Have you ever had a true meeting, perhaps with a mysterious stranger who left you with a spiritual message that has stayed with you throughout your life.
“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” – Miles Davis
Jazz is all about improvisation. Nevertheless, a jazz musician always returns to what is called the base line. You can improvise all around the base line, but you must always return to it.
Is this not what the spiritual path is about?
One’s Sādhanā, or spiritual journey, is concerned with the return to the One, the Ground of Being. This reflection provides us with a profound sense of what free will is. We have the freedom to go off in any direction, and we can riff all we may wish. Nevertheless, in order to be an accomplished musician in life, we must continue to return to the base line. Otherwise,we will find ourselves to be without direction.
Free will allows us to move away from the trajectory of our soul, but we must eventually return to the base line.
What is this base line? I feel that this is the movement of the soul along its divine trajectory. Do you feel you’ve lost a sense of your life’s trajectory?
POINTS FOR REFLECTION
1) Are you entirely certain that we exercise free will?
2) Do you believe that the totality of past events inevitably causes what occurs in the present moment?
3) Is there such a thing as inevitability? Given that most behavior is not mindful, can we reasonably speak of freedom?
4) On the other hand, can you imagine the sheer freedom of experiencing the soul’s movement along its divine trajectory?
It’s an interesting observation, Tim. It seems valid, to me! I, like you, have spent my life largely in search of the elusive baseline, only to recently discover that it’s been within me the whole time.
From what I’ve witnessed, most people, including fellow travelers along this road, only get as far as their intellects can take them. They have voluminous knowledge of most of the great philosophers of the age, and for many, (not including you, I don’t think), that seems to substitute for actually getting there.
To me, simply knowing this stuff is much like my knowing as much as I do about how to play the flute, or cello. That’s quite a bit. But when I try to play a flute, I sound like I’m blowing into a coke bottle! And there’s an even stronger parallel there than meets the eye. More on that, later.
I was told that among jazz saxaphonists, it is said “it’s easy play the sax poorly; it’s very difficult to play it well”. This harkens back to a quote elsewhere on your site: “the unexamined life is not worth living”. So, it takes no discernment to live life poorly, but much intent, and practice, to live it well.
Unless one finds oneself to be a savant of living, just from Grace. (I hear tell.)
Also, Tim, I’ve got to say your ‘points for reflection’ are excellent. They really take us to the point of not-knowing, from which all wisdom must arise.