Music has always had a huge emotional impact on me. When I write, I like to listen to music. I love to sit and listen to music. In college I studied while listening to music. There’s a different soundtrack to each aspect of my life. Even in session, when no music is playing, I’m listening to the music of the Divine expressed in the individual or group that I’m sitting with.

Monday I was working on getting things done, and I noticed an album that my girls gave me for my birthday sitting on my desk. I’d just loaded it to iTunes and I thought I’d have a listen. Immediately I was drawn instead to an album that’s been with me for a long time.

As I started listening a flood of emotion and memories poured through me. I remembered buying the album in 1987. A good friend of mine who has since gone on to become a world renowned jazz musician and I were at a CD store in Boulder, Colorado – our home town. It’s funny to think about it now, but we were both in jazz band together. I played trombone. He played (and still plays) saxophone. I was looking for a new disc and felt drawn to this particular artist, and this particular album. Something in me knew it was the right one to get, even as my friend was trying to convince me that this artist’s older music was much better. I knew, even though I couldn’t explain, this was what I wanted even though I’d never heard even a note from the album.

I remembered in April of 2005 as I was driving home from the airport, returning from a financial services training and I put on the same track. At the time I was feeling like I had made a big step forward towards doing something important with my life. I felt like I would be able to more meaningfully contribute to the lives of my clients. I felt like my life was in the process of getting in the groove. Finally after years of feeling unsatisfied in my work, I finally was moving towards something that I felt could lead to a new level of meaning and enjoyment in my life.

I had no way of knowing at the time, but these feelings were spot on – they just didn’t unfold in the way that I was thinking they would.

I remembered 7 Years ago in September of 2007, I met a man named Lin when he wrote on a piece of paper: “you should be working as a healer” and I started sobbing (you know, the sob of soul recognition) immediately despite not knowing what the word ‘healer’ meant.

I remembered 4 Years ago in September of 2010 I received Beneath the Sand in the middle of a private session. I had been asking for different processes for the various challenges we face in life (money, relationship, experience of the Divine in our lives, etc.). Instead I got one simple processes that is the answer to all these seemingly disparate issues. When BTS came in I had just launched a commercial website that invited people to engage with me and exchange money for the experience of having a group or private session. At the time I thought I would give myself 6 months to begin making a living. It took much longer – even after my initial target came and went things grew increasingly challenging for me financially. By the time I surrendered on June 30th of 2011 being homeless was a distinct possibility in the following month or two.

I remembered 2 years ago in September of 2012 I was completing Foundations of Spiritual Mastery I – a self study course that contained all 6 practices that had been given to me at various points – including Beneath the Sand. My goal with this course was to provide everything I offered in private session in an accessible online format that opened this work up to support a larger audience than what I could work with I private session. Looking back on the last two years I realized that this course was so much more than I realized at the time. It’s as if the course continues to mature with each passing month.

As your consciousness goes, so goes the content and impact of everything you have created or will ever create.

I remembered a couple of weeks ago when I set aside a long weekend to write a book that has been brewing in many different forms over the last 2.5 years. Starting the book in early 2012 lead to the awareness that completed the Foundations I course. And after working with the practices and understanding them more completely, it’s been clear to me of late that it is time NOW to write the book!!

As I was marinating in the emotion this music that I have felt so connected to for such a long time, through so many different aspects of my journey, my appreciation deepened for how each point has lead to the next – even when they seem unconnected or even counterproductive at the time. For example, really embodying the lessons of self-love through surrender would not have come to me so powerfully and completely in 2011 if I hadn’t been really struggling financially.

Even the last 3 or 4 months have been full of so many different opportunities for inner growth simply by following guidance. I got the message to pause all programs and development work early in the summer. It was a hard message for me to honor. I like creating and serving and very much want to grow my reach and the people I serve. Why then would I pause?

As it turns out (in a shocking development) my soul knew what was next for me. Deep inner work to ensure that my next steps can be taken in complete resonance. My impatience of early August has given way to a new appreciation for the power of following inner guidance yet again.

Even this afternoon I was on the phone with a good friend and colleague and we were talking about expansion. As we spoke it became clear to me that there’s another level of letting go that I’m being invited to. A way to return to the discomfort and glory of complete surrender, in the face of ideas and concepts of what may go wrong or not happen correctly if I get out of the way and let the Divine drive the bus completely. It’s funny how this awareness keeps circling back around over and over again.

New, deeper experience of resonance. Letting go completely of all sources of tension and aspects of control. Sinking more fully into Divine resonance. Recognizing that as much as my ego wants to take control and get all the credit, I am a conduit for something larger than what I can comprehend, that all the same is ready to flow even more fully into every aspect of my experience. If only I will once again get out of the way as I step into the mystery, following that inner guidance, recognizing that it is only when I surrender completely, that I begin to glimpse and experience who I really am. And as I step towards that, remembering all these amazing, wonderful, extraordinary, and challenging milestones along the way, I know that I am just barely beginning the journey.

I am but a babe in the woods. My wonder and awe spontaneously unfold from a place not of knowing or having things figured out and from a clear recognition that I simply don’t know.

I didn’t know then. I don’t know now. And in this remembrance, I am drawn once again to a place of deeper connection to myself and the Divine. I take a deep breath, knowing that the breath is becoming me and I am becoming the breath, just as the Divine is becoming me and I am becoming the Divine.

And I let go … stepping out into the unknown mystery. Inviting you to step with me into the same on your journey. Grateful that we’re connected in this way.

Here I am looking back on it all, listening to Pat Metheny, crying, in a place of deep gratitude and wonder, curious about what will unfold next.

That’s it for this week … From My Heart.

Peace,

Ken

Ken W. Stone
The Soul Archaeologist
Experience the Divine Within
www.KenWStone.com