If you want to master anything in life,
You need to practice.
As a music teacher,
This really is my jam.
Over the years I've practiced many instruments.
I've practiced meditation.
I've practiced resistance training.
And something slowly dawned on me.
Practice doesn't begin when you say,
OK,
Now I'm practicing.
Practicing is happening right now.
It's happening whether you like it or not.
So what do I mean by practice?
To practice is to continually look at something from a similar angle.
Let me tell you a story.
When a new student comes in,
I show them a very small metal trophy of a guitar.
It's only a couple of inches high.
I hold it up and ask,
What is it?
They say,
It's an electric guitar.
I hide it in my hands,
Reveal it again.
What is it?
It's a small electric guitar.
It's a metal electric guitar.
It's a guitar trophy.
I hide it again,
Reveal it again.
What is it?
By now they're smiling at me like I'm an idiot.
Finally I hand it to them and say,
Now look at it from every angle,
Even the bottom.
They turn it over and at the base is a small hole,
A razor blade and a slit and their eyes widen.
It's a pencil sharpener.
Yes,
It's a pencil sharpener.
And then I ask them,
If I only ever showed you the guitar part,
How long would it take you to realize it was a pencil sharpener?
Most of them say,
I would have never have guessed.
And that's the point.
Most of us are looking at life from one angle,
Our habitual angle.
We get good at seeing life the way we think it is.
So good in fact,
That we become convinced that that's all there is to see.
But that reduces life to a narrow corridor of ideas.
If you sat down every day for half an hour and wrote out every thought your mind had,
You'd begin to see a pattern and that pattern would show you what you think reality is.
I suspect most of us would be slightly shocked reading our thoughts out loud,
Possibly embarrassed.
You're not alone.
Everyone is walking around inside their own small interpretation of reality.
It's taken me a very long time to realize.
I have no idea what's going on.
Other than one thing,
Everything is in a constant state of change.
When I believed life was a massive problem to be solved,
Money,
Relationships,
Success,
Perfection,
I was constantly juggling smaller problems inside a bigger one.
I wanted to be the perfect husband,
The perfect father,
The perfect teacher,
The perfect musician.
But the only thing I was perfecting was madness,
Because I was trying to hold still a world that is forever changing.
Perfection is not something you finely polish like a silver cup.
Perfection is recognizing that everything is perfect as it is.
Yes,
There is destruction in the world,
But destruction is simply change.
Stars expand.
Planets disappear.
Entire galaxies are swallowed.
I doubt the star has regrets.
And when I eventually die,
I won't feel bad that I've left.
Life is fleeting.
We spend too much of it thinking we know what's going on,
Fighting with life to produce our preferred version of reality.
It's not wrong to improve your circumstances,
But there's no guarantee the world will cooperate.
And even if it does,
The mind will find another problem,
Because that's its job.
It shows you how things could be better.
That's not wrong.
But who's in charge?
You or your mind?
Can you sit on the ground for half an hour and do nothing,
Without the urge to check your phone,
Without thinking someone might be looking at your profile,
Without wondering about the football scores,
Without chasing the next distraction?
The mind is restless.
It's like a child constantly tugging at your sleeve.
But there is something deeper available.
The satisfaction of saying everything is perfect,
Just as it is.
There is nothing I need to fix.
Nowhere I need to go.
Nothing I need to become.
I am already enough.
This doesn't make you passive.
It makes you peaceful.
You can allow the mind to rattle on without obeying it.
You can feel the aliveness in your body.
You can practice stillness.
You can practice awareness.
You can practice noticing fear without becoming it.
You can practice letting meaning soften.
You can see a thought and say interesting and let it pass.
Every day you practice liking this and hating that.
You practice irritation.
You practice anxiety.
You practice ambition.
You practice dissatisfaction.
Or you can practice relaxing.
Meditation,
Chanting,
Tai chi,
Yoga.
These are simple structured ways of practicing acceptance.
The more you relax,
The more clarity you find.
Many people never find this clarity because their nervous system is constantly braced.
Even sleep doesn't fully restore them.
Because the dreams mirror the anxiety of waking life.
But if your waking life becomes serene,
Your sleeping life follows.
So here is a question.
If you're already practicing,
What do you want to practice?
Managing life or experiencing it as extraordinary?
Everything that you think will complete you.
Money,
Status,
Success is surface level.
Even if you got it all,
The mind would still whisper,
Something could be better.
That's survival.
But awareness is freedom.
You can surrender to the mind's complaints without becoming its servant.
You can allow life to unfold in all its strange beauty.
You can see arguments and delight as the play of human consciousness.
You can soften.
You can let go.
You can practice stillness.
And in practicing stillness,
You transform your life one note at a time.
In a moment,
I'll invite you to close your eyes and we'll move into a 15 minute sound bath.
This recording was made last year.
It's what I call the alternate sound bath.
Let the tones do the work.
There's nothing to achieve.
Just practicing listening.
Practice being.
I'll see you on the other side.
Notice what's here now.
No need to analyze.
No need to label.
Just this breathing,
Awareness,
Aliveness.
This is the practice and it's always available.
