7 Keys to Serenity: Creating Harmony Within

By Serge Mazerand

In a world of conflict, disruption and uncertainty, many people live in silent despair. 7 Keys to Serenity: Creating Harmony Within inspires readers to attune to their inner music, reconnect with their essential powers, and create authentic happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543904796

Book preview

Introduction

Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

∼Attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne

The quest for inner peace goes back to the dawn of time. And yet, like the butterfly of happiness, inner harmony seems to have become ever more elusive to humankind. Is it the exclusive purview of a few enlightened sages who are, by some magic, able to escape the entanglements of life? Or is this inner quietude, this serenity, available to all of us, albeit perversely veiled by a relentless search for what we falsely believe to be happiness and freedom?

My own existence has long been dominated by a visceral drive to pursue both. Fooled by a forceful and hedonistic puppet master, I spent almost my entire existence travelling to exotic shores, flitting here and there, an insatiable sybarite whose only goal was to indulge in the many nectars life constantly tempts us with. In my mind there was no doubt I had composed a beautiful and successful life symphony, and yet, when I finally paused to listen more carefully, to my dismay, I realized that I had been largely oblivious to the subtle inner cacophony I had unconsciously created.

This belated awareness caused me to feel as if I had awoken from a long slumber. Many people get wakeup calls through a personal crisis, an accident, a life-threatening illness or a heartbreaking loss. I was no exception. Some of these calls were quite jarring; most, however, were subtle in the scheme of things, and so I merely kept slumbering through most of my life.

That is, until one extraordinary day, when synchronicity led me to settle on the banks of a magical river. It murmured and spoke to me through its riffles and inspired me to reconnect with my God-given childhood gift of music. The keys of my newly acquired grand piano unlocked a long- overdue transformation. In the spirit of sharing the healing process, I began to play on stages and to record my music.

I hesitated greatly before venturing to write. Why, after all, would a performer and composer of healing music want to write about harmony and serenity? Shouldn’t the music be allowed to create its own magic and the literary efforts be left to others?

In fact, what prompted me to switch from a piano to a computer keyboard was the overwhelming feeling that my own healing journey demanded that I go beyond music. I needed to crystallize reflections on the meaning of life—something, I suppose, most conscious individuals feel compelled to do at some stage of the journey. These musings were born out of many seasons of solitude and meditation along the river. It taught me to look under the surface, into my heart, and as I did, I found myself staring into a glaring enigma: Why was it that harmony, while being at the heart of music, couldn’t be found in my own heart, once the notes fell silent? I composed, played and recorded healing music under the label Keys to Serenity, and yet, paradoxically, inner peace continued to elude my own life.

I was in illustrious company. Many composers throughout history, even as they created sublime music, were unable to create harmony in the score of their own lives—some of them cut dramatically short by illness, oversensitivity, unbridled passion and emotions, broken hearts or dependencies on people or substances. Observing many of our contemporary musicians, performers and songwriters, we see the same pattern unfold over and over: a lack of balance, the need to escape from inner ghosts, the inability to harness emotion—ironically the very same energy that creates beautiful music in the first place. Music was my refuge, Maya Angelou confided.² Like her, I attempted to hide and crawl into the space between the notes, as she expressed it so movingly, but in the end one cannot escape from Self and sooner or later, one must face the music.

And yet, I reflected, if harmony could be created in a music score, there had to be a way to produce it in life too, because in essence, life is music. It is a melody we compose or improvise every single day. As a matter of fact, I would venture to argue that we are all musicians by nature. We whistle, we hum, we sing, dance and swing and what’s more, unbeknownst to us, we play music all the time, however subtle. Music is part of our DNA. Our cells continuously orchestrate their own inner symphony, dancing to the circadian rhythm, emitting subtle vibrations in the process, and we broadcast the resulting melodies into the world at large over a variety of frequencies.

Our language is infused with musical terms: we resonate with people and things; ideas and words strike a chord; we waltz into a room, we act in concert; we set the tone, we feel upbeat or downbeat and indeed, albeit reluctantly, at times, we must face the music.

Perhaps most importantly, we are gifted with a very powerful set of instruments—the brain and the heart. We are the instruments. The brain serves as keyboard where we play the notes (thoughts) the mind composes. The heart is the metronome that beats the rhythm of our emotions. It is the soundboard that amplifies the music we play. Thus, in fact, we do have the potential to create any music we choose, beautiful harmonious melodies or awful-sounding cacophonies. The choice resides in our minds and hearts: we are truly altogether the composers, the instruments, and the conductors of our own lives.

What would it take then, I wondered, to transpose harmony onto the score of life? It could not be overly complicated, could it, considering that the core of Western music is composed of only a few basic notes— seven of them, which one identifies and reads as A, B, C, D, E, F and G. They combine and unfold into the richness and diversity of their tones, overtones and chords. On a piano, these seven notes, or keys, replicate over a number of octaves (which are intervals of eight notes) to form a keyboard that usually counts eighty-eight white and black keys.

As a point of clarification, the eighth note of an octave is simply the repetition of the first one, only with a different tone or pitch. So, in an octave that consists of A, B, C, D, E, F, G and A, the last A happens to be the same note but with a higher tone. (The ratio of frequency between two notes that are an octave apart is 2:1.) For example, if the first note A in the octave vibrates at 440 hertz, the upper A vibrates at 880 hertz.

At this time, I must also briefly clarify the role of sharps (♯) and flats (♭) in music notation. These symbols, called accidentals, modify the tone of notes, sharps increasing the pitch by a semi-tone, and flats diminishing it by a semi-tone. (On a piano, they are embodied by the black keys.)

Sharps and flats represent what is called the key signature of a piece of music—you’ll find them at the beginning of the staff, the five lines on which the notes are written. Compositions may be written in major or minor mode, for example in E major, (four sharps on the staff) or in C minor, (three flats on the staff) and so forth. The key signature is what lends music its tone and colour, what creates mood and atmosphere; in other words, it determines the range of emotions one experiences when listening. This is important to remember as, throughout the book, the term key signature will be used frequently to characterize the frequency of our thoughts or our attitudes in life.

I have deliberately oversimplified this musical explanation in order not to confuse you with the intricacies of music theory. After all, my intention here is merely to share how I came to playfully ponder a way to transcribe music into a literary form—specifically, how I translated the seven core keys into seven words.

What could be more appropriate than keywords to correspond to these seven core keys? Many candidates instantly sprang into my mind and resonated strongly. After much reflection, I felt inspired to build the concept and structure of this book around seven keywords that would embody the keys to serenity: Awareness, Belief, Creativity, Discipline, Energy, Flow and Guidance. I realized of course, that there were many more such keywords, alignment, attunement, authenticity, balance, choice, coherence, emotion and gratitude, to name a few. However, just like keys of a piano, all these keywords will play together throughout the book as they combine to form octaves and chords on the keyboard of our brains, resonating with overtones and different frequencies, yet all synergistically interacting within infinite variations to create harmony.

In Part I, I’ll share with you my take on the nature of harmony and serenity. For the sake of clarity, however, it is essential to begin with a general overview of why humanity has such a difficult relationship with inner peace. In broad strokes, we’ll identify the most common stress- and-anxiety-creating dissonances we all seem to create at some point in time in our earthbound journey.

In Part II, I invite you to play the seven keys to serenity. However, I must caution you, playing is not simply about the enjoyment of making music—it takes hard work, commitment and ongoing practice. Repetition is key, my piano teacher always kept insisting. What’s more, to create harmony and serenity involves transformation, and any transformative process can be rather uncomfortable.

It is interesting to note that, while I was writing this book—living with the book, literally—there were many instances when I became suddenly aware that my thoughts and actions were not congruent with the words I was typing. I felt a bit like a fraud, as if I were cheating my potential readers, and above all, I realized I was deceiving myself. But in slow, incremental fashion, the pieces of the puzzle gradually fell into place as I came to live the book and to align myself with its content, playing the seven keys in my day-to-day routine. What had begun as a playful exercise in transposition of musical notes to literary notes, as a musical perspective on the meaning and relevancy of harmony in life, unfolded into a challenging yet hugely exciting personal process of transformation.

Through the lens of imagery steeped in both music and water (after all, this is who I am, a pianist, a composer, a fly fisherman and above all, a worshipper of nature), I hope the reflections in this book will inspire you to resonate with an everyday awareness of the subtle music that plays within you, to become attuned to its synergistic components the way a caring orchestra conductor listens to his musicians.

This awareness, represented by the key of A, is the master key to inner harmony and the common denominator to all other keys to serenity. Developing this state of conscious living will nudge you to pause and breathe, to switch off the autopilot mode and learn to attune to your inner Self.

The key of B will help you identify the beliefs and attitudes that empower or disempower you; it will allow you to understand the nature of balance and find your own unique state of equilibrium on the tightrope of life.

The key of C inspires you to access the transformational power of creativity, of conscious choices and change; D encourages you to harness discipline and implement a mindful strategy of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self-care; the key of E takes you into the mind- boggling quantum perspective of life and allows you to grasp the essentiality and universality of the subtle energy that creates the template of your existence.

Played together, these keys will create synergy, clarity and flow (key of F).

Finally, but no less importantly, in the key of G, I’ll share with you my reflections on guidance, on how the exhilarating awareness of the God- force residing within us truly empowers us to find our way through life in harmony and serenity.

At this stage, the nature of spirituality needs to be defined, for it’s clear that it often means different things to different people. In its essence, it is an awareness that connects us to Spirit, to our soul, to our Source. Spirituality nudges us to ask questions such as Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we meant to do to create a meaningful life? It carries with it an awareness of the existence of something bigger than ourselves. Yet spirituality should in no way be assumed to exist only within the purview of organized religion. Any human being, regardless of the orientation of his or her faith, or the absence thereof, has the ability to embrace this awareness of spirit in many empowering ways.

I simply cannot subscribe to the haphazardness of life and do hold the unwavering belief in the existence of a force, an intelligence that orchestrates the dance of the universe. As I wrote this book and my thoughts crystallized around the central idea of harmony resting on a balanced combination of energies that create and sustain all life-forms, I was struck by the ever-recurring theme of interconnection, coherence and alignment that speaks more to a purposeful design than to randomness.

No matter how much or how little they may contribute to your own transformative process, I sincerely hope these insights will strike a chord in your heart and soul and awaken in you a new awareness of the art of conscious living. May this book help you glimpse all the possibilities that lie waiting, inspire you to find your own authentic voice and become, if you are not already on your way there, the composer and the conductor of your own beautiful life symphony.

The little boy teetered on the edge of the highest of the three springboards in the local public indoor swimming pool. Through the refraction of the crystal-clear water, he could see the bottom’s aquamarine tiles in their most minute detail—they seemed to be magnified. The distance now looked much higher than it had from down below. Why had he climbed all the way up here? he wondered. His father had coaxed him to do so and on impulse, he had taken up the challenge. Now, shivering and wavering, his toes clinging to the edge of the diving board, he stood, frozen by a visceral fear that weakened his knees, churned his stomach and whipped his heart into a gallop all at once. His nascent ego told him he couldn’t go back down or he’d look like a coward. His father was looking up and egged him on. Some older boys had already gathered below, at the base of the ladder, and watched him, seeming almost eager for a dramatic turn of events—or a shameful capitulation, so they could ridicule him.

Fear warned, No, wait! You cannot do that. Go back—it’s dangerous, you could fall flat on your stomach, you could break your neck, you could injure something inside you. Go back! There were so many reasons to retreat to the ladder and climb down. And yet, although he resented his father for the awkward situation he was in, he felt he could not disappoint him. The faintest little voice whispered, It’s okay— you're going to be fine. Trust me, you can do this. You need to do this, jump! Closing his eyes, he dove headfirst, into the shimmering blue.

PART I

Cacophony and Harmony

The Dissonances of Life

Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in fear

It seems that for much of humanity, the pendulum of life has swung from the brink of harmonies all the way to the brink of madness. Stress and anxiety are rampant in our society. Mental illness in various forms affects more than sixty million people in North America alone. Some two centuries ago, in his memoir Walden , ³ Henry David Thoreau lamented that The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. How would he feel today? This general sense of despair seems to have reached catastrophic proportions, fuelled by anger, insecurity, anxiety and stress—all pointing to one single common source: fear.

The fact is that many among us are simply overwhelmed by life, undermined by a profound sense of uncertainty. We feel trapped in a system with no way out, we fear losing control—what we perceive as control, that is—over our livelihood, our jobs, our health, our wealth, our culture and our way of life.

No doubt, life can be overwhelming. Countless numbers of individuals struggle to secure basic shelter and food; many more are under enormous pressure to make a living, at times involving long, daily commutes in a noisy, rushed environment, endless deadlines, compounded by relationship issues and health concerns.

Humankind is confused and torn by conflicting sources, interests, feelings and motivations, often burdened by weighty baggage stored in the deep recesses of the subconscious mind. Scores live in a mental fog, with no clear sense of direction, values or goals, sometimes with a complete absence of meaning or hope, often without enthusiasm or passion, merely surviving in a world generally perceived as hostile.

Contributing to inner disharmony and conflict, in many parts of the world we see a growing sense of alienation and abandonment. This is largely due to a widening gap between rich and poor as well as a profound mistrust between races and cultures. Because of rampant poverty, many feel excluded and estranged. Some resign themselves to their fate, while others revolt and choose extreme paths, leaving in their wake terror, desolation and suffering.

Global change and disruption rise exponentially, fuelled by mind- boggling technology and instant communication. Anxiety is exacerbated by ubiquitous, distracting—and mostly toxic—information. Core values collapse, economic and societal realities shift ever more rapidly, and natural calamities intensify in the wake of a runaway climate change.

Life seems to conspire to plunge us into a disempowering mental swamp, creating a state of helplessness, of permanent inner angst, a fear of living, fed by the human ego’s own innate sense of insecurity. This existential angst in fact leads to the most pernicious form of anxiety, not linked to any particular issue, hovering and roaming in the deep recesses of our subconscious mind, undermining our life vibrancy and sabotaging our health. We literally worry ourselves to death.

Fear of living is compounded by a subconscious fear of dying. Deep inside ourselves, many of us fear death to be the end of all. No matter our bravado and professed beliefs, religious or otherwise, the fact is that as a whole, the Western world isn’t comfortable with the idea of dying. Few care or dare to talk about the subject, which still is largely a taboo topic, buried in the deep folds of our psyche. Most of us feel deeply uneasy coming to grips with our own mortality even though death hits the news daily. As we go through life, as we see friends and family being taken from us one by one, we subconsciously wonder when our turn will come. With this imaginary sword of Damocles suspended over our necks, we bury our heads in the sands of distraction.

Of hamsters and frogs

A number of people enjoy keeping a cute little rodent, usually a hamster, in a cage that is equipped with a wheel allowing it to run freely within an otherwise rather constrained space. Ironically, many of us run on our own hamster wheels, in a pathetic attempt to escape our ghosts. We have no time—or so we believe—to pause, reflect and meditate. We do not take or make time to nurture ourselves, when that is precisely the medicine we should take. Instead, we pop pills. We try to do more rather than less; we multitask; we distract ourselves altogether to avoid taking time to reflect, for fear of facing issues we perceive to be potentially too uncomfortable to confront. We even kill time by engaging in futile and mindless activities.

To cope with our stresses and anxieties, we numb ourselves with emotional substitutes such as alcohol, food, promiscuous sex or various mind-altering drugs that modem sorcerers remorselessly and lucratively concoct for us. In a less obvious yet still addictive way, we often find refuge in our work. We create artificial cocoons out of routine, habits, rituals and entertainment, and we cultivate falsely comforting, sometimes mindless patterns of thought and behaviour, staying carefully inside the box, imperceptibly falling prey to physical and mental entropy.

Although we vaguely intuit that some aspects of our lives are muddled and out of balance, it often feels just too uncomfortable and complicated to create change. Stuck in a state of mental inertia, we resemble the frog that basks leisurely in a pot of lukewarm water on the house stove.⁴ It doesn’t notice that the water is slowly heating up; it may make an effort to jump out, but the ever warmer temperature makes it drowsy and lethargic, and soon it finds it difficult to move and ends up dying, cooked alive! Had it been thrown into a pot of hot water to begin with, it would have likely jumped out immediately.

And so it is with us: in utter complacency, we bask in the numbing comfort of our routines unless a serious crisis makes us jump out. By then, however, it may be too late. Meanwhile, the compounded effect of all these inner incongruences and conflicts we are accumulating, subtle as they are, in turn creates an inner cacophony. We know the consequences all too well: insomnia, depression, mental illness, heart problems, a progressive weakening of our immune systems. And yet, we do nothing about it.

We drive our lives in automatic

In this chaotic, busy environment, we tend to live on autopilot. Much of our body is in this mode—we could not stay alive without our autonomic system, a natural feature that performs a number of physiological tasks automatically. While this built-in automatism is essential to our physical survival, subconsciously orchestrating many daily tasks, it affects many more areas of our lives and turns out to be much less beneficial.

Most of the time, we tend to completely surrender to our subconscious mind, living in our daily routines, acting and reacting like automatons, puppet versions of ourselves. Buttons are pushed and strings are pulled. Researchers in neuroscience estimate that our subconscious mind influences almost all of our choices and decisions.⁵ We say things automatically, often regretting them, and we do things in contradiction with our values, creating a web of conflicting energy patterns around and within us along the way. As a matter of fact, we have grown totally unaware of our ways of thinking, of our words and actions, so much so that we drive our lives just as we drive our cars, distracted and mindlessly shifting gears, braking and signalling automatically.

Tn the high grass of the lake, at the edge of the forest, they lay entwined on a bed of thick moss. During last summer’s school lys, the young woman had noticed how, more than once, the boy’s eyes lingered on her ample bosom. Intuitively, she had sensed his burgeoning transformation, realizing he was no longer the little boy she had known for a few seasons now, since she and her husband had begun living at the cottage as caretakers. A robust yet quite attractive country girl, she dealt with most of the chores during the weekly absence of her partner, who was busy making a living in a faraway town. When the boy shyly suggested she should join him at his secret fishing spot, she took him at his word.

Nobody would disturb them in his hideaway, perfectly concealed from view by a thick row of reeds. His father had travelled back to the city, working, and his mother would not be looking for him, assuming he’d be fishing as he always was. Besides, she would be too afraid of mice and other creatures rustling about to even consider venturing into the woods at this late hour of day.

At first, he had felt apprehensive and awkward. It suddenly occurred to him she may be more than he could handle. What do you do? This was no sexy poster-girl in a glossy magazine, nor was she one of the few shy, inexperienced girls he had attempted to explore sex with. No, this was a real woman, and she sat close to him now, on that bed of moss, so close, so impossibly sensual in the intimate glow of the setting sun.

Attuning to his needs and fears, she kissed him lightly and tenderly, guiding him with expert patience through