harmony:
a situation in which people live and work well with other people, in a way that does not damage things around them
agreement or concord
the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole
We have to practice whatever we want to experience in our lives.
As Adrienne Rich wrote in a poem that I have adored since I was a teenager:
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down in the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
We have thought of practice as something you do in music or sports or some other activity that you’re good at or enjoy and want to improve.
But no one ever said that what is inside you ripples out as your life. And so in order to experience you must practice.
Everyone understands that musicians and athletes must practice. And yet the rest of us think that we are going to experience peace and harmony and joy as a matter of course.
But. . .
If our internal lives are not harmonious, how do we expect our external lives to be any different?
Harmony in music is different notes coming together to form a concordant sound.
If we want our world to be harmonious, each and every one of us must make harmony a heart-centered practice.
This means that if you are driving down the street wishing the whole world was like an early 1970s Coca Cola commercial and then someone cuts you off and you flip them the bird and start screaming expletives out loud — or even just in your mind — you’re not in harmony with yourself. And certainly your behavior isn’t.
No use saying they’re not either. It starts with you.
Look at the picture I posted. We would never think that whatever is in that pipe will be different when it comes out into the rippling pool. We know that the water that comes out is the same water that is in rippling out into the pool. So if there were battery acid in the pipe, we’d never believe that it would come out as still pure uncontaminated water.
Our lives are no different.
But that’s not how we behave.
We have ALL lived our lives believing that there would never be any real consequences.
Every thought has a consequence: The consequence is the quality and experience of every minute of our lives. So if we want harmony in our world, we have to practice harmony. Period. The end.
What does that mean? It means different things in different situations. But as its essence, harmony means playing well with others. To do that, first we have to make sure that all the internal parts of us play well together. And then we have to take that inner concord out into the world.
in human terms — inside and out — harmony means compassion, kindness, communication, connection. Harmony means Love.
If we’re going to love our neighbors as ourselves, we have to practice loving ourselves first.
If we want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, first we need to learn to sing Love to ourselves.
THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. Living Love is not optional.
For, as Adrienne Rich continues in that same poem (Transcendental Etude) that I have loved for so long:
But there come times—perhaps this is one of them –
when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;
when we have to pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow
ourselves to silence, or a deeper listening, cleansed
of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static
crowding the wires. We cut the wires,
find ourselves in free-fall, as if
our true home were the undimensional
solitudes, the rift
in the Great Nebula.
No one who survives to speak
new language, has avoided this:
the cutting-away of an old force that held her
rooted to an old ground
It is time for us all to cut away these old forces of internal inharmony that have held us all rooted to an old ground. To do this we need to become heart-centered practitioners every single day. No exceptions.
Today is Memorial Day. What better time to put this into practice — to honor those who are not here and to honor those who have yet to be here. And to honor ourselves who are still here and have a chance to make a difference.
What is inside each of us ripples out as our lives. Let us all ripple out Love.