed it and it's been helpful in some way to you.
If you would like to hear more,
Please come back to my profile where I'll be loading up more tracks very soon.
If you'd like to leave a comment,
Please do so.
And if you do leave a comment,
I promise I will reply as soon as I can.
And all I've got to do now is just thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time out to listen to me.
Thank you.
