Law of Attraction

The Bangkok Guitar Lesson and New Goals

Greets friends!

I am writing you from Cologne Germany and I just arrived from Bangkok last night. Long trip.

Traveling to Bangkok to play with Tommy Emmanuel and the other GREAT players there was an experience I will not forget. The fine players on the bill were Boonchob, Masa Sumide, Joe Robinson, and Michael Fix. Each one had a unique ray of guitar genius and I am very appreciative to have ben there for it all.

On a personal level, certain weak areas of mine as a player became apparent to me. I like the idea of sharing them with you on this blog, because it’s easy to think that pro concert players simply “have it together” musically and psychologically all the time. Maybe by showing you my fragile side, you’ll feel okay about yours. We’re all human.

🙂

Michael Fix and I were having a coffee and he summed it up by saying “wow, here I am with all you other world class players, I almost feel as if eventually people will figure out that I am a fraud”. Crazy, huh? Well that’s exactly how I felt too. We had a good laugh and realized we probably were not alone.

I figured I’d share my new musical goals with you and invite you into my growing process. Please watch my growth and if it gets too big, have a doctor remove it. That’s a joke.

Until now many of my arrangements have been very much like classical guitar transcriptions in concept. Like “well if I map out the bassline and melody to Stevie Wonder, play it funkily, I’ll just slap the two together and have a cool arrangement”.

This is valid, but it is a completely different approach from seeing what the guitar does naturally and beautifully. Composers like Fernando Sor right on up through Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel allow the beauty of the guitar, the open strings, and the natural physics to play out….like a deep comfortable exhale of breath.

A balance between the approaches is what I need next. Better yet, a commitment to beauty and tone is where I am heading. Knowing you’ll play an E Triad and thinking about going to the next triad is very different from playing the triad and ALLOWING ONESELF to feel, experience and vibrate with the triad.

It’s a cycle of playing and listening, then playing, then listening, etc – but having one’s radar up for a “feel good” vibration, a vibration of “love”. Sometimes just a deep listening to one’s own playing can stir this. And, a sense of real honesty with oneself…which is something I struggle with sometimes. I hang with certain ideas to see if they will work rather than discard things immediately, but maybe I need to toss things sooner!

There is nowhere to hide when you have an acoustic guitar blasting through a PA. Tommy, as always, had everything covered so beautifully my skin tingled and energy shot up my spine hearing his beautiful stuff.

I know that he has spent more time than me in that place of listening, making sure it feels good and making sure the music lines up with his intuition. That’s way deeper than “knowing” how to play your arrangement. It’s the difference between a monologue and a dialogue.

Here I go back to the drawing board, evolving. This morning I woke up at 4:30 and decided to just play pretty and have my radar and intuition up. No funk, no fast stuff, just beauty and glow and tone. Playing simple stuff, improvising and listening. Very different from practicing a piece – but more like practicing a “place”.

The plan? Let me stay there and see what happens. Let me go there every day and practice that vibration and allow new things to happen on their own.

Thank you for listening to me, and my music and tolerating my growth! No not the one on my back, the musical growth 🙂

I am not a finished product and never will be. Let’s see where music goes next.

Until next time…with much love….Adam

Happiness for No Reason At All

By Adam Rafferty 2 Comments

Greets friends. I am up at 4:27 am in NYC….the Europe jetlag has me crashing early and waking early.

I just returned from a great week of playing jazz with the Alvin Queen Quintet in Bern, Switzerland. It was a very musical, fun, grooving gig. I am looking forward to a slew of fingerstyle guitar performances in Bangkok and Germany over the next month.

“Rational” logic or dinner table / family conversations would follow like this…wow, I am doing all these things – gigs, cds, etc…therefore I must be happy. This is the typical thinking. Yes, I have been a working music machine all year and “should” be proud, happy and all that.

Well, I have struggled with a lot over the last several weeks, actually. The stress of essentially playing 2 styles and 2 instruments has had me freaked out…there’s a new wonderful lady in my life whom I love and don’t want to be away from for weeks on end…I’m watching my parents age, and I’m seeing friends have kids and not having any myself…and as I embrace the touring life, my grip on the local NY scene loosens and it feels like there’s no ground under me. My home feels like a hotel and a hotel feels like home.

Ok, none of this is real – it’s my mental creation, and yuck, I don’t like writing it and making it more real…but to prove the point that stresses can creep in even when the outside looks rosy.

I was thinking to myself how absurd it all is. To not be happy in the midst of the worldly success? What’s wrong with me? And the riddle continues…I “should” be happy, but am not. What? Who said I should be? How come I am not? And on and on, the mind spins.

Ahh, and then the answer descends on me….yesterday afternoon after stuffing my face with the local Indian food here in Jackson Heights, walking back to my apartment. Must be something in that Indian food, I tell ya 🙂

On 74th street as I strolled I suddenly had no thought of the future, not thought of the past, no thought of what I have accomplished or what my plans were. No worries, no ideas, no nothing. The most full, brimming nothingness, so beautiful all by itself. Awareness. It was utter presence and delectable silence that descended on me and sent a shiver up my spine just for a moment.

To know that this is available always is incredible. Absolute grace and bliss for no reason at all. In a moment, the mind and soul are refreshed, wiped clean of illusion.

That’s what I call a gift from God.

Planting Seeds in the Mind

By Adam Rafferty 1 Comment

Good Morning!

It’s 5:21 am here, Pacific time. Blackness outside as I listen to Oliver the cat crunch his dry food. Time to put some coffee up…it is peaceful right now.

Life is good. It’s just good. Always has been good, and now I feel it’s good!

I taught 3 private students yesterday. Much to my surprise, one walked in with a Gibson ES 175 guitar and wanted to pick my brain jazz wise. It’s been a while since I taught jazz guitar.

I showed him how to construct lines that fit over chord changes and walked him through an example. Then I realized it was an just an example and wanted to convey to him another level of the work that really has to be done in order to learn the language of jazz.

Learning an example is step one. Then at least the conscious mind is fooled into thinking it understands. It still does not mean there’s a deep knowing, but at least is encouraged. Examples are good, and offer a welcoming feeling and encourage deeper study.

What I then saw, in retrospect was how I learned much of what I learned in jazz. This could apply to anything – not just jazz. In fact, what I discovered was that I had applied the Law of Attraction to my musical studies without knowing it.

As a college student learning jazz I “transcribed” solos. That means that I’d find improvised solos on records (yes lp’s) that I liked, record them to cassette, and proceed to write them down on paper. Sometimes I would use a guitar or piano for help, but soon after the first few transcriptions I could start writing to the paper by ear with no instrument.

I’d never learn the solos on my instrument, but I’d have them kicking around in my mind. I remember going to jam with other musicians after doing this kind of work, and sensing an expanded sense of musical possibilities.

What I now realize is that I “planted seeds” in my mind that would grow for years to come. I’ have to focus so hard that I’d see, hear and envision the music – and that for years after, everything I’d practice would in fact make my “vision” come true and manifest. That’s why it’s so good to see and listen to great performances in all areas of life – not just music!

We all work towards the vision we have in our mind whether we realize it or not, and many of the Law Of Attraction books are more about the awareness of the vision we hold. The law operates whether we realize it or not, like gravity we can’t change that…but what we can do is hold a vision in our mind of our ideal life. Upgrade the inner vision, then you upgrade the match when it arrives!

A psychiatrist friend of mine put it differently….but similarly. He said that our minds are problem solving mechanisms and that if we have a discrepancy between the vision inside and outside, our minds will work night and day to make the outer circumstances match the inner vision.

Fascinating and exciting stuff. The more and more and I watch, and the more and more I am clear regarding my inner vision, I see my dreams are in fact coming true. It’s incredible. As I said before, life is good.

Allowing Transparency

By Adam Rafferty 1 Comment

Greets Friends. I am writing you from the Bay Area in California. It’s about 6am Pacific time, and I have been up for some hours, already working – uploading a new vid to youtube, looking at emails, etc. Busy work, you know…

It’s just bizarre when one sees how beautifully transparent life is. As I look “back” (whatever that means) on accomplishments, relationships and life, and – as I look forward to ideas about what I’d like in the future, or what it may bring, there is this itty bitty speck called NOW.

In this NOW it’s like this transparent nothingness – like just a small crack allowing light in. It’s this small valley in between the massive past and future. But – on looking again and again, maybe these huge mountains of past and future are nothing but illusions, and all that has ever and will ever be is this weirdly eternal speck of time called NOW.

Lester Levenson calls life “the dream that never was”. I’ve not experienced a trauma lately, but I’m reflecting on relationships with people that have “returned to the invisible and silent realm”, looking back on relationships with mentors, animals who I loved and nurtured until their passing, music I have written….wondering where did it go? Or – maybe it didn’t go anywhere. It’s almost as if it never was….only my observation made it feel real.

Quantum physics shows that even the smallest particles are only “probabilities in motion” (or something like that) until and observer comes and looks, crystalizing a vision. Isn’t life the same? Constantly in motion, wiggly, never defined – until we imprint an image in our minds and observe it? Like a snapshot. Then for a brief moment – when we observe, it appears as if it all stands still and forms into some kind of NOW point.

Sometimes this transparency frightens me when I “think” that there’s nothing to hang onto. No job, parents, lovers, home will stay permanent…it’s all much more fluid than any of us sometimes want to admit. From where do these friends, lovers and circumstances come, and where do they go?

In meditation the NOW moment merges with the flow of time it’s like flying with no net…we realize this is the only moment there was, there is…and it’s all okay when we allow this transparency.

Thus…it’s not about the destination – it’s about the journey.

A Taste of Eternity

By Adam Rafferty 2 Comments

Once you start feeling time in a less linear way things get stranger, stranger and stranger. I feel that life has gotten more mysterious than ever, and it has gotten more precious and more lovely. It is more beautifully strange than any movie could depict.

Discovery – when Einstein discovered E=MC2 lets say, – he didn’t create it as much as he “uncovered” it. There was this principle hanging out there waiting to be discovered. Do we ever discover anything new, or do we simply uncover yet another eternal possibility – in relationships, experience and life? Isn’t it all out there and we need only “tune it in”?

Time – what is time? To the mere mortal it’s the memory of former “now moments” and the projection of “now moments” based on our ideas of former moments plus an “itty bitty right now” which slips and quickly becomes a former “now moment”. Hmm….I don’t buy it.

Outside our mind, what the heck is time? In a sense it stands still. But on the other hand, it pulsates and lives, and changes. It’s both. Our linear idea is off, eschew. It is a delicious Kaleidescope, every moment as precious as the next…always changing but from within like a pulse. What if it were one big fat right now? (hint…it is)

The only reason for all the now moments is all the little forgetfulness moments breaking up the all pervading now.

When you really love deeply, you forget about time. When you dance and a rapt in the joy of music you are not seeing a linear score…..it is a big fat joyous now moment. This is beyond the mind, don’t try to understand it…just let your heart love an animal, nature or (gulp) a person, or God…and then ask where time went and you’ll see – your mind went to a higher place where time does not exist: the realm of love.

Now when I travel, meet new people hear new music and experience fresh exciting things – it is the uncovering of what always is, what always has been….just like E=MC2….these people places and experiences have been waiting, like a TV station, to be turned on, tuned in and activated before my eyes, based on my willingness and readiness to see.

I am always finding that which I have known, people I have always known, music I have known.

It is all a “coming home” and like Merlin, I am heading into the past and looking forward to it. I am remembering the future. With every new bit of information I get I just say “of course!” When I receive a new melody to a song from the angels whispering in my ear I say “of course”. And when I meet a new friend whom I love and cherish I smile and say “of course! ….well, what took you so long?” 🙂

So “forever” is not a stairway to heaven or a line fading forward. It is and expanded, delicious “right now”. This is a but a taste of timeless eternity. Wow. Yep, right here right now.