the divine meditation newsletter: softening the heart with music

A newsletter contemplating the divine in the everyday

There’s the constant pulse of reggae playing in the background as I write this. My dog, Karuna, is recovering from a surgery. During a full moon last year, when she was anxiously pacing around the home—likely due to the invisible bond which connects her to me, and us both to the moon—I learned that listening to reggae is calming for dogs. One theory is that the rhythm is similar to a dog’s heart rate, and as puppies, they nestle near their mother and use her heartbeat to relax themselves.

And it works.

As my senior habibi sleeps, Bob Marley is in the airwaves of our home singing, “Remember that, when the rain fall, it don’t fall on one man’s housetop.” Every now and again, I’ll tune in to a lyric like this one, struck that it meets the moment. A few words, speaking directly to the heart and conscience. 

Recently, I have been struggling to articulate my worldview and vision—realizing the absence of a clear knowing of the world I hope to build with others. With big eyes I ask friends: “Um, what’s your worldview? Do you think we fully understand the consequences of abolishing the state? Can we trust that we’ll be able to keep the water on? Is the answer municipalism??” As I awake to my not knowing, all I have is a felt sense that “When the rain fall, it, don’t fall on one man’s housetop” is part of the soundtrack to this worldmaking.

So more and more these days, when I feel in me how untethered the human experience is (i.e. what even holds all this together?), it is the most humble of knowings which grounds me. Right now, it’s this: music is healing. 

I was reminded of this when hearing musical genius Jon Batiste talk about playing with his band Stay Human on NYC subways, military bases, and for royalty: “We played in situations where our lives were in danger, and we literally changed the energy in the room so that people didn't know we were shifting their intention.” 

Music has the power to shift what is harming to become non harming. It is energy work. It alchemizes. It carries god in it—harmonizing us by literally synchronizing our brain waves. Because of my work facilitating interpersonal conflict, I am keen on being a student of this. Because of what I imagine it will take to stop the harm which ripples through generations, I am a student of this. Music has the power to reflect a harmony within us which we may have forgotten. Which is to say, it has the power to remind us of who we really are. It meets us at the level of vibration. When there are no words for the pain, thank god there is music.

I went to see Jon Batiste in concert a few weeks ago with two dear friends. Being the everyday anthropologist that I am, I took in my neighbors in the crowd. Having my own delayed reaction to the fact that going to a concert = being close to masses of people you don’t know, I observed a group of white women close to us who were having a good time. I ascribed a few stories onto them – straight, upper middle class, suburban moms. I thought about how rarely I’m in an intimate social space which includes them. Yet here we all were, shoulder to shoulder, making our way to the divine.

We are not as different as the armor around our hearts sometimes has us believe. We are deeply different, rich and important differences, but not that different. I’m cautious when I encounter anything in myself which may not be able to tell the difference. We see all around us  the grave cost of those with immense power, who have forgotten our shared humanity.

I reflect on years of leftist politicization, which in spite of being rooted in a deep love of people, has in many ways shaped me to be incredibly judgmental and critical. And not for nothing. In his book A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield writes, “We may notice directly how aversion and judgment arise from a deep longing for justice [...] from a clarity and discriminating wisdom that cuts through the illusions of the world.”

I don’t seek to let go of discernment and the longing for justice, but I invite myself to soften around it. I come back to these words in Stephen Levine’s soft belly meditation, which instructs us to let the hardness that’s formed in the belly from pain, grief, and anger, “float in something softer and kinder.” Because it’s in our nature to forget, I must actively practice letting love in, allowing it to hold the fear in something softer.

As Karuna and I flood our systems with reggae, I notice how music can soften the fear produced from binary thinking, or categorizing the world into good and bad. If everything is everything, this music has helped me generate this piece of writing—which is scaring the parts of me that are afraid of being seen as ‘too wholesome’ or ‘not critical enough.’ Fear is really tricky!

Walking my conehead dog around the neighborhood this week, I notice that it’s children and elders who stop us to ask: What happened to her? Is she okay? This gentle curiosity and care from strangers on either side of the age spectrum is a teaching for me, as a person somewhere in the middle. These simple interactions really open my heart. In this way, they are my spirituality. They generate a warmth I didn’t know I needed. Like music, they reflect the connection we all have to each other. I heard love described by our Year to Live teacher, Frank Ostaseski, as feeling “a part of something larger, which also includes you.” I haven’t landed on a worldview yet, but this and Karuna falling asleep to One Love is the general vibe.