DANNY ELLIS

The Gaze 

“Be a Light unto Yourself” Krishnamurti 

Nearly 20 years ago, I stumbled across an experience which immeasurably changed my life and my music. I was lying on my back looking at the ceiling when an inner doorway opened in my Gaze which pierced me to the core with Light and clarity. This light, which was the radiance of my own being, was fiercely cleansing, filling my whole body and mind with a vital certainty that this was my true nature: We are the Free Light of Being—which is most accessible through the free light of Seeing. Most of us access it from time to time, albeit mostly unconsciously. It's our natural state of being.

However, we carry within our Psyche and viscera the stress of endless financial, relational and career concerns all of which conspire to make us more tense that we can even know. This tension in the body/mind is very difficult to release. But we also carry it in our eyes, and there in our relaxed Gaze—when we stop processing the objects of sight and thought—we can find release. Because within the Gaze, again, is the free light of seeing. 

When we deeply enter this Gaze, something happens in the way that the eyes, mind and body, open to the visual field, in such a relaxed, diffused way which is not involved in categorizing or even perceiving the objects of sight.  With practice It can be profoundly calming and liberating.  

 By integrating the Gaze-Light-of-Seeing into our singing and music we can;

1. Release tension and find ease making practice and performing a joy
2. Enter into a state where we have access to intelligent effortlessness
3. Access insights from our subconscious treasure trove of knowledge
4. Find that we can remain relaxed even through mistakes and mishaps
5. Realize that our well-being is more important than hyper-vigilant over-efforting
6. Release the unsure gaze with which many musicians look out to the audience

That last  point is so crucial to remaining comfortable in our skins as we perform and practice; Releasing the fixated Gaze can produce a profound sense of ease in our bodies as our brains stop producing the “fight or flight” hormones (adrenaline &cortisol)  and instead flood the body with “rest and digest” hormones (acetycholine.)   

Performing can be extremely stressful and make us retreat into ourselves, tensing muscles and viscera, awakening old patterns of fear. (Contraction) But when we learn to CONSCIOUSLY release into our Gaze, we can release the fisted grip of anxiety and nervousness. (Expansion)  Think of the feeling in your Gaze and heart when you unexpectedly meet an old friend on the street; you shine, your eyes and mind filled with glowing welcome; your entire day is transformed. You can learn to have this feeling on your own—to "be a light unto yourself."  Release in your Gaze can transform your voice and free your music!

Regarding Songwriting, when we release all concern and compulsion to create and simply Gaze into our subject, we move out of the trap of creating with words and concepts and into the infinitely richer visual field of images. This release can open us up to insights far beyond our ordinary capacity and recall. This release opens the door to authentic creativity.

As an aside, this brings to mind Truman Capote's directive; Don't write your memoir while you're still angry about your past. For myself, completely blown away by this Gazing experience, in which my entire visual field became a radiant sphere of of aliveness within and without, I was able to write my memoir “The Boy at the Gate,” and the accompanying  CD “800 Voices,” in a what has been described by critics as; “Completely without bitterness or sentimentality.”  To be honest, I wasn't conscious of trying to be altruistic: the Gaze simply tends  to infuse writing with the universal truth of things. (See The Irish Times, Hot Press, Goodreads and Kirkus reviews.) 

In those writings I was able to tell my stories as I “SAW” them in the radiance of my gaze without undue coloration. This is not to say that we shouldn't express anger or emotions. But to be overly commandeered by them in writing or performing is to be less grounded and thus less effective. My experience is; by releasing in the Gaze we can be grounded and sovereign even within our recall of painful memories.

Health wise, through immersion in my Gaze, I realized that my body, mind and the entire world, inner and outer, are made of Light. This Light-of-Seeing-Gaze fills and energizes the whole body/mind with radiance and reveals a sublime world of sensation; bridging Feeling and Seeing: Pure Sentience—INTEROCEPTION! (More on interoception below.)

Psychologically speaking, immersion in FEELING is very different than immersion in storied feelings which are so often captured by negative emotions. (As in; “you hurt my feelings.”) For the energy of feelings, and emotions, although essential to music-making and performing, can unfortunately be somewhat unstable. Conversely, pure FEELING, especially when mixed with pure SEEING, can regulate and positively inform the stuckness which often accompanies psycho- physical identification with memories—which are often hilariously unreliable! 

Spiritual speaking, I later found that this experience in my Gaze is what is called the Third Eye, the Kutastha, or Ajna Chakra which unites the radiant, free light of SEEING, with the more embodied darkness of FEELING. Also uniting WHAT we see with that BY WHICH we see.

This radiance of pure SEEING liberates the captured, all-too physical soddenness of body-identification and startlingly, the body is Seen/Felt to be made of the same free light as Seeing. This is both expansively liberating and yet, soberly grounding and authentically human.  More on the spiritual aspect of the Gaze.

Research: I spent years scouring the internet—and still do—for references about this startling experience of the radiance in my Gaze. I found literally hundreds of papers, ancient and modern, Buddhist and Hindu, Sufi and Sikh, and early Christian mystics—sacred texts describing in the most laudatory language the vivid details which I was experiencing in the Light of Being daily first-hand.

In this Gaze, the world of Feeling is more body-based than mind-based, and again, without the coloration of story or even memory. My experience here is one of profound access to the most authentic inner state and, again, which discharges inner tension and trauma in a sunburst of liberating luminosity. 

When you Feel how you See,
you See how you Feel

This is the reunion 
of Sight and Sentience 

The meeting of Light and Living 
Shiva and Shakti

They have the same essence 
the same taste

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See also an aspect of the Gaze that science calls "Quiet Eye"