The power of music

Listening to music recalls memories from our lives, and so listening sensitively to music helps us to better know ourselves. The ordering of the melody or the rhythm reflects the way our thoughts are ordered.

Subconsciously we all realize this. Our favorite songs are the ones that call forth the strongest responses from our mind, the ones whose ordering best reflects the ordering of our own thoughts.

Listen sensitively to music! Take time to listen to your favorite songs without surfing the internet at the same time, playing a game, thinking about all you have to do, or whatever. Allow yourself just to listen and let the music affect you. Reflect on what images from your life the music brings to mind. This is music’s chief power over us and the primary benefit that it offers.

For example, You Never Give Me Your Money, Golden Slumbers, and Carry That Weight at the end of the Beatles’ album Abbey Road, always produce strong feelings when I listen to them. The transition from the youthful enthusiasm of pursuing “One sweet dream!” expressed in You Never Give Me Your Money to bearing weight of expectations in Carry That Weight brings forth a barrage of images from my own experience of how, in elementary school and middle school, I was always eager to work to do what was required to get a high grade, but then in high school this enthusiasm and eagerness to “become successful” became a giant weight on my life.