Hello Friends,
Typically, the week of a Parvati Magazine launch, I don’t write a blog entry. But I have been a bit delinquent with my entries to you. So despite the latest issue of Parvati Magazine being now live – go check it out!! – I wanted to share a bit of my heart and my creative process over the last couple of months with you here.
As you know, I have been immersed in the world of sound, creating my album “YIN: Yoga In the Nightclub”, which I hope you have had a chance to listen to, and perhaps enjoy as much as I do. If not, please take a listen to it at Yoga in the Nightclub.
As I wrote, engineered, produced, arranged and mixed the tracks (and the mix polish process with the talented sound engineer Carl Gardiner in the U.K.), I was literally brought to my knees again and again. There was something powerfully different about this particular album for me.
At first, I thought, perhaps it was the short window of time I had to create it. But that did not feel right. Then my audio engineer friend Carl suggested that perhaps it was the typical ‘second album angst’ that seems to plague most bands and artists. But that also did not seem to really describe what I was experiencing.
Then I realized that literally a year ago from the time I was producing the album, I was flat out in bed, in agony, with a severe spinal injury. At that time, I was undergoing a deep spiritual transformation, one that required profound surrender and trust like I had never had before. From that injury, as I have shared with you, my whole world changed.
From the onset, I knew I was creating a series of songs as a nod to the yoga community that shared my love for yoga and the Divine. But doing so at that particular time seemed to channel into this musical work much of the spiritual energy and the fruits of my inner transformation that I experienced during my injury.
In addition, I had never recorded myself chanting in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a vibrational language geared to invoke states of consciousness through sound. So repeating phrases over and over through the recording process was, in the unseen realm, stirring up my inner consciousness pot, rearranging cells, and moving me deeply.
In addition to being face to face with the power of the inner experience I had through my injury and the power of Sanskrit, the entire album was fueled by the depth of my love for my guru, Amma, and the devotion I have to Her and the spiritual path. Cooked to the core through this recording process, I repeatedly met my ego that kept surfacing saying “I can’t”. It kept wondering how something as large as these expressions could come through this tiny body, this finite time and space, ultimately, this “little old me”.
The answer eventually embedded itself into my being deeper than ever before: “get out of the way – you are not the doer.” I relied heavily on the knowing that reality is plastic and that nothing in this world is fixed, despite the ego wanting to think it being so. So I focused on being an instrument, as best I could, and on just taking orders from the unseen.
Through the creation of the album, I worked very diligently with my music production soil-less garden. No, I was not tending to plants. A soil-less garden is indeed a garden without soil or any ground and works with Nature’s Devas and the unseen realms on a creative project. It is a very powerful process that I recommend to anyone. You can read about it at the Perelandra website that says:
“A soil-less garden is how you apply the principles of co-creative science to every aspect of your life: business, education, the arts, the home, research, your job, personal and professional projects and goals... all those gardens in life that are not rooted in soil. It's how you work with nature to achieve any goal you wish with extraordinary efficiency and balance.”
So for hours a day, I was in my soil-less garden coning (a particular energetic configuration of Nature Devas and Cosmic Intelligence) to expand my consciousness so that I could access and download (for lack of a better term) sonic information that would best express what I was called to share. At worst, I felt like I was taking dictation. At best, I was dancing with the Divine through sound. It was an exhilarating creating process.
As you know, the album, with its songs to the Divine Mother, was aptly launched on Mother’s Day weekend. Thanks again to those who attended. I was so glad to see you all! Since the launch, I have tweaked the music, adjusted sets, made costume fixes, redesigned lighting… generally polished the show. I am on tour through the US right through to the first week of August. I will be sleeping out of a van for the next few months, but updating this blog with photos and captions from the journey. I look forward to sharing it all with you.
Just like when I went to the North Pole, I felt I was going with you all. So too, I feel we are all connected, so what I do, I do with you, and wherever you are, I am there too, as you are with me. Space and time are plastic, stretchable expressions of our heart’s focus and divine alignment. As I sing in my song “Shanti”, “we are one earth family”. Yes, we are!
If you have not yet picked up your copy of the album, you can get it exclusively at the Positive Possibilities store, in biodegradable packaging or in mp3 format. Your support is immensely appreciated! A percentage goes to Embracing the World.
Much peace, gratitude and joy to you!
Jai Ma!
Parvati
