Who Am I?

I am multi instrumental, have a Music Degree, have worked as a school peripatetic brass teacher and in 2012 I founded a Music School teaching brass, woodwind and piano, which operates to this day. These days, my own musical interests lie with piano and fiddle, although like everything in this world, this is ever changing.

Music as a Spiritual Guide

Music was instrumental (!) in teaching me what, and who I am. It has provided me with a road map and manual for life and so has made my spiritual seeking journey very succinct. I am not and never have been affiliated with any religion or spiritual tradition, as the Nature of music has always held and guided me. I have entered into many traditions briefly to learn how they are similar in communicating the same message as Music. I regard this lack of attachment to any one tradition or teaching, a great Blessing and Freedom as I do not have to go through the process of detangling myself from the attachment.

My entire life I have lived in the invisible world of music. I use my eyes only for practical purposes, meaning that I do not take the objects that they see, too seriously. The invisible world of Sound is eternally connective, rather than separative, and so:

“I do not see separateness; I work only with connections”

…Connections between people, traditions, phenomena, skills, arts, cultures…

There are not 10,000 things. Only Oneness. To recognise Oneness in all things and all people is to move through this world in harmony and with great ease and love.

We can also learn anything quickly and rapidly with this realisation. For many years, this insight formed the basis of my Music School. I now expand this into all modes of learning in AwakenedLearning.Space which offers an alternative to mainstream education for future generations.

I see the world through a musical lens, ‘all the world in a musical note’, and when I have a problem, I liken it to a problem in music and ask “as a music teacher, how would you teach a pupil to overcome that problem?” And then I teach myself…I assume the role as my own teacher.

In my early 20s, the realisation came to me that:

‘everything moves in the same way’

that is, there are not 10,000 different skills to learn out there, and things don’t work in 10,000 different ways, but rather, there is only One thing working in one way. First we master the Mind, and then go prior to it’s activity, into the heart. And with this Knowledge, we can go anywhere, learn anything, fit in anywhere…When we cease to perceive separation.

I realised that life is easier if you only attend to ‘the stuff’ that is the same between seemingly separate things, viewed (and skewed) by the eyes. Learning lots of instruments was probably my first and most thorough lesson in this vein. After I had put the slow painstaking hours into the first instrument for years on end, it was intuitive to look for “what is the same as what I already know” in the second, third, etc rather than looking at each separate instrument as a whole new task to learn.

The Pinnacle of Achievement: What Next?

I, this person, achieved much in Music. I have the first class degree, I started (but did not finish) a PhD, I have lectured, I have taught 1000s of music students, I play many instruments (although I am very out of practice at most of them), I have observed and studied the invisible physics of the nature of sound as well as the psychology of learning in general. I have a 100% exam pass rate over nearly 20 years and my pupils thoroughly and skilfully reach Grade 5 in as little as 18 months and Grade 8 in as little as 3-4 years. 

In short, I had mastered my art, at least as a music teacher. I had delved into all areas of Music for which I had interest and had ‘done music to death’ by my late 20s, as I had been granted this gift so young. It died by my own hand, as everything does if you go deep enough into it. I went all the way through music and out of the other side. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where learning was encouraged and I had delved into many subjects and skills as a young girl. It had given me a great sense of self confidence in what I was capable of, how much I knew and importantly, that there were no limitations on where I could go. But what did that really mean? Yes, it seemed I had reached a pinnacle very early in my life. But did I feel fulfilled?

No. I was just left asking ‘OK, so what can I learn next?’ It occurred to me that there must be more to this life than merely collecting things to learn, relationships and experiences. By my late 20s I honestly said “I have done everything I want to do or learn in this life”. Regardless of this immense and seemingly diverse amount of intellectual knowledge and practical skill, I felt there was still something missing. Something, which I felt maybe was trying to find me…

Through Physical Suffering to Freedom: Discovering Osteopathy and Meditation

Around this time I was addressing a long standing debilitating illness. Severe tension and torsion wracked my whole body, which made moving difficult and chronic asthma made every task either impossible or exhausting. All of this had been there since childhood, but the symptoms were worsening and to a point where I was struggling to walk or even stand and my energy levels were at an all time low. 

At physical rock bottom, and as if by ‘Grace’, I discovered a specialist osteopathic technique which revealed the root of my physical suffering as a lesion in the cervical spine (neck). Over a few months and much commitment on many levels, I was relieved of all of these symptoms.

It was an epiphany point in my life. 

I was granted freedom from this difficult body which I had always felt I had dragged around while I passionately pursued my interests in life. My entire nervous system would often reset, with me dropping to my knees in immense joy and liberation. I do believe some people would label this as ‘a kundalini awakening’. From the experience of it, I would simply describe it as my body surrendering it’s long held tensions.

At the same time, also as if by Grace in 2016, the art of meditation entered my life, and I utilised it solely as a means of calming my nervous system while my spine and body rehabilitated. I have been a regular meditator ever since.

A New Identity and A New Purpose

My whole focus – and identity – shifted from being a musician to promoting the healing combination of this osteopathic technique and meditation which together, I felt had saved my life. I had just become a Mum to a little boy, and at the same time, I was awarded a scholarship to train with Breathworks, a world leading organisation dedicated to relieving physical pain through meditation and mindfulness. My journey into the mind had begun in earnest, and two years later, together with my osteopath, we founded a Chronic Pain Centre with the aim of melding these two healing arts, as One.

This was my aim, and although the Centre did function in this way, it did not do so easily without a colossal input from myself, which ultimately was not loving towards me nor sustainable long term. I realised that the fundamental reason for the difficulty was that most people – practitioners and clients alike – could not reconcile that meditation and osteopathy were essentially doing the same thing, but just carried out in different ways. They could not make the connection as One and there was much resistance particularly to going inwards in meditation and melding the two arts. In short, the idea of separation was too profound; nobody could see the Oneness except for me, it seemed.

In the Face of Defeat, Go Inwards…

Then the pandemic arrived and compounded all difficulties. I had to eventually admit that nothing was flowing easily, and that a different route was required for me to have any kind of peace and happiness in my life. It was time to let go of a dream, which had dominated, by this point, the last five years of my life.

I chose to use the pandemic years to go deeply inwards, to peel back layers of beliefs and conditioning and fall back into who I truly was, prior to ‘the musician’, ‘the entrepreneur businesswoman’, even ‘the meditation teacher’. To expand my present understanding of meditation. I have moved through many teachers who were part of my everyday life here in Scotland, to very famous ‘gurus’ of our age. Along this journey, I came to understand that every single person we encounter is our teacher. Those closest to us, and those we dislike are the very best teachers! 

Deepening Meditation Understanding into Non Duality

I learnt predominantly from the non-dual teachings of David Hawkins, Mooji and latterly Rupert Spira as well as several artists in the realms of music and poetry such as David Whyte, The Gloaming, and Ajeet Kaur and I made sure to put the teachings into practice. I dedicated my life entirely to going beyond the sense of self. Every waking minute, through every task, I was learning, and I remain to this day, a perpetual student.

I began to realise that my physical healing had been down to my own self love and dedication for Truth, Love and Beauty rather than solely to any third party. I also realised my error was that I gave too much time and preference to other people rather than to myself. And I needed to drop the identity I was gaining from the Chronic Pain Centre. It become apparent that re-telling my story of suffering, in order to help others was keeping me, myself stuck in the past.

I needed to see that, and the whole dream and ‘identity as a person’ needed to fall apart. I admit that it took a while for me to let go of the dream of healing humanity! It was exhausting.

From my final teacher, Rupert, I gained, and then lost every-thing. I filled myself full of knowledge and then moved prior to it and emptied myself of it all. I realised that Music had provided me so young with this same great wisdom for which everyone else was seeking. I had had it all along, but was not aware I had anything as I have no memory prior to music! I can concur when Rupert says of his own teacher, Francis Lucille “the greatest gift he gave me, was the understanding that my deep love of Beauty, [in my case through music], which had dominated my life, was the exact same as the deep love of Truth [of Reality] which I was now discovering lay within.” In short, I discovered I had been studying The Nature of mySelf and The Nature of Reality since I was 3 without ever knowing it!

Beyond Non Duality…and Coming Full Circle

For a while, I became identified as a non-dual teacher until I realised the potential suffering in that too. ‘Don’t take shape; stay in the highest place’ (Mooji Mala Music) is one of the highest teachings to live by.

I began to merge all I had learnt into a unique blend of teaching but which could be given no label.

My dedication to going inwards through deep meditation and self enquiry (Who Am I?) was knitting together with my love of Music. I was coming full circle. I realised I could come back to my music now with a rejuvenated purpose. I realised I was given the greatest gift aged 3. Music moves people beyond the mind and conceptualisation. It is Universal. Without words, it speaks directly to the heart of Who and What We Are. I explore this Oneness in Sound’s Creative which is part of Awakened Learning Space.

My music teaching and performing today is aligned with the great Truth and realisations which I have gained from meditation and self enquiry – both on and off the mat.

Who Am I Now?

And so I find myself after several years of intensive spiritual seeking, formal meditation, self enquiry and dwelling as pure Awareness/Consciousness, now coming back to re-engage with this life and acknowledging this ‘body-mind’. My unique skills can now be recognised but now utilised in service of what I have discovered I am rather than in service of personal achievement either for myself or for others.

For those of us, who have been on this journey for some time, it is vital that we do indeed, come back to honouring who we are as a person. This is beyond the recognition that we are Pure Awareness, which is just the first step. We must find our place in this world once again, still with the deeper knowledge that we are Pure Awareness permeated within.

I wish to share this knowledge, as One, discovered in the study of music, osteopathy. neuroscience, meditation and self enquiry, both in the processes of the mind and prior to mind, to relieve others of tension, difficulty, conflict and suffering on a physical, mental and emotional level.

“In the beginning, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; 
later on, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers; 
and still later, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.”

Please do take whatever resonates from my story above, and the archive of meditations and talks. Attend events and hang around as long as you are benefitting from any understanding which comes through me. But I do not wish you to become attached to me as a teacher long term. At some point, the teacher and even the teaching must also be let go and you must realise, there is only one Guru, and that Guru is in the hearts of all Being. And then let go of spiritual seeking and Live and Trust in Life.

“We just need to learn to listen and feel with our hearts rather than look with our eyes.”