HARMONY - balance of Heaven & Earth

When we talk about harmony, when we use the word harmony, often times we use it to express something pleasant, something comforting, something we like, something joyful, and that's beautiful. But the deeper meaning of the word harmony is actually a little bit different, it’s the balance between the opposing forces of duality, up and down, high and low, light and dark.

In the ancient Chinese teachings music was understood as a bridge between heaven and earth and Pythagoras talked about harmony as a universal law of the universe. So harmony is actually something grander, more universal, a balance of light and darkness, an embrace of joy and pain; an acceptance of pleasant experiences as well as unpleasant ones. Harmony is the whole of it. The balance of those opposing forces.

We can express it in a different way and say harmony is either consonant or dissonant. Consonance and dissonance are in their essence musical concepts describing how two or more notes sound together, with consonance being a pleasant, stable sound and dissonance being an unstable, tense sound. Consonant combinations create a sense of rest, while dissonant combinations create tension.

Now, consonance is a condition of stability. Consonance is what we usually mean when we say harmony. It's a condition that is joyful, that is pleasant, that makes us feel good, that is comfortable, that is stable.

Dissonance, on the contrary, is a condition of instability. It is unpleasant,  painful, challenging and brings with it a need for transformation, because ultimately we want to again reach that state of consonance, a state of comfort.

There is a constant dance between those two. Life will never just stay in one place. Everything is changing, is moving, and if you're in a situation of dissonance, it really longs for comfort and stability; if on the contrary you're a long time in a situation of of consonance, it longs for friction and challenge, because there needs to be a movement, a transformation, like in the cycles of life and nature. Of course, we all deserve consonance in our life. We deserve to be happy and peaceful and fulfilled and in comfort. But many times, what we really need on a deeper level, is the embrace of the dissonance, to be able to embrace it as an equal aspect of life.

When we are able to really face dissonance, to face the difficulties, to face the pain, the loss, the failure, the disappointment, to face any challenge,  we are  in a way integrating our own darkness. There is a deep mystery inside the forces of consonance and dissonance, an invitation to understand harmony and integrate harmony as that eternal dance of light and dark.

Talking about the harmony of our life: our health and well-being very much depends on how much we are in tune with ourselves. We can look at our whole being, body, mind and soul, like a big orchestra of many, many players, many instruments, playing a certain symphony. Now, if that orchestra is tuned, if every musician tuned its instrument, if they are all playing the same symphony and the conductor is a skilled maestro, you will experience harmony. That's when we are in a state of perfect health and well-being. All the elements of our being are working together perfectly and are playing that symphony of our life.

Now, the other way around, if that orchestra was partying the night before and the musicians show up tired and with a hangover, most probably half of the instruments will be out of tune, half of the players will be unfocused, the conductor won't show up at all, and that orchestra will sound terrible. That’s dissonance, that's how sickness feels in the body.

Things are out of tune. The different elements are not working together. All the different levels of your being are not tuned with each other in harmony. So, our health and well-being can be very much understood in a musical way. And that's also why we say ‘I feel in harmony’ when we feel good. We use that word because we understand it's a musical situation. It's a situation of us being either in tune or not in tune.

Life is changing constantly. That's what nature teaches us, that everything  is in a constant movement and progresses in cycles. Nothing stays the same! We all know that in our life. Once we get to a point where we think that we understand something, the next challenge is already on the way, the next wave, and everything is again upside down, messed up. There is a constant movement to life and as much as we all long to hold on to something stable, something permanent, it always changes, It always does, like nature, like the cycle of day and night, like the cycle of the year, the cycle of the moon.

Everything is in a constant periodic motion and this idea of a steady, linear, constant economic growth or unlimited technological progress, is just not right. What goes up must come down. What flows out will move back in. This is the pulse of life. This is how energy moves, in cycles.

Everything follows a cyclic movement. Understanding the nature of life means understanding the nature of change, the ever constant movement of life.

One of my greatest inspirations on my own musical journey and on the journey of learning the mysteries of music, was and always is the grand Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Khan from India. I talked about him before in a previous episode. He was a classically trained musician, and through the practice of his music he reached a state of enlightenment. Now to him, the whole universe started to become music. He came forth with the most wonderful teachings, describing and explaining the whole symphony of creation through the lens of music. According to him there are three levels of harmony in the universe;  a cosmic harmony, a universal harmony and an individual harmony. The cosmic harmony is something that is pretty much beyond our understanding. It's like the silence, the silent essence of the universe, the silent center that is unchanging, the very inner dimensions of life, the inner matrix of energy and light; untouched by what is happening on the surface.

Universal harmony he calls the harmony of the universe, the harmony of the galaxies, of the solar systems, the planets, the elements of nature and the cosmos working with each other in harmony. It’s a manifestation of the cosmic harmony. That’s the harmony we experience in nature and as we are a part of nature we are also part of that universal harmony. Unfortunately, in this period of time, we are starting to clearly experience that influence of us humans on the planet, how through our human progress and development the balance of nature has been changing. It took millions of years here on Earth to create the exact balance of elements that enable our human existence,  a pretty stable climate and regular seasons, the basic conditions for our civilization to thrive. We took it for a given, but now it is changing and we have to face a new phase of instability on the planet.

Then there is another state of harmony that he calls ‘individual harmony’. This is the harmony of life, of our personal life. How much am I able to be in tune with my body, mind and soul? How am I able to live my relations? How am I related to people, to the world, to nature? This individual harmony is where most our work and responsibility is happening; to refine that tuning.

There is always an inner dimension to it and the outer dimension to it. There is an inner world we experience in life and an outer world, and those two are in interaction. Of course, they are always in interaction. We are influenced from what is surrounding us. We are influenced from the environment we are living in, from the people surrounding us, from the nature that is surrounding us and our inner state of being, and, our inner world is influencing the outer world. Our words, thoughts, creations, whatever were am bringing forth is influencing the world.

So there is a constant dance again between that inner and outer world but there can only be true harmony in my life, if I find that inner tune I call it the ‘song of my soul’, to become truly who I am, to tune into that essence of my being. To become that. To be that and to radiate that vibration out into the world in order to gain the right reflection of it in the outer world.

We are creating our reality. We are creating the response of our inner world in that outer world. So if we are claiming that place within us, if we find that place where we are really in tune with that essence of us, with this ‘song of our soul’, this is the way we can really find peace in this life, how we can attain true harmony in this life.