Friday, April 4, 2025
When I was younger, I “took” to the pipe organ like a duck “takes” to water. It felt natural to sit down at the console; but that didn’t make playing it any less exacerbating. My natural proclivities helped, but my brain got twisted up so many times, I lost count.
I crashed and burned so many times I lost count. I wanted to quit so many times I lost count. I learned that playing the organ was a reduction of sorts – a refining, releasing, and relieving myself of illusory awkwardness and alienation. I had to fine tune, learn to hone in, and refine what essentially was already there deep within me. In other words, I had to dig for it, yet it was calling me from within.
I have had organ students not take to the organ. Even though they played piano, I’ve had some who have not improved. It felt as foreign and clunky the last time they touched it as it did the first time they sat down at the console. Some have sat down at the organ and skyrocketed.
If you want to skyrocket, you have to take to real living. You have to have a zest for the here and now, an unreasonable, yet unsuspicious joy of being alive. You have to love what you’re creating just by being you. You have to look forward to becoming your highest potential – free, open, clear, and unencumbered by alienation.
True looking forward is taking to living. If you take off the hard edges of suspicion, you’ll uncover what’s already there. You take a shining to reality when you realize it’s an open field, uncluttered with predictions and predicaments. It’s a blinding light of the unconditional. It’s relief. It truly looks forward with no reason at all. That’s living well. That’s taking to life like a duck takes to water.