How Sound can change the World
All the information for joining us M/W/F 10amPST/1pmEST/6pmGMT is here.
I’ve been up to something these last few weeks that I feel a need to share more broadly, more overtly. I’ve been praying… with sound, with people. In retrospect, and for those that know me, this is probably less of a surprise than it seems to be for me. So let me say more about my journey with it and why I think you should come join us.
What’s been going on
Every M/W/F (and, at the moment, Sundays) at 10amPST/1pmEST/6pmGMT, on FB, I appear on my own wall and talk a little bit about whatever is most energetically purposeful at that juncture, and then I sing; I do my Sound Prayers. On the receiving, participating, end of this, is you, with me. So we’re together for 20-30mins. You might sing, wail, dance, grieve, pray according to your own tradition. I can’t hear you and yet I know you are there. You might be indoors, outdoors, up a tree, on a walk. I can see anything you type, I can see that you’ve come online and joined us and I can see the lovely hearts you send across the screen sending love to all beings. The question is why am I doing this, why now, and why should you be joining me?
Aleppo, Syria
There is an unbearable, profound, pain quietly – yet relentelssly – growing in my awareness, over time, hiding in the folds of my heart, unquantifiable by my sanity. It seems to have coalesced through ever extending genocides, bombings, aggression, invasions, death, loss, rape, violation of human rights and land rights, urban and social devastation and destruction, all around the world. People becoming less than people as they value abstracts and possessions over culture, over their humanity and over life.
Abu Ward was a ray of hope for me, for many, a very real symbol of a fast-disappearing humanity. His once-happy son, Ibrahim, was left without his father after he was killed by a bomb. You could tell from the film made of them how close they were, how much they cherished each other. Aleppo has had my attention for a while now – witnessing the story of this father and son, tending the nursery, putting flowers in the city streets, keeping hope – and community – alive through his ‘familiar’, got me. I am feeling Syrians familial plights in my heart and guts, along with their collectively violent and sudden homelessness. This homelessness is extremely literal, whilst being also coldly symbolic – a measure – of our shared humanities’ increasing ‘soul homelessness’. With our awareness we watch from a safe distance unless uniquely moved to become involved. This ‘watching’ affects us. The genuine connection we have to these people’s loss and suffering is inside of each of us.
Palestine
On other plains, my eyes have become opened to the extent of the debilitating and throat clenching wall Israel is putting up between themselves and Palestine, and of Google (one of our major international communications company) seemingly trying to erase Palestine from their maps. Pain-filled agendas are everywhere. There is a ghostly feeling here, represented in this picture, of a nation held hostage by another nation’s needs. Where might they come together and share what both need and re-establish their humanity in the process? How can it happen, after all these years and all these injuries?
Standing Rock, ND
Closer to home, on American soil, I have become invested in the Native American very true fight for peace, mutuality and clean water, at Standing Rock, ND. These water protectors are trying to keep the Dakota Access Pipeline off their sacred land and away from their essential and, as yet, clean and healthy water source, the Mississippi River. In order to do this they are facing down militarised police, with prayers, peace, determination and fierce love of the sacred water, of sacred life. What they are facing is both illegal, provocative and violent. It includes desecration of sacred lands and a cultural humiliation at the hands of Morton County Police and the Energy Transfer Partners’ hired weapon-bearers. Although some police have put down their badges and walked away, unable to violate their own ethics any further, many other souls stay ‘floating’ on this people’s land, Treaty land, as if they have nowhere better to go, no home to celebrate, disembodied vessels, aggressive ghosts, in uniform.
The Planet
Make no mistake, our land is our identity, it is our unique relationship to life. It doesn’t just feed us elementally, it feeds us psychically and energetically. Our water is our freedom to live. Our families and neighborhoods are our sanity, they hold our stories, support and create our connectedness. We should be safe. We should all be safe. But everything seems to be going off the edge of the cliff, like the historical buffalo, very dramatically, and moving very, very fast.
Final shriek of the lost soul!
We receive our most recent bombshell, only this week, a man that seems incapable of any kind of mutuality, love or appreciation of rites, rituals or relations becomes the USA President elect – our international diplomat or, at least, some people’s. Not mine. Not a ‘good fit’. Maybe we’ll see what happens after his upcoming human rights violation trials. So, with all that… where to go to find our morphing sanity?
Sound Prayers: There is something very deep in the undercurrents of life right now, pushing their way from beneath the ground, becoming tangible, visible, witness-able. I have a deep instinct that we’re all feeling it and that we know we need to hold on tight, for our lives. There is a field where life has not happened yet – Rumi talks of this – where form has not committed itself to becoming… yet. It is the sound field. The field of vibrational self-realisation, life creation. It’s where we make choices. It is a fluid field, not yet claimed, not necessarily claimable. It is the one territory that can be nurtured by us, collectively, through intentional unity. We can enter this field, we can shape our intention, we can commune, we can create. It is powerful. Truly. There is an impulse in me that is calling me to meet you there, that is meeting you there, in Sound.
The rising impulse
When I felt the ‘black snake’ of the collective soul tapping on my door, knowing it is broken, trying to get in; looking for respite, perhaps even for healing, I started to sing Sound Prayers. This movement into sound that is growing is bringing us together. This is an antidote on the epiphenomenon of competition and ‘othering’ that we have been drawn into with the creation of Xenophobia, Consumerism – an Alienation due, in large part, to the work of *Edward Bernays [see below].
The inside is stronger than the outside
Here’s the crux: Sound/vibration creates form. It also changes it, and it can dismantle it. It can move things – objects, feelings and thoughts. It can change states of being. It affects us, alters us, frees us and releases us. And, perhaps most importantly; it connects us. I sing because I am driven to by a certain raw teleology that draws me forward to speak, to consider, to listen, to sing, in communion with YOU. And when you show up in this Sound Grove, for Sound Prayers, something magical happens. I feel it – and so do you. In this slightly odd, yet precious, 20+ minutes, we rise. Hopelessness, feelings of despair and distance make way and are replaced with a wordless kind of unity. We are actually, genuinely, doing something that is real, positive and powerful. We merge; we merge with all our intentions, our brothers and sisters, our strongest healing energy, our ability to give – which is what actually makes us grow stronger, together. Communing in this collective field gives us an opportunity to focus, heal and regenerate. And in here is a place where miracles can happen. As alchemists we need such a place to do our work, to weave our magic, to foucs on healing. This is such a place. And it is available 24/7. So what does coming here, to generate generosity and love heal?
Love and intention is the strongest vibration.
Some people steal energy and it actually makes them smaller, and more needy, each and every time they do it, which means they have to keep doing it, to replenish, because the universe is based on the principle of growth through generosity. We are discovering here, in the Sound Field, that we can give energy, work with it powerfully and, when we do, something amazing happens to our souls – they grow, they grow and expand and shine vibrantly… they grow and expand into each other and we manifest our unity. We free ourselves from stasis, from self-doubt, from smallness. We rise. We become generous. Big. Alive. And vital. Connecting to nature, loving the sorrowful back to vibrancy. We let people know we are thinking of them and working to sew the threads of interconnectedness back together, one raw and real voice at a time. Each voice is part of the glistening and tenacious web that binds us to all our relations, healing past and future, bringing togetherness in ways that we can’t even yet begin to fathom. So yes, come join us, come be part of The Great Sound Field, in Sound Prayer. Do it for you. Do it for all our Brothers and Sisters. Do it for Water, Air, Trees and Land, for our Ancestors, for the Planet and for Life.
This particular day, Friday 11 November, we will be focussing our energies on the Marrakesh climate talks, Standing Rock, and anything you may wish to include in your own sound prayers. Use this time and the powerful force of sound united in intention to proactively send healing to all situations that pertain to your conscience and your own powerfully beating heart. Each time is unique and real, based on the consciousness in the Creative Collective, at that moment.
All the information you need for joining us M/W/F is here. On Sundays, at Sound Grove for the Trees, I am currently doing a weekly sound healing at the same time that invites people to join Tree Sisters and help plant more trees; they are currently at over 1,000,000 trees/year and rising! That information is on the same link.
And, by the way, you may see these sound prayers being called Sound Groves – that is deliberate, the origin of this idea was around Tree Groves and being part of the eco-family: you are invited to create your own Sound Grove wherever you are, to create unity and peace.
Love and intention is the strongest vibration.
Thank you for reading.
See you in The Field.
Clare
Clare’s Bio: Clare is a sound-healer, international speaker, protector of the sacred, and educator for the creative potential of humanity. Clare has been a a singer/songwriter, recording artist, performer and healer for quite some time, and has also taught and researched the physics of sound, it’s properties, it’s ‘signatures’, it’s power, it’s multi-dimensionality, it’s history… even its moods and applications. She has taken this knowledge and her skills into hospitals, conferences, workshops, ritual space and even for sacred yoga (and Labyrinth walks) at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, on recurring Tuesday nights. She’s used Sound for her own healing and for deepening her relationship to the Divine. She often accompanies herself with her Shruti, or the piano. Here’s a link to info on Sound Prayers. Find more of her work, and music, at clarehedin.com.
*[He experimented with the question of whether he could use certain approaches of Hitler, based on the ‘propaganda machine’, to manipulate mass behavior in people, through accessing their sub-conscious. Having taken concepts and tactics directly employed by Hitler’s WWII propaganda machine, he renamed propaganda ‘Public Relations’, consciously renaming people ‘Consumers’. This changed people – their focus went from inward to outward, people became more concerned with their own appearance and the cache of owning things. The focus shifted from meeting our more essential needs to our more superficial ones. Even if we felt a cognitive dissonance deeper inside, we became easily distracted by the exterior novelty of a newly burgeoning economy of mass production. This aspect of our story is mapped out clearly in BBC’s 4 part series ‘Century of the Self‘. It shows us that our unprecedented obsession with buying consumed us and part of our humanity – rendering us both the ‘Consumer’ and the ‘Consumed’. How’s that for irony?!]
#SoundHealing #SoundPrayers #StandingRock #Consciousness #War #Healing #NODAPL
