Dear Friends, we held our third evening of spirit singing with Kath and Lori. Our circle is getting larger and the group is finding its voice!
I am so surprised how my voice now wants "to go places and sing into places" and my "job" is to simply allow, sense and listen and let go. Letting spirit sing is a kind of surrender. In our first session my throat tightened and the superego jumped in everywhere. Phew it was tough, challenging and vulnerable. But after the three times I am sensing a trust and confidence that it is OK to let go and see what happens.
Sometimes it felt like a kind of group prayer as we moved from chanting into the silence and back into chanting.
I am curious how this was for you.
The 3rd spirit singing was my first experience. I found this spirit singing to be a deep meditation. At first I felt the need to follow the leaders and the group, and to 'do it right.' By the final part of the evening, my voice was freer and following its own leading which felt very right to me. Also, in this part I felt like moving my body and so eventually got up and moved behind the circle and allow my both and my voice movement and sound expression simultaneously. This felt very "right" to me. Also, during this experience I found my voice expressing different sounds, more spontaneity and exploration that I experience in singing a hymn with others.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this opportunity to comment. Allie, thanks for sharing your experience. I hope others will comment on their experience of "spirit singing."
Jim crowfoot
Wonderful Jim. Prayer, meditation, embodiment! All is emerging, ever emerging if we are willing.
DeleteI too am finding a greater ease and sense of freedom in the singing, such that I am able to play and explore different patterns or just repeat a phrase without so much worrying about what it will sound like, whether it's 'right' or not, etc. It is an opening to experience and to listening deeply to what is within me as well as to what is outside. We'd talked in an earlier session about holding and vessels for Presence -- I found that the spirit singing gave me both a sense of being held by the group energy, and a sense that my own vessel was being shored up and expanded at the same time.
ReplyDeleteAmelia, I love your reflections on this. There is this wonderful (and perhaps metaphoric) state that one can arrive at with this singing - both responsive to the world around us yet deeply, inwardly present. We are listening both to ourselves and to one another. I feel like this is something that applies to life. Recently, in an inquiry, I noticed that I had a strong association and belief around presence and stillness, presence and aloneness, which caused me to dismiss experiences of presence that happened in everyday life. I began to let something into my awareness which called itself "living presence" - being present while I'm engaged with the stuff of life and living. I feel like spirit singing is great way to practice staying with yourself while listening and responding to the world around.
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