Adam Rafferty’s Blog – Guitar and Spirit

Hi everyone, hope you are having a fabulous day!

I am always amazed at the resiliency of the human spirit. The possibility that every moment one can start new, start fresh. Today is the start of a new dedication for me – to take on a day by day task of blogging, you-tubing, myspacing, podcasting, and all the “current” web stuff. I am an old HTML dog and must learn new tricks.

I am inspired!

But why? For the money? To be cool or hip? To be loved by others? To feel in control?

None of the above – right answer!

I hit a point a year ago where desire in one realm of life, well – took a shift. And the reason I am writing about it is because we all have our own personal “versions” of this story: toiling, hitting “the wall”, and finding a fresh outlook and a new beginning.

Approximately 18 months ago (I can’t believe I am about to plug this stuff) a friend recommended “The Secret”, and prior to that another friend recommended “The Release Technique”. Uh-oh, here we go with “religion and inner” stuff.

Regardless of what you have read, heard, said – these materials started a chain of events for me. Since then I have discovered more fabulous self-help / personal development materials which I’ll discuss later.

I had been playing jazz guitar seriously now for 20 years and had been plugging away at a career the way a ggod little jazz student of the 90’s should: Produce CD’s, tour some, take a jillion gigs, and join the army of musicians toiling away. I enjoyed the great gigs with jazz luminaries too.

Just from re-reading the paragraph above, I can see, there was a sense of duty, a sense of “I should hang in” and all that.

And then I learned that “I can be, do or have anything”. Holy s–t!! What?

I realized that these hardships, tests, dues paying, plugging, struggling – were my experience only and I was creating it. I could simply let go. And this was a scary proposition because my identity, career, personal relationships – were all built around my beliefs like a house of cards.

While teaching a workshop, my good friend Frank popped in a DVD of a guitarist named Tommy Emmanuel, and when I saw Tommy grooving and so in love with his playing – it was a cosmic reminder – that’s what I am too. Understand me, I did not say “who I am” and Tommy followers would crucify me – because I am not as good, yet. I love him, he is my new favorite guitar player, but my experience was “I am that too – now do the work to manifest that greatness”.

Whoa!!!

So there I was looking at what I’d built, and I see somewhere radically different I’d like to go. This is the crux of why I am writing this for you to read. We all have different stories, but isn’t it really all the same?

“The Law of Attraction” was now at work. I saw something, and would now materialize it. The thoughts snowballed, and old memories of guitar lessons as a child came back. I felt the joy, the enthusiasm, the urge to play the guitar again. I watched youtube for a week – always finding what I was attracted to.

The jazz guitar’s achilles heel for me had always been the sound. You can play any string of notes you can think of, however. That’s the trade off. Great notes or great sound. So it gets down to a matter of vibration, and where you are at in life.

I went to the music store and asked to play a Taylor acoustic…and I strummed just a G chord. Upon hearing and feeling a great acoustic guitar, heaven opened up, my heart sang. Done!

The ”vibration” of the guitar – the brassy bronze strings, the squeaks, the open strings – evoked images of sunsets and stirred me. Maybe Giant Steps won’t be in my repertoire for a while, but I need to go where the soul stirring tells me to go.

And as of this writing I have just finished recording a new solo project which I think I will be calling “Gratitude”. It’s 14 tunes of solo acoustic guitar – 7 originals and 7 covers. It is a pop recording practically – very little improvisation.

There was no rush or sense of duty in doing this. I have waited for years now to record, sensing the right project would come to me. In the past, recording had been a compulsion, fueled by caffeine, fear of a disappearing presence, and wanting approval from my mentor. Sounds fun, huh?

Esther and Gerry Hicks, with Abraham (http://www.abraham-hicks.com) have an axiom in their Law of Attraction teachings, and they are becoming my favorites. The axiom is that the most important thing to manifest one’s desires is to feel good. we offer less resistance in a feeling good state and allow all the good things we want to come on in to our experience.

The idea is this – when you are anticipating eagerly the delicious arrival of new desires, with no worry that it is not yet here, and a certainty that it is coming, you are planning something you want. When you worry about something you are planning what you don’t want.

Delicious anticipation is planning; worrying, dread and stress is planning; looking at what is currently in our life is simply planning more of the same, which is why “the better it gets, the better it gets” and “the worse it gets, the worse it gets” and “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”;

The first process they give in their 22 processes for attracting the things we want is called “The Rampage of Appreciation”. That’s right – when we appreciate and love and feel truly grateful, we offer little or no resistance, and allow in all we have asked for.

So, by appreciating Tommy, by appreciating the glorious G chord on the Taylor, by appreciating my teachers, and all that has led up to this moment – a whole new angle on life, music and spirituality has opened up for me. This stuff works.

This is why I am calling this music project “Gratitude”. To get the word out that Gratitude is the key!

And, to get it “out there” I am embracing these new (for me) technologies (blogging, youtube, myspace, podcasting) so if you know of any great [places to read up, please let me know.