TTW: What’s Going into Your Ears?
*TTW= Thinking Teastained Woman
I used to be addicted to music.
Yes, it’s totally possible. And it can be bad if you never scrutinize the motive behind plugging in headphones or pulling the record out of the sleeve, pressing play and letting your mind fill up with the music+lyrics from another human being’s life experience.
I’m not dealing with “good” or “bad” music—you should know what’s good for your soul and spirit to have hummed into it—I’m dealing with the reasons and informing attitudes behind our playing music.
Listen to what you're listening to.
Take a moment and pay attention to the lyrics of the songs you allow to enter your mind via your ears. The lyrics that have access to the same space as the books you're meant to write, the ideas you're meant to execute, the recipes you're meant to cook, the product you're meant to design, the dance you're meant to choreograph, etc. Should these lyrics--others' thoughts set to music--be trusted in handling what you contain? Are these words relevant to who you are or who you want to be? Are they multigenerational truth or ambassadors of temporary sensations catering to a weaker "you"? Are you using music to medicate, escape, or drown out? Are you using music as the soundtrack to the alternate reality you've created for yourself when life gets too stressful/too heavy/ too intense/too...much?
Lyrics can be dope poetry set to music, but let's be real: these days a lot of what's on the airways is TRASH. The words are unintelligent, inappropriate, smutty, and project characteristics of fantastical women most of us don't wish to become. Most of all: lyrics are musical representations of how SOMEONE ELSE FEELS. Singing over and into us are words that were true for him/her THEN. Why take what's relevant to that singer and stuff it into our minds? Why allow mood-altering beats to distract you from what you should be pondering at the moment? Why allow another's melodic ideologies seep into your day and nterrupt what you could hear/receive for a few minutes of a "good beat"? THINK. Do these words belong to you? Do you want to have another's thoughts hovering in the background as you think your own--as you're generating, creating, etc? Should a stranger with a good voice have that sort of access to your originality?
While songs can be great background noise while you work, study, exercise, etc. they can also be a great distraction when it comes to your being accessible to a higher frequency. A song stuck in your head could be contaminating your focus, causing you to lower your spiritual guard when it should be heightened or interrupting the flow of revelation. A song can bear the tendrils of soul ties that you never cut that are tugged whenever it plays. Music can also cue and conjure physical movements and mental flashbacks that your spirit was never meant to reengage/review.
The moments when a song is played could very well be the moment when you’re supposed to be hearing the Creator’s voice, receiving inspiration, remembering or reflecting on something in the past pertaining to your creating your future. Assess your association with music: interruptive or edifying? Fantasy-inducing or soundtrack? Is a playlist worth missing the prophetic, the celestial instructions for your season? The relationship we have with others’ words set to music impacts the relationship we have with our own words, the lyrics to the songs of our lives. We cannot preserve or prophecy if we are locked into moments with music that contorts our focus and skews our perspective of life. Our design demands that we be available to “tell”. If music impacts this, we must reorient it into its rightful place into background soundtrack or timely, eavesdropped inspiration—not as the lens through which we interpret or disconnect from our life circumstances.
Guard your mind.
Chimene
