The Inward Music

Intuiting and Connecting with Something More

It happened on probably the third or fourth time that I encountered this line from a Rumi poem:

We rarely hear the inward music, but we're all dancing to it nevertheless.

What dawned on me was that “the inward music” might be the best way that I’d stumbled on to refer to Something More, to the essence that we try to grasp when we refer, in our unknowing, to “God.”

I’m inclined to think that when we ignore the near-universal sense that there is a Source of meaning and love beyond our understanding, we tend to slip toward materialistic and reductionist assumptions that are thin and dry. But the temptation of words is to reach too far, to pretend to know and control so much more than we do or should.

So, I am tempted to agree with Catherine Keller that:

Whether we “believe in God” or not—most of us are already loaded down with presumptions about divinity. Theists and atheists more often than not share the same smug concept of God.

When we do rely on words for a time, it’s wise to pay attention to Meister Eckhart’s medieval plea: “God, rid me of God” - to help ensure that language never leads us to believe that we know more than we do about Divine Mystery.

Here’s where Rumi and musical metaphors shine: As I was reminded of Rumi’s line about the Inward Music — the music that animates our life-dance even while we’re not aware of hearing it — a string of thoughts began to echo through the days and weeks that followed, all resonating with how well Inward Music reflected the intuitive experience of connection and love and fullness and possibility that I associate with Something More.

Music provides a way for us to understand meaning and intuition and experience and feeling without the pretense of the specificity of words. Things we know through music, experiences we feel through music, are not graspable and controllable the way doctrine and dogma are. Music reveals without nailing down; it points beyond itself, opens up worlds, attracts through beauty rather by imposing dominant and rigid (mis)understandings.

Of course, at its best, language can do this as well, provided that we always hear with left and right brain, leaning poetic rather than propositional. But it seems so much easier for language to go wrong, and all the lousy ways that references to “God” are misused just bears testimony.

I understand if some folks might feel the metaphor of Inward Music lacks the personal or relational element; for whatever reason, it just doesn’t for me. I feel the love and connection in the Music, and certainly listening to the Music helps awaken the love and connectedness in me for others. And we need more than one metaphor anyway; there will be plenty of other times when imagining a loving Abba or mother hen gathering her chicks will speak to what we need.

So, if I want to imagine the Inner Light that Quakers refer to as residing in all of our souls (to which we may or may not attend), I believe that I’ll now conceive that most often as Inward Music. As my own thoughts and perceptions harmonize with this Music, as my emotions and actions learn to dance in rhythm to this Music, I will grow wiser, more mature and compassionate.

If I am still enough, listening, I will become aware of the ways in which I’m out of step, throwing myself and others off. I’ll become aware of where my desires are creating discord.

As things go, as these thoughts continued their echoing, I started seeing more references all around me (of course I did — that’s the essence of Inward Music!), like this one:

In the dream I drew piano keys on the kitchen table. I played them without a sound. The neighbors came in to listen. —Tomas Tranströmer
(with thanks to David James Duncan in Sun House).

Coincidentally (with a Jungian synchronicity), upon reading a recommendation by Thomas Merton, I dove into Doctor Zhivago for the first time and read this passage by Boris Pasternak:

“And you think it’s the other way round — the world will be saved by beauty, is that it? Dostoievsky, Rozanov, mystery plays, and what not?” “Wait, let me tell you what I think. I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats-any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death-then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don’t you see, this is just the point-what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. (emphases mine)

And then later:

Lara was not religious. She did not believe in ritual. But sometimes, to be able to bear life, she needed the accompaniment of an inner music. She could not always compose such a music for herself. That music was God’s word of life, and it was to weep over it that she went to church.

I love how Pasternak states that Lara “could not always compose such a music for herself,” implying that the composition is a relationship — a participative encounter. Sometimes we passively receive; sometimes we co-create.

The synchronicity continued: soon after I read Mary Oliver’s “At the River Clarion”:

I don’t know who God is exactly. But I’ll tell you this. I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking. Whenever the water struck the stone it had something to say, and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water. And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying. Said the river: I am part of holiness. And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water. I’d been to the river before, a few times. Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly. You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day. You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears. And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through all the traffic, and ambition.

….Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and each of you too, or at least of his intention and his hope. Which is a delight beyond measure. I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea. I only know that the river kept singing. It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the river’s own constant joy which was better by far than a lecture, which was comfortable, exciting, unforgettable.

Of course, when it’s Mary Oliver, the words are music!

Then, emphasizing that the time had come to share these echoes, this past Sunday, I looked, as I occasionally do, to the poems on the Grateful Living site for a reading, and was drawn to the resonance of this poem, that sings with truths that we knew (even when we didn’t know we knew):

The Second Music

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.

- Annie Lighthart (gratefully with the poet’s permission as I didn’t want to leave anything out!). Originally in Iron String (Airlie Press, 2013)

Always there, but so easy not to stop and pay attention. So easy to get distracted by the more surface music.

I’ll wrap this up my bringing it back around to Rumi. And I’ll risk driving you crazy with repeated references to synchronicity by pointing out how this connects to an old blog post - “A Window in the Centre of My Chest” (on synchronicity and inner music no less!) from 2020. In that post, I refer to a couple of different Rumi poems, one of which meant so much to me that I printed it, framed it, and put it on my kitchen wall:

Here’s a portion:

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music….

…They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see….

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

— from The Essential Rumi - trans. by Coleman Barks
You can read the whole poem here.

Most likely this had already primed me to think about “everything as music,” the hidden root of all that we need to be connected to with our hearts (after the words stop).

P.S. [If you’re not tired of references and want to read on]:

Here are a couple of bonus references that came around during the weeks of these thoughts echoing inside:

Let your flute be still and your soul float through
Waves of sound formless as waves of the sea,
For here your song lived and it wisely grew
Before it was forced into melody. (Rilke, “Music”)

And, finally, a line in a prayer attributed to St. Brendan (he of the coracle rides), from a “Celtic Service” where we pray this at least monthly:

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven
And somehow make my obedience count for you.
(from the “Prayer of St. Brendan”)

May it be.

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[This is part of a series of posts exploring a contemplative pathway to healing/maturing that I call “a compassionate consent to reality.” See this post for a summary of the project.

I’m so grateful for your interest and for any comments that you may have!]