We are all notes. We are all the notes of the kingdom. Each of us is able to resonate with things we would never dream could produce either such a soothing or scary resonance in us. What should be evident in this fact is that when the “sound,” or manifestation, of someone else sets us off and sends us into a fit, it is not their vibration that vexes us and makes us a “victim.” What really disturbs us is the internal vibrations of a few of our own unknown strings as they sound off (within us) in a natural sympathetic response to the dominating tones of the moment.

Our recurring resistance to these undesired moments, to such people and conditions as create in us this discord we mistakenly blame on them, keeps us from learning how to utilize these relationships in order to realize their true purpose for us. For instance, say there is someone at work who tends to irritate us. Our usual approach is to avoid this person, as our errant thinking tells us that being out of sight is out of mind. The only thing is, as we have all come to experience, we cannot escape the sound of our self; so if it isn’t that person we dodge at work, surely someone else will come along and strike a similar chord, “making” us hear those same sorry sounds of self again.

What is the answer? To realize deeply, personally, that we cannot outrun any one of these sounds of ourselves anymore than a piano can move out from under the strings by which it plays; and, as an integral part of this new self-understanding, that we need not, must not, resist some unpleasant note of our own, or that of someone else. These notes, whatever their tone, do not define us unless we make the mistake of identifying with their sounding. The false sense of self that each such sound produces within us is just that: a temporary self that is, itself, little more than a passing effect of the blending of these sounding notes.

To change our relationship with life, to realize its unlimited song, we must bravely learn what it means to hear all of ourselves. Here is the key to this new relationship: Our quiet awareness of any one sound of ourselves, regardless of its bright or dark tone, is the field of relationship and not its sole content. What does this mean? When we see a spring pasture, our pleasure is derived from seeing the whole of it — all of it colors, each of its shapes. Imagine judging a field of flowers by picking out one weed.

As we learn how to listen to the sounds of life within ourselves, as we open up to life’s endless relationships by becoming aware of them within ourselves without limiting their sounds simply because they don’t agree with our present five-note self, then we begin to realize our real life. We hear at last within ourselves the lost chord that has always been our true self.