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To make a rough analogy with what I've been talking about
and to integrate it more with the Course, one could speak of that everyone
has within him or her the true melos, which is the song of love.
So "The Song of Prayer" as most of you know, the pamphlet begins with this
beautiful expression of the song the Father sings to the son
and the son sings to the Father. It's a song without words;
It's a song without melody. It's a song without notes.
There's that beautiful passage at the beginning of Chapter 21, The Forgotten Song,
where Jesus talks about the song that is in everyone. And he tells us in that section
the notes of the song are nothing. It's the song itself that is what is important,
but the notes itself is nothing. But that song is in everyone.
That's the song of our oneness. That's the song of our true Self with a capital S.
That's the song that has nothing to do with anything here.
And, again, for me that's the song that Beethoven attained.
A conductor once said of Beethoven and Mozart that Beethoven's music
reaches Heaven and Mozart's music comes from Heaven. So what you'll find
in Mozart's music probably everything is just a reflection of that love,
but what you find in Beethoven, again because his work really is a process,
is you really experience the attainment of that peace of Heaven
and that love and that song. And then when you listen beyond the notes
that's what you hear. However the reason we all are in this world, in this body,
is that we are terrified of that song and we have fled from it.
And so if you really listen to people what you will hear
will be the block or the defense against that love.
So when I spoke about Schubert earlier what I was able to hear in his Second Trio
was that there was a place where he stopped.
Where Beethoven continued Schubert stopped and he said I am just not going to go there.
There's a block and all blocks are fears, are expressions of fear.
In many different places Jesus tells us that the core of every dream is fear.
And of course you could also add sin and guilt, etc., but fear is the core.
And the ultimate fear, which is what drove us into the arms of the ego in the first place,
is the fear of letting that song be who we are. For in the presence of that song
all the notes disappear and we like being a note. We like being specific.
We like having everything orderly.
Furtwangler used to say, and he could be quite critical of conductors,
not quite what the vituperation Wagner was, but he was quite critical of conductors
who felt and he quoted one conductor, he never named who he was,
saying that a conductor has done his job when he has rehearsed the orchestra
so perfectly that he's not even necessary for the performance because
everything then becomes very set and you know exactly where the music is going to go.
And for Furtwangler it's exactly the opposite. So that if you listen to any of his performances
especially the live ones you'll hear lots of wrong notes, you'll hear some false entrances,
the orchestra is not always quite together, but you will hear a sweep, a rhythmic sweep
that will take your breath away. And you will experience
that what he is doing on the podium is recreating the same inspiration
that the composer had, so it became a lived experience.
And what Furtwangler said, which is the point I am making here, is that conductors
become afraid of that so therefore they rehearse every detail
so that the night of the performance there are no surprises.
The orchestra is not surprised and the conductor is not surprised.
And the audience that has come to expect this is certainly not surprised either
because it is always exactly the same. With Furtwangler or someone who conducted
in his tradition as Wagner, again, had basically established, it's all different.
Everything is a new experience.
Well it's the same thing in our relationships with each other.
If you open yourself up you will hear how the block, how the fear in the other person,
is interfering with their letting that song of love just flow through them.
That's what Freud talked about when he identified defenses.
And actually one of the things that he emphasized a great deal
in terms of how analysts ought to be, was that they should listen.
He was very, very strong about that. You should listen and if you listen carefully
your patient will tell you what the problem is, not necessarily in words, but
you'll hear the block. And if you read Freud, for example, from that point of view
you'll realize he's coming from that same tradition, that you listen
and people will tell you. So, for example, Freud, he did this with dreams,
he did it with slips of the tongue, he did it with jokes and in fact he said that
you could do this with everybody. People will always tell you what is going on in them.
You watch how they dress. You watch how they walk. You watch how they speak.
You watch how they handle themselves. You watch what they say.
You watch what they don't say. You watch the slips. You watch the mistakes.
You listen to the dreams. And they will tell you, but you have to listen.
You get beyond the technique, you get beyond what is verbal.
You get beyond your own understanding and you open up your heart.
At the top of his score for the Missa Solemnis, Beethoven wrote
"from the heart may it go to the heart." And I wrote this from the heart
may it reach the heart of the listener. That's what you want to do.
You want to come from that heart of love inside and be able to hear
the heart of love in someone else and then the fear of that love
and the way that the person then interferes with that.
There's a beautiful, beautiful phrase in "The Obstacles To Peace"
in the third obstacle where Jesus talks about the attraction of death
and the mournful figures, the black draped figures that have embraced death,
which really is all of us, and Jesus talks about how you touch them
with the gentle hands of forgiveness and then the drapes just fall away.
You touch them with the gentle hands of forgiveness.
That basically in a nutshell is what healing is. You feel the block, you feel the fear.
You don't judge it. You don't criticize it. You don't try to fix it. You don't try to manipulate it.
You don't hate it. You don't demand it be different. You just touch it
with the gentle hands of forgiveness, which you cannot do if your hands are not gentle.
And your hands are not gentle if you don't allow yourself to be open to that love.
There's another passage in the Psychotherapy pamphlet where Jesus is talking about
if the therapist feels in any way that he has a need, he won't be able to hear.
At any point you feel you need something from this other person,
and we're just not talking about psychotherapists, we're talking about any relationship,
on any level, if you need something from that other person you won't be able to hear.
Because that neediness, which of course is specialness, will interfere
with your touching the block with the gentle hands of forgiveness,
which means the job of the therapist, the job of the person regardless of the profession,
regardless of the relationship, is always to get past that neediness.
That's why there's so much in this Course on letting go of specialness.
If there is a neediness, you will not hear. You'll be listening through your own filter,
which will distort what you're hearing. When there is no filter, when there is no need,
when you are in that holy instant, then you would automatically hear, you would hear the block.
So in the Course when Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit's judgment
and the judgment is either people are expressing love or calling for it
that's what we're talking about. Either people are expressing that inner melody,
that forgotten song of love or they're so afraid of it
that they have to defend against it. And therefore they are calling for the love
that they have denied, the love that they have defended against and above all
the love that they do not believe they deserve. That's what you would hear.
And as I say many, many other times it makes no difference
whether that person is expressing love to you or calling for it your response would still be loving.
So you don't even have to know. And if there is a block, if the person is calling for love,
which of course we do ninety nine point nine percent of the time,
the love in you would automatically reach out and touch the pain,
touch the hurt with those gentle hands, which means you would say,
you would do whatever would be appropriate, whatever would be helpful.