ART IS PROCESSWORK IS ART 

Some years ago  I got a deep message.

The message was: Music as the way back home.

This sentence accompanied my life  since then every day. Not only by making  music, but also  generally. The way back home was a mantra for me, to align my every day life to the fact, that every day, every experience in my life is something on the way back, to death, to new life, to the unknown, to love, to new music, to creativity.  Life as a process of dying and rebirthing.

Often in my life, music was consolation in difficult situations. Music and  sounds in it’s  divers expressions are now  my guides to another world beyond everyday issues, music supports me, to work on my life from the quality of an essence level. The essence level,  Arnold Mindell* developed, is one level of a three dimensional approach to life and experiences. Essence as  a world without border, a level of oneness experience. Working and beeing with this essence world I get able to go through every situation in life even through difficult ones in a more creative way. The essence level is a space where all comes back and  where all is going out.

Discovering more and more new aspects of music, arts and processwork and there’s way getting home to the  true self, a deep longing, I took with me since years, woke up again and knocked at my door to be explored.

COMING BACK HOME  

Coming back home in my mind means a world beyond everything, beyond the everyday life, a world that is bigger and larger then what I experience in my every day  life.

Back home means also a world, where life and death, the life here on earth and the life in an immaterial dimension come together and stay in a deep relation to each other. Back home means a point, an aerea from where all goes out and all comes back. Living at home means living our true self, because our true self is a resident in both worlds, on earth and in a dimension beyond materia. Back home also means going out of home encountering struggles, fragmentation and then coming back again. Enriched with new experiences, this true home opens, get  enlarged and our true self, on it’s endless path, embraces again and again life, death and rebirth.  Back home is not static, back home is not local. It is a lifelong movement and everytime I come back again, this home is deeper then before, richer of insights, of feelings,thoughts and awareness of the different forces moving us. I imagine coming home at the end of my actual incarnation could be  nothing else than another back home.

I made the experiences of coming back home in music, in arts and in processwork. Therefore my research work  focus on these three aereas and my goal  is also to make these experiences accessable for everyone who wish this.

When I speak out the word home, or hear it,  a special atmosphere accompagnies this word. Coming home, a deep breath and many rememberings, a tableau of my life appear. When I was a child and a teenager, the youngster of a big family, always on sunday all my sisters leaved the home and I remained alone in a home full of unspoken tensions, but also in an aerea with many possibilities to escape from these tensions: music, nature, animals, space. Being alone, tears came and I played piano, mostly music of Joh. Seb Bach, a music of consolation and deep spirituality. In this world I felt at home. No longer the tensions of the everyday life in the family, no longer a certain physical form. I was within the tones and  the musical energy, lost in the everyday life, arrived in another world beyond time and space. In this years music was my survive strategy and my deep home. 

I also remember staying on my alp with animals during summer, making cheese and working hard. There I had some cow bells and I noticed another musical home, a home within one unique tone. Everyday I listened to this unique sound I  felt this  home. Or I sat on the river there, simply listening, simply being and nature's music embraced me, building something like a sanctuary around me. Again a  home, that allowed to  feel deeply into myself, feeling my true self.

Over years, after many music and other art experiences with myself, with piano students, children, teenager, adults, people with special needs,.... a deep longing appeared within myself to support people experiencing music, art and processwork, not only  for becoming better musicians and artists, but becoming life artists through music, art and processwork  for there own enrichment, for there coming home, exploring there true potential and through this,creating there life in a deeper sense. Music, Arts and Processwork as a path back to our true self. 

*Arnold Mindell, Founder of Prosesswork. See www.aamindell.net

I will publish little exercises for you. Here is the first one:

Your everyday life and your music

1.    You are in the middle of your day right now.

2.    Stop for a moment you activities and notice what happens in this moment.

3.    You may be angry, sad, a person disturbs you, you may be happy, lazy, or you  may dream of holidays.....

4.    Probably you notice many perceptions, many different energies. Now choose one of them, if possible, one , that seems strange to you and make some notes.

5.    Put the notes aside and focus on the choosen perception. 

6.    Now allow yourself coming into contact with this perception and with your curiosity, let go judgments and focus on the the energy of this something, even it is strange or crazy for you.

7.    Go further with this qualitiy, with this energy, connect with it and become this energy.

8.    You are now no longer your everyday self, you are this something with it’s unique quality. It is like in a night dream, where you dream of  sometimes strange figures.

9.    Now  this energy begins to move and to sound, this something moves, sounds. You, momentarily being this „NOT ME“ moves and sounds.

1. Enjoy this movement , this sound and let explore it by itself. Follow what wants to happen, enter now the creative process that follows it’s own path.

1. You will notice when this process comes to something meaningful for you, something you feel in a new way at home. If you arrive there, give so much space as possible to be there at home. Perhaps you are a bit changed, perhaps you notice a new homelike feeling.

1 Wonderful, celebrate, be with this new home till this home feels completed.

Questions:

What surprises you?

What is new for you?

If you face a conflict these days how could your new home support you?

What could be your next steps to live more your new home?

Little tips:

Make a little tape of this music and listen to it a few days, till you feel, that the message arrived definitly, or/ and repeat this music a fews days as a little meditation.