Spirituality

Listening

A few days ago I found myself asking someone in my life to listen to me better. I felt as though I was being interrupted, misunderstood, and all around felt uncomfortable and dissatisfied. Not a nice feeling!

I found a wonderful article on listening, and sent this person the link I highly recommend it! You’ll love it:

https://traubman.igc.org/listenof.htm

I also reflected on how as a musician my experience playing is radically altered if I have an audience that is listening. Some magic happens, and there is this wonderful space in which the one who is speaking or playing can hear themselves through the “ears” of the listener. Attentiveness and attention are present.

What then happens is the conversation (or music) unfolds based on the listening. Awareness and present moment deliciousness are the fabric upon which the words or notes are woven.

Interruption is resistance against the present moment, essentially. Interruption can also mean “zoning out” in a conversation – turning one’s attention elsewhere as a form of resistance against the moment. The person who is allegedly the listener is saying “no, I resist this moment and what it is offering”.

Here’s the clincher though. In all my personal dissatisfaction, irritation and anger that arises when I feel that I am not listened to, I must ask “where is this anger?”. In me of course, so I must take responsibility and look deeper.

I then took stock of several people who I felt were not listening to me well and noticed that I had built resistance against them, and did not listen well to them.

I found that when they spoke to me, t was a feeling I had of “oh they’re just saying the same old thing” or “here they go again” or if it were directed at them as a verbal interruption I’d say “wait – I know the answer and I just don’t have the time to listen to the end of your sentence!”

Feeling these feelings is ok. But having the inner space around these feelings, to see them arise and not necessarily react by zoning out or interrupting, is what makes all the difference. So, in spite of wanting to resist the moment somehow, could I see my feeling, allow the feeling to be, and redirect attention to the speaker?

So has this just been projection on my part? Maybe I have not been listening so well!

I decided to listen to them, for myself and for the relationships. I decided that I’d hold myself to my standard – tuning out and interruptions were and are not allowed. It became my vow to give full attentiveness to them.

Yes, and just as you probably thought I’d say – the dynamic changed completely. They didn’t know what hit ’em. Peace and presence arrived not just for me, but for us all.

Change yourself and the world changes. It never fails.

Even cooler than that, I found myself walking alone down my street the other day lost in thought and drama. I then wondered, “Can I listen even when there is no one talking? Can I simply engage in the act of listening, all by myself?”

So there alone, I started to listen to the wind, the street, and the silence – and my world transformed on the spot.

Shhh….Listen to the sound around you right now as you finish reading this.

Here you are.

The Gimme Trap

By Adam Rafferty 1 Comment

Greetings friends.It is 7 am in NYC and I have just emerged from my morning meditation. No it was not mellow, it was a distracted mind, but I sat there anyway!

Late last night I listened to one of my favorite “modern day” spiritual teachers – Marianne Williamson, and was reminded of a simple but important message.

The more “wanting” and “gimme” you have in your attitude – the more of that you experience in life – and you feel like the world is saying “gimme” to you. The more “abundance”, “having” and “gratitude” you have the more you experience and the more you feel as though the world is giving to you.

A wanting state implies that “I lack” or I don’t have. I think this is what one of my favorite teachers, Lester Levenson actually meant when he said “want equals lack”.

At first it is counter-intuitive, but through insight you can see that our psycho-spiritual “mechanism” operates this way.

Deep, huh? 🙂

Seriously though, as a musician freelancer there is always a dialogue inside me of how I want more, how can I get more? How can I get more gigs? How can I sell more CDs, more books? What tunes can I learn and re-arrange to get more of an audience? What instructional videos would sell…and so on. I need to be extremely careful regarding this dialogue.

While this kind of mentality is praised and honored as industrious and clever, it is not a very “high up there” kind of mind.

I tell you – the most blissful, most sweet, most delectable experiences and states I have had in recent years were in the writing of the music for “Gratitude”. I remember sitting and “receiving” tunes and melodies from “source” or God or whatever you want to call it – and literally being brought to tears by the sheer beauty.

That’s right – no cleverness, no “how can I get ahead”, none of that crap. The gift was given to me, and I made a commitment to give it back to listeners and the utter joy, through and though was unreal.

I am very thankful for having experienced this good that life has to offer, and I am thankful to see when I have steered in a wrong direction.

And now as I leave you to go about my week I ask the question, “what can I give?” and from there I will practice music, email people and act.

Keep Swingin’

Adam

The Miraculous Nature of Manifestation

By Adam Rafferty Leave a Comment

Greetings from Cologne Germany! It is a gorgeous sunny morning and I am drinking a nice hot coffee!

Describing a miraculous experience is impossible in words. The idea is for you to have this experience yourself, so that you may know of what I truly speak, from within yourself. Then and only then will you resonate with what I am saying.

It is similar to reading a book about being in love, or reading about joy. Words can only conjour up images and imaginings, and are not the experience itself.

It seems that it is all the rage today to learn about the message of manifestation as described in “The Secret” and then become a teacher of it. Gurus teaching gurus. But to see it in action, truly see this law function, for big and small, makes one wonder about the meaning of life and the nature of our minds and souls.

The law of manifestation holds true for small things and big things, positive things and negative things – to see that regardless of any label you give it, that what you get is what you envision. The question then arises, is life an inner experience or an outer experience? Truth be told, there is no difference between outer and inner. There is no hiding the inner within the shell of the outer.

Many of the “manifestation” articles, books and movies (and gurus) get their draw by telling you that you can be rich, famous and all that material stuff – which is fine, but it is only a small sliver of the richness of life. The magic is not in those things. The miracle is to see the law in action, and be awestruck at it’s miraculous nature.

When you start seeing manifestation occur in your life without strain, without effort – and grounded in a knowing that what you had in mind would of course manifest, your old cosmic view of time, distance, age, separateness and ego starts to crumble and a new view of it all emerges.

This is the indescribable gift, the miracle.

I’d like you to prove the law of manifestation to yourself today, and it can be done quickly easily. How you observe your everyday life has everything to do with it. You use this law all the time without realizing it. It’s as if you are in fact a miracle worker, and don’t know it – so it is time to watch your life differently.

What is something you are planning to do today?

Eat food?
Call someone?
Buy something for yourself or someone else?
Go to work or school?
Tell a friend something?
Brush your teeth?
Practice an instrument?
Exercise?
Finish a term paper?
Do laundry?

Decide on something very small (and seemingly un-miraculous) that may even be part of your routine and just play around with the idea that it has in fact not yet happened, and acknowledge 100% that the picture is in your mind.

One example that I particularly like is getting an item such as a cup of coffee. I’ll use that here, but you can use anything today as you play around with this.

Pick something very easy so you can watch the manifestation process run smoothly. Do all the steps I have described, don’t skip anything even if it seems silly.

1. Start by acknowledging that the picture in your mind is THE SAME THING as if it were physical reality.

Say aloud “The picture in my mind is my reality. My reality is the picture in my mind. Both are one.”

2. Envision the item in a picture form or verbal form. Acceptable modes are 1) seeing it in your mind’s eye 2) seeing on an actual image, such as a vision board 3) writing 4) speaking. All forms.

Ex: See the coffee in your mind and acknowledge that it is in your mind and not yet physically present.

Say aloud “I am manifesting the picture of _______ that I have in my mind”.

Remember, this is about seeing this entire manifestation process from start to finish. This is not a regurgitation of other teachers methods to get wealth and fame. Allow yourself to witness the miraculous.

3. Either make the coffee or buy it. Really do it if you want to understand these words. Reading alone will not do it. Do whatever it takes to manifest the coffee.

4. Look at the coffee that is now in front of you. Reflect deeply on the fact that your vision became reality and that you can do this again and again, and have in fact been doing this your whole life, and will continue to do so.

You did whatever it took and organized things around your vision to bring it into being. This is the meaning of “God helps those who help themselves”.

5. Know that the label you give it “big or small”, “important or unimportant”, “rich or poor”, “miraculous or mundane” is just a description in your mind. Truth be told, if you have done steps 1 through 4 you have in fact operated the law of manifestation.

6. Ask yourself where the time between the vision and the manifestation went. Who experienced the time and where did it go? When you get insight into the non existence of time, you will see that you can create anything you want and not even see time, money or effort as part of the equation.

7. Reflect on the miraculousness that you brought forth the thing you envisioned. If you are unable to see this and feel “big deal, I bought a cup of coffee” then you need to quiet down your mind because that just means you can’t sit still long enough to reflect and see the miracle of this cosmic event!

The coffee is the same thing as your highest goal, your dream of a family, a degree in school, career or anything else. It is good to see the process from start to finish with a relatively easy item, and look at the process during each stage.

As I reflect on my life, I see clearly that the origins of everything I have started with visions in my mind. Some things came (and come) immediately and others take years of work. Doesn’t matter though.

As a kid who loved the rock band Led Zeppelin, I can remember just “having to have” a Zeppelin t-shirt. Well, I looked and looked and got one. “Big deal” you say, “lots of people have those”. My reply is that it IS a big deal and that every one who wanted and sought and got one is a “creator” and has successfully operated the “law of manifestation” by holding the vision and getting one.
That is all for now.

Eating Frogs…mmmm Yummy!

By Adam Rafferty Leave a Comment

Greetings friends. Wow, it has been a whirlwind of activity here on my end….so much to talk about.

I recently picked up a personal development & productivity book by Brian Tracy called “Eat That Frog” and it has been a life changer.

My most productive periods in life have been when I have essentially focused on something and allowed the rest of life to fall apart. Yet, I somehow would feel guilty when I did that. For example, when I dove into solo acoustic guitar I simply let EVERYTHING else fall apart.

And, I find that I have returned to my standard M.O. of feeling overwhelmed and spending my days taking care of little tasks trying to “put out little fires “. The problem is – the feeling of overwhelment and the hyper activity of taking care of little tasks like email, phone calls, laundry end up happening instead of the 2 most important things – practice guitar and organize gigs!

Brian Tracy’s message is unique – you can never get it all done, so do the big important stuff and just let the little stuff fall apart. WOW. In hindsight, I saw that’s what I have done in my most productive periods.

According to him – the most successful people have the ability to figure out which action is the most important to do at any given time. You may find you have “10 to-do’s” on you to-do list – but ONE action will be TEN TIMES as productive as the other 9.

He calls this “eating the biggest, ugliest frog first”.

Let’s see if you can spot the most productive task.

For example:

Go To Cleaners
Buy Cat Food
Call Mom
Sew Hole in Shorts
Wash Dishes
****SEND CD TO MAGAZINE FOR REVIEW ****
Go To Post Office
Jog
Send email to dad
Re-organize bookshelf

He approaches this basic premise from many different angles. I am reading, re-reading and highlighting.

How often I find myself getting stuck in the B.S. tasks!!!

Allow me to share a personal story. For years, I have had a dedicated web server. Yep, I was a hobbyist programmer / web geek designer and would do the occasional site for friends / family and then host them for a few bucks a month.

Well, multiply that by about 15 friends and before I knew It – I was accountable to 15 people. I’m a nice guy, have a hard time saying no – and I can’t tell you how much guitar playing got pre-empted due to being in charge of this server.

Most of the time, the thing ran fine – and I had months and months where I did not have to think about it – but nonetheless, it was there.

Recently I had to decide (since I was in need of an upgrade) to keep it or not. After reading “Eat That Frog” I realized that the low-level, unproductive task of all the talking, energy, emails TOOK THE SAME TIME that a VERY productive task such as writing music or recording does.

From the book – “RULE: Don’t spend time doing something very well that needn’t be done at all”.

So this was and is a big “letting go”. Silly as it sounds, I had to admit that I like the feeling of controlling the server and of being the “go to” guy for people. Time to let go – and really decide what activities will accomplish my goals and what won’t.

And yes, I remember being on tour in Vienna years ago doing web tech support across the Atlantic right before a gig. Ridiculous!!! Well, I am proud to say that I have made the right choice now – and I urge you to do the same so that you may reach your goals.

Eat the big frogs FIRST, not the little ones.

I highly recommend this book if you feel that anything I have said here resonates with you!!!!

Adam Rafferty Gig Review @ The Bug Theater – Denver, CO Sept 9, 2008

By Adam Rafferty Leave a Comment

Greets friends. Boy I feel great. Playing concerts makes me feel human again. After even a few days off from gigs, my skin starts to crawl!!!!

Last Night’s gig at THE BUG THEATER in Denver was really a blast. I teamed up with local songwriter / guitarist Wayne Gremminger and we played a set each for the audience.

It’s funny – on previous trips to Denver to visit friends I felt myself get very “squirmy” and downright uncomfortable. Playing a gig here paints an entirely different picture of the place.

When you are a musician you need to play just like a fish needs water. I am an addict, what can I say? 🙂

=-=-= About the Gig =-=-=-=-=-

Wayne’s set was an intimate, introspective, gorgeous 45 minutes of music. He has gone for free to hospices to play music for dying peopple. He’s even traveled to India to play music for dying people at Mother Theresa’s house for the dying – just to give these souls a ray of musical sunshine before they pass on.

That tells me something about his character.

I met Wayne at a friends party and we hit it off immediately. He expressed to me how much wanted to get back into playing music for people, after not having done it for several years.

Not only am I appreciative that he organized last night (all I had to do was show up and play – imagine that!) but it warms my heart to know that I provided just the motivation he needed to make his comeback performance a reality.

The result? Everyone wins – I had a blast, Wayne made his comeback and the audience had a great time!!!

Until next time, keep swingin’!