12/10/2025
~The Power of Music~
There are moments when a chord, a voice, or a fragile silence between notes arrives like a small epiphany, not an announcement from outside, but a door opening from the inside. I speak here as someone who has learned to listen not only with my ears but with the whole body: with the breath, the ache in the chest, the memory lodged behind the eyes. Music becomes a laboratory of the spirit, a site where neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and devotion meet and conspire to show me who I am and what I am not.
From a scientific vantage, music changes the brain’s chemistry and circuitry. Neuroimagers like Andrew Newberg and Antonio Damasio have traced how aesthetic experience engages limbic circuits, modulates autonomic arousal, and integrates sensory experience with a sense of self. When a melody resolves, or when a singer articulates a line that names a feeling I could not yet speak, networks that normally keep experience compartmentalized, memory, emotion, self-representation, begin to synchronize. In those milliseconds of resonance the brain temporarily loosens its habitual story-making. The “I” that narrates diminishes, and awareness becomes more spacious. This is not magical thinking but a describable neurophenomenon: music alters prediction, attention, and interoception, and through those channels can catalyze experiences we call awakening.
Psychologically, music functions as a mirror and a midwife. Carl Jung taught us about archetypes and the collective psyche; music is one of the most efficient carriers of symbolic content that resonates across individuals and cultures. A song like “Solsbury Hill” or “Given to Fly” can operate mythically: it offers a narrative of ascent, of being lifted beyond limitation, and because the narrative is encoded in rhythm and timbre, it bypasses the defenses that words alone confront. From my own listening, I notice how certain songs, whether the plaintive ache of a Beethoven string quartet or the ecstatic cadence of a Beatles’ meditation, summon latent imagery, release grief, or open portals to compassion. In therapy and contemplative practices, clinicians such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and Daniel Siegel have acknowledged similar processes: mindful attention to sound can cultivate neuroplastic change and a more integrated, resilient self.
Philosophically, music teaches me about paradox: it is structure and surrender at once. The composer lays down rules; the performer dissolves them in interpretation; the listener completes them in meaning-making. In the phenomenology of awakening, this becomes instructive. Enlightenment is often described as both a radical deconstruction of the personal narrative and a deep appreciation of particularity, the paradox of being both utterly empty and distinctly alive. A song can show me that paradox experientially: a simple repeated motif becomes a scaffold on which spaciousness grows.
Spiritually, music is a sacrament. Across traditions, sound has been used as a vehicle for devotion and transformation, kirtan, chant, gospel, devotional rock. I have noticed that when I sing, or when I open to a song that “sings” me back, the boundary between worshipper and the worshipped softens. Teachers from Ramana Maharshi to contemporary voices like Eckhart Tolle describe awakening as a shift in the locus of identity from a limited self to a field of presence. Music often precipitates that shift because it invites a pre-reflective immersion: I am carried before I can announce myself.
Neurologically, there are also humbling limits and practicalities. Not every musical experience is transcendent; some songs reinforce defensiveness, agitation, or dissociation. That’s why intentionality matters. When I curate my listening, choosing pieces that invite softness, deep time, and rhythmic safety, my nervous system learns new patterns. Repeated exposure to music that fosters regulation can re-tune the autonomic balance, moving me toward parasympathetic ease where insight and compassion are more likely to arise.
Clinically and ethically, the intersection of music and awakening demands humility. Practitioners who incorporate music into therapeutic or spiritual contexts must respect trauma histories, cultural meanings, and individual difference. A melody that felt like liberation for one person may reopen wounds in another. This sensitizes me to a core teaching: awakening is never a one-size-fits-all achievement; it is a relational process that requires care, boundary, and ethical attunement.
What I find most extraordinary is how music provides a lived pedagogy of awakening. The arc of a song often mirrors the arc of inner transformation: an opening, a confrontation, a dissolution of old forms, and then a new emergent shape. Listening becomes practice. So does spontaneous singing, dancing, or even silence held in the wake of a finished track. I remember sitting on a quiet evening after listening to a suite of songs that seemed to be telling the same story; the feeling was not merely emotional but epistemic, I knew differently. I knew that my sense of separateness was a constructed stance and that beneath it lay a constant field of awareness that is intimate, unbothered, and wide.
To name a few luminous examples is to point to the diversity of ways music awakens. From classical codas that dissolve the ego’s logic, to pop lines that articulate longing, to progressive epics that narrate soulfully, artists provide maps. I find myself moved by the keen psychological realism in an Vivaldi, Mozart, Enya, Loreena, Alanis lyric or note, the Eastern-inflected inquiry in The Beatles’ “Within You Without You,” the expansive uplift of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” and the mythic ascent in Pearl Jam’s “Given to Fly.” Each is a different modality, contemplative, confessional, ecstatic, narrative, and each offers an invitation.
In practice, I cultivate a listening life that is both devotional and investigatory. I listen with curiosity, noticing bodily sensations, images, and the line between thought and non-thought. I allow music to be a friend that names what my words cannot. And I bring the humility of a scientist to the mystery: I observe, I record, I reflect. The result is not an intellectual trophy but a quieter heart and a steadier capacity to meet life fully. This is the alchemy I call music-as-awakening: a slow, embodied training of attention that, over time, helps dissolve the friction of self and reveals the luminous presence that has been listening all along.
🎶🎵🎼❤️🎼🎵🎶
Vivian Correia
Vivian Correia II
Vivian Correia - Holistic Psychologist
Psychology and Literature
Vivian Correia - Lifestyle
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