“I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.”
Lesson 281, A Course In Miracles
A few months ago, I decided to record a string quartet for my song “Todo al Blanco.” The mission was, on one hand, to compose the arrangement and write the sheet music, and on the other, to find two violinists, a violist, and a cellist willing to play. I had never done either of these things before. I quickly realized that something inside me was preventing me from moving forward. I didn’t know what it was, but its voice was that of fear. So I sat, frustrated, in front of that invisible wall for several months.
The day I finished this semester at Berklee, finally freed from the responsibilities of student life, I decided to look inside, to face the fear. “Enter that cave,” said a Voice from the sky of my mind. I didn’t know what I was going to find, but I knew that whatever it was, it was preventing me from making the most of my experience at Berklee, advancing as a musician, and generally enjoying the life I feel called to live. It was time to put things in order there.
That was on a Friday, and I had scheduled the quartet recording for the following Monday. With three days to go, I still had to finish the arrangement and the sheet music and find two musicians. I launched myself against the wall like a rocket, and instead of breaking through, I crashed. I had a major internal crisis that made it impossible to do what I needed to do, so I canceled the session and dedicated the entire week to recovering physically and mentally.
After that first failed attempt, I felt that I couldn’t break through that wall on my own, so I started praying, constantly asking for help. A month went by, and it was tough. Crashing against the wall didn’t break it, but it did create cracks. As if I had opened Pandora’s box, all the evils of my inner world began to emerge through them.
The spiritual path is truly analogous to a pilgrimage through unknown lands. There are peaceful stages, through green meadows with birds, juicy blackberries, and crystal-clear rivers, and there are tough stages, through deserts or swamps with mist and mosquitoes. This month and a half was through a swamp. Disoriented, with wet socks for weeks, and with the constant feeling of being attacked by something I couldn’t see but whose presence I felt in the mist. Fortunately, having finished the semester and still being in Boston, the only practical thing I had to do was keep my body alive, and I didn’t do much more than that.
On that journey, I faced different facets of my mind: shame, guilt, apathy, sadness, and fear—the grim faces of low self-esteem. Childhood traumas surfaced, like when my friends, yelling at me during recess, made me feel humiliated. Some roots from which imbalances in my health sprouted were pulled out. I understood that I was causing all that suffering myself, so I began to reclaim the power of my mind to consciously put it at the service of love and life, not fear and death. I established decrees in my inner world, all expressions of the same idea: “I choose to love myself unconditionally.” The wolf that punished me for not being the person I thought I should be was stripped of its sheep’s clothing. In Nietzsche’s words, I came face to face with the dragon “Thou Shalt.” The mist was not mist but the smoke exhaled by this monster, a symbol of the spiritual ego.
The spiritual ego is the set of personal, religious, spiritual, or social beliefs that define what it means to be a good person (Brian Gibbs’ definition). When one obeys its mandates, one receives an increase in energy as a reward. When one disobeys these beliefs, one experiences a suppression of vital energy as punishment. Not being productive for just one morning is enough for that punishment to activate. I finally understood what I had been facing, and once something is recognized, it immediately loses much of its power.
All this was the answer to my prayers for help. The option to choose greater freedom appeared, and all I had to do was wholeheartedly say, “yes, Lord.” The rest is in God’s hands, and all I had to do was go with the flow. All suffering comes only from our resistance to accepting things as they are. Hence, one of the mantras that helped me get through this swamp, besides “yes, Lord,” was “Let all things be exactly as they are.” This is the last thing the spiritual ego wants to hear, with all its impossible dreams about how the world, others, and oneself should be.
Last week, finally, a pleasant change occurred. I rented a car with my dear B., and we left Boston heading towards the forests and beaches of Maine. We spent five days going from one beautiful place to another. We arrived in Portland, Maine, and while taking a walk, we discovered a lovely café called Novel, where a jazz quartet was improvising while a man with a white beard read poetry. There was also a dancer improvising alongside the poet. We ordered tea and sat down to enjoy the show. It turned out to be a poetry jam, open to anyone who wanted to read. When B. found out, she looked at me with a little smile, and without saying anything, I knew she wanted to see me on that stage reading one of my poems. I agreed because rationally I know that doing this kind of thing is why I’m in this world, but emotionally, all I had were fears and doubts. During the 40 minutes that passed until my turn came, besides looking for excuses not to go up, I also planned what I was going to say, out of fear of I’m not sure what.
Finally, my turn came, I went on stage, stood in front of the mic, and looked silently at the audience. Immediately, I started speaking with grace and ease, without saying any of the things I had planned. I introduced myself, explained a bit about what I was going to read, and then turned to give instructions to the jazz quartet, something no one else had done. Being a musician, I know it’s much easier and more inspiring to improvise when there are rules to the game than when there are no rules and the field is infinite. I told them: the poem is divided into three parts: the first talks about the shadow, the second about how the clouds begin to part and the light starts to come through, and the third is about the light. I told the bassist to play alone in the first part, with the bow instead of with fingers, and I told the others to come in during the second part. They all nodded and smiled with their luminous faces. I turned back to the audience and proceeded to read my poem “Song to the Dark Light.”
It was a glorious experience. The musicians improvised wonderfully, listening attentively to every word I said and adapting their music to the story. My voice sounded sweet and musical, calmly reading that long poem. When I finished, I thanked the audience and the band and left the stage thinking:
“That was incredible, and I did it wonderfully. It’s evident that I have everything necessary to go on stage and do what I do with grace and excellence. So why the fear then? Who was I planning all those things for before going on stage?”
Then I had a great epiphany:
“I am none of the things I think I am.” All the ideas I have about my identity are false. Language cannot contain or express what I truly am. The only true thing I can say is “I am.” Everything else is limiting and therefore false, because what I am has no limits.
This didn’t come as a grand mystical experience, seeing galaxies spin to the rhythm of the Music of the Spheres. Rather, it was like a small “ha!” and, as if nothing, I went to dinner with B. to celebrate that small victory over fear. The true power of that epiphany wasn’t revealed until a couple of days later.
Here’s a snippet of me reading the poem.
Returning to Boston, I knew I was in for a very challenging week: another attempt to break through the wall. On Thursday, I had rescheduled the string quartet recording, and if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, on Saturday I had something A. (my producer) and I called “Silent Transmission”: a live album recording where I would first play any songs I felt like playing, recording it with studio quality. That first improvised concert would be for an audience of musicians who, after I played, were invited to play their instruments over my songs, adding arrangements created on the spot.
With a week like that, on Monday when I woke up, I knew that as soon as I looked at my phone to start the necessary arrangements, a wave of fears and insecurities would crash against me. And so it was, but after the spiritual victories of the past two months, and thanks to the epiphany at the poetry jam, as soon as the wave of fears and insecurities appeared in me, I raised my right hand with an open palm and said, “No, thank you.” For the next three hours, my body was like a pressure cooker with the lid off. All the internal pressure, all the fear, and other emotions accumulated over the years, poured out of my nervous system in large quantities, forever. By lunchtime, I felt a state of peace I had never experienced before. I had finally reached the other side of the swampy plain. I then felt I had to sing, and when I did, I was surprised to find my voice coming out clean, joyful, and powerful. It made no sense. I hadn’t practiced at all in the past week, and I thought that after such a journey, my voice would be weak and I’d have to practice a lot. That wasn’t the case, and I felt that I wished Silent Transmission was that very day. But there were still six days left.
For the rest of the week, that peace remained unaltered. Any fearful thought revealed that the energy of fear had arisen somewhere in my consciousness. With complete calm, I let that energy pass, not believing the thoughts and choosing to trust in God. The necessary arrangements for the string quartet recording were gradually resolved almost on their own. A violinist appeared who offered to help me find the other musicians. She found a viola and a cello. The day before the recording, we still needed one more violinist. Not knowing what else to do, I said to God, “Lord, help me find someone. I know this project is good, and I would like it to happen.” That night, A. (the producer) wrote in the group, “I’ve found a violinist!”
The next day, I finished the arrangement, wrote the scores as best as I could, and showed up at A.’s studio. The recording was wonderful. “Todo al Blanco” is turning out spectacular. When we finished, while we were eating something, the violinist who joined at the last minute approached me. He looked at me and said, “Man, what’s your philosophy of life? There’s something about you… like an evident peace. Have you heard about levels of consciousness?” Laughing, I said, “You’re not talking about Dr. Hawkins, are you?” and he said, “Yes! Do you know him?”
I told him that Dr. Hawkins is my main teacher. At this point, his books are almost the only thing I read, and for the past three years, all the transformation I’ve been experiencing is due to an attempt to align myself with his teachings. It turned out that he had just discovered his books and was fascinated. He had started by reading “Letting Go” (that’s where I started too) and, recognizing the profound truth reflected there, had oriented his life in the same way I did three years ago. I then understood that this guy was there as an answer to my prayer from the day before, and as always, God’s answers are much better than one could have imagined. Not only had I found a violinist, but I had also found a fellow pilgrim.
And with that, the Thursday session ended. Now, my focus shifted to Saturday, a much more challenging day. Only one fear remained in me. For the past five years, I have never sung for more than 20 or 30 minutes straight. It always happened that either my voice didn’t feel right for singing, or it felt acceptably well, I would sing, and then lose my voice for several days. Like a little bird with a broken beak, this pattern became a curse that took away my song.
Now I had an opportunity to record all the songs I wanted, and that seemed to be the only remaining limitation. I continued applying the same technique as with all the other fears. As soon as a fearful thought appeared, I would look for the energy of fear in my body and let it go. That afternoon, I also established a new decree in my inner world: “I stop doubting myself as an artist.” That night, I drew a random card from the “Oblique Strategies” deck. The card said, “Don’t be frightened to display your talents.”
The morning of the concert, I woke up calm, made the necessary preparations, and without a hint of nerves, I sat down in front of the mic and piano. I prayed for assistance to protect my voice and sing from the heart and began to play the first song, which sounded very good. Almost two hours later, I sang the last song. I was physically exhausted, and my body was burning, but my voice was not only not tired; with each take, it sounded better and better, increasingly warm and precise. In fact, I kept singing the rest of the day, in a session that must have lasted about 10 hours. We recorded violins, vocals, guitars, harmoniums, and saxophones. It was a truly divine day, dedicated to creating with everything we were capable of offering. I went to bed more tired than I had felt in a long time, but also deeply happy and grateful.
The next morning, I sat down with B. to watch the video of my concert. That’s when I realized that I had sung non-stop for almost two hours. We watched some of the songs, and after listening to one of the last ones, “I Believe,” B. looked at me and said, “He’s good.” I laughed and, nodding, replied, “Yep, he’s good!”
Then my heart skipped a beat. I realized that, for the first time in years, I had said that I was a good musician. I said it without a trace of doubt, with total honesty and naturalness, like someone saying, “This ice cream is very good.” That recording and the entire experience of the previous day were irrefutable proof that the limitations I felt were illusory. After several hard years of self-sabotage and low self-esteem, I realized that the demon that made me feel small and doubt myself had vanished. I was free again to make music and sing as much as I wanted. For the first time in years, I felt true optimism about my future as a musician. That invisible wall had disappeared. Now that I think about it, the lyrics of one of the songs I recorded, Nimbo, refer to what I just experienced: “There are no walls to tear down, only doors to open.”
Yesterday, I had another nearly 12-hour session alone with Ari, recording arrangements for several songs. They are turning out wonderfully. I have no idea when I will release them since my student visa in the US prevents me from publishing things here, and my student life wouldn’t leave me much time to do the album justice with a good release plan. Well, the moment will come. Thank you for being here, reading me, and waiting patiently with me. In the meantime, I leave you with a poem that is very fitting. “Love Your Rhythm” by Rubén Darío:
Love your rhythm, and rhythm your actions
under its law, as well as your verses;
you are a universe of universes
and your soul a fount of songs.
The celestial unity you presuppose
will cause to sprout in your diverse worlds,
and upon echoing your dispersed
numbers, pythagorize in your constellations.
Listen to the divine
rhetoric of the airborne bird and divine
the nocturnal geometric emanation;
kill taciturn indifference
and link pearl after crystaline pearl
where truth tips her urn.
With all my love,
A.
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