Going Within (17 page)

Listen to the sounds beyond silence.

S
ound is an infinitely important part of my life. Harsh noise drives me crazy. Loud voices seem immature and temperamentally disturbed to me. Traffic noise seems unnatural because it drowns out the sounds of nature. I have never been able to adjust to the technological sound pollutants that progress has created. A peaceful, natural silence is heaven for me, and when I go through long periods deprived of that natural silence it affects my well-being. Consequently, meditating with sounds that heal became important to me.

Man’s scientific instruments and his five senses can detect so-called solids because they are obviously physical. Solids are also characterized by their very slow vibrations.

Then comes sound, which ranges from 16 to 32,768 vibrations per second.

Steven Halpern, in his book
Sound Health
, proposes
that vibrations at 1,000 cycles per second are easily audible. If you double the vibrations to 2,000 cycles per second, that equals one octave higher. If, on a piano keyboard, we could extend its range another fifty octaves higher, the keys, when struck at the higher end, would produce colors rather than audible sounds. Color vibrates at 500 billion cycles per second.

The color of light is expressed in various vibrations depending on the individual color. If we could “hear” colors in a musical language, the harmonics would be about forty octaves higher than audible sound.

There are seven notes on a Western scale of music. (The eighth note sounds the same as the first, but is eight notes higher—that is what makes it an octave.) There are seven colors in the rainbow. There are seven energy centers in the body. There are seven colors that correspond to those seven energy centers, and the mystics say there are seven levels of consciousness: physical, etheric, emotional, mental, astral, spiritual, and soul.

Each color of the chakra system resonates to its corresponding level of consciousness as well as to its note on the scale. In other words, if the vibration of the color red (first, base chakra) could be heard, it would resonate to the keynote of C on the scale. The color of the second chakra, orange, would resonate to the keynote of D. And so it goes up the scale. Each color has a corresponding note. Therefore, when meditating
on a chakra color, augment the meditation by humming the note that each color corresponds to.

I found that meditating with color and sound on each of my chakra centers was helpful in making me feel more harmonious.

Sometimes I meditate and chant the sound “Om” with each chakra color. It was difficult at first to combine the two, but with practice it not only became easier but actually felt natural.

Om is said to be the original audible word best duplicating the vibration of God. It is a “power” word and has been used for centuries to instill harmony in healing. Actually, Om is an easy, soothing sound to hum, coming from deep in the throat and chest. When I chant it over and over it puts me in touch with the center of my being. I found that the longer I chanted Om, the deeper the state of my consciousness became.

However, since I didn’t want to become a monk, I stopped chanting Om for
deep
meditative purposes. I use it now for color and sound alignment of the
chakras. I let the sound reverberate in the center of myself until I feel it touch the place where I feel my soul connect with the universe. The energy I feel is soothing and therapeutic.

I first learned how effective sound could be
internally
when I began singing lessons. I couldn’t understand why I felt so much more centered after a lesson. And it really didn’t matter what my voice sounded like—it was the effect of the vibration on my solar plexus, heart, and so on. I remembered how diathermy, which is the therapy of sound waves, was a favorite with dancers and athletes whenever an injury was sustained.

Since I am so sensitive to sound, I travel with a white-sound machine that duplicates the gentle sound of ocean waves. (Actually it has rain, waterfall,
Surf I
, and
Surf III)
Whenever I am in cities, particularly to sleep through traffic noise, I use the white-sound waves
(Surf II)
to drown out the sound pollution from below.

I think we are all sensitive to sounds in ways that are not measurable. Harsh sounds can affect our minds and bodies and spirits in very deleterious ways. Conversely, beautiful music and the peaceful, rhythmic sounds of nature nourish us. We are like receiver sets attuned to incoming and outgoing electromagnetic vibrations. We have highly attuned nervous systems, which, when violated, can make us sick and anxious.

The Schumann resonance is an equation which
concludes that the human system vibrates at a basic rate of about 7.8 to 8 cycles per second, which is inaudible when it is relaxed. The frequency of brain waves produced in meditation is also in the 8-cycles-per-second range.

Physicists claim that the Earth itself vibrates at 8 cycles per second. The nervous systems of all life forms are attuned to this basic frequency. Thus, there is an invisible harmonic resonance between the Earth, as a living vibrating entity, and the human being when in a relaxed state. When we humans are hyper or tense we are out of balance with the resonating frequencies of the Earth itself. Feeling in harmony with ourselves and the Earth then becomes a natural marriage of electromagnetic vibrations.

When we listen to beautiful music, the oscillation of the music vibration usually massages the tissues and cells, which in turn effect a balance that improves blood circulation, metabolism, and the pulsation of the endocrine glands. Music may be the universal language because it helps each of us to vibrate as one. For instance, the earliest forms of music—the tapping together of sticks, hand clapping, tapping on stretched skins, repetitive grunts and hums—were devices to express rhythmic sound, which is vibration.

Along those lines, I was interested in what Steven Halpern had to say about the phenomenon of what is called
Entrainment.
That is to say, whenever two or more oscillators in the same energy field are vibrating
at almost the same rhythm, they tend to shift their respective rhythms until they are vibrating at
exactly
the same level. That is cosmic law—natural law. Entrainment is happening not only within our own individual bodies but is occurring with one another. We will shift to one another until we find a common rhythm. Therefore, if there is
anyone
suffering, we will all not only feel it but adjust our own rhythm to include it. Hence, one individual is everyone else’s concern.

When we are each in tune with ourselves, we significantly affect the attunement of others. When we are seriously out of “sync” with ourselves, we also disrupt, disturb, and distress others. This is why someone who is aggressively skeptical
can
affect or even distort the effectiveness of “sensitives.”

So, using color meditation and sound therapy helped me feel more peaceful, which in turn made me feel more healthy. I think more people could learn to use these techniques and to take responsibility for their own attunement as the first step toward recognizing that they have the right to experience themselves as harmonious.

According to science, the universe is an extremely harmonious place. Everything moves toward alignment and order. We humans, through our own self-judgment, actually seem to feel more comfortable with distortion and discord. But I think that is beginning to change as we see that happiness is a
choice
we make. Happiness requires attunement, and attunement
requires knowledge, and knowledge requires discipline in order to apply it. Holistic and self-healing knowledge is a gift we have not yet allowed ourselves to accept. We still put our trust predominantly in medical authority, which by its very definition treats disease rather than encouraging the individual to stimulate his or her own self-healing process. But even in this area, some physicians are beginning to admit the power of individual belief as an aid to recovery.

We are not simply a collection of chemicals that can be treated with drugs. We are electromagnetic beings and we can help ourselves in many ways. Man has responses to the vibrations he is aware of, such as sound, electricity, heat, light, and color. Beyond this range, though, there is a vibrational field of reality that human senses cannot yet perceive, but which our scientific instruments can detect. The X ray, for example, oscillates at 2 trillion vibrations per second.

There is a vibrational continuum in nature, but even science can detect only a limited level of that continuum.

Beyond all these realities lie higher planes of reality with even faster vibrations, about which Western science still knows little. These include the etheric realms, the astral, the mental, and the spiritual planes. And each plane of existence and reality obeys its own laws and principles.

Since each human being is Divine in essence and
carries the vibration of the Divine within, he or she can be healed of many ills by touching and visualizing and meditating on the higher velocities of spiritual vibration. This is the basis of individuals said to have “healing hands.” The body is a byproduct of the mind and spirit. Energy follows thought. Body follows consciousness. In fact, our physical world depends on what we consciously project and perceive it to be.

So the process of working with visualizations coupled with sound or music, allowing the harmonics of the notes to soothe and quell tension and stress, is available to anyone who is prepared to take the responsibility of trusting the internal harmony to merge with exterior vibration.

Here’s one of the processes I use:

I draw a hot bath at a time when I know I won’t be disturbed. I turn off the telephone. I place my crystals on the four sides of the tub facing inward. Sometimes I use bath oil in the water—flower essences or pine oil, for example.

I light a candle in the bathroom and turn on some beautiful music, choosing the music according to what I need. It is never rock ’n’ roll.

Sitting back in the tub, I take three deep breaths, one for body, one for mind, and one for spirit, and allow the music to wash over me and through me. I breathe in whatever colors come to mind. I breathe them in deeply and with trust. I feel each color merge with the corresponding chakra. Then I picture
myself in a beautiful garden, with birds and flowers and trees and animals all around me. When the music reaches a point where I feel I can “Om” with it, I do. I feel the sound vibration permeate through me. I chant Om to the music, feeling the notes and colors dance within. It’s a wonderful feeling. It makes me feel like a child. It releases constrictions. It enables me to feel freed. I then have an adventure in the theater of my mind, allowing myself to be taken wherever it wants me to go. Sometimes the trip is peaceful and simple, sometimes it is elaborate and better than any movie I’ve made. I trust my Higher Self to lead me down paths where I have never been before. I know that I am safe and will always return to the tub in my bathroom when I want to.

Sometimes I meet people with whom I need to resolve conflicts. Sometimes I meet old friends from other lives as well as this one. (And I clearly have lots of friends!) The more I let myself go, the more fun I have and the less stress I feel when the meditation is over.

I am me, but I am different. I know somehow that I am not only a three-dimensional being. I am multidimensional and I am interested in each dimension equally. I feel I am experiencing all time at once, and realize that the focus of this experience in this life, now grounded in this bathtub, is an infinitesimal speck of the totality of who I really am. I am everything and everyone at once. I am the hologram of all there is. It feels as though in me lies the essence of the great oneness—and at that moment I am home.

11

Sex and the Chakras

All life is a boomerang.
We receive what we give.

W
e have now delved into the spirituality of color and sound, the quiet power of the Higher Self, and how all of it relates to the bodies we live in, but none of it makes sense without also discussing one of the most fundamental of human activities—sex. Sex is as attractive and confusing as any human adventure we indulge in.

First, from all that I’ve read and learned from therapists and psychology experts, sex is rarely about sex. Sex is used basically to work out other emotions, other needs, such as power, possessiveness, control, propriety, domination, anxiety, momism, popism, and a plethora of other aspects of the human condition. Sorting it all out has filled thousands of books by those selfsame experts. Most of this analytic material, because it is about distortion, is necessarily negative.