Perspective 12 Benedictus in Gloria

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The Benedictus is a dream chant with Strephon’s own sound of the chant coming from inner, and of course connected to tradition but also improvise to go with inner spirit.

Strephon-Kyria Church Chant

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You must have courage to allow transcendence into your life.

At its best the Kyria arouses in one that special feeling deep in ones breast of the Greater Transcendence of God. How can words express such a feeling? You must do it, be it, for the full experience.

Even if you do not the chant out-loud in a specific place, like a church when no one else is around, you can still observe, hear and be with the Kyria Chant through inner listening and seeing.

This is how Strephon, in his acceptance and in his imperfections as a human being does the Kyria Chant.

There are monasteries where younger human beings do a Christian form of the Kyria. These are devotional and beautiful indeed in their perfection.

One must not mistake perfection or perfect harmony for the experience of transcendence.

We experience transcendence through direct experience of our mortality rent wide open to allow the soul, the immortal part of ourselves, reach out and touch the Living Source. This is the Greater Power, residing at the core of The Universe itself, which is within and without.

In everyday terms we do not neglect the devotional aspect of our being. We give ourselves daily to Greater Guidance, to the Centering Forces at work in us and through us.

Now that this Kyria Chant is preserved it can be used sometimes as part of ones daily meditation. It is used so by Strephon himself.

Strephon calls this Dream Chant because he has discovered that the source of the music is not composition notes but a free flow of sound-soul already originating in some deep place within.

While tradition preserves in remembered notes how others have done the Kyria, when Strephon does the chant he listens and sings. Thus the improvisation works to bring in connection with transcendence, leaving personal ego aside.

Form reveals Source, and Source reveals Form. We listen and the chant comes.

Note how in harmony the camera person, Susan, moves around the church recording the devotional work of others to create the whole which is the beingness of the particular church come alive in an instance.

This Kyria does not have Christos words in it. It is universal, rather than strictly Christian. It allows for individual spiritual experience, however you might or might not feel it.

Use it as you will. If you look and hear with it, truly take the time with no distractions and present your whole being. Maybe such a state only comes after many experiences of the Kyria. You may want to eventually add your sound to what the recording brings to you through your computer used as a electronic window into Universal Soul.

God is present everywhere . . .

- Strephon Says 27 Forth Fret Guitar Meditation

Meditative Spanish guitar by Strephon. Healing sound to play over and over to give lyric expression to your various feelings. Music of integrity to evoke the heart. Listen and let go . . .

Music is often played to entertain. Strephon’s chanting and trance guitar playing is for touching the heart. First his own heart and then the hearts and emotions of those who listen and open.

This is not New Age mellow or superficially happy to make you feel good. Nor is it chaotic, wild, or traditional.

Your best way to listen is to let the sound play over and over. During your meditation be aware of the feelings and images that may begin to flow. This is your inner content being evoked from your core being and your unconscious.

Yet since Strephon has done much healing work with people his music recreates the many aspects of people’s emotions that Strephon has assisted towards healing places.

Perhaps for this reason some have described Strephon’s sounds as sincere, directly of a real heart, of real feelings, and thus healing and evocative for others who can begin to listen to their own authenticity being evoked by this wonderful hand-crafted Spanish Flamenco guitar in Strephon’s hands. As he says,

“I play automatically, letting the fingers do the work, letting the sounds and rhythms come, letting the many soul-filled words of the many people who have shared their intimate secrets and feelings with me come through. Of course my own soul feelings are always evoked. The music is always fresh I believe because it is authentic. The music is not composed, nor is it made to entertain or show how good I am as a musician or composer. There must be no ego in it when I play. I think it is this transparency that allows my body simply to play over the guitar strings and transcend the mechanics of playing into a soul-filled sound-field itself where we all touch in our common humanity. Just think of me as soon leaving this earth. I have lived my life as I have lived it. I am alive in all my essence but my body takes this guitar in a moment of time and plays from me and for me and all of you a bit of the essence of whom I have been when so very much alive.“

In this sense of the Ur Grund, the ground o being, there is no death or limitations due to personality. We are bathed in a mixture of soul sound and the heart-beat of the Great Mother Sound, the Universal Heart, the palpitations of universal energy that sustain us as organic and orgasmic flesh on this earth, and sustain the universe itself.

Thus through music do we transcend ourselves, no clapping needed, no entertainment, no marveling from a distance, but only direct heart emmersion into what is for us Life.

Listen until you are beyond words, beyond willing, beyond desireing, but deeply in a reflective and healing process.

Strephon Kaplan-Williams, speaking also with his beloved guitar

- Strephon Says 26 Alleluya 5 voice healing chant

This five-part chant is for healing. It brings disharmony into harmony. Listen over and over and it will reblend your chaotic emotions into creative harmony, restructure chaos into transcendence and grounding.

This Alleluya is a form of Dream Chant discoverd by Strephon Kaplan-Williams from his work with the harmonium of India. Just like in dreaming you allow yourself to go into a gentle trance state in which you tune into a transcendent place within yourself, the Source, wherein a healing and universal harmony exists if you can let go enough to let it come through and sound it.

Strephon has sounded all the parts, including his trance guitar played on a fine Spanish flamenco guitar which also has great resonace the way Strephon plays it in a trance state.

A trance state can occur when you let go of known ways of doing music and allow a spontaneous process to develop which is not your personal ego and its learned patterns.

Trained musicians at first find Dream Chant difficult or impossible to do since they are trained to follow notes, keys and already composed compostions. They are trained to stay on key. Perfect pitch is a scientific measurement but not necessarily a positive standard for tuning into Source energy and inter-harmonizing with it. A musician’s goal is too often perfection. The goal of trance work is to allow the Greater Center, to source the sound, the music, the beat, the harmony with some discord to be with it.

Dream Chant, or Trance Chant, must have been the way music originated. People got together thousands of years ago. Someone started a basic and beautiful sound and others came in and danced in harmony around it until a beautiful and powerful blending developed.

The ancients did not go to music school to learn how to play music. Nor do you if you can let go of control while developing through sound a profound relation to a source greater than your own ego.

Yet to start you can play this and other of Strephon’s chants over and over and let them begin to harmonize you by evoking your own Source healing. Then when you have let go enough you will find your own sound to blend in to these sounds. It will come naturally enough when you are ready.

This is good to play over and over and make your own sound to it as you meditate or work at the computer.

Of course, the more you live in harmony with a greater Source inside and related to you in many aspects of life the more you will be able to Dream Chant.

Folks can find this process scary because at first they may experience themselves making weird and irrational sounds. This seems to be because they are controlling personalities who have learned to live by collective norms. They may like certain forms of already developed music and live their sound expression through known songs and compositions. Thus people can scream away and express themselves while mouthing someone else’s song. It is far harder to develop your own songs by letting go to your own true and transcendent center within.

Strephon has spent many years working as a dream pyshotherapist and teacher, often doing profound healing work with people. Dream Chant has been part of his work with people, expecially in healing workshops and trainings around the dream and its dreamwork.

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