Tag: exercises

The Music of Shirley Hadley

I have recently discovered that our friend Shirley Hadley, photographer extradenaire, is also an amazing and uplifting musician! She has produced three albums, Being In Greatness, The Depths of the Inner Self, and her latest, and the one we are featuring here today, Channels of Consciousness.

Channels of Consciousness is a collection of my very first songs on my keyboard. The year was 1993. I had been without an instrument to play for 8 years. During that time I used my dreams to help fulfill my desires to be making music. In my dreams I would be playing the keyboard composing songs, sometimes playing with other musicians.

When my keyboard finally emerged into my life, I immediately began to find my way on it and began to remember the songs I had created in my dreams. The title song Channels of Consciousness was written from this most amazing dream I had. In the dream I was in this valley, surrounded on all sides by these jagged peaks rising up and into the spacious sky above. I was standing on this wooden stage. I had this instrument that was mounted on a stand. I have never seen an instrument like it before. There was an audience of people sitting on the grass surrounded by wildflowers. The sounds would echo off the sides of the mountains and elevated us all into very ecstatic states of awareness. I use the word channel because I see it as paths along which energy or consciousness flows.

That is what it is like when I am playing music. These inner pathways are found by me and I, as consciousness travel them. Each song is like a step along the way, no destination, just a journey into the infinite realms of the sound spectrums that emanate throughout the universe.

Click here to visit Shirley Hadley’s Music Page at CDBABY, where you can also sample each of her albums, and either purchase a CD or download either albums or individual songs in digital MP3 format. A great way to spread good vibes and to support and independent artist! 🙂

Progress with Learning to See Energy

I used to hold the belief that I couldn’t see energy or auras, while John has been able to see energy all of his life. Recently I decided that it was time to let go of that belief, since seeing energy just seemed like an opportunity to get to know reality in yet another new way. And not only let go of the belief, but choose a new belief where I was now learning to see it. Even though beliefs are ‘just beliefs’ or ‘just thoughts’, it’s amazing how different they can feel when you shift your focus – even the ‘small’ shifts.

I selected some exercises from books I had and websites I’d bookmarked. I reminded myself that I had to play along and not dismiss something as an ‘afterimage’ or the like. As I lay down to go to sleep, it took me a while to relax my usual waking focus to something more open and loose. (At this point I have occasionally seen faint ‘sparkles’ in the room, which I think of as random energy.) Then, in the darkened room, I held my hand up in the air with the ceiling in the background.

I had to remember not to try too hard, and that I was aligning myself with the ability, not with NOT having the ability, or blocking it. I took deep breaths and let my gaze relax. On a conscious level, I was expecting to see a very pale haze of lightness around the outline of my hand. Which I did! Although I had to watch for the immediate dismissal, which I mentioned above. But what I wasn’t expecting to see was tiny sparkles of white lights, mostly in the spaces between my spread-out fingers! (Brighter and more concentrated than the random sparkles.) Even better, since it was something I wasn’t expecting, it wasn’t something my left brain could dismiss as easily.

Since that first time, I’ve been able to practice it a few more times. Each time I’ve had to take a little while to relax my daytime focus and tune into my intuitive faculties more. I’ll continue to practice, and as usual, see where it takes me. It’s fun to be stepping out into undiscovered experiential territory!

Note: While browsing The LD4ALL Lucid Dreaming Forum, I found this article about using your attention to what the author called “phosphenes” (my ‘sparkles’ – wikipedia describes them as “A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye.”) to attempt to induce a lucid dream. Click here to read the article, complete with some really helpful images.Â