I’ve been thinking about music a lot – well that is pretty much always, I’ve never NOT thought about music a lot. Anyway – I came up with a few reasons I believe playing an instrument moves us forward on our spiritual journeys. 

Vulnerability – Creating and playing music forces you to get over yourself. No one plays every song perfectly every time they play it. They just don’t. My favorite music teacher says there is nothing else like it – no one expects an athlete to play perfectly every time – that’s why there are terms like fumble and error right in the vernacular.  But in music there is this feeling that we must never make a mistake, my guess is because we hear recordings so we hear it played perfectly (probably after many many takes and some creative mixing). But to play live, we have to accept that we are human just like everyone else and focus more on turning a mistake into a cool riff. You have to let go of the perfectionist in you, open up and be vulnerable. You have to get over yourself.

Discipline – If you don’t practice you won’t sound good. With maybe a couple exceptions of insanely gifted people, most of us have to play consistently to see any improvement. The good news is that with practice, everyone improves. And if that’s true for music it’s true for everything else in your life. Self discipline, doing the work, will always move you further ahead.

Finding Your Voice – Whether we play classical (precision) or blues (freeform) music, eventually we find our voice – IF we keep at it long enough. There are many musicians out there who can count and read notes, the exceptional ones add feel to their playing. A light touch here, an improvised lick there can take a song from beautiful to meaningful. In order to get to that spot we not only have to practice how we play a song, we have to know what we want to say with our playing. We have to get to know ourselves better and spiritual growth is much easier once we know who we are and why we think and feel the things we think and feel.

Conversing On A Different Plane – All the vulnerability, discipline and self searching pay off when you get to start conversing on the musical plane. It’s the language that crosses all barriers. If we meet somebody and we don’t speak each other’s native languages, the conversation usually doesn’t go very far. But if we meet that person while performing music, we can talk all day. We learn each other’s emotions, tone, even culture. No words are spoken but we get to the feeling of the other person, we know more about who they are and where they are coming from. There are no politics, no religions, nothing that could divide us.  We are just listening to each other and trying to get together on the same vibe. 

To reach higher levels of spirituality we need to get beyond the physical self and relate to ourselves and others on a vibrational level – a level of just being and being with one another – no arguing or judging, just listening and responding in a way that is true for us.  Music can take us to that place … and sound good doing it.