Music has been apart of my life from the very beginning. Whether in grade school rocking to Kokomo by The Beach Boys, as a young teen slapping on makeup of Peter Criss from KISS for Halloween or being a member of the Naughty By Nature fan club leather strap watch and all, music was my childhood more than anything. 

Ever see those shows where people just break out in song and dance and think (that never ever ever happens). Felt the same way. Raised three kids in show choir and realized that life does exist; and let me tell you it’s a beautiful thing to hear. 

My soundtrack

My life has a soundtrack. I play over two hundred thousand minutes of music every year. 

From beautiful calm music to send me to sleep, the rock ballads to get me through the workout, or the devotional music that brings me to my knees, music affects every minute of my life.  

Music is something I cherish and guard everyday. I make sure I am almost always playing my soundtrack. 

When your life’s soundtrack is being dictated by others, we can lose connections to our lives, our path, and even our souls. It can also bring you closer, when hearing the soundtrack of your loved ones around you. 

A life without a soundtrack is still a life with music, but it’s a life we let those around us control. That is not a situation that is always best for us. 

Music is the bodies alchemist

From the sounds of an excessively loud motorcycle, mufflers on a car, the vibrations all around us actually play music that affects us. Whether you hear it or feel the vibrations the music creates in air, music affects every cell in your body.

Stand near a loud rumbler and monitor your heart rate. 

Monitor your chemical releases like cortisol, dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline with the music society plays with our souls. 

We watch movies and tv shows of people making potions to chemically altar the human brain to manipulate it.  

The reality is Music is the real alchemist that can change your brain chemical make up the second it starts. 

Don’t believe me? 

Complete this sentence “Sweeeet Caroline…….” 

Did you smile?  Shake your head?  I didn’t even play the actual music. Yet, I just personally chemically altered your brain and maybe even made you smile.

Music was the alchemist, I just stirred the pot with two words. 

Connecting our Souls with Music

I won’t say any song is “bad” alchemy because every lyric ever written has a source of chemical emotion that created it. 

Music has a soul, it’s something that can’t be artificially connected to you. You finished that song because it is a part of your soul. 

The right song for you can sound like the wrong song to me. It doesn’t make it wrong for either of us though. See when I listen, INTENTIONALLY, to your song that connects to you, we thread our souls together forever with Love. 

Every single solitary time you take the time to listen to the words of a song that is cherished by someone you Love, you create a permanent thread that surpasses even riding on the Maya Express. 

The sound of Maya

Unfortunately the Maya Express knows the true importance of music.  They don’t prevent music, they just have a tendency to bind our hearts to songs that don’t serve our souls purpose. 

Maya likes to play that random song on the radio that reminds you of that lost love. The song that makes you miss your parent or child. Just as positive music can be life altering, it can be just as dark and the Maya Express will take your moments of silence and plug in their music.  

I truly believe whether playing some instrumental positive music even low like white noise, produces a life that helps keep Mayas soundtrack out of our playlist. 

The Origin Sound 

Music is the language that connects us to our Spiritual Path. In Bhakti and Hinduism in general we recognize the original sound of God being Om ॐ

Sadhus would pass down oral retelling of the Srimad Bhagavatam using meters and hundreds and thousands of verses to sing the entire thing. They used music for memorization.

Think about how many times that song from thirty years ago appears and you immediately know all the words. Now repeat to me a conversation word for word you had with your loved one an hour ago. We can memorize Ice Ice Baby for thirty years and yet can’t remember if she wanted two percent or whole milk at the store, after she just told you five minutes ago.

Whether it was the big bang or simple humming sounds of the sound OM from a higher being, it started with a sound stirred in a pot. 

The true history of the human race stands in music.  Whether for it or against it, music has a place in every inch of society since we heard the sound of lightning striking and fire crackle. 

Society is controlled by Music

Whether it’s society rendering straight edge punk music, metal headbanging riffs, lyrical geniuses from pop artists and rappers or the instrumental magic of an orchestra, Music weaves its way every second of our day. 

Our love for each other and the connections we build come from the music of our heart. From that origin we can build love and lives with those around us. 

My active playlists always are influenced and updated by those around me and their soundtracks. My love for others or sadness or hunger always appears in my playlists of the day. 

Even genres I might not have liked as much in the past, I find after really listening to a friend’s playlist, I love it too. It took me taking the effort to sit and listen with them and the right time to really understand them more. 

The right time, for the right song. 

For most my life the Maya Express kept the music my soul needed for my Path away from me. The idea of Godly music at my own kids Christmas choir concerts bothered me. Then I started down the Path of Bhakti and Love and that changed everything.  

At the Path of Christianity, I found myself not just listening to devotional Christian music, but having to read it word for word as I worked the audio/ visual as a volunteer. 

I really started to appreciate the music and combined with the angelic singing voice of Marcie and the rest of her choir, it really opened up my heart. 

As I started appreciating the good alchemy, some in the congregation started to even dance. 

All you want to do is Dance

I am not a dancer. But you will see me dancing everyday now. The music hits right and I’ll dance for hours, somedays even if I’m driving. 

What changed was one of the most beautiful quotes given to me by a musician from his Guru. Radika Das.

Sukha Dev Goswami once said

“When you lie down and chant/pray, God sits beside you”

“When you sit up and chant/pray, God stands beside you”

“When you stand and chant/pray, God dances beside you”

“And when you dance and chant/pray, God EMBRACES you”

This past year God embraced me so much i found myself in a mosh pit of Sadhus and Swamis. 

The Path of Music is one of the most beautiful paths I have ever walked on, I encourage you to listen intentfully and mindfully to my playlist. I encourage you to listen to all your friends playlists, and share yours as well. I promise I’ll listen to an hour of anyone’s music as best to my abilities. 

YouTube playlist. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPOB5Rhbnz0FHI7ldHZI6MEu46oLqqav0&si=iaZC4GbxeOVoFl

Spotify List https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3nDGsYsGsRsqxG6P4Nm4bi?si=E_xe8aO0Tl2XBSiYPMV0OA&pi=JAvdUZieRqGm1

As fun as this path was, nothing prepared me for all our energy and wonderment that followed down the Path of …… 

Yours Forever Grateful.