Singing Bear Music

I had an experience today which I want to share with you. I went into a store called Alive and Well feeling very happy and funny … after shopping and eating, I ran into one of the salesmen there who is so friendly and supportive.

He said, “How’s the music going? I really want to see you live.”

“I’ll go get my guitar and sing you a song right now,” I said, always willing to share something as pure as music.

“That would be awesome,” he said.

Soon, I returned with my guitar and walked through the store, singing a light song about how beautiful the world is. Before I knew it, a woman was screaming at me … “This is not a performance hall! You have to leave right now! I am calling the police!” Wow … and she was really angry, like her eyes were beating out of her head like she was so mad she was going to smack me. It felt unnecessarily abusive. Some of the shoppers actually came outside to listen while I sang, and people were clapping from their car windows. In fact, everyone else seemed to respond with joy and gratitude except this one ballistic woman who I could only assume was the “Owner” or whatever. Anyway, I complied with her hostile request, and I didn’t feel to phased at the time … such is the life of a musician. Later, however, I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth” and I read this quote …

Click here for Eckhart's Website

The physical needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and basic comforts could be easily met for all humans on the planet, were it not for the imbalance of resources created by the insane and rapacious need for more, the greed of the ego. It finds collective expression in the economic structures of this world, such as the huge corporations, which are egoic entities that compete with each other for more. Their only aim is blind profit. They pursue that aim with absolute ruthlessness. Nature, animals, people, even their own employees, are no more than digits on a balance sheet, lifeless objects to be used, then discarded.
Further in the next paragraph it says …
. . . when those thought forms operate, no possession, place, person, or condition will ever satisfy you. No content will satisfy you, as long as the egoic structure remains in place. No matter what you have or get, you won’t be happy. You will always be looking for something else that promises greater fulfillment, that promises to make your incomplete sense of self complete and fill that sense of lack you feel within.
Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth” 2005

I always thought that these kind of attitudes were more present in the large corporations or government operations, but I think this economic pinch is making even small store owners crumble. In reading this, I went from having a subtle distaste of this woman’s actions to feeling sad and concerned at the state of humanity. How many of us are clinging to our identities, businesses, and possessions so tightly that we have begun to turn our friends, co-workers, and artistic creations into digits on a page and ubiquitous .coms? Isn’t the point of having a small business that you can think outside the box and be original, imaginative, and creative with your presentation? I suppose we have lost something more valuable than all the money in the world when we have reduced the world to ownership and ego …

I highly encourage everyone, especially that woman today, to read this book, “A New Earth”, if for nothing else, than for the possible preservation of something as simple and sacred as love.