Come On And Join The Joyride

In December 2019, I got home from dropping my little ones off at school and I was drawn to my old CD collection (yes, yes I still have one). There was something I needed to listen to. I wasn’t sure why but I reached for Roxette and spent the morning being transported to a time when I was just short of a decade old and living the fizz pop of youth and first crushes, and it hit me how the songs spoke differently now.

They felt like poetry rather than pop, and later that afternoon once the kids were home, we cranked up the volume and danced and sang.

A few days later, on December 9th, I heard the news that Marie Fredriksson had passed away.

This death winded me. It wasn’t the first time that I had been called to play an artist’s music, only to hear of their passing a few days later. It also wouldn’t be the last time an artist would connect with me from beyond the veil with a question or message for humanity.

I obviously felt the deep sadness that comes with life ending and witnessing a chapter of one’s life story close in some way. But this was also an “a ha” moment. A moment of awareness that I had in some way been invited to a celebration, by a soul. Something of a last hurrah as it prepared to leave the physical that was Marie and continue the joyride. John Lennon clearly knew something of this when he said:

“I'm not afraid of death… It's just getting out of one car, and into another.”

What struck me most by this experience was the reach of it. There Marie had been, unbeknown to me, in Sweden. I was, unbeknown to her, in Dubai. The spirit, however, truly knew something neither of us were aware of. It was untethered… bound not by walls, countries, borders, language, rules, regulations. And certainly not bound by the body. Connected, etherically, in the vibrating web of light and music that is this bitter sweet symphony. Those who don’t feel it are possibly simply too entrenched in attachment to the idea that the physical is the only reality.

Now, as I sit at the end of 2021, after two years of being struck by how a globe sank into immobilising fear of death and each other, it is clear that the foundation for that fear was disconnect. Not just physical disconnect, but our own disconnection from the fact that we are more than that. We always have been.

Our discomfort with death stems directly from this. Our physical mortality brings us face to face with a bigger question than: “Have I been successful?”. It stirs an existential question: Have I honoured my soul and uplifted the souls of others? And in a world that has been designed and, dare I say, orchestrated for centuries to pull our focus away from our inner tune and direct our attention to distractions, the answer can be difficult to face.

Some would argue that this experience of mine was a fluke, a random coincidence, something impossible since science cannot prove it and that my ideas are a little bit dangerous. I can understand that perspective. But as Friedrich Nietzsche once said:

Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

I would argue that every metaphysical and mystical experience in humanity has been labelled “out there” until science was motivated to find a way (or the funding) to catch up and confirm it. The fact that something is “out there” does not mean it does not exist.

Dr Joe Dispenza puts it succinctly:

“Once you have a mystical experience and get your first glance behind the veil, you can never go back to business as usual, and with every subsequent mystical experience you have, you move closer to source, wholeness, oneness, and the indivisible unified field.”

My “meeting” with Marie was one of those mystical moments. A moment that confirmed: You can stall in fear. You can lock yourself away in the garage because “It’s dangerous out there”. Or you can live the inherently uncertain, but exhilarating joyride and heart-opening “love game” that is this incarnation. If you rearrange the letters in the word Earthed you get Hearted. Perhaps that is what this earthly experience is. An invitation to share whatever makes your heart sing, the unique art you came here to create. Metaphoric music that lives on, reaching further across space and time than any of us could imagine.

And when you think you’re done, fear not, because, in some way, “It all begins again where it ends.”