Listening is our bridge from the outer world to the inner world. Music creates multiple levels of listening. Learning to listen to music in creative ways provides the means for health improvement in the body, enhanced communication, and expression. For music has all the universal components of language, emotions, and expression. There is music in silence; thus meditation and hours of silence heighten awareness of our body rhythms and sounds.

As we listen to music we enter into the mystery of another person’s inner life.

Play needs no purpose. That is why play can go on and on as long as players find it meaningful. After all, we do not dance in order to get somewhere. We dance around and around. A piece of music doesn’t come to an end when its purpose is accomplished. It has no purpose, strictly speaking. It is the playful unfolding of a meaning that is there in each of its movements, in every theme, every passage: a celebration of meaning.

On a desolate island off the west coast of Scotland, the sand "sings" when it’s touched. Walking across the beach produces a wide range of musical tones, like playing a musical instrument.

Scientists think the structure of the sand creates the sounds. The grains of sand are tiny pieces of quartz, rounded by the sea. Each grain is surrounded by a pocket of air. When the sand is touched, friction between the air and the grains produces musical tones. We may not have a chance to hear the strange music of singing sand, but we all have a chance to hear the music of rustling leaves. Happiness need not be pursued in exotic places. The joyful music of Creation surrounds us. All we need to do is listen.

There is a pressing need for something to be made known, for the secrets of the heart to be made public, for the music of the soul to be played. For centuries lovers of God have held the secrets of Divine Love within their own hearts, shared only with a few. But this knowledge needs to be made public, the song of Love's oneness to be heard. If the music of Divine Love is not played in the marketplaces, life will lose its meaning, and the collective despair of the soul will be too terrible to imagine.

The music flows within me like pure spirit.
What a wonderful conversation
within the flow of universal energy!

Eloquence needs no words --
I know this from intimacy with the divine.

O Great One, I give thanks for this
and for all music --
A power line fed into my heart from
the universal grid.

A divine voice sings
through all creation.