Quieting The Monkey Mind: How To Meditate With Music
by Dudley Evenson and Dean Evenson, M.S.

185 pages with photos, charts and illustrations.
Available in paperback and e-book through Amazon

Enjoy this excerpt from the introduction of our new book about meditation Quieting the Monkey Mind: How to Meditate with Music by Dudley & Dean Evenson. Availabble on Amazon.

When we first became exposed to meditation many decades ago, we found that it made a powerful impact on our quality of life. Since then, we have continued to practice and learn as much as we could about meditation and its benefits in order to help bring peace into our often less-than-peaceful world. In a way, our story is the story of a generation, the one that came of age in the turbulent ‘60s, a powerful time of awakening to something that had been hidden deep within us. After a decade of civil rights protests and anti-war demonstrations, our generation knew what we were against, but it took us many years of intense personal seeking to discover what it was that we were actually for.

On a basic level, we were searching for meaning and for understanding, trying to make sense of this crazy world we were born into. We didn’t accept the status quo and we yearned for a living truth. We asked a lot of questions, and we are still asking questions: What kind of life do we want to live? How can we make the world a better place? How can we help? How can we heal? I am guessing that if you are reading this book, then you are also asking some of these questions…

We lived and traveled in a half-sized school bus during the 1970s which was an adventure in exploring consciousness and we captured a lot of what we were learning on our new video camera. We videotaped gurus and yogis, Native American elders, healers, environmentalists, and many others involved in creating a new paradigm. When yoga and meditation first started coming into public awareness, we began exploring them with great enthusiasm. The ideas and philosophies from the East that we were exposed to resonated with our souls and influenced our music as well. Dean began to play more long, slow tones on his flute, while I discovered special harp tunings that lent themselves to making open, spacious music…

As we had been studying yoga and meditation, it was a natural fit that we tended toward music which encouraged relaxation and stillness. Initially, we were simply making meditative music from the heart that reflected the peacefulness of the natural world. In the process of our travels, we had been inspired by our contact with Native American wisdom keepers so our music with natural sounds was in support of their compelling message about respecting Mother Earth.

As practitioners of yoga and meditation, we have benefited greatly from the blessings these activities have brought to our lives. As musicians, we see how intertwined the sacred and musical can be. We have been fortunate to study with Indian yogis, Tibetan lamas, Zen monks, rabbis, ministers, and Native American medicine people. With those masters to guide us and using our personal intuitive compass, we delved deeply into this very important field of self-discovery and found that the use of sound, music, and chant can greatly enhance the meditation process…

In this book, we share some basic principles of meditation along with a wide array of sound tools and practices that can be used to take one into deeper states of inner peace and meditative bliss. The ideas and practices shared here can be of benefit to experienced meditators as well as to those who are just beginning the process of meditation.

Click here to order on amazon. Quieting the Monkey Mind: How to Meditate with Music by Dudley & Dean Evenson.