THE PRESENCE OF SPIRIT

What is the spirit? The spirit is nothing. Or no-thing. This is its simplest definition. Now. How do we spot the presence of nothing, or no-thing in our lives?

Yes. A very tricky proposition (snoop dog?), and yet, the spirit pervades both life manifest and life unmanifest, and so it definitely is there around us. Not only that, but it is there to help and guide us, if possible. If we are awake enough to sense in some way its presence. In some way. But how? How can we sense the presence of nothing or no-thing? Well. We can’t. All we do is notice its secondary effects, as it were. Perhaps not even secondary. Effects many times removed from their original cause or stimulus. In other words, I suppose, we must look out the corner of our eye. Or as Jesus said, not let our right hand know what our left hand is doing. In more recognisable terms, I can point to a very obvious example and relate that to my own life.

MUSIC!

Music in many ways is the Spirit. I think we’ve all at some time heard a certain piece of music somewhere, and been ‘entranced’! inspired. Carried away, as it were.  It really doesn’t matter if it’s pop, classical, or Jamaican bongo music. The music shows us the potential for something new. A new way to feel. A new way to be. And this is the spirit talking to us. Why? Well. Music is very close to nothing. It’s really just vibrations and air moving. Nothing concrete. And why does music have the effect it does? Nobody knows. No scientific formula can explain it. We can say it mirrors nature in using patterns, but that’s about all. But being close to nothing, it can channel the spirit very well.

In my own case of meeting the Spirit, it was hearing a friend at secondary school play a Beatles song on the piano, ‘Martha my dear’, and feeling absolutely entranced and thinking, I want to do that! Play the piano! This led me to get to know this friend a lot better, learning music with him, and writing songs with him, and eventually it was this friend who first introduced me to the work of Carlos Castaneda! Now. Considering that it was when I read Castaneda in my early thirties, for the second time, and it was then that I had a ‘spiritual awakening’, you can see how my meeting with the Spirit , in the first instance, was not as straight forward as it appeared, or did not appear, at that time in my life. In fact of course, I had no idea at all that I had met the Spirit. I thought it was all about music and learning the piano! For the Spirit can’t talk directly to us. It has to be devious. And a lot of people find this deviousness so repellent, that they never entertain the possibility of the concept of meeting the Spirit, to exist at all in their lives. Sadly. But this ‘trickery’ is necessary. Absolutely.

But what did happen when I heard ‘Martha my dear’ on the school upright?????

What really happened???

Kieth Johnstone in his seminal work IMPRO, talks about interrupting routines.

I’m on about theatre, or comedy improvisation here.

He recognised that performers get stuck in one track and need to be jolted out of it. If they start on one thing, like digging holes, they just dig holes endlessly, until someone recognises, it is a routine, and says, “Hey! Lets plant a tree!!!!!!”

Now the same thing happened to me when I met the Spirit. My routine was to go around thinking constantly, magic doesn’t exist; magic doesn’t exist. Etc. but then I heard the music, and had my ‘realisation’, that jolted me out of my routine. I thought, “ Hey!! Magic does exist!!! He’s playing it!!!!!”

Let’s stop and think. We know that John the Baptist used to baptise people. Why? Why stick their head under water? What for? It’s a nonsensical act really.

Just getting someone soaking wet? Or is it? Was he actually trying to break their routine? Was John the Baptist really Keith Johnstone??? And of course, we know what happened when Jesus came along, and the Spirit descended from heaven, in the shape of a dove! The Spirit.

Let’s stop and think again. With Castaneda his first meeting with Don Juan is at the core of his work. (If you don’t know this story please look it up.) He mentions this meeting in nearly every book. Even his last one! So that what happens is, it becomes this huge myth. The momentous meeting where something transcendental and awesome took place! In ‘reality’ of course Castaneda didn’t meet Don Juan, at the bus depot, he met the Spirit. He was entranced by a look! A look which made him realise that  his routine, his academic bluster, which he used on everyone regardless, was actually nonsense! This is what that look told him! It jolted him out of his routine, just as Martha jolted me out of mine. Not that I’m comparing myself to him. 

But how can I reduce everything to impro. Which it so obviously isn’t. We’re talking about the Godfather of the new age movement. Dr Carlos Castaneda, a man whom I am very grateful too, and respect and admire. How? Well, as I said at the outset, that the spirit is nothing or no-thing. It is an absence. A void which appears and allows something new to fill it. And this points us to what normally fills this gap. And that would be THE SCRIPT,  or THE SCORE, or THE PLAN, or whatever. The ‘thing’ behind what we do, that makes sure it always stays within certain parameters. And we all know those parameters. Let’s be honest!

So in the final analysis, what have I said? I have said the Spirit is present in music. And that is saying nothing. Or no-thing. We all know that. And that is the Spirit. It is nothing.