Have you ever heard an instrument that was slightly out of tune?
Nothing terrible.
And yet… something doesn’t feel quite right. The music is there, but the harmony is missing.
Sometimes I wonder if we live this way. Slightly out of tune with ourselves. Not because something is wrong with us. Perhaps we have simply forgotten what it feels like to be deeply attuned to ourselves.
Before an orchestra begins to play, something beautiful happens. The musicians don’t start playing immediately.
First… they listen.
One instrument offers a single note – the reference note. And then each instrument listens and tunes itself.
Still uniquely a violin…
a flute…
a cello…
No instrument has to become another instrument. Each simply finds its own true tone – and its place within the whole.
Perhaps life is inviting us to do something similar.
To listen…
to our original tone…
beneath all the voices we usually listen to.
Voices like:
“You should have done better.”
“You’re not enough.”
“Be careful.”
“Don’t make a mistake.”
“What will people think?”
These voices can become so familiar that we begin to believe they are who we are.
But are they?
Listening beneath the noise
Looking back, my own life has been one long journey of learning to listen.
Listening to the body.
Listening to emotions.
Listening to stories.
Listening to silence.
Until I found myself listening for… my original tone.
Whenever I sit with a client, I find myself listening beneath the words and symptoms.
Beneath the fears, the self-judgments, the anger. And I wonder:
What was always true about this person… before life taught otherwise?
Sometimes, symptoms have a message. They might be calling for attunement. But they were never meant to conduct the whole orchestra.
Perhaps this is also why compassionate listening is so powerful. When someone truly listens to us, without trying to fix us, without trying to improve us, something inside begins to relax.
Because we have been deeply heard.
Perhaps the same thing happens when we deeply listen to ourselves.
What if you simply listened?
What might happen if, for a moment, you stopped trying to change the voices within you? What if you simply noticed them?
Perhaps one is agreeing. Another is doubting. Another is already thinking about what comes next.
You don’t have to make any of them disappear. You can simply notice them.
And then ask youself:
Who is noticing?
Can you sense that place?
There is a quiet presence in us that has always been there.
It doesn’t judge.
It doesn’t compare.
It doesn’t rush.
It simply is aware.
Something beautiful can happen when we begin listening from this quiet place. Little by little… our original tone begins to emerge. And little by little… it takes the conductor’s place.
The inner noise doesn’t have to disappear. It simply no longer leads.
And perhaps, little by little, the different voices within us begin to attune to one another – finding a beautiful harmonic resonance.
Finding our place within the whole
When an instrument is tuned and sounds in its own true tone, it doesn’t make music alone.
The whole room begins to vibrate.
One clear tone naturally invites another.
I feel that healing is like that. Little by little, the dissonant voices begin to find their place within the harmony of the whole.
Perhaps our deepest freedom and peace
come from coming back into resonance
with our original tone.
Not the tone shaped by expectation.
Not the tone shaped by fear.
Not the tone shaped by success.
The question remains:
What is the original tone that has been quietly waiting to be heard again?
…beneath all the noise….
