by meredith murphy
This morning as I started my day to a mocking bird orchestra-in-one, and then a flock of naturalized parrots took flight, soaring overhead and squawking with such exuberance that all the dogs including our new puppy Lily stopped, turned and looked up, I began to ponder my song.
As a non-native speaker of these early morning songs, I can only marvel at their lyrical beauty. Birds to me and to many of us have long symbolized freedom. Their innate rapport with the sky alone is enough to create a sense of awe. Their consistent singing, though is what really moves me. It feels to me like the same commitment to being that trees and flowers demonstrate; a devotion to embodying the essence of each aspect regardless of location, weather, or any other mitigating circumstance.
Birds, I've noticed, sing even in the rain. They sing when the local city workers are drilling and putting in new traffic lights, like this morning. They sing when it's cold and when it's scaldingly hot and hasn't rained in months. They just sing.
I love to sing and although I typically don't start my day that way, I actually used to. I typically start my day in quiet, listening, which I also love. But I have not been singing much these last few years after giving my piano away when it lost it's tune and although I intended to buy a new one, I haven't and slowly as it often happens, music a great passion of my early days, just faded out of my daily experience.
I remember being in college and going to choir after lunch while a student a Michigan State. The incredible joy of making such beautiful sounds, breathing deeply and doing so with others, was pretty heavenly.
Considering all the themes in life lately that have been urging us to tune into our heart's desires, I am wondering if perhaps it's time to take a hint from the birds and begin to do so--meaning to sing more, consciously and with the kind of simple enthusiasm for dawn, another day, for being alive and aware, to articulate my own affinity with the sky by wafting my own sounds on the breeze and letting my heart flow into song.
I think there's a connection between music, the spheres, birds and harmony which is potentially the root of happiness: a no holds barred expressing of one's essence in the dance of life.
Singing is often associated with the breath, and there are all kinds of feelings about if one sings well, or not and who is a singer. But in truth the birds songs I loved so much this morning were more about the innate ability we each have to just let our heart-felt participation in this amazing expansion loose!
These songs were just sung. No rehersal. These beautiful birds are being, not performing. It was sharing, communicating, expressing perhaps, but there was no evaluation or judgment, just letting it rip with no thoughts--second or otherwise.
I can see where in the midst of this is some sort of cosmic clue: a recipe for happiness. Something about love for everything and just being part of the game. The birds don't have some idea of who they are or how they should sing that interferes or narrates the experience. They just do it. They do it their own way. It's their thing.
When I sing with this kind of release, I feel great. I am entirely extravagantly relaxed (all that breath pouring in and out) and happy. It all becomes effortless and like the bird, I am free. In a moment like this we just flow with sound and breath in a Oneness that's ancient and emblamatic of the nature of our being and all being. Sound is, after all, vibration. Vibration is the essence of life and light. While singing we potentially release our identity as one being and become One with that moment of focus, with the harmony of other singers, the instrument, the dogs barking, the sound of the lawn mower, the tune on the radio, or even, sometimes a counterpoint to the silence.
Our life is song as there is vibration created by our energy, from our intentions which take vibrational structure and although we don't often hear them, we emanate their themes. We are continually, in essence, singing!
Singing has always given me joy and as I awaken I feel the longing for more of it again. I sing to my dogs when I feed them. I sing in my car. And I can feel that this desire to sing is expanding. It is I suspect a conscious, reliable pathway to the essence of my being, which is innately happy. It's a way to dip into my connection with everything, to flow the energy of breath from my heart into sound and to allow my melody to take the essence of me to the sky. The resurfacing of my desire to sing, however, is more than that--it's a sign that my whole being is longing for release beyond story and purpose into just expressing the essence I am.
It's a reflection of the changes within and the transformation that is flowing within all of us. It's becoming self-evident that my song is vital and important as is yours. And that each of us choosing to be our own undistorted melody is the essence of the new song...the song of harmony, peace, love and happiness on the inner planes, mirrored in the manifest reality.
I may not be able to fly, but as I realize that I am consistently singing, I can own my ability to tune the air to my song. I consciously realize that I am continually broadcasting, and everything that is, hear's everything I transmit.
With this in mind, I choose to be the essence of me: an enthusiastic sharer. A joy-filled being who loves to translate into words, paintings, stories, experiences, or sounds, what I've felt, discovered, know and love. That's me. That's my song. And there is no end...there's more where that came from, I am infinite and limitlessly expanding with everything that is.
Each day that I let myself just be myself, without judgment or concern, I sing my true song. There is the ultimate alignment of being as essence. There is ease. Life opens up as I do. I become one with the morning with creation and claim my own connection to the sky. And instead of pondering my song, I simply close the gap by being me: I AM my song.
