Sit quietly with your desire

Before a concert begins, you can hear the dissonant testing of tones, the unrelated tuning of many instruments. That's the sound of instruments ignoring each other and tuning to themselves. And the more willing the musician is to sound bad right now, the better he will sound when the concert begins.

The more able she is to close her ears to all the other tuners, the more she will bring her instrument into alignment with itself. With that done, they can bring their best sound to the performance.

As our beautiful Earth does her laps around the sun, we begin a new concert with every new year. We change the title of the performance to the next number and we toast the success of the new program. There is one thing we sometimes forget to do. And that is to tune up before we start playing.

You are the primary instrument in the symphony of your life. Tuning yourself before you ?perform? allows you to radiate beautiful harmony everywhere you go. And while it's easy to do, it gets tricky if you try to tune up once you're in the middle of a song. So let's take this sweet moment of beginning a new year and use the heightened opportunity it offers us to tune our own instrument.

If we can be, just for a few moments, willing to sound bad, that will be good. If we can tune out the other instruments, just for a moment, we will create a stable foundation in the tuning process and we will ultimately blend well with all the other players.

? Sounding Bad. If you can't hear where you're out of tune, you won't think to bring yourself into tune. So we proceed, without judgment, by putting an ear to our life tones. We start tapping our toes to our inner rhythm. Listening for the groove it has fallen into, driven by habit. Feeling for dissonance, conflict and disagreement between our desires and our beliefs. In a matter of fact way, we seek out the places where our flow of life force has gone flat. We are happy to find these places because we know we can tune them.

? Tune Out The Others. When other instruments are in the tuning process, they may still be untuned. Or they may be tuning to a note that you are in the process of tuning away from. Don't listen to them. Lean your ear into your own instrument. Tune yourself from within before you mingle with the others.

We are about to tune ourselves for the new year. Dust off the piano, open the guitar case, polish up the trumpet. I'm not kidding. Do you have a musical instrument in the house? I'll wait here while you go get it...

You don't have one? OK, you can do this. Go take three drinking glasses from the cabinet and fill each one with a different amount of water. Gently tap each one with a spoon. Voila. You've got an instrument.

Tune Up

Usually musicians tune their instruments. We are going to have our instruments tune us. Don't worry if your guitar only has 3 saggy strings (just tighten them up 'til they sound like strings) or your piano hasn't been tuned since the Beatles broke up. This process is so simple you could just blow over the mouth of a bottle and get the job done. All we need are a few good tones. Ready?

If you have written out a list of resolutions or goals for the year, you can jump right in by tuning that list. If you don't have a list, no problem, just start with a desire. Any desire. Keep your instrument handy as you begin this process.

Step 1. Sit quietly with your desire. Let the specifics of its story drift away until you are left with a sense of its tone, its vibration, how it feels as it lives in you. Be willing for it to 'sound? bad. Look honestly at how it feels right at this moment inside of you. Release all thoughts about what others think about it. Let go of comparing your manifestation to the accomplishments of others. Turn your undivided attention to listening to the hum of this goal or resolution or desire, as it vibrates in your field of being.

Step 2. Without disturbing your awareness Screw Box and Sterilization Container of the current tone of your desire, pick up your spoon or your guitar. Sit at your piano. You can even use your own voice if you like. Start sounding different tones from your instrument. Listen for one that feels especially good to you when you hear it. One that is soothing. One that feels resonant with your desire. You may be surprised at how easy this is. It is unmistakable when you recognize a tone that has nothing to do with your desire. And it is thrilling when you find one that is brightly in tune with the essence of what you are asking for. Once you find that tone, the one that amplifies the good feeling of your desire in your consciousness, the one that nonverbally sings its praises, you have completed Step 2.

Step 3. Now, play that tone and listen to it with your heart. As you let it ring through you, allow your desire to match it. Let the tone of your desire move itself to the new tone you have chosen. Imagine your desire riding this tone. This is completely simple. All you have to do is hold the desire in your mind while you deeply enjoy the beautiful tone. You will know when you have tuned that desire when the new tone is the only one you feel. When the desire is humming the new tone.

You can repeat these three steps with all your desires, goals and resolutions. You may be amazed at the results. Without tangling yourself up in the content of your desires, without aggravating the quarrel between your desires and your beliefs, you are simply tuning your instrument for the fulfillment of your desires. I think you'll be happy with your next performance.