People often ask, “What do you do?” We’ve all been there, whether it’s at a friend’s dinner party, a networking event or at an in-law holiday gathering, where introductions become quiet acts of self-definition. They typically mean, “How you earn a living,” not who you are, how you move through the world, or what inspires you from the inside. How we answer it often depends on our comfort level with the person asking and our environment.
When people visit our home, they often ask if I’m an artist. Color, texture, layered walls, objects that feel more ceremonial than decorative—our space carries a certain frequency that exudes all things creative. With a piano in the corner, drums, crystal bowls and percussion instruments scattered around, many assume my partner or I (or both) are musicians too.
I am not an artist or musician by profession. And yet, both art and music bring me into states of inner peace, presence and connection that surpass other things in my life—they’re right up there with writing, which is in itself, an art. Writing has been a daily practice for as long as I can remember, a quiet devotion to feeling into and translating what moves through me. It’s always been very healing.
That creation process (art, writing, music) has always been a spiritual experience for me, and in fact, it shapes my world. It is from this lens that I see the world and am shaped by it in profound ways that aren’t always immediately obvious.
Nature connects me more profoundly with Spirit, while music and art open portals beyond linear time. In those moments, I disappear. I lose a sense of time itself. While working in the photography lab at my London college campus, I was in another reality until something snapped me out of my trance (perhaps a need for a glass of water or a bathroom break). Suddenly, I’d notice the 3 am flashing on the clock.
Those who create regularly know this state well—the feeling that you are being played as much as you are playing, a bit like a violin. The feeling that you are being written through as much as you are writing. It’s as if the universe itself has borrowed your hands, ears and eyes for a moment.
Mystics and scientists alike have spoken about this higher-than-me state that takes over. The universe is not outside us, observing from afar, but within us, expressing itself through countless forms. As Ram Dass and Deepak Chopra have both said in their own ways, we are not separate from the cosmos; we are participatory expressions of it. In other words, the universe is in us as much as we are in it (I’ve written about this before). Philosopher Henri Bergson once suggested that the universe is “a machine for making gods.” I would take it a step further.
We are all gods and goddesses as co-creators, simultaneously observing and shaping reality, moment by moment. When we make art, play music, write, or simply listen deeply, we step back into a profound rhythm that doesn’t make sense to our linear senses and conditioning.
As a writer, artist, and musician, I often see—feel is perhaps more accurate—parallels to this state when I read about quantum physics and the latest research stemming from neuroscience.
Enter the imaginal realm. Some mystics, including one of my favorites, Cynthia Bourgeault, refer to this as the imaginal realm or an imaginal state of being, not to be confused with imagination.
As Jean-Yves LeLoup writes, “Both physicists and mystics speak of the darkness at the core of light. Of course, these are only analogies, yet their message is that in the physical domain, as in the spiritual, the essential always eludes our minds. We only come close to it through silence and repose.” BTW, music and art also bring me into a state of silence and repose.
The Bridge to Music
Before we had language, we had sound. I have often heard the word OM is the sound of the universe, perhaps the first sound that emanated from the universe after the Big Bang, or as I prefer to say, the Big Breath, as coined by cosmologist Dr. Jude Currivan. Before words, we had a pulse, perhaps a rhythm, such as the beating of a heart, the hush of wind through trees, the low hum of existence itself. Long before spirituality was organized into doctrines or philosophies, it was felt—much like music is felt—vibrating through the body, bypassing logic, speaking directly to something ancient within us.
In many ways, awakening unfolds like a piece of music. At least, this is how it feels for me.
Let’s move from sound to what I call noise, or more accurately, “noise in the field.” Our external world is loud, full of digital chatter ranging from opinions and fear-based narratives on social media to tainted news, and perhaps a digital identity we’ve created that doesn’t match how we truly feel inside. We live in a constant state of information overload in an always-on world, much like a radio stuck between stations keeps hissing at us until we finally get up and turn it off.
Spiritual awakening often begins not with clarity, but with dissonance when something just feels off and the old stories, friends and conversations no longer resonate.
Then, slowly, an inner voice says, “I’m not happy.”
My Piano Tuner & Harmonizing
Harmonization is important in music, just as it is in spirituality. When we are in tune with ourselves, we can attune to others, which simply means deep listening so that we can connect with their soul, not their exterior shell. When we tune ourselves like an instrument, we become harmonized, which also means we are more aware when something feels off within ourselves, or as I often say, out of alignment. We may not know if it’s our nervous system or a physical issue at first, for everything is connected. When we are perpetually stressed, fearful, or disconnected, we’re playing out of tune with life itself.
It is times like these that we can turn to meditation, breathwork, time in nature, or simply sitting in silence, all of which act as tuning forks to bring us back into resonance. How does this happen? Resonance means removing the “noise in the field” or the static that is obscuring our clarity.
This is why so many people describe awakening as remembering rather than learning. Our melody was always there, and it happens to be our Higher Self, or our Soul Self’s voice, one that is often diffused by the noise of a chaotic world.
Resonance as Remembering
There’s a moment in music, as in art, when something is so aligned and utterly beautiful that you don’t analyze it, you simply feel it. In the non-canonical gospels like the Gospel of Mary, Phillip and Thomas, academics and theologians speak of Mary Magdalene’s innate understanding of Yeshua’s original teachings so deeply that there were moments when no words were needed. Silence did the trick alone.
Universal truth, regardless of the spiritual lineage or philosophical tradition, is resonance. When something resonates deeply, it’s not because it’s novel, but because it’s familiar at a soul level. You’ve all had that experience at least once in your life, hopefully countless times.
Resonance is the bridge between music and consciousness. When a frequency meets its match, a single note can shatter glass, and a single insight can dissolve a lifetime of conditioning. This is why certain teachings, books, or experiences awaken people instantly, while others pass by unnoticed. It’s not about volume but frequency.
You see, music isn’t just about playing sounds; it’s also about the silence it creates within us. A spiritual path also requires silence, or space between thoughts, reactions and identities. It’s often why you see spiritual masters respond slowly, taking in silence and heart contemplation before the voice speaks.
In other words, we emerge in these spaces as observers, not just participants. Both need to be in sync and harmony for inner peace to embrace us. Contrary to what many people think of the word silence, there’s a fullness to it. The guides we work with constantly remind us that we are everything and nothing, and that the Void is everything and nothing, all at the same time.
Vibration: The Physics of Being
Music has interesting parallels. Sound is measured in frequency (hertz), and lower frequencies are felt in the body—bass, drums, heartbeat—while higher frequencies are perceived as melody and harmony. For example, when I play my crystal bowls for a group, they have a very different effect than when we gather for a drum circle around the fire. One isn’t better than the other, but they create different vibrations that impact the body in different ways. While we’ve never measured this scientifically, we’ve witnessed the effects firsthand over the years.
Early in life, we are immersed in denser frequencies, such as survival, fear, identity forming and conditioning from our parents and teachers. Awakening doesn’t remove us from our physical body, but it allows us to expand our awareness beyond the physical body, which, btw, is also the energy body—they’re one and the same even though our perception is not.
When we expand our awareness beyond the denser layers of our perceived physical body, we experience the world differently, and the subtle is then added to the noise. In other words, subtler states are more readily available to us, such as intuition, coherence, compassion, and interconnectedness: the imaginal realm that Cynthia and other spiritual greats speak of.
This isn’t just symbolic; it’s also neurological and physiological. Not all doctors and scientists will agree with this connection, but a growing number are recognizing the correlation. Finally. Thank you, IONS and CHI, for your wonderful research that is helping to accelerate this realization.
Resonance: Why we Resonate
In science, resonance occurs when one vibrating system influences another to vibrate at the same frequency. This is why a tuning fork can cause another tuning fork across the room to sound without being touched, which is similar to how our nervous system works.
When we hear music that moves us, our brainwaves synchronize with the rhythm and tempo, and if you take notice next time you’re listening to music, notice how your breathing changes. We get that wonderful dopamine hit. Spiritual insight, or as I like to say, innate understanding, works in much the same way. When we experience something freeing or true, it resonates. You can feel it in your chest, your gut and even your breath. This is why spiritual experiences bring tears and sudden clarity even when they don’t make logical sense, so much so that we’re often afraid to share them with others.
Resonance is how the body recognizes coherence.
The Science Connection
Music and art have always done this for me, as far back as I can remember. They dissolve the sense of a separate “me” and replace it with immersion. In other words, it’s as if they take over or possess me, taking me into other realms and dimensions, creating surreal realities that connect me to All That Is. From that vantage point, it should be no surprise that many spiritual mystery schools start off with the idea of identity and shedding our perception of it. We did the same when we ran our two Blue Soul MASTERS courses many years ago, and we’ll be including it with our new Blue Soul Alchemy Wisdom School program that began in the Spring.
The World Surrenders to a Silent Mind
I reference this statement often. It was listed as one of my “go-to” phrases on my old Down the Avenue blog for years, and I even mentioned it in my last Substack post. Why? Because that word surrender seems to have a profound impact on my nervous system. It’s one of those innate understandings beyond my ego-self.
Surrender is also part of every spiritual path. When I’m at my best on the piano, I’m no longer looking at sheet music in front of me but surrendering to the feeling in my body. I let my fingers dance across the keyboard, as if something beyond me is taking over.
At some point in every creative undertaking, there is surrender. Improvisation. Trust. Spiritual awakening asks the same of us: to surrender the mind and ego-self and feel our way forward.
Life becomes less about performing and more about participating. The heart begins to lead more than the mind. When we stop trying to control the rhythm of existence, we begin to move with it. My male athlete friends call it FLOW. In that state, we can attune more and respond from the heart and deep listening rather than simply reacting. Put another way, we begin to allow life to play through us rather than demanding it follow a script. This is where authenticity is born—where our unique song emerges.
Perhaps the most profound parallel is this: No single instrument carries the whole song. Awakening isn’t an individual achievement that you need to ATTAIN—it’s relational. Just as harmony requires multiple notes, consciousness expands through connection. Each of us carries a frequency shaped by our experiences, cultures, wounds, and wisdom. When we listen to one another—truly listen—we create something larger than ourselves. This is why diversity is humanity’s greatest strength, not a weakness, as I discussed in a recent post.
In a fractured world, this matters, especially now with the divisiveness we’re seeing, most recently in the United States, which is closer to home for me. When I heard the Minneapolis protesters in the streets chant “You belong to us,” about the immigrants in their communities, I broke down crying. It wasn’t something I needed to think about; it happened instantaneously. Why? Because resonance was a felt sense in my body, an inner universal truth that all humanity feels at their core when they let their heart lead: We are all one.
This is the collective symphony affecting our collective consciousness at its best. All I could think of at that moment was, “We need to hear more of it, and I’m with you, Minneapolis. I’m with you. I’m with you.” When our hearts blend, everything changes, as my drummer teacher friend Barbara Borden told me once about an experience she had in an auditorium. When everyone drummed together, they automatically harmonized with each other, which harmonized everyone’s nervous systems. I experienced this firsthand in one of her drumming groups, albeit with a much smaller sample.
A Return to the Music & Inner Truth Within Us
Music and art remind us of this innate truth. In their own unique ways, they move through the body, dissolve boundaries, and quiet the mind. In those moments, we don’t feel separate from others, but connected and whole. Or perhaps you could say, we’re home. Finally. Science has equations and a different language that now prove this connection. Finally.
Spirituality is not separate from science, just as music is not separate from physics. Music reminds us of what science now affirms: we are vibrational beings in a resonant universe. When we remember how to deeply listen, we attune or rather, tune back into ourselves, our true essence. Then we begin to hear the clarity that was always there, a reminder to look within rather than to keep searching out there for the answers. This is a message we often teach, so it bears repeating again and again. And again.
Renee Blodgett is the Founder and Managing Editor of We Blog the World, a global travel, culture and lifestyle publication exploring the world through the lens of meaningful experiences, human connection and cultural depth. Having lived in 10 countries and traveled to 95, Renee has spent much of her life immersed in the people, traditions, landscapes and ideas that shape how we experience the world.
Since launching We Blog the World in 2007, she has written and produced extensive editorial coverage spanning boutique and luxury travel, culinary experiences, arts and culture, wellness, adventure, technology, spiritual traditions and transformative travel. Her work is rooted in the belief that travel is about more than where we go—it is also about what a place, culture or encounter awakens within us.
Renee brings more than three decades of experience across journalism, photography, media, brand strategy, technology, wellness and global storytelling. She has worked with companies and organizations around the world on brand positioning, communications, product launches, media strategy, speaker positioning and storytelling. Through Blue Soul Media, she works with authors, entrepreneurs, thought leaders and purpose-driven brands to clarify their message and expand their impact, which includes speaker coaching/training for high-profile stages such as TED and bringing authors’ work to market while retaining authors rights.
She is also the co-founder of Blue Soul Earth, an educational platform exploring consciousness, ancient wisdom, spirituality, healing and the intersection between science and the nature of reality. Renee is the producer and host of the award-winning Blue Soul CHATS, a conversational series bringing together leading voices in science, technology, consciousness, wellness and spirituality.
Her growing body of work also includes Blue Soul Living, which extends her interest in consciousness and well-being into the spaces we inhabit, exploring how intentional design, energy and environment can support greater harmony and connection.
Renee is the award-winning co-author of the bestselling Magdalene’s Journey and founder of the Magdalene Collection, inspired by women’s voices, stories and wisdom across cultures and generations.
A longtime photographer and storyteller, Renee has documented people, places and cultures around the world and produced photographic collections focused on destinations including the Galápagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome and Ecuador. She also co-founded Traveling Geeks, an international initiative that brought entrepreneurs, journalists, creators and technology leaders together with their counterparts in other countries to exchange ideas and explore innovation across cultures.
Renee’s work has been recognized by Forbes, the United Nations and others for her influence in media and social storytelling. Across her work in travel, media, consciousness and culture, a common thread remains: curiosity about the world, the stories that connect us and the ways meaningful experiences can change how we see ourselves and one another.
