Tension and Release

I'm thinking of music this morning. The musical suspension has always been one of my favorites... the way two perfectly dissonant notes, a mere step apart, lean into relationship with each other and then resolve into harmony in a dance that creates the musical equivalent of yearning and fulfillment. What are the suspensions in my life? What are the dissonances that create the tension... the dramatic tension that sustains the illusion of lack and longing? If in music beauty is found in the enjoyment of this tension and release, why would it be any different in all other areas of life?

I learned when studying in India that the trick lies in leaning into dissonance. Indian music delights in tension and release within the linear raga, not distracted by layers of harmony. So I can delight in the dramatic tension in my life, leaning into it so to speak, riding the wave as it finds its natural denouement and release. In music and in life, this takes trust and abandonment, the willingness to let go and to allow it all to unfold in the beauty that is my life. Appreciating the wonder of it.

It occurs to me that to really experience a suspension in music, you have to completely let go of the spaces and intervals that seem to separate the notes. What a metaphor for our lives! Letting go of the imaginary spaces and intervals that seem to lie between us. Letting the remembrance of Self return, the Oneness that we really are. And of course this means that we embrace all dissonances as part of the Beauty, as our very Self... welcoming the tension and the release.