Blog 258 – Using Meditation to Leave The Pit, Part 4 – 21 May 2025

I finished Blog 257 with these words.

The music is only an efficient tool to help you eliminate clutter from your brain.  You need to eliminate the clutter because the clutter is the reason why you are still in the Pit.  Toss the clutter into the rubbish bin and the way out of the Pit becomes so much clearer. If you simply get lost in listening to beautiful music, this gives you the same effect as asking the doctor for some pills.  It dulls the pain, but the muted pain stays with you forever. If you simply listen to beautiful music without getting rid of the mental clutter, you are just rearranging the furniture in your room in the Pit to make the room more user friendly – but the room remains located in the centre of the Pit. Don’t use the music to rearrange the furniture in the Pit. Use the music for its intended purpose – getting rid of the mad mess of thoughts in your head so you can walk away from the Pit and never go back.

I am serious when I say that you must avoid the attractive trap of avoiding your genuine escape from the Pit by thinking you can escape just by listening to wonderful music.

The wonderful music will certainly make you feel better while you are listening to it, and for a short while after it has finished, but music is not your escape vehicle.

The only escape vehicle that will ever exist is a hero called YOU.

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I keep repeating my purpose.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

You are the hero and you hold within yourself, the only key in the whole universe that will ever unlock your exit from the Pit.

That is not a fantasy but the literal truth.

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Photo of me next to the 4 wheel drive that got me into the camp at the base of Mount Ragged on 10 April 2011.

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I took this photo on 8 April 2011 when I camped at Cape Arid National Park on the eastern coast of Western Australia.  There is no phone reception and no services of any kind; bring your own water, food and everything else.  If you do not bring everything you will need, there is a good chance you will die.

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This is the track that eventually brought me to the Mount Ragged campsite on 10 April 2011.

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Contrast the wild ruggedness of the dirt track I drove along, with the fragility of this glorious butterfly!

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Dawn on 11 April 2011 at the Mount Ragged campsite.  Dawn actually looked so much better than shown in my photo.

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I camped in a bush camp at the bottom of Mount Ragged on 11 April 2011.  The nearest living human being was no closer than 200 kilometres away.  If you get into trouble in this area, it is not possible to phone a friend.  If you break a leg climbing Mount Ragged, you will have to crawl down the mountain; even if you do crawl down the mountain, you will probably die.

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In case you did not completely understand what I have been saying, I will repeat myself.  The purpose of listening to the beautiful music is to enable you to develop the ability to focus your thoughts.  If you focus your thoughts on the music, this will automatically drive the usual mental clutter out of your brain.  The usual mental clutter is what holds us in the Pit.

When you are able to focus on music which is beautiful but repetitious, you are on the way to being able to focus your thoughts by consciously excluding things that bring your spirit down.  This is why I have described musica as a tool and not as the end result.  You train yourself to control the thoughts going through you head in a similar way to how you train yourself to be a good cricket or basketball or football player – practice, practice and yet more practice is needed.

You are no more likely to become a master of your thoughts in a short time than any professional sportsperson is likely to master a sport in a short time.  To conquer the flow of rubbish constantly flowing through your brain, you must practise until you acquire the necessary skill.

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Here are some more chant artists that I have found helpful.  Some chant artists focus on the repletion of the chants rather than on making the chants sound exceptionally beautiful.  This is because these artists want to help you master the skills of meditation in preference to making gorgeous sounding music.  You should not assume that the music is boring.  The intent is to enable you to concentrate on the chant and drive the rubbish out of your head.

·         Kamini Natarajan (https://www.kaminimusic.com):

o   Chants for Meditation.

o   Chants for Meditation 2.

o   Shiva Meditation.

·         Ajeet Kaur (https://www.ajeetmusic.com)

o   Haseya.

o   At the Temple Door.

·         Dechen Shak Dagsay (https://www.dechen-shak.com):

o   Day Tomorrow

o   Jewel, Joyful Heart Through Precious Tibetan Mantras

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Tomorrow, I will tell you more about how to meditate.