Seth, Charles, and Being a Musician
© 2004 Kurt Leland
[I wrote this article back in 1990 at the request of the late Maude Cardwell, editor of the Austin Seth Center’s magazine Reality Change. Unfortunately, Maude, a passionate advocate for the Seth philosophy, became ill and died from breast cancer before the article could run. Shortly after that, publication of Reality Change was permanently suspended. Maude has been sorely missed by the many members of the Seth community who benefitted from her wisdom and generosity. I dedicate this article to her memory.]
I began to read the Seth Material, starting with Seth Speaks, during the summer between my junior and senior years in college. At that time I was a music major at Ohio Wesleyan University. I was studying for a bachelor's degree in clarinet performance and music composition, and I was taking piano lessons as well.
I was quite anxious about the fact that I would be required by my degree program to prepare two senior recitals--one as a clarinetist, and the other as a composer. The latter was to be a performance of music I had written, combined with a lecture on creativity in music. Although I never considered myself to be much of a pianist, none of my fellow music majors were skilled enough or had the time to learn the piano music I had written, and so I would have to perform those pieces as well.
I became so enamored of the Seth Material that I made time almost every day to read The Nature of Personal Reality during that very busy year. It seemed only natural to apply what I was learning about how my beliefs create my reality to performance on clarinet and piano, and to music composition. I was able to identify any number of insecurities, trace them to the limiting beliefs behind them, and replace them with other, more positive beliefs. My clarinet playing improved considerably, and my recital on that instrument went well enough. But there was clearly more work to be done in getting rid of limiting beliefs before I would be the kind of player I truly wanted to be. More on this later.
In the area of music composition, some rather startling personal experiences were stimulated by the Seth Material. One night I dreamed of an invisible lecturer on music explaining some things I’d never thought about before. I made a brief notation of the dream on an index card the next morning. At that time, I could recall only two brief fragments of what the lecturer had said. For several weeks following that dream, though, I would be seized by sudden fits of inspiration and would cover dozens of index cards with ideas about music that were in a similar vein. These ideas were definitely connected to the lecture I’d heard, and ended up forming the basis of my own lecture on musical creativity.
Seth frequently refers to the concept of probabilities. This concept states that whenever we choose to make a particular action manifest in this reality, the actions that weren't chosen will be explored in alternate realities by alternate selves. My dream inspiration and subsequent notes prompted me to apply this notion to the creative process.
The decision to create a work of art generates what I call a probability field. This field contains every possible choice that the artist can make given the techniques, media, and expressive concerns he or she has access to at a given point in his or her life. Further decisions are made based on input from intellectual, emotional, sensual, and intuitive sources. Every new decision limits the number of future choices.
For example, if an artist decides that his or her next work will be in pastel, that decision eliminates the concerns or techniques associated with any other medium that he or she enjoys working in. Furthermore, the kind and size of paper, the subject, viewpoint, stylistic approach, and the particular colors to be used will also limit the number of probable choices yet to be made. As the work emerges into physical reality, the number of choices continues to be reduced until finally only one is left: to stop working because the piece is finished. (I use the example of a work of art rather than music because I would not be able to explain how this idea applies to composing without using technical terms my readers may be unfamiliar with.)
Closely related to this notion of a continually narrowing probability field is an idea introduced by Jane Roberts in her book Psychic Politics: that of inner models. In one of her frequent adventures in consciousness, Jane had been making visits to a kind of psychic Library that seemed to be superimposed on the southeast corner of her living room. She would see an image of herself browsing among the stacks, opening a book, and reading from it. In the meantime her physical self would transcribe what she read.
In Chapter Seven of Psychic Politics, Jane receives a message that this new book was at least in part to be a transcription of works from the Library:
The phenomenal world springs into being in accordance with inner models. Infinite versions of these bridge the gap between the invisible and the visible. . . .
Therefore this book, not yet completed in your time, exists in a library that is a model for the libraries that you know; and yet in your terms this book is also an eccentricity, for it is not a copy but a new edition, completely recreated, while holding within itself the kernel of its own integrity.
The creation of this book is original in that it has not existed in this form before in your world, yet it is also written in response to its model; and the same applies to all creativity.
The application of the idea of inner models to musical form seems quite obvious: every fugue, for example, shares certain characteristics, yet no two fugues will sound exactly alike, even when they've been written by the same composer.
In the area of music composition, the idea of inner models has been quite helpful to me, but in a slightly different way. Rather than select an inner model, like the fugue, and then try to write my own version of it, I make the assumption that my need to express something at a given point in my life has its own best way of being realized. In other words, there is an inner model for my expressive need. This inner model begins as the probability field I mentioned above, and may be shaped by intellectual, emotional, sensual, and intuitive choices even before I've written the first note of music.
Mozart had a similar experience. In an often-quoted letter he writes:
My subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. (From Life of Mozart, by Edward Holmes)
I find myself amused by how often this quote appears in studies on creativity, along with every possible psychological--or even physiological--explanation. Yet it seems to me that the one originating in the Seth/Jane material seems the best. What else could Mozart be referring to but an inner model?
I don't hear my inner models, as Mozart did, but I sense them. I can always tell when what I've written corresponds to the inner model and when it doesn't. In the latter case, a strong feeling of dissatisfaction as I play a new passage at the piano will compel me to keep working until I've "gotten it right." Yet how do I know when I've achieved this correspondence?
The answer is simple: the dissatisfaction is absent, and I feel pleased with myself. I should mention that the kind of dissatisfaction I'm talking about has nothing to do with being self-critical. Rather, it is an almost physical thing--a kind of restlessness that won't go away until I've corrected the problem. Likewise, the sense of satisfaction is more physical than self-congratulatory: something like the sense of contentment that follows a particularly enjoyable meal.
I find working with inner models to be endlessly fascinating. For one thing, the bits and pieces of inspiration that spin off from them may not come in the order one would expect. Apparently, I'm more capable of tuning in to some parts of the work than others at certain times. So very few of my pieces are written from beginning to end, the way they would be performed.
Once, to amuse myself, I went through the sketch book in which I wrote the ideas for a piece as they came to me, and numbered each sketch according to the order of the final version. I got the end first. Almost a month later, I got something in the middle. Next, the section that preceded the middle, and the one that followed it came along. Then came a section just before the end. And, finally, the beginning occurred to me, exactly three months after I’d written down the end.
Apparently, Jane had an analogous experience when she was writing The Education of Oversoul Seven:
I couldn't wait to get to Seven each day. The book was certainly pointing out the simultaneity of time, and in the funniest fashion. One day I might get Chapter Ten, and the next day, Chapter Five. I never knew what was going to happen to the characters. If I knew where they were in, say, Chapter Nineteen, I didn't know how they got there, because I didn't have Seventeen or Eighteen yet. (Adventures in Consciousness, Chapter Nine)
Who knows how frustrated Jane or I would have been if we had forced ourselves to begin at the beginning and work straight through to the end. We might never have gotten anything done.
After graduating from college, I went on to graduate school, working toward a Master's in music composition. During the first year, I became bored with my program. The first volume of Sue Watkins' Conversations with Seth had just come out, and so I compensated for my boredom by immersing myself in Sue's entertaining and informative account of Jane Roberts' ESP class.
I began to wonder whether it might be possible for me to do what Jane did, in channeling Seth. Since she had gotten started with a Ouija board, I bought one for myself. At the first session, a friend and I dutifully transcribed every letter the board spelled for two and a half hours--and didn't get a single intelligible word. Despite this less than encouraging result, I persisted in my experiments with the board. Eventually, I was able to work it on my own and to receive helpful guidance on personal matters from an entity calling itself A.M.
Some months later, I used a yogic breathing technique a friend had taught me as a springboard into speaking in trance. The sessions with A. M. were often hilariously funny, but never seemed to yield information of the quality of the Seth Material--which is what I’d been hoping for from the start.
One night, however, the voice speaking through me announced that "Symbols are a means consciousness uses to monitor its own development." This seemed like a fresh concept, worthy of pursuing--something quite different from A. M.'s constant banter.
Eventually, I learned that A. M. had vanished and a new entity named Charles had appeared, in response to my desire for information along the lines of the Seth Material. That was in 1981, and Charles has been with me ever since. Much later, I discovered that it was he who had been lecturing on music in my sleep that night during my senior year in college.
While I was in graduate school, I did some experimenting in combining my developing psychic awarenesses with the principles of music composition I was learning. For example, I once used the Ouija board to come up with a melody for a new piece I was working on. The names of notes are the same as the first seven letters of the alphabet, and so all I needed was some way for the board to indicate sharps, flats, and naturals. I decided that the word NO printed on the board would represent the flats, and YES the sharps. The naturals would then be represented by the space between the arch of letters and the line of numbers at the bottom.
I learned that there were limits to using the board for this kind of work. For example, I couldn't get rhythms this way. But I did write an entire piece for solo cello based on the notes I’d gotten from the Ouija board.
My composition teacher was an ultra-rational man who would literally throw fits when anyone mentioned the subject of mysticism in his presence. Needless to say, I never told him where I’d gotten the inspiration for that piece--nor how much Charles had helped me with it.
My career goal when I’d first arrived at the University of Illinois was to become a professor in music composition. After a brief and unsatisfying stint as a teaching assistant, I gave up on the idea. I wondered what would happen if I were to try to make my living as a psychic.
By now, Charles and I had been sporadically teaching classes and doing readings for a little more than a year. I wanted to see what it was like to live in a big city, so I moved to Chicago, thinking that there would be greater opportunities to do readings and teach classes there. Also, I felt that Chicago would provide a more stimulating cultural environment than that of a university town.
During this period in Chicago, I began to explore alternative approaches to practicing clarinet and piano, based in part on the Seth Material and in part on information from Charles. It had become clear to me after several unfortunate clarinet performances at the university that I was not yet finished clearing out limiting beliefs in this area. I began to keep a dream journal, writing down and interpreting each night's dreams. According to Seth,
You may have dreams urging you to move in such and such a direction, or pointing out areas in which corrections could be made. Often such dreams bring about behavior changes whether or not you remember them in the morning. You may request dreams in which proper direction is given, and you will receive them. (The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 7, Session 632)
Sometimes, I asked my dreams for help in dealing with my limiting beliefs. At others, my dreams volunteered such information. A recurring symbol in such dreams was my high-school band director, whose wife had been my clarinet teacher. He appeared so often that I knew my dreams were trying to make a point. It took me quite a while to figure out that the message was contained in his last name: Markworth. Over and over again my dreams were telling me that nothing I might do to clear out limiting beliefs about my clarinet playing would work unless I would start valuing myself as a clarinetist (mark my worth). To this day, the band director appears in my dreams whenever I'm having problems valuing myself as a musician.
Here's an example of how dreams can be a useful way of addressing limiting beliefs. I have a belief that the highest notes on the clarinet are hard to play. As a result of this belief, I continually forget the fingerings for these notes--thereby making them hard to play indeed. Even after looking up the fingerings, I may not be able to get them to come out right.
One night, a dream reminded me that the clarinet is capable of playing a few notes higher than the last ones on the fingering chart. I have a book of avant-garde playing techniques that lists the fingerings for these notes. The dream suggested that I learn these fingerings, so that what used to be the highest notes on the instrument no longer were. Instead of helping me get rid of the limiting belief that the highest notes on the clarinet are hard to play, the dream simply suggested that I shift that belief to a different set of notes. Since I know of only a couple pieces that require these very highest notes, I might never need to use them. In the meantime, the other high notes, which occur more frequently, were no longer defined as hard. Now, every time I practice they get easier to play.
Another limiting belief that I've struggled with for years is one propagated by music teachers: If you skip a day of practice, it takes at least a week to get back the technique you've lost. I can understand that music teachers must get pretty tired of listening to the lessons of kids who haven't practiced. But for those of us who are serious about musical careers, this belief has generated a lot of fear and guilt. Furthermore, it implies that the body doesn't have its own wisdom and integrity--including what Seth calls cellular memory--and that unless we keep beating and whipping it with long hours of daily practice we’ll never be any good as performers.
As my schedule of doing readings and classes in Chicago grew more demanding, it became important that I find ways of reducing the amount of time spent practicing the clarinet, and increasing the benefits. If I had to skip a week of practicing sometime, I wanted to make sure that I improved regardless.
Charles encouraged me to develop the belief that my choosing not to practice at a particular time meant that I would be practicing in another probability, and that I could draw upon the gains achieved by that probable self. In effect, this meant that at some level I was practicing all the time. Not only that, but I began to have frequent practicing dreams. Perhaps these dreams indicated that my inner self was to some extent taking over the exercising of the neuromuscular connections involved in playing. Or perhaps this was a means of funneling the achievements of my probable self in this area back into my reality. Each of these dreams would also make me aware of limiting beliefs and how to change them.
As a result of this combined program of inner practice and release from limiting beliefs, my playing improved, no matter how long I went without actually holding the instrument in my hands. If my teachers had been correct, then it should have taken me a year of daily practice to get back the technique lost in two months of not practicing. This would certainly have been true if I had ascribed to their belief. Instead, however, I came to the conclusion that, once you've mastered the playing of an instrument, that mastery becomes cellular knowledge. According to Seth,
Each physical cell is in its way a miniature brain, with memory of all of its personal experiences and of its relationship with other cells, and with the body as a whole. In your terms this means that each cell operates with an innate picture of the body's entire history. . . . (The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter Seven, Session 632)
You never lose cellular knowledge. But you can lose your way to it. In other words, complete neglect of the instrument over a long period of time does not so much result in an atrophication of neuromuscular connections, but in losing access to the ever-present cellular knowledge of how to play. All that's necessary to get back your technique--no matter how long it has been since you played--is to regain access to this cellular knowledge. Apparently, the best way to do this is to ask your dreams for help.
Of course, if you hold a belief that you'll sound awful because too many years have passed since you played regularly, that's the reality you'll create for yourself. As Seth says,
You must accept the idea completely . . . that your beliefs form your experience. Discard those beliefs that are not bringing you those effects you want. In the meantime you will often be in the position of telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely contradictory. . . . You must realize that you are the one who produced that "physical evidence". . . , and you did so through your beliefs. (The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 4, Session 622)
The idea of evidence brings me to another point, applicable both to people who practice regularly and those who want to get back to playing an instrument. Doubt in your abilities will often manifest as the belief that a certain passage, or a certain aspect of playing the instrument is difficult. As you practice, your doubt will gather evidence: first that the passage is indeed difficult, and then that you'll never be able to play it. If your approach is to repeat that passage over and over again until you get it right, the fingers might get tired, or your concentration might flag, causing further problems, and seeming to confirm that you can't play the passage.
Charles has suggested a far more productive approach: Practice the passage only until you perceive an improvement, no matter how slight; then go on to something else. Gradually, over a matter of days, you'll be gathering evidence that you can play the passage. Using this approach you're not so much practicing the notes, but rather the belief that you can play them.
Another way of looking at it is this: You're overcoming the limiting belief in the passage's difficulty that blocks your access to the body's cellular knowledge of how to play it effectively. Of course, if you've never played a passage like this one before, and new techniques are required, then the belief in the passage's difficulty will block you from making these new techniques part of your cellular knowledge, and accessing them in the future.
Charles says that mistakes in practicing are not a result of the body's stupidity or slowness in learning--as many musicians seem to believe. Thus, the best way to correct such problems is not to force the body to play perfectly, with added hours of practice.
According to Charles, mistakes in practicing are a result of lapses in concentration. The most brilliant and beautiful playing is the result of the highest level of presence with the instrument, while practicing and while performing.
Charles likes to define presence as willingness to be here. Thus, willingness to be with the instrument can be more important than long hours of practice--especially if the drudgery of the latter leads to resentment of the body, the instrument, one's teacher, or the music itself.
I like to think of practicing not so much in terms of technique as in terms of states of awareness. Answering the question of how I can make myself more present in the playing of a passage tends to iron out technical problems much more quickly than endless run-throughs.
What about nerves in performance situations? To my knowledge Seth never addressed such a question directly. But, if you keep in mind that mistakes are a result of lapses of concentration, and that your beliefs create your own reality, then it should be clear that nerves are an expression of the fear of not playing well. That fear causes lapses in concentration, which in turn make it difficult to access the cellular memory of how to play a passage.
Charles has this to say about performing:
The fear that you will not play well is actually a limiting belief. Usually, it derives from the feeling that you "aren't good enough." Aren't good enough for what? To be alive? To enjoy playing your instrument? To love music? To impress your parents? To get a good grade? To land a job?
Notice how the first three questions refer to personal satisfaction, and the last three to success, in terms of how other people view your performance. Ultimately, the question of not being good enough boils down to a decision you have to make about why you’re here on the planet. Are you here to grow and learn, for your own personal fulfillment and satisfaction? Or are you here to impress people?
It should be clear that, in the former case, a mistake would indicate there's something more to learn. In the latter, it would mean you were a failure. The point is, that with each performance you must decide whether you're playing for personal satisfaction and self-expression or for the "success" of impressing people.
With the first attitude, the adrenalin rush that often accompanies performing will create a heightened state of awareness in which cellular knowledge is completely accessible, and you remain in control of shaping all elements of the performance--sometimes with unexpected new insights or approaches. With the second attitude, your fear of possible failure will cause the adrenalin rush to work against you, blocking cellular knowledge, and resulting in a loss of control over certain aspects of the performance. Why? Because fear of failure causes you to concentrate on failure--and, as Seth says in The Nature of Personal Reality, "You get what you concentrate on."
While I was living in Chicago, I also made an interesting experiment in using the Sethian concept of world views. A world view is a kind of electromagnetic gestalt of a deceased individual's personality, beliefs, and perspectives on his or her own life and the period in which he or she lived. Seth claims that these world views exist at another level of reality, and can be accessed by individuals who are still alive. Usually, the experience of trance communication with a famous dead person involves tapping into the individual's world view, rather than accessing his or her soul directly. According to Seth,
Each world view exists at its own particular "frequency," and can only be tuned in to by those who are more or less within the same range. However, the frequencies themselves have to be adjusted properly to be brought into focus, and those adjustments necessitate certain intents and sympathies. It is not possible to move into such a world view if you are basically at odds with it. You simply will not be able to make the proper adjustments. (The "Unknown" Reality, Vol. 2, Session 718)
Jane wrote two books based on the idea of world views--one having to do with the philosopher William James, and the other with the artist Paul Cézanne.
I felt that I had the kind of affinity Seth speaks about above with the world view of the Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso, Béla Bartók (1882-1945). When I was in high school, one of the first piano pieces I composed was in a style that resembled his--even before I knew much of his music.
The year 1982 was the centenary of Bartók’s birth, and an album of all the existing recordings of his piano playing had just been released to celebrate it. After listening to this album, I wondered if I could somehow access Bartók’s world view in order to improve my piano playing. I would imagine his hands (visualized from a photograph included in the album's program notes) superimposed over my own when I was practicing pieces he had written. I would also imagine that I was playing along with him when I listened to the records.
I don't really know whether my attempt to tune into Bartók’s world view actually helped my playing. However, it did set into motion an interesting sequence of events. One day, I was skimming the classifieds in a weekly paper and came across the following item: "Piano lessons in the tradition of Bartók and Liszt." I became quite excited and called the number listed in the ad. The woman I spoke to was about my age and had studied with a woman who herself had studied with Bartók. Not only that, but the woman who had studied with Bartók lived only about twenty minutes away. I lost no time in signing up for lessons with this woman.
Strangely enough, for the whole first month my new teacher wouldn't allow me even to touch the keys of the piano. I was to close the lid and practice a certain uncomfortable hand position along with finger-strengthening exercises. Over and over she would insist that this was the way Bartók himself had held his hands. Talk about creating your own reality!
For years, I held the belief that the reason I couldn't play the piano well was that I’d had inadequate training as a child. What did my new teacher do but start me off playing at the child level again? I hated it. Not only that, but she was one of those piano teachers who want to control every aspect of your life. I quit after she spent a whole hour's lesson lecturing me about the evils of vegetarianism and giving me recipes for goulash.
Looking back on this experience now, I see that, at another level, I’d set the whole thing up for myself in order to confront the limiting belief that my childhood training had set me back. Once I’d let go of that belief--by insisting to myself that my early training had in fact been adequate, because I’d successfully overcome the challenge of learning how to read music)--my piano playing began to improve much more quickly than it had when I was making the Bartók world- view experiment.
I lived in Chicago a little more than two years before deciding to move to Boston, a town which felt more home-like to me even than the place where I’d grown up in Ohio. I continued to see clients, as a psychic, and to teach classes based on the material I’d received from Charles. I also continued to practice clarinet and piano, and to compose.
Writing poetry was another interest that I’d maintained through the years. And, in Boston, I began to explore a dance form called contact improvisation, and to teach myself to draw.
Trying to balance all of these activities with a romantic involvement, maintaining my friendships, keeping a daily dream journal, running the house, and staying in shape, became ever more challenging. I felt a great need to figure out some way of managing my time, so that I could juggle all the things I enjoyed doing, or which felt essential to my personal and spiritual development, without having to drop one or more of them in favor of the others for extended periods of time.
In The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Seth says that impulses "help to impress the world--that is, to act upon it and in it effectively" (Chapter Eight, Session 857). In my personal sessions with Charles, the latter began to elaborate on the Sethian concept of impulses. Gradually, Charles produced a system that enabled me to recognize and pursue my impulses more easily. Thus, I would be able to develop all the various aspects of myself, while at the same time maintaining a spontaneous approach to living. I brought the material to my class and we began to extend it so that everyone from artists to nine-to-fivers and housewives with children could benefit from following their impulses, which would allow them to live more spontaneously, and yet more responsibly.
In 1989, we published the book that eventually emerged from the many personal and class sessions on the topic of impulses: Menus for Impulsive Living. I dedicated that book to the memory of Jane Roberts, because I'm sure it never would have appeared without my exposure to the Seth Material. Nor would I have met Charles. And, given the seemingly insurmountable frustration I sometimes experienced as clarinetist, pianist, and composer, I wonder if I would have stayed with music had I not read The Nature of Personal Reality. And who would I have then become?
But, no matter. This is the probability I’ve chosen. And I find it a fulfilling one indeed.
^UP^