Singing is Cleaning

You are welcome to sing with us. 

If it is not your thing, if there's too much foreign language, or if the words are moving about on the paper, then that's fine. There is nothing expected of you. You can rest in the knowledge that we are singing for you. 

Some find, however, that the more they enter these realms, the more the interaction and relationship evolves. Then you may want to learn a little of the language; it pushes and prods you, saying, "Enough navel-gazing; it's time to sit up, it's time to participate in your healing." Singing is one of the easiest ways of active participation, of active meditation. It concentrates and sharpens the mind toward the present moment of what is arising. If you get lost, hold to the song. If the seas are stormy, hold to the ship. If things get dark, hold to the light.

One of the grandmothers I used to work with, a remarkable lady from a strong family lineage of curaderas (healers) who has, by today's standards, a rare knowledge of plants, would always encourage me to sing. She said to me a wonderful thing: 

"Singing is cleaning." 

Sit with that thought; let it simmer in your insides. 

Singing is cleaning us from the inside out. It is like a nice soapy shower that we apply to clean all those hard-to-reach places, to brush away some of the cobwebs and shed light in the dark corners. 

Many nights with her and her family, everyone would be singing at the same time; however, they would all be singing different things. It is madness, it is chaos, but somehow it works perfectly. In those moments, I was free to dive in, to explore, to run with the melody and freestyle myself into its river. I would not so much decide what happens next, but listen and follow the river's course, riding the gentle winds and enjoying the scenery along the way. 

Singing the hymns and songs is similar. It is not so much a sit-down-and-I-sing-healing-songs-to-you kind of thing—you can have that if you want—however, here we also cultivate a sort of communal shamanism, one where you can find the ground and the strength of your own will to learn to stand on it yourself, and that happens together. When we sing together, we uplift the collective prayer. We work on the same team to cleanse ourselves, each other, and the space together. It is at once personal and individual, and also collective and unified.

We say it is a current: a current of healing, a current of concentration, a current like a strong river. The best place to be when the songs are happening is not on the banks of the river as a bystander, but inside its stream as a participant, being pulled by its course.

In the Bhakti tradition, one of my early teachers once shared with me a wonderful story regarding communal chanting. She said the mind is like a beehive, with hundreds of buzzing bees constantly zooming this way and that, and the walls are hardened and rigid with wax. In the heart, there is a tremendous fire that, once kindled, blazes onward and upward. Between the head and the heart, there is a passageway, a channel, a bridge, which is the throat. When one opens that passage to sing of the fires of devotion found in the heart, the sound of the fire rises up to the mind and tranquillises all the busy bees. They are calmed and become still, and the heat of the fire melts all the hardened wax as it slowly turns to sweet honey and returns downward to further fan the flames.

We are like little birds, you and I, made to sing, to hum, to whistle, to chant, to dance. Some of us have remembered this, some of us never forgot, some of us fell from our nest long ago and have not realised the wings we were given to take flight when we open our mouths and let the melody soar.