9-23-01, Sunday Journal, 356 words
WARM BLANKETS ON THE SOUL
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
In
my journal of this date in 1982 I described a memorable experience as "a
warm blanket on my soul." I am sure you know what I mean.
Some
people meditate with mandalas – pictures or icons that move one into
transcendent awareness. All the times we have warm-blankets-on-the-soul are
actually memory mandalas.
Keep
you a list of these memory mandalas in the place where you do your spiritual
work. Re-experience them anytime you feel the need.
They're
what I call "soul pictures." What makes a soul picture different than
a mental picture? In a word, memorableness. Anything that hits you hard enough
to return with power, that moves you at your core, is a soul picture. A memory
mandala. A warm blanket for the soul.
What
a shock to learn that Irving Berlin wrote all his songs in the key of F-sharp.
Why? Because it was the only key in which he could play!
Get
into this thought. Here's possibly the most successful songwriter the world has
ever known and he only knows how to play in one chord.
If
you can only do one thing, you may still become immensely successful at it. Like
Colonel Sanders and his famous chicken recipe. If you can only play one song,
the key is to find the places where there are people who are most likely ro.
respond to that one song.
Our
limitations are mostly in our minds. Berlin could have given up as a musician
and writer. Surely at some point he had the thought, "I'll never make it in
music. I can only play in one chord."
A
solitary asset can possess immense power and possibility. The whole game is
seeing how to use it. And just having one asset can be a blessing by forcing us
to consider every possible use and application of it. Some multi-talented people
fiddle around with this and that and then the other and never get anything
going.
Next
time you sing "God Bless America," remember that the former singing
waiter who wrote it could only play in F-sharp.
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