Sound Spa for the Inner Body:
Plugging In to the Other Side
An essay on mystical electricity, sacred emotion, and making the hookup through soulful music.
This essay was originally published in March 2020, two weeks after we entered self-isolation (one year and counting) due to the coronavirus pandemic. Our prayers go out to all those who have suffered, passed on, and lost loved ones this year.
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With so many people quarantined at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, there has never been a better opportunity to discover that the world of spirit and your interaction with it are inherently “virtual.” We’re referring to the oldest worldwide web ever created—the original network that connects all things on both sides of the mystical veil. All you require is some old-school spiritual engineering to get you plugged in, tuned in, and ecstatically on the main line.
The idea that we’re part of an interconnected web is nothing new. What you likely have not been told, however, is that the lines of this web are made of a rare kind of sacred emotion that, when awakened, pulses like an electrical current. Therefore, plugging into the mystical-electrical high grid involves somatically hosting and feeling sacred emotion. This is a directly experienced relationship to the highest source and force of creation—the divinity, theophany, and mystery of the numinous. Once you are emotionally and somatically connected to this main mystical line, all other needed spiritual connections are handled by the higher operator.
The dual power line and telephone line between you and the divine is less physical or metaphysical. It is more felt than seen or understood because it is pure sacred emotion. When it circulates within, the whole of you is reset in an uncommon, extraordinary way. Specifically, your new earth-to-heaven connection and reception of other worldly emotion sends a mysterious electricity into your body. All aspects of this virtual network are activated by ecstatic (rather than static) prayer—not the soulless repetition of words, but a sizzling creative blend of rhythm, tone, movement, and emotion.
Making the Hookup
Here’s an often forgotten secret: It is ecstatically enacted praying that connects you to the ineffable power station and central hub of holy communication. This heartfelt and soul-melt hookup brings the deepest satisfaction and the greatest “smoldering joy,” even in the direst of circumstances. Without a sizzling prayer in play, the spiritual goods cannot be delivered—you need a pipeline, channel, or mainline for sacred ecstasy and its electrical bliss to come through. Avoid pale imitations and stale approximations of spiritual treasure; learn how to ecstatically burn with a prayer line-and-wheel-turn whose repertoire of transformative expression is virtually limitless.
You don’t have to leave your home to experience the spiritual mystery net, and you don’t necessarily have to perform any external display to tap into its electrical, life changing emotion. All you need to start is to sincerely feel the need and desire to “get online.” Join us as we further explore the spiritual engineering and practical know-how behind getting in touch with whatever lies in store for you from the highest force that is really “in charge.”
Introducing Your Inner Body
Your external physical body that touches your computer keyboard is not the one who makes the spiritual connection. It is your virtual body that will participate in the spiritual web. Like the old alchemists and mystics taught, you have a virtual “little me” that exists on the other side of the material/spiritual divide. It is neither your id, ego, nor superego. It is not even your psyche or psychological self. It is your spiritual, alchemical homunculus or “little me,” and it has been waiting for the chance to participate more in your everyday.
Holding the original spiritual blueprint of your life, this “little me” is perfectly designed and ready to spring into life. Behind all great work, from art to science and religion, is found the involvement of the awakened homunculus (since creation is the art of improvisation, we call this the “TheloniousMonkulus”). We invite you to imagine that you were born with such a virtual body that was designed to masterfully create. To get on the mainline, you will need to get this little me in play.
The eccentric genius and Sorbonne sensory physiologist from the 1890s, Charles Henry, was aware of the virtual agent[1] needed to optimally relate to higher creative offerings. He proposed that this “inner body” must experience the artist’s emotional muse. As the original inspiration is felt, it spontaneously sets in motion the inner body’s instantaneous recreation of the art. This is accomplished by unconsciously re-enacting the rhythmic dynamics embodied in what you behold, whether it is music, dance, visual art, or mystical ecstasy. In other words, art implicitly follows a recipe that prescribes how to blend its elements together with specified rhythms. When your inner body artist follows the recipe, art is recreated as its inspiring emotion caught. Henry argued that we are not able to
consciously comprehend emotion that an artist tries to express, but we can be made to feel it; artists set down those outer manifestations of their emotion that our body will mechanically imitate, however lightly, so as to place us in the indefinable psychological state that caused them.[1] (italics ours).
In summary, to experience what a masterpiece of art can wonderfully convey in order to transform you and your world, your inner body must catch its emotion and recreate it. You—the inner, virtual participant in creation—must paint it, sculpt it, compose it, choreograph it, and perform it.
Over the years, the external physical body becomes dissociated from the perfectly formed virtual artist, creator, and mystical explorer. This separation leads to acquiring habits that knock you out of tune and leave you emotionally, aesthetically, and spiritually out in the cold. However, no matter your present outer body condition, you can learn to awaken and develop your inner body so you can naturally live more ecstatically. The degree to which your external life is vibrant, joyful, and creatively alive depends less on your physical condition and the abundance of your surroundings, and more on the release of the inner virtual artist.
Your inner body carries none of the limitations of your physical form. For example, your inner voice can sing better than Pavarotti and make better music than any orchestra, band, or instrument. It can also dance far beyond the leaps and fast turns of Nureyev. The same is true for sports—go ahead and hit 150 home runs this season.
Speaking of physical activity, one of the great physicians of our time, Dr. Robert Fulford, used to imagine doing physical exercises while lying in bed each morning. He learned to activate his nervous system, muscles, and whole body with the micromovements associated with an imagined performance, and this helped keep him fit. The same is true for spiritual exercise. When you pray powerfully and inspirationally on the inside, your outer body will also feel it, actually stirring sensory-motor activity and neuronal excitation.
Waking up the Inner Body with a Sacred Music Soak
The experiments of Sacred Ecstatics especially include searching for practical ways to wake up your inner performance body—the virtual “little me” who desires the fire of transformative change that drives the climb to sacred ecstasy. Perhaps you have already experienced your inner body in action when listening to music you adore. For instance, while attending a concert you may have caught the emotional excitement in the music to such an extent that you felt like you were the musician, even experiencing your hands move as if they were playing the guitar or hitting the drum. You can become so connected to music that you no longer consider any separation between who is the performer and who is the audience.
Musicians also may feel a similar reversal when the music gets a hold of their body. Pianists, for example, may experience the piano keys moving their fingers rather than the other way around. When you merge with the whole of music, the striking of a piano’s hammer becomes indistinguishable from the chord struck in your soul and the strings of your heart are the same as those on the soundboard. The keys, piano, and music then feel like they are playing you. Here the muse inspires both creation and its recreation, as it fuses performer and observer. This is the incredible magic made possible by the inner body in action.
DIRECTIONS FOR THE EXPERIMENT:
We developed a simple practice for helping awaken your inner body. Called “the sacred music soak,”[1] or “sound spa for the inner body,” you arrange a time to focus on absorbing the emotion of sacred music. Any kind of music that conveys soul stirring emotion and brings a sense of mystery on high is a good place to start. When you soak in its melodic sound, allow the tones and rhythms to penetrate you deeply. Follow this instruction:
- Hold back external body movement to focus only on feeling the emotion inside the music. That’s right: experiment with not physically moving in order to concentrate entirely on being penetrated by the sound and the emotion it carries. (There’s no need, however, to be overly stiff and rigid.)
- Once you feel it, proceed to imagine moving your inner virtual body. Visualize this “little me” as the original performer that was also intended to model and guide your external physical performance. Allow it to move so that its perfectly imagined movements are masterfully coordinated with what is heard and felt.
Here you can enjoy performing impossible physical feats like leaping high into the atmosphere to kiss a raindrop in a cloud, or effortlessly tap dancing down the middle of the Mississippi river. As long as your imagined movement is in alignment with the music and its emotion, you are free to let your inner body unabashedly let loose and take center stage.
Repeat this sound soak multiple times during each practice session – always with the enthusiastic spirit of experimentation. That keeps you in the middle wobble between worlds and oscillating between the inner and outer body of you. Alter your musical choice and let that difference inspire the next alteration of your inner body performance.
(Scroll to the bottom for a couple of playlists)
a sound spa right now.
A sincere dip and soak into the sound of divinely inspired music gives your virtual performer the opportunity to catch sacred emotion and recreate your world in a First Creation theatre and changing universe. If the virtual creative performer of you can catch the emotion of divine mystery—best conveyed by song—then all the rest will naturally follow when it comes to building another reality where anything can happen.
Since you’re likely spending more time inside your domicile right now and may often feel like an imbecile who does not know what to do, why not travel further to the inner middle core of your virtual spiritual home? Go all the way to the limitless spiritual universe that is the home of your inner virtual body. This performer is already perfectly well, attuned, and plugged into the mystical web that connects you to the treasure chest, library, performing arts hall, and ceremonial theatre left by the mystics, shamans, healers, and spiritual explorers of old. Do more than abstractly imagine your inner body—activate it, awaken it, and let it plug you into God’s electrical current.
Sacred Ecstatics encourages you to pursue the other side of presumed reality and the unfamiliar experience it offers that is often unseen, unheard, unfelt, and ignored by modern spectacles. When you feel unsettled, don’t settle for inner peace. Give sacred emotion a try, but put it in the hands of your virtual other, the one that embodies rather than understands the action that leads to reality expansion and spiritual electricity.
Rather than seek the short-lived calm of emotional detachment that eventually leads to resentment and discontentment, soak your inner bones in a bath of sacred tones. This is the first and last step toward igniting a spiritual fervor on the inside. When sacred emotion is caught, the other ingredients of prayer become spontaneously ready to blend, form the mystical prayer wheel, and set your transformation and transportation in motion. The Sacred Ecstatics path, built on the alternating relations of creative change and steadfast higher emotion, helps you cook a delicious life.
This is our ecstatic shout that declares how the worst of times can also be the best of virtual time, space, and energy! Mystery is virtual, as is the numinous whose embodiment includes but is not fully contained within physical, chemical, or biological matter. All aboard, this virtual train is pulling into your living room. Let’s take a ride to the mystical heavens as they are alive and well in any kind of earthly situation.
-The Keeneys, revised March 16, 2021. Originally published March 24, 2020
If you go to our Youtube Channel, we have a few songs loaded in a gospel playlist and a sacred sound soak playlist. Enjoy!
[1] The Keeneys, The Spiritual Engineering of Sacred Ecstasy. (2018)
[1] Ibid., 10-11.
[1] [1] Rae Beth Gordon, Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early Cinema (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 9.