The Ostrich and the Elephant

A blog on spirituality, science, philosophy, ETs, and mental health

Tag: Love

  • The Importance of High Vibrational Music

    “Where words fail, music speaks.”
    ~ Hans Christian Andersen

    Growing up through my twenties I mostly listened to one band over and over again. That band was headed by a guy called Conor Oberst; the band name was Bright Eyes.

    A lot of people considered this “emo” music because he was indeed very emotive, but he was different from the emo genre in a big way: He was uplifting. There was hope in his music. Not to mention he’d been called this generation’s Bob Dylan because of how great a songwriter he is.

    Here’s one example out of pretty much any song I could choose:

    “The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Qu’ran is mute
    If you burned them all together, you’d get close to the truth
    Still they’re pouring over Sanskrit under Ivy Ieague moons
    While shadows lengthen in the sun”

    Beautiful right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

    Or maybe this one:

    “ I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth
    With a post-modern author who didn’t exist
    In this fictitious world all reality twists
    I was a hopeless romantic, now I’m just turning tricks”

    Like, what the fuck. How good is this guy? And those are just the first two that popped into my head out of the thousands I could have chosen.

    There used to be a facebook group called “Conor Oberst has more talent in his little finger than I do in my entire body.” There was also one called “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend”. I joined both. Actually, I did more than that — I wore a shirt with “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend” on it to a festival once. It got mixed reviews.

    And sure, his voice was often quivering, he often sung like he was scared to sing, but that’s part of what touched me so deeply about him; his vulnerability and his rawness. And even though a lot of other people found him depressing, I didn’t. I saw past the quivering fragility and saw the fervent spirit inside him. The same goes for Leonard Cohen. Yeah, it’s sometimes sad music, but it’s the beautiful kind of sad. Not just sad for sad’s sake, but sad for honesty’s sake.

    I heard about a study on death metal music recently. I’ve never been a fan of death metal at all; I couldn’t understand how people could enjoy listening to that type of music, but apparently they do. All I hear is rage and darkness, and I don’t want to feel that. But the fascinating thing about this study was that people who reported liking death metal said they didn’t feel anger or darkness when listening to it — they felt peace and joy.

    Peace and joy while listening to someone scream like the devil? Apparently so.

    And, contrary to what a lot of people claim, listening to death metal doesn’t make you more prone to violence.

    Here’s a link to the audio discussion on this: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/the-curious-joy-of-death-metal-music/10514754

    I guess this is what we love about music. It evokes emotions in us that are otherwise unexpressed. And music is a very healthy way to do that. So I’m not against death metal or its fans, because I now understand where it’s coming from — it’s coming from a place of truth for them.

    But it’s easy to get trapped. It’s easy to just have one type of music you listen to that you listen to all the time even when it’s not really what you’re feeling inside. I’m sure death metal fans don’t want to hear the devil’s voice every minute of the day, just like I don’t want to hear Conor Oberst’s voice every minute of the day. Sometimes I actually much prefer silence to music. It changes all the time. And so should our music — so it accurately reflects what we’re feeling in that moment, and so we don’t get stuck in a set pattern of feeling because we just always happen to have the same playlist on repeat.

    This is why I have now broadly expanded the types of music I listen to. I’m still not a fan of death metal, but I now appreciate where it’s coming from. And my musical tastes over the years have now expanded tremendously. It used to be just sad, beautiful songwriters. Now it’s everything from Rudimental, to Kali Uchis, even to some chill EDM. (Okay, I guess my taste hasn’t changed THAT much. But it’s still constantly expanding).

    My point with this article is that, because music has such a powerful influence on our emotional states, I think we should try and be more conscious of those emotional states when we’re listening to music (or when we’re in silence), so that we’re not reinforcing an emotion we don’t want, but we’re also not avoiding an emotion that is there and needs to be expressed, lest it comes out in unhealthy ways.

    As John Cusack’s character said in the movie “High Fidelity” (yes yes I know it was a book first blah blah I’ve even read it so bite me) — “Did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or was I depressed because I listened to pop music?”

    I think the answer is a little bit of both, John. My advice is: Listen to what speaks to your soul, whatever that is, at any point, but don’t get stuck there because you just always put on the same type of music.

    Which brings me to the main topic of the article: high vibrational music. I’m now on the look-out for music that’s positive and inspiring that matches where I am at in my life right now. There are a few I’ve found: The self-titled Radnor and Lee album which is so good I made a whole post on to itself (link here:
    https://theostrichandtheelephant.com/the-best-spiritual-album-i-have-ever-heard/ ), Rudimental, and a few tracks here and there that I really resonate with. An album called Known Odyssey I’ve also liked, which is a bit more new-agey but I’m beginning to appreciate that type of music more too, and it has some beautiful piano compositions. I’m still only on the beginning of the journey in finding high vibrational music though, so if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments and I will check them out. Thanks!

    But I think it’s also important to remember, with all this talk of sound and music… as someone has probably said once, silence itself is the most powerful sound you’ll never hear.
    Or, as in The Simpsons when Lisa is at a jazz bar and the patron next to her says: Ugh, sounds like she’s hitting a baby with a cat.
    And Lisa says: You have to listen to the notes she’s not playing.
    The patron: Pfft, I could do that at home.

    Thanks for reading,

    In love and light!

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

  • My Message is Really Just Love

    I write about a lot of things on my blog: mental health, spiritual awakening, the reality of the extraterrestrial phenomenon; but at the end of the day it all really boils down to one thing: Love.

    I believe love is the highest emotion a human can experience, and I believe it is what we are all deeply searching for. All our actions to attain pleasure, success, fame, money – it all comes down to a deep desire to experience love, to experience connection. To love, and to be loved.

    If the content I am posting does not share more love, more freedom, more joy, more truth, then I think what I’m writing is a waste of time. Or, worse than that, it is actually harmful to those reading it.

    I think as humans we are really so much more powerful than we think we are, and we have a much greater influence on the world around us than we think we do.

    One of my favourite quotes by one of my favourite spiritual teachers is by a guy called Adyashanti (his name is a Sanskrit word meaning “primordial peace”). He once said: “If most human beings truly realized the impact that they have on the whole, they’d be crushed by the realization of it.”

    I experienced this during my spiritual awakening. At a certain point I began to realize just how much fear and sadness and pain I had been causing and was causing to those around me by my actions and by my state of consciousness. This led to me one night alone in a park, lying on the grass with my hands on my heart just repeating “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” I’m sorry for all the pain and hurt I have caused by my actions, and I’m sorry for not realizing what I was doing at the time.

    You see, as humans we often think in a very simple, linear way. In mathematical terms, we think we either add more happiness or subtract more happiness, but it is so much more than that. So so much more. Not only is our effect on the whole not just a simple additions or subtractions, it’s not even a multiplication or division: Our effect on the whole is exponential.

    Someone once told me a little fact: If you give a compliment to three people, and each of those three people give a compliment to three more people, etc etc, then by level 15 every single person in Australia has received a compliment. That’s almost 10 million people (although the population of Australia has grown significantly since then). So, in just 15 simple steps, every single person in Australia is happier.

    But it’s not just compliments, it’s our simple, everyday interactions with people. Are we approaching other people from a place of love and openness, or are we approaching other people from a place of fear and contraction?

    You see, thanks to good old mathematics, we really are actually so much more powerful than we think, and simple acts of kindness, or simply being in a positive state of being has a profound impact on those around us, who then pass on that profound impact onto the other people they meet that day.

    Now, I believe there is a great awakening taking place on planet earth. It doesn’t really matter whether you also believe this to be true or not for what I’m saying to be true. But I believe through a range of avenues – technological, social, economic, environmental – we are becoming much more aware of our effect on the world around us, and are beginning to make big changes in these areas. But here’s the greatest thing: the changes we make don’t need to be huge, they just need to be little, as often as we are able. Like the Australian musician Paul Kelly sung, “from little things big things grow.”

    There’s a quote that says: “In an avalanche, no snowflake ever feels responsible.” But the flip side is also true. A whole bunch of snowflakes rolling down a mountain, grows exponentially and can produce a significant impact on anything that gets in its way.

    So, like the late comedian Bill Hicks once said, we have a very small, simple choice to make in each moment whether we are living from love or whether we are living from fear. That may sound cliched and oversimplified, but I think most profound things are simple.

    There are two sides to this awakening thing though. On the one hand, waking up means you finally start to see where all the problems are coming from. You start to see the fear and the anger and the sadness that has always been suppressed and swept under the rug. So it might not always seem like things are going *great* during this waking up period. Just look at American politics right now for a perfect example. But on the other side of the coin, the great thing about this awakening is that it’s happening all over the place, so as more and more people begin to wake up to these things and to their own contributions, it becomes easier and easier for others to do the same. This is why it is so important to “find your tribe”. Find people who have a similar outlook on life as you do, and this connection will amplify the awakening process happening in both of you. As Jesus once famously said, “wherever there are two or more gathered in my name, I am there.”

    The sad thing is, this means you may need to cut ties or keep your distance from people you no longer resonate with, or who have a very pessimistic view of life, because they will only bring you down and slow down your own evolution into who you really want to be.

    This is why I think things on earth are going to transform much quicker than most people realise. It is because of this exponential effect of those with similar visions joining with their little contributions into making in the end massive contributions.

    So while things may seem to be getting even darker and more chaotic at the moment, the opposite effect is also happening, and all we need to do, as Bill Hicks said, is choose love over fear. It really is as simple (and sometimes difficult) as that.

    But for those who find it difficult, remember what Jesus said when he was being crucified on the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” That I think is the case with every negative action in the world. Every negative action comes from a place of misunderstanding – a misunderstanding of the interconnectedness of all life. If you truly begin to see life as all one, as one web of life, then how could you do something that would harm your neighbour? It would be like cutting off your own hand. It would no longer make sense. It really does start to become as clear as that. Or, as one of my idols, Helen Keller once said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.”

    Scientists have often stated that we live in a kind of “middle world” of the universe. We’re small enough, and move slowly enough, so that the effects of time dilation and space contraction don’t appear obvious to us, and we’re big enough so we don’t experience the quantum weirdness of things, where things appear to not really be things at all. But that doesn’t mean we’re not affected by these things, it’s just not as obviously apparent to us in most cases. The consequence of this is that our brains really only evolved for relatively simple things: find food, shelter, sexual partners – we didn’t evolve to understand concepts like infinity or to truly appreciate the effects of exponential growth. But these things are real whether we are able to conceptualize them effectively or not. I’ve included a picture of infinity below for your perusal.

    A picture of Infinity* (*not to scale)

    So, next time you’re out interacting with people, or even just by yourself in your room, just remember how powerful you are. You are exponentially powerful. You are so fucking powerful that your brain didn’t even evolve to be able to understand how powerful you are.

    How cool is that?

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

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