Audible JusticeIf It Helps You To Sleep

9 MUSIC

by John Justice

I am so overwhelmed by the severity of the situation I now � nd myself in. It damages my calm so much that I’m running away. Actually, I’m racing away, as fast as my car can take me. � ings feel bleak. I analyze the situation from a billion angles, but it’s no use. I can’t � gure this one out. I can’t even hear myself think. I have to slow down. I take three deep breaths, put on “Rubber Soul,” and suddenly I realize… I’m already home. And things seem a li� le less bleak.

Even on my worst days, I’ve proven time and again that music is my most pow-erful remedy. It is an un-shakable mountain ready to bare the weight of my heart at any moment. It can stop me dead in my tracks and transport me through time and space. Even a few seconds of my favorite albums will bring me straight back to the present moment, just as it is; objective and without illusion. I � nd this connection be-tween mind and sound so incredible, and yet so o� en unnoticed.

One of my new favorite authors, the Noble Prize-nominated � ich Nhat Hanh, has been known to go into great detail about an ex-tremely powerful mental technique known as “Bell Meditation.” In this traditional practice, Buddhists monks positively exploit the mind’s innate ability to subconsciously recognize and respond to repeated sounds. (Students of science might equate this to Pavlov’s Clas-sical Conditioning. But I believe it goes much deeper than training dogs to salivate on com-mand, or Dwight’s unexplainable desire for a breath-mint.)

� rough intimate and continued time spent observing the sound of a bell, even a small bell, accompanied by entering a peaceful state of mind, we can train ourselves to instan-taneously return to that place of mental tran-quility every time the bell sounds. Again I � nd this unbelievably miraculous and yet so over-looked in our part of the world. (I wish West-ern science would spend more time validating

these life altering psychological exercises and reduce their time developing far less e� ective pharmaceutical alternatives.)

If repeated practice can have such a deep a� ect on our peace, our happiness, and our mental endurance, invoked from only the nat-ural and simplistic sound waves of a pocket-sized bell, how vast are the treasures waiting to be unlocked amid the � nal “mix-downs” of our favorite recordings? What cerebral riches are yet to be discovered inside their innumer-ous vibrations and the complexities they cre-ate as they collide together through the void between speaker and ear?

I think it’s time we stop overlooking the power of our own mind as well as the phe-nomenal enhancement of that power available to us through music. How much more con-tent would we be if our great times were even greater and our not-so-great times weren’t re-ally that bad a� er all?

Music is my immediate alleviation from stress. It is my unwavering calm in constantly changing winds. It boosts my energy faster than any digestive process. It amplifi es any activity and accentuates the often unnoticed levels of beauty in my peripheral view. It paints the most enthralling murals in my imagination and it weaves an enveloping tapestry for my mind’s eye. It is truly my daily medication. “There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway, a song that they sing when they take to the sea, a song that they sing of their home in the sky, maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep, but singing works just fi ne for me.”