Sailing on Sound and Ceremony

“That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.”

–Michael Morpurgo

Just as a ship sets sail on the sea with a destination in sight, so do we set sail on the astral sea. It is wise to consider what the masters meant when they said the path, the vehicle, and the destination are all the same. In the sacramental ritual space, that means presence in the beginning, presence on board, and the destination is presence. We begin by consecrating this union, not by searching for it, but by realising that the waves on the ocean are the ocean's waves.

We are all on the ship—it can be a metaphor for life—but some of us have had the stark realisation that we are out at sea. Some of us take to the helm, take to rowing, take to navigating, etc. Some find use for themselves; they find their place, they find their study. Others, on the other hand, get sea legs, get struck with the pang of fear, nausea and dizziness at the immensity of the sea and have to sit tight and learn to trust those who have gone before.

Sometimes we have to hold tight to the mast that guides us to remember that amongst the changes there is something that does not change. That in the centre of the storm there is an eye of calm and also surrounding the storm there is an even greater calm. The seafarer who knows this somehow holds this calm in difficult weather. They attach themselves to the depths of an unknown calm that, in turn, soothes their soul. The master's guiding star is the quality of naked presence that meets the moment without apprehension. Such a meeting is a musical thing, for the moment is always dancing.

Just as sailors do not think they know better than the sea and therefore enter the ocean with respect for its wildness, so too should one be humble in the spirit, bowing their head to the North Star that somehow orients us all.

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Music and communal chanting serve as an active means of concentration and devotion. When one is singing, they are not ruminating over meanings but digesting them, tasting their essence internally on a deeper, more intimate, and often emotional level. In this sense, music allows us to engage with our prayers, reinforce our intentions, and embody the teachings we have learned.

Music, as a spiritual practice, involves crafting the mind and body through the skill of an instrument. This, in turn, leads to the realisation that one's own body and mind are instruments—either to play or be played.

Music

A participant once shared after the ritual that it was as if we were singing inside of them. Even though they were on the other side of the room, the music felt very intimate, very near, moving them with every change and serenading them with every word. It acted like a type of field where they felt safe to experience a whole range of emotions without fear or constriction.

Who has not been moved by music? It is obvious to some of us why music plays an essential role in spiritual study, precisely because of that: it moves us. Every culture around the world has a type of mysticism or contemplative philosophy related to sound and music. It interweaves with life and flows through every fibre of every being. One could say that music is the very river of life, running through the veins of everything, ever playing on and on into the next song and the next song. When we listen widely, we see it is all one song, one singing, one vibration with many emanations, one beautiful quality of being.

Music is an invisible landscape, a hidden map that brings so much meaning with every little discovery of its body. If you put human beings anywhere, after a little while they will start to make music; melodies will find and flow through them, rhythms will knock on rocks and on their doors. We are like birds who forgot how to fly, for just as the bird has wings and sings, we also have the means to music, as natural as our ability to walk. It's as natural as breathing, as normal as blinking, as regular as our heartbeat.

There is an old Zimbabwean proverb that says, "If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance." I'll add to that and say: if you have a heartbeat, then you can find a drumbeat. And, the trumpet is blowing… Listen. Do you hear it? It blows in all things.

It is important for us to note that we are not pretty musicians who play for ayahuasca rituals; rather, we are explorers who have learned to navigate and listen to music, and have found that it is one of the primary vehicles by which to move in the astral. For many of us, and I can speak for myself, we start our musical pilgrimage here in and from the ritual space. 

There is a phenomenon that happens with Forest Path ceremony participants. They arrive feeling like they do not have a musicality, and then depart from our retreats. But months later or a year later they return, instrument in hand, declaring they have taken a leap in their listening, or that something leapt into them and opened a newfound and yet ancient appreciation for what is heard: for music, for poetry, and the invisible places they emerge from.

Music is a doorway, each song holding a different key to enter through that door. Each has its own personality, its own mystery, and when you listen, it guides you through the doorway and into its teaching. 

Music is the teacher, Music is the master. In the East, there is the famous aphorism: nada brahma, or simply put: sound is God. Everything you see is vibrating, differing oscillations but one vibration. Isn't that also what we are at one level? That is why deep listening and the contemplation of sound and music are important for us; they lead us back to the original orchestration of which we are all a part.

Singing

You are welcome to sing with us. If it is not your thing, if there's too much foreign language, or if the words are moving about on the paper, then that's fine. There is nothing expected of you. You can rest in the knowledge that we are singing for you. Some find, however, that the more they enter these realms, the more the interaction and relationship evolves. Then you may want to learn a little of the language; it pushes and prods you, saying, "Enough navel-gazing; it's time to sit up, it's time to participate in your healing." Singing is one of the easiest ways of active participation, of active meditation. It concentrates and sharpens the mind toward the present moment of what is arising. If you get lost, hold to the song. If the seas are stormy, hold to the ship. If things get dark, hold to the light.

One of the grandmothers I used to work with, Amelia Pandero, a remarkable lady from a strong family lineage of curanderas (healers) who has, by today's standards, a rare knowledge of plants, would always encourage me to sing. She said to me a wonderful thing: "Singing is cleaning." Sit with that thought; let it simmer in your insides. Singing is cleaning us from the inside out. It is like a nice soapy shower that we apply to clean all those hard-to-reach places, to brush away some of the cobwebs and shed light in the dark corners. 

Many nights with her and her family, everyone would be singing at the same time; however, they would all be singing different things. It is madness, it is chaos, but somehow it works perfectly. In those moments, I was free to dive in, to explore, to run with the melody and freestyle myself into its river. I would not so much decide what happens next, but listen and follow the river's course, riding the gentle winds and enjoying the scenery along the way. 

Singing the hymns and songs is similar. It is not so much a sit-down-and-I-sing-healing-songs-to-you kind of thing—you can have that if you want—however, here we also cultivate a sort of communal shamanism, one where you can find the ground and the strength of your own will to learn to stand on it yourself, and that happens together. When we sing together, we uplift the collective prayer. We work on the same team to cleanse ourselves, each other, and the space together. It is at once personal and individual, and also collective and unified.

We say it is a current: a current of healing, a current of concentration, a current like a strong river. The best place to be when the songs are happening is not on the banks of the river as a bystander, but inside its stream as a participant, being pulled by its course.

In the Bhakti tradition, one of my early teachers, Sangeeta, once shared with me a wonderful story regarding communal chanting. She said the mind is like a beehive, with hundreds of buzzing bees constantly zooming this way and that, and the walls are hardened and rigid with wax. In the heart, there is a tremendous fire that, once kindled, blazes onward and upward. Between the head and the heart, there is a passageway, a channel, a bridge, which is the throat. When one opens that passage to sing of the fires of devotion found in the heart, the sound of the fire rises up to the mind and tranquillises all the busy bees. They are calmed and become still, and the heat of the fire melts all the hardened wax as it slowly turns to sweet honey and returns downward to further fan the flames.

We are like little birds, you and I, made to sing, to hum, to whistle, to chant, to dance. Some of us have remembered this, some of us never forgot, some of us fell from our nest long ago and have not realised the wings we were given to take flight when we open our mouths and let the melody soar.

Trancing

Entheogen-using cultures around the world have one thing in common for the most part: the use of trance. The ability to induce trance in oneself and others is a meditative acquisition, allowing one's ordinary rational mind to step aside in favour of navigating with a different set of faculties, a different set of senses. To train in trance is to abandon the secondary sense of self in the experience. Normally, we have an experience and then have an internal interpreter narrating the experience. This secondary narration is not always necessary. In fact, when we enter into the experience as it is, first-hand or direct, are we not closer to the reality of the present moment?

This is why many aspects of religious trancing require faith and surrender in a type of self-abandonment to enter into communion with something greater. It's about being moved by the invisible, not just riding the wave but allowing the entire ocean to move us as the wave. People can make all sorts of assumptions about who, what, and why they are moved. However, it's best to stay humble and not be quick to believe our experience. We should remember the discernment between ego and inspiration, and keep close to teachers who can verify our experience or course-correct us towards more reflective and transparent waters. 

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It can be somewhat taboo to speak openly about visionary experiences. However, I want to share one because it pertains to sound and offers a way of understanding the entry point and the place from which I wish to hear it. In my late 20s, around 50 of us were singing with full intensity as we chanted the hinário of Padrinho Alfredo (a hymn book of the elder and lineage holder) during a Santo Daime ritual. The sacrament shook me, and I entered into the miração, the visionary state brought on by Daime, or Ayahuasca. I stumbled over to the central altar and kneeled.

In my vision, I ascended higher and higher until everything dissolved into pure, crystalline, blinding light. In that space, there were no walls, no boundaries, no distinctions—only the frequency and vibration of the music, oscillating and scintillating into fine filaments of light. These filaments resembled long, flowing hair waving underwater, or delicate wisps of smoke drifting through the air, fading in from nowhere and out again into nowhere.

In this endlessness, I saw—or was shown—the timelessness of the universe, the great empty fullness, from quarks and atoms colliding to solar systems forming. I saw every life form that ever was or could be. I witnessed the beauty and the wonder, and at the same time, the very ugly, disgusting, and disturbing, all merging into a familiar harmony.

In that presence, she took me through vast vistas—all in the span of a blink of an eye—and revealed how the underlying reality of all that is manifest is a single vibration. This vibration has existed since before time began; it is the original cause, the movement of time expanding into space. In my vision, I saw that everything is a manifestation of this vibration, rippling out from the first spark of the universe, from the first stirrings of mind and thought, echoing its way into a multiplicity that unfolds with infinite possibilities.

Jonathan, who is leading the ceremony, quotes the Bible and says, “With God, all things are possible,” then smirks as he adds, “Tell me, what is left out of that equation?”

Everything—from the largest celestial spheres in the cosmos to the most minute particles—turned around. The inside became outside, the below was above, and everything opened. At that point, I heard the infectious anthems of the hymn being sung around me, and the voice inside me said, I am Music, the Mother of All.

This vision has become part of my devotions as a Nāda Yogi, which is one who is dedicated to listening and placing contemplation upon the supreme sound of silence, which I call the voice of God.

Experiences like this teach me to listen deeply—to appreciate space rather than fill it, to appreciate stillness rather than move it, and to rest in silence rather than cover it with noise. It reminds me that what informs our lives is the unseen rather than the seen. It shows me that when I listen from this place, I can find it everywhere. In listening everywhere, there is nowhere that it is not, and thus, there is nowhere to hide—from myself, from the world, or from the divine—because it is here and now, in all faces and in all places.

Excerpt from Walking the Forest Path: Volume 1, available in early 2025.