Some Kind of Wonder-full…

The Power of the Imagination

Last night, I attended a candlelight concert at St Martin in the Fields.    The pianist played Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and “Appassionata sonata”, Chopin noctures, Rachmaninov and Liszt: a truly romantic collection.

I have begun to discover the power of the imagination latetly, so I used this concert as an opportunity to explore this.

First, I experimented with listening from different parts of my body: imagining I had ears in my elbows, or my heart.  Then, I imagined ears in several places – knees, belly, shoulders – and joined up the dots, so that I listened with that whole square.  Then I imagined my whole body was a receiver, and I couldn’t allow any music to get past me, around the edges. 

Finally, I tried continually changed where I was listening from, to match the music.  Hence, the lower notes were felt lower in the body and vice versa; those most emotional excerpts by the heart.  I began to feel that, rather than being an audience, I was a participant.  I became the music, utterly absorbed in its notes.  My body the piano being played.

All of these experiments helped to get me out of my head, and into my body.  My mind and body as one.

After listening with my whole body as a receiver, I expanded the circle to include the people around me.  I imagined I was listening from all of them.  I do something similar at Quaker meetings, first centering myself, then expanding the circle to include the whole.  Eventually, I was the whole audience; there was no distinction between me and them.  With such non-duality, I felt my appreciation of the music heightened stratospherically.  I was one drop in the ocean, and then I was the ocean itself.

It is too early to come up with any generalisations about when to make use of the imagination in such a way, and how.  A great deal more exploration needs to be done.  One thing is for sure, however, there is much much more to be discovered!