J. Mark Scearce on Spiritual Music

I am a vessel. When I create, I open myself to my muse and am filled with enthousiasmos—that stuff of all creation. Far from our evolution of the word, what it means is “god within you”. To create, one is filled with the capacity of all creation. Inspiration itself is the breath of life. Inspiration is itself the breath of life. Inspiration in itself is the breath of life. And it is the same breath of life found in the Taoist Ch’i, the Indian prana, the Greek pneuma, the Hebrew ruah, and the Latin spiritus. As Sextus Empiricus wrote eighteen centuries ago: “There is one breath pervading the whole cosmos like soul, uniting us.” When the Muslim Sufi dervishes dance to their ecstatic music, Islam does not call it “dance,” does not call it “music,” but calls it sama—deep listening. The level of the spiritual in Music is the level of our listening for it.