Conducting the Music in the innerdance entails that the facilitator needs to enter the deep state of consciousness participants undergo, just as deeply if not, even deeper.The process of creating the sound environment in the journey is based on our ability to step outside Time and enter a large space where we access what is called the Echoic Network - the place where all possible combinations of sounds are stored in our shared physical and mental library.
The same thing happens in Language. When we speak, how do we choose the right words that ends up in our speech?To select the words, we must do so from outside the chronology of thought and Time, an overwhelmingly intuitive and complex ability humans take easily for granted.
The innerdance facilitator uncovers this skill as would any artist, poet or musician.The right songs played at the right time can elicit an emotion, a mental image, an energy movement, a transformation. So many people have given the same feedback - the right sound seems to arrive at precisely the moment in the journey when at the person is already seeing the same image that the words or vibrations in the music affirm seconds or minutes afterwards.It is as if the facilitator knew (without knowing) before the moment of Seeing, what to play out through the Language of Sensing and Hearing.
Consider the states of our minds when we relied on oral traditions, cave paintings, then the early stages of writing and reading. As we learned to store more information books and CDs, so did our mental functions extend themselves, which accelerated intensely over the last few decades.
In this sense, the music in innerdance is part of an accelerated shift in the way we create and listen to sounds and vibrations and the stories we hear about the transformations at work in human beings demonstrating this shift. Music itself is changing before us, something conscious by itself, undergoing awakenings in and through us, as we also awaken within it.
Selection depends on your Library of Sounds
Human musical systems hold a complex network of vibration-based histories, cultures, genres and meanings that store global memory. Each of these sounds affect the brains, minds and bodies of those who hear them in an innerdance process, a dance hall, a cafe, over a radio program or on a YouTube channel. It was only years ago that sounds that took thousands of years to emerge separately, started to converge in small devices.
Today, anyone can access any of an infinite array of sounds and music using basic technologies easily utilized even by children. In previous generations, one must have resources and a lot of space to hold even a modest library that pales in comparison to what can be contained in a portable music playing device that has powerful effects on those who use them. Literally, the music that might have been stored in an entire building, can fit into one’s pocket.
There are no rules to Selection. One can hold one or just a few sounds that can hold an innerdance process. The innerdance in Pi’s experience began without music. After which, he also grew within Music.
When one begins to understand the developmental stages in the brain and the minds of those in the spiritual awakening journey, music assists in the growth stages of consciousness. The Brain holds quadrillion possible neural connections. When the brain develops, sound serves as an ever-expanding map that is similar to how language too, expands as a person grows older.
Technology, Music and the Brain
A facilitator can get to do this by working on the coordination of multiple devices that act as mirrors for the brain:
a digital device (phone, laptop, tablet) serves as the central processing unit, the brain’s cerebral functions.
a source of sounds (YouTube, spotify, the library of friends, one’s own collection of music) acts as the brain’s sensory function.
A downloader and a storage unit (apps, a laptop, the cloud, google drive) acts as the brain’s memory function.
A music player or a mixer (a DJ app, a digital audio workstation, or a music player application) acts as the brain’s attention function.
A noise app can also be installed that works alone or on top of a music player application.
1.) Creating a Library
A library is organized in many sections, which contain further sections such as topics, authors, date of creation or type of media.Each object such as a book for example, is further divided into a section of chapters, paragraphs, phrases, words and letters.
The digital library mirrors our internal capacity to organize any infinite amount of elements. Jacques Lacan once wrote, “The Unconscious is Structured Like a Language.” If he was alive today, he might have written, “Language is Structured like Music.” Such an insight might go further to think of the possibility, “The Collective Consciousness is Structured by the Music of the Earth.”
In Linguistics and in Music, the capacity to access the Library is based on Selection.We can select a sound, an image, a word from Space, what we then organize in Time.
When some of us create a playlist today, we usually use music we have not heard in the past, mixed with some that we already have in the Library.When we add musical elements, we can either organize this within our cellphones, laptop or tablet depending on what we use for the innerdance journey.
2.) The Mind’s Technological Dimensions
An innerdance playlist could be structured like a jukebox, a playlist, a mixtape or a DJ mixset.Each of the above examples affect the brain differently as music combines in either analog chronologies (one song at a time) or in overlapping layers as is done in new art and musical movements called the Pastiche, Musique Concrete, Sound Collage, Montage, Mashup, Bastard Pop or the Remix.
Historically, the Playlist came in many forms and terms:
the Jukebox that was popular in the early part of the 20th century, was a machine that allows for programmable vinyl record changes.
the Mixtape in the 80’s was a homemade collection of music recorded onto a cassette tape.
With the advent of MP3 technology, the Playlist in the 90’s can be defined as a curated list of audio and video files played on a media player in sequence or in random shuffle. In previous decades, the term is also applied in TV and radio programming.
the DJ Mixset is a sequence of musical tracks mixed together to appear as one continuous track, previously through the use of a DJ mixer and multiple sound sources.
The Music Producer can create Playlists and Mixsets using audio editing software.
The playlisting mode depends on the facilitator’s interest, as each of the above brings forth levels of awareness in Time and Space prominent in the dimensions of awareness that shifted as we learned to access different media.Certain techniques might trigger emotions, memories, thinking, body movement, visioning and deeper reorganizations taking place in our internal Library.
3.) Combining the Music
Deciding on the chronology of music determines the nature of the journey. In the innerdance community, the 12 Stages of Awakening in the innerdance outlines in psycho-spiritual terms, how the circadian rhythms takes participants into realms of purgation, disintegration, illumination, choice, the Dark Night of the Soul, reintegration and so on. Certain elements in the library brings out stored sadness, grief, anger, guilt, just as they can bring about self-reflection, forgiveness, awe, joy and celebration.
All of the above emotions rise and fall on each other in a sequence, so that this is the art and science of the space-holder. In understanding the combinations of electrical and magnetic impulses, brain states, heart and breath rates, neurotransmitters and hormonal shifts, a 60 to 90-minute spiritual journey can be created limited only by what a facilitator prepares beforehand.
Combinations of music can take place in Time. This was the initial technique founded in the innerdance process. When songs jump in contrasts of moods, tempo and genres, specific effects happen in the autonomic nervous system, particularly in the sympathetic. Crude combinations of sounds created alterations in the rewards and stress response systems in the brain, disrupting addictive and avoidant pathways; the effects of which focused on emotions and unconscious physical movements.
Combinations of music can also take place in Space. This was the latter set of techniques that emerged in the innerdance journeys. When songs are layered on top of each other simultaneously, corresponding effects take place in the parasympathetic nervous system, bringing forth visions and insights as the body evolves from the phenomenon of body movement and into deeper more conscious psychological transformations.
To conduct combinations in Time, one needs only a basic music player usually installed in a device by default. Spotify is also useful for these.
To conduct combinations in Space, one may do so during the workshops live, by practicing the use of a DJ application (such as DJ Pro) or a noise app (e.g. My Noise), both of which grants the facilitator numerous effects, tempo and key change alterations, giving access to the different ways brain-body states are altered in a journey. If a facilitator would rather practice combining songs before the session, they might opt to learn how to use a digital audio workstation such as Logic Pro, Ableton Live or Adobe Audition.