Musitations™: Exploring Music, Meditation, Creativity and Wisdom

For those who know Mark Nepo's work he needs no introduction.  For those who are not yet familiar with his work, Mark Nepo has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time,” “a consummate storyteller,” and “an eloquent spiritual teacher.” A bestselling author, he has published twenty-three books and recorded sixteen audio projects. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Recent work includes Surviving Storms (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2020) and Drinking from the River of Light, a Nautilus Award Winner (Sounds True, 2019). 

I have been following Mark's work for over 30 years.  Yet, I first connected with him when my music was used on his two audio programs for Sounds True, Reduced To Joy, and Inside The Miracle.  Since then I have had the honor and privilege of being part of a number of his mentoring circles for authentic living. 

Mark has a unique capacity to bring the inevitable complexities, challenges and inherent paradoxes of life into an intimate, clear and accessible focus through the power of story, metaphor and his timeless poetry.  In this episode, we dive into his most recent book, "Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity".  It's as all of his books a powerful, deeply intimate read about becoming truly ourselves in times of adversity, challenges and suffering. Today, more than ever, Mark's timeless wisdom is a welcome healing balm and lantern to light our way through the dark. 

Mark's Main Website: https://marknepo.com/  

Marks Website for Live Webinars: https://live.marknepo.com/

04:52 The Basic Chords Under Everything

06:24 Between The Song of Life and The Pain of Life 

07:57 Exhausted Open To the Joy and Pain of Living

09:30 The Everyday Broken Hallelujah

12:31 The Liminal Space of Being Born Premature 

16:00 Losing the Connection to the Chords Under Everything - Our Primal Home

16:30 Where is Your Soul At Home

20:57 The Essential Paradoxes of Life

21:40 Whales and Dolphins as Examples of Solitude and Relationship

24:00 Our Direct Connection and Reverence for Life 

24:45 Presence and Depth of MY Truth vs. Relationships and Truth Beyond My Own

25:50 The Gifts and Liabilities of Solitude and Relationship

26:30 The Maturing of Compassion - Staying Open To Your Pain Without Losing Yourself

28:00 Un-individuated Love and Codependency

28:39 We Have the Switch To Our Own Light, Not Others 

30:00 Through Suffering and Loving We Find Our Inner Light 

31:00 Being a Greenhouse for Each Others

34:00 Dealing with Paradox by Stepping Back To See the Wider View

35:00 The Hawk and The Horse - Balancing Revelation and Step by Step Living

39:00 Letting our Soul Catch Up With Us

42:00 Circles for Authentic Living

43:00 Progress vs Incarnation (doing for others AND seeing for myself)

46:00 Breaking Codependence (Extension of Suffering vs. Being a Resource for another Suffering)

48:00 Not Avoiding Suffering and Becoming a Hand Carved Flute

49:00 Being Fully Carved Open Like a Flute

50:00 Everyone Has a Gift Which Gives Us The Capacity to Live Life to The Fullest

• 00:00 Intro 
• 04:17 Letters to a Young Poet Inspiration
• 05:51 Rodin and Rilke’s Relationship
• 08:00 Rilke asks, “How should I live?” 
• 09:22 Rodin’s Answer
• 11:51 Rilke’s quest for a Muse 
• 14:29 Heart Work and Empathy
• 19:45 Creativity and Madness
• 21:12 Do we need demons to create?
• 26:00 Art and the Mystery of Being
• 27:45 Seeing with Awe and Wonder
• 30:37 Looking through Rilke’s Eyes
• 31:57 Letters and Poems
• 35:41 Art and the Survival of our Species
• 38:51 Art and Nature
• 39:02 Truth over Beauty?
• 39:17 Nature and Truth 
• 41:00 On Solitude and Togetherness  

The title of this podcast is the provocative title of one of my favorite books I have read in recent years, Rachel Corbett's masterwork of historical non-fiction, You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and August Rodin.  It really rocked my world. I had read Rilke's monograph of Rodin back in grad school 40 years ago, and have always wondered why someone had not written more about the relationship between these two men of vision, heart and artistic genius. To many Rilke is considered the greatest poet of the 20th century, and Rodin perhaps one of the greatest sculptures of all time.  In particular, Rilke's masterpiece, "Letters to a Young Poet" spoke so deeply to me as a young aspiring poet/artist and musician - that it has shaped my own approach to life and art in deep ways, and remains (as it does for many) as one of my favorite gifts to give to young, aspiring creatives of all types.  I was also going through a very difficult time when I read this book as we were entering the pandemic and it was as if Rachel was speaking directly to me through her thoughtful, wise and empathic prose.  I have wanted to have her on the show for quite some time and I'm THRILLED she agreed.  You won't be disappointed and PLEASE go buy this book and read it! If you want to experience Paris and the artistic/intellectual climate at the turn of the century - it will take you on a fascinating, wonderful journey - particularly with a caste of characters as diverse and extraordinary as Lou Andreas-Salome (Rilke's lover, mentor, guide and muse) and Camille Claudel (Rodin's gifted, brilliant and ultimately tragic muse) and so many others.

Here is a bit more about Rachel: 

Rachel Corbett is the author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, which won the 2016 Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing.  She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

• Website: http://www.rachel-corbett.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rachelncorbett?lang=en
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corbett_(art_journalist)

I first met Felipe when he asked me to be part of a local PechaKucha, a fascinating form of storytelling that celebrates humanity. Felipe was the driving force and organizer for our local chapter. For those that don't know PechaKucha’s 20x20 presentation format allows each presenter 20 chosen images, each for 20 seconds. In other words, you've got 400 seconds to tell your story, with visuals guiding the way. PechaKucha means "chit chat" in Japanese and began in Tokyo in 2003, and since then it has grown into a worldwide movement. 

I loved the experience and was immediately impressed with the quiet strength, compassionate wisdom and presence of this young man and the community he helped develop in our Gulf Coast town for our fellow creatives. As you will find out Felipe loves hanging out with ALL the muses of life - and most importantly his love of people, family and the creative process.

Felipe is an award-winning artist, a five-time entrepreneur with 20 years of marketing experience, and a decade working on business branding and consulting. He's been coaching and training professionals since 2010 on how to work creatively with various tools and more recently focusing on assisting individuals on living a more mindful and meaningful life by embracing their spirituality, creativity, and exploring new positive experiences.

His father is a fine artist and interior designer, and his mother is an educator in theology and philosophy. Early on, ideas, concepts, and experiences allowed him the privilege of having time and space to develop critical thinking, compassion, and an existential drive that motivates him to this day in appreciating the beauty in every person and every moment. As a father of two expressive and creative children, now more than ever, he appreciates all the experiences that his childhood provided him.

Join us as we take a deep dive into all things creative in particular how he has developed his Art and Meditation practice and our mutual passion of combining present moment awareness with the creative process!

You can find out more about Felipe as: https://munoz.work/about or https://empathicpractice.us/  

I am thrilled to have my good friend, fellow flutist Sherry Finzer on Musitations Episode 12! We've known each other close to a decade and share a love of the flute and a passion for bringing more healing, meditation and mindfulness into the world through music.

Topics we explore: 

1. What led you from classical/jazz to more healing music?
2. How do you use music as a meditation for yourself and others? 
3. What do you love most right now about your exploration of healing music?
4. Can you tell us more about The Tank and recording there and what you love most about it?
5. What is your creative edge?
6. Being the first musician to live stream on Insight Timer!

Sherry Finzer believes that music can heal. Her musical journey has taken her from classical to jazz, pop, world, and flamenco, to today, where she feels her music does the best work by helping to calm, soothe and bring people to a state where they can begin to heal through her New Age music. Fueled by stories shared by listeners and fans of how her music helps them deal with stress, depression, and physical ailments such as tinnitus, stroke, and cancer, she records, performs, composes, and runs Heart Dance Records – a label consisting of artists with a focus on creating music to be used to help mentally and physically heal. Sherry specializes in the low flutes - alto, bass, and contrabass, as well as Native flutes.

Sherry's music can be heard on SXM Spa Channel, Pandora, Spotify, Music Choice Soundscapes, Galaxie Spa Channel, Calm Radio, River of Calm, Journeyscapes, international radio programming, multiple airlines, and overhead music channels. She was one of the first musicians asked to live stream on the Insight Timer app, and performs weekly on this platform.

She has recorded over 27 New Age & Contemporary Instrumental CD's and has released many singles.

You can find out more about Sherry at: https://www.sherryfinzer.com/ 

I so loved doing this podcast with one of my newest soul friends Susan Harper - a true moving storyteller, dream weaver and continuum teacher who opens portals to the vast space of creativity we all have within us!  This last year, I became a huge fan of the work of Emilie Conrad. I spent most of COVID reading, re-reading, digesting and book marking her riveting autobiography "Life on Land," where she introduces how we all have aquatic origins.  That book brought me in touch with Susan who I truly see as carrying on the soul of Emilie's work, bringing together the 3 muses of movement, sound and breath.  At the end of the soulversation, Susan helped shed light on a vocal trauma I suffered at the age of 10, and also helped me dive more deeply into my current grief around my father's dying process I am currently traversing with him as a soul doula. So grateful for this time with her.

Themes we explore on this rich, deep dive of a soulversation: 

1) The relationship between vocalization, breath and movement in continuum.

2) What Musicianing is when it comes to our own breath, movement, sounding process?

3) The dual process of rooting and reaching.

4) The dual process of autonomy and connection (interdependence).

5) Cultivating Fluid Presence.

6) What is an Improvisational moment.

7) Ways of dissolving to discover primordial wisdom.

8) Tension between what is and what is possible.

9) What is our soul-heart-song? 

A bit more information about Susan and how to connect with her and her work:

Susan Harper is a Continuum teacher, a heart-soul-counselor, creative instigator, and inspired teacher of perceptual and movement inquiry.

Susan has the ability through personal demonstration of sounds, breaths and movement to transmit a primal and spiritual fluidity that inspires participation resulting in embodied innovative discoveries. Her students call her a moving storyteller, a dream weaver, one who opens portals into the vast space of creativity, which is available in all human beings.

Susan joined Emilie Conrad, founder, in 1975 to study, and eventually became a partner in developing the organization and work of Continuum. Emilie and Susan developed teacher training programs, and co-founded Continuum Teacher Organization in 2000. She continues to mentor many of the authorized Continuum teachers.

Susan creates contexts for those who love to inquire, who dare to listen at the edge and in the depths—to be in the frontier conversation—who are aware of the adventure of courting the unknown.

You can find out more about susan and her work at https://continuummontage.com/

Beautiful documentary of Susan and her work:  https://vimeo.com/449520710 

In episode 10 I'm thrilled to have the talented musician and author McCall Erickson back on Musitations™!  I first read a quote 5 years ago by McCall that touched me deeply, “Soul work is not a high road. It's a deep fall into an unforgiving darkness that won't let you go until you find the song that sings you home.”  It was a beautiful distillation of what I have found to be true on my own journey. In Episode 6 you can hear more about her book  The Second Half of the Mountain: A guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening.

Since our last episode we have stayed in touch and found a mutual focus, concern and interest in the following topics particularly around emotional sobriety and how it relates to healing from codependency, developing our creativity and supporting our well-being.

Topics explored:

• What is emotional sobriety?
• Our personal journeys with healing codependency and learning to transmute feelings and emotions
• Feeling vs. Emoting and how they're both necessary
• Our work to live beyond the drama triangle
• Forming secure attachments outside of the drama triangle
• Attachments vs. connections

Link to McCall's website: https://www.mccallerickson.com

Link to the video version of this episode (coming soon)

I was thrilled when my good friend and musical colleague from my Music for People days asked me to be on her wonderful Sounds of Healing Podcast.  We decided to create a 'soulversation' for both of our podcasts as we dove into The Sounds of Mindful Living from the Heart which I have renamed Soundful Living from the Heart for our Musitations podcast episode 9! 

A particularly special, heartfelt part of this particularly soulversation is our sharing about our beloved teacher, friend, mentor and colleague Grammy winning cellist David Darling who passed away earlier this year. 

Here is a little more about Karen's amazing work and background: 

Dr. Olson uses her sound healing method to help people find peace, freedom and the power to live their dreams.  She has established herself as an authority in emotional and physical wellbeing. Her education, training and personal experience is the subject of her award-winning book, SoundPath: Using the Power of Sound and Silence for Health, Harmony and Happiness

Karen draws upon a rich background of degrees, certifications, strong faith and many gifts to be able to hold a space for Divinely guided energetic answers for her clients. She is a multi-award-winning, Billboard-topping musician and composer, best-selling author, international speaker, and bio-energetic practitioner.

Dr. Olson has advanced degrees from Juilliard, Yale, and NYU. She is a violist with eight CDs, has been on the top-10 of four Billboard charts and has won multiple awards. She is a member of The New York Pops with regular appearances at Carnegie Hall. She has shared the stage with superstars Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Liza Minelli, Roger Daltry of The Who, Sarah McLachlan and many many more. Her recent music video featuring Deepak Chopra and Michel Pascal is used to help give prisoners a sense of peace and is part of a program at the United Nations. Dr. Olson was also featured in the UN’s Global Bwell/BKind Challenge. Experience her music and programs so you can receive deep peace and answers for a path to freedom, peace, improved health and happiness.

You can find our more about her at her website: https://www.karenolson.com/ 

Bill Schulz (Chiz) has been my oldest and dearest soul brother and friend for the last 42 Earth years.  He was the first one that awakened in me both the practice of meditation at the age of 16, and the first person I explored musitations and soulversations with.  We have shared a love of using music as a form of inquiry into the nature of reality and being-at-large through our over 4 decades of friendship.  Our love for exploring the stars, night sky, and the natural world equaled our love of creating music for healing ourselves and others.  In this rare and deep dive into the origins of the idea of musitations and soulversations we explore understanding of music, nature and the soul.  We also journey back and discuss what we use musically call  'Soft Space' which was another phrase for what we understood as 'soul space' where we both felt our identities 'dissolve into a river of sound.'    

Topics we explore in Episode 7:

What is the relationship between music, nature and the soul?

What was unique, strange, curious about our particular form of playing and listening to music from the beginning?

What is the role of silence in our lives and music that we love to listen to and play?

Why is the awareness of impermanence, emptiness and death central to understanding music and musitations?

When was the first time you felt seen, heard and were able to talk about and share what is most important to you?

In episode 6 I have the wonderful opportunity to have a deep soulversation with musician and author McCall Erickson.  I first read a quote 4 years ago by McCall that touched me deeply, “Soul work is not a high road. It's a deep fall into an unforgiving darkness that won't let you go until you find the song that sings you home.”  It was a beautiful distillation of what I have found to be true on my own journey.  We explore her journey and her book The Second Half of the Mountain: A guide to Personal Alchemy After Awakening and many shared interests in the overlap between the soul's journey and the creative process - in particular music - and the importance of honoring decent, growing down and darkness as sacred and critical in finding an authentic life grounded in the wholeness of being, including the times we must embrace the sacred dimensions of emptiness and not-knowing.    For me a soulversation is two souls encountering each other in the present moment tracking the music that arises between there own rhythms, melodies and see what third element arises - like the harmonics that arise spontaneously and seemingly out of nowhere in music.  I hope you'll enjoy ours, I sure did!

In this episode I have the unique opportunity to have a deep dive conversation with the author of Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being, Philip Sheperd.  This profound book really touched me and gave expression to many of my own experiences of wholeness.  Philip shares my love of creativity and the power of present moment awareness for helping us move from our head back into our bodies intelligence where we can ground ourselves in the wholeness of being.  We also touch on how we are a 'standing wave' not an object in space, which is very aligned with our understanding on Musitations, that we are music! From his amazing soul adventure at the age of 18 biking from England to Japan to study Noh Theatre, to his playing lead roles on stages in London, New York, Chicago and Toronto, to the international teaching he now does on The Embodied Present Process™(TEPP), Philip is on a mission to help wake us up to the inherent wholeness and grace of our being.  Join me in this very rare and not to be missed soulversation.  For me a soulversation - is two souls encountering each other in the present moment with the intention of exploring what arises.  I hope you'll enjoy ours! 

Today is my paternal grandfather's spiritual birthday - the day he took is last breath 47 years ago. It is also the birthday of one of my dearest soul mentors who transitioned 13 years ago, Hugh Carter, whose soul name was Pilgrim - a deeply humble, wise and compassionate soul who taught me so much.  Hugh was a musician, teacher, and life long minister of the soul.  They both lived well into their 80's and were living, breathing symbols of humbly living from the heart while having a deep resiliency and courage. 

Today I share how we are all a song - and a song never dies. It may go silent, but it is always out there flowing through the atmosphere for anyone to receive it and play it again - reviving its essence and its power to touch the soul, open the heart and calm the mind.  I share the poem "Pilgrims Glance" from my first book of poetry, Moments: Healing Poems for the Journey Home that I wrote for Hugh after his physical passing.  I also share how my grandfather, Hugh and my mother have become more present to me through their physical absence. The sounds, the songs, the music doesn't die - it goes on and on, like star light....

In this episode Michael takes listeners into his micro-musitation practice: Three breaths to de-stress. It is a resonant breathing practice that calms the nervous system, reducing fear, anxiety and increasing blood flow.  This also has been found to be very beneficial in boosting immunity and also help you in dealing with respiratory distress.  Being Music is his brand of music that explores both what it means to live each moment as a note in the song of today, while also creating music that helps us 'be' and not 'do'.  He also discusses the view that we are going through a global soul initiation by having to 'be' and not 'do' and how this helps us do inner work which is so crucial to maneuver the inevitable rapids of life with resilience and creativity. Finally he shares the title poem to his new book of poetry When All Is Lost: Finding Heart in the Dark.  He discusses how 'musitations' also means finding a meditative practice in any of the creative arts - the 'muses' that help us transform suffering into creativity - poetry, movement, visual art, gardening, cooking, etc.      

"Each moment is note in the song of today," is a line in a poem I wrote many years ago while going through a dark night of the soul.  It was my attempt to stay with my experience of grief and despair, to feel my feelings all the way through until the grief and sadness cleansed me of all that was not essential and I found myself changed by the experience. 

As painful as times like these are that we are going through, it is a powerful opportunity to explore the pain and anguish that often we numb through TV, social media or checking out with substances or addictive activities - that's actually living beneath the surface of life.  

When we can feel what we feel and give some kind of creative expression to it there is an ease and loosening of the feeling and it can even give way to a fluid feeling of being connected to life and belonging to our own hearts again.  This applies even more to meditation, instead of trying to accomplish something in meditation, allow yourself to track the arising and dissolving of thoughts, feelings and sensations as a kind of music - sometimes harsh and painful, something cool and joyous, but always shifting, morphing and changing into something else.  No feeling, sensation or thought is final, keep it flowing and find the music that is flowing through you today.

On this first episode of Musitations™ - Michael shares his Bill of Creative Rights. Modeled after his teacher, friend and improvisational musical mentor David Darling's Bill of Musical Rights, Michael shares about the creative crisis on the planet today.  We all need a creative outlet to help us maneuver the rapids of modern life like never before given pandemics like the Corona Virus.