There is a shift that happens when you don't do it for yourself anymore but you do it for them. 

Duty. No matter your mood. No matter the circumstance. You show up for them. When you are scared to show up, you face those fears for them. By healing them, you heal yourself. 

Your dedication is serving your people. And as your good aligns with the world’s good, you are helped and supported. When selfishness turns to selflessness you get what you want as you don’t need it anymore. Great selfish force turns to actions for somebody else’s sake, turns to flow and joy of service. When own energies wane, a new surge of energy carries you to the next day. The greater good is the only good. In such alignment, the world helps you get what you want because it is what the world wants. The people you serve will help you as you help them. 

Selfless service is performed in a selfless state. You disappear into the work and the work flows effortlessly from your being. Selfless work is potent and emanates the state the artist is in when creating the work. The path is from selfish to selfless, dissolving the ‘I’ into the work. That is how your real work heals you. It sheds the past with each creation. That is how your work heals others because it points to the truth; love; God.

Who you are is your gift. That gift is God-given and inherent in your soul. Your task is to uncover that gift and share it with the world. You are your path. You are your task. You are your destiny. By walking your path you return to yourself. When all shadows fall and you stand in your soul, you are life itself.

Little Coltrane lost his father very young and grew up in a time where his skin color and impoverished upbringing restricted the free natural unfoldment of his beautiful little soul. He found music, or rather music found him—his saving grace; his only love. In all of his free time, he practiced the saxophone. Day and night he played and that dedication led him to play with Jazz bands around America. He wasn’t exceptional, but he practiced every waking hour. He didn't have his own sound, he imitated his heroes. 

Soon he played on stage backing his heroes. His life started to reflect his hard work. By his own hands, he now played and recorded with the greats. But he himself was not a star, not a legend, not a hero, but a heroin addict. His life started falling apart. It wasn't until he surrendered his gift to God that Coltrane became the beacon of Jazz. I recently read his biography and here are my takeaways:

Coltrane surrendered his struggle with Heroin and his music to God. His 'Spiritual Awakening' led him to live a life of service. He now existed to 'make people happy through music.' I directly attribute his purity of performance (transmission) to his surrender. He became a vessel for the greater good. His personal identity melts in the face of God, and that purity is captured in the recording. His music puts tears in my eyes.

I will link one of my favorite recordings of his in the show notes; just listen. He puts me in meditation instantly. The purity of his performance is divine. He is no more when he plays. He is the music and the music carries him. And so when you listen, you are no more. The music carries you. There is just God. 

Why is Jazz so divinely beautiful? Because there are no multiple players. Jazz is one.

A box is a beautiful frame until it becomes my prison. Mastery requires demolition, undoing, and liberation. Masters fly like birds, and so I, too, must let go and fly. Coltrane received great resistance upon innovating music (finding, and establishing his sound). First, it was messy, then it turned to divine. He followed his instincts throughout. 'If I was going to put anything on record, then it ought to be me.' - John Coltrane 

Private art and public art are two different worlds. Private art is comfortable growth at one's own pace, while public art is compressed, pressured growth, leading to leaps in artistic development if not abandoned by facing pain publically. Mastery is establishing one's voice through one's chain of art (portfolio) and, by that, carving one's place in the history of art.

Who are you as an artist?—You are your portfolio of work. Media compounds and is a leveraged flywheel. Put all your art on the internet. The internet is magical, removes all middlemen and distribution is at your fingertips. I will write more on my contemplations on this subject in further episodes. 

Back to Coltrane: By his own hands he became excellent at playing the saxophone. After he surrendered to God he became a master. I will add a recent diary post of mine here so you feel mastery from a non-dual perspective:

Hard work is required to gain the skills. A master then unlearns everything to become a child again. He learns to surrender to the divine. He learns to be life; not force it but to let it unfold through him. He learns to trust in life and knows he’s a mere tool of creation. He obeys and respects the art that comes through. He sees the brilliance of the art and recognizes that he is a mere fool and the work is untouched by him; hence the art captures divinity he could never create alone. Great effort turns to non-effort for the master who has walked the long road that ends in God. He dissolves into his work and smiles when the world cherishes his art. It is not his art, it's the world’s. He quietly communes and serves. He became an artist by his own hands; then at the edge of mastery, he let go and let God do the rest. 

And so, each day I give my gift and soul to God as it’s his soul and I’m his song. 

This is the prayer I recite every morning. Feel free to use it for yourself! 

Today, I serve you, God—show me the way.

Today, I am yours, God—show me the way.

Today, I listen.

Today, I serve. 

To bring the greatest joy to the world.

The greatest joy that I can bring.

Take my fate, work miracles through me, and show me the way.

Today I don’t walk alone to write my words on my own, today I write my words for you (fill in with your creative pursuits).

Today I don’t walk alone to sing my songs on my own, today I sing my songs for you (fill in with your creative pursuits).

Each of us serves in an interconnected web everyone at the right place and time and each service adding to the one great ripple of love. Your ripple, indistinguishable from the one wave of change and progress. Individual work, melting into the one great piece of art (love/God). Many hands into one. The one selfless work of each soul. 

No one can take me from my destiny as I am my destiny. 

No one can take my part as I am my part. 

Uncover your soul to uncover your part. It is you that you are looking for. Who are you as an artist? What is the unique part you bring to the world? Then, give your God-given gift back to God. Your gift is inherent in your soul. You are made to explore your gift and bring it to the world. No one else will bring that gift. Will you rob us of that gift? Your destiny is not yours, it is the world's as much as it is yours. It is your duty to uncover who you are and that natural soul expression will delight the world and heal you as you shed the past to become your little soul again. As you heal, you heal the world. Your authentic soul expression will free you from your accumulated crust of past. Your pain is shed with each work of art, with each expression of soul. 

Your destiny is the destiny that belongs to the world. It is not yours. You living your destiny is the gift of individual experience. And by walking it you become the road and disappear back to love, back to your soul, and back to God. 

Your real work is the death of you. A birth cloaked as death. It’s sweet to die alive. 

My work burns me. It burns away my past. And that is each podcast episode to me. My journey of unbecoming. My journey of remembering who I am. I am honored to do my work in the world. 

Listen to this week's podcast episode HERE.