Music has the incredible power to touch us like no other vibrations can. Music seems to move our consciousness to a place beyond thought; a universal medium that crosses boundaries, not only between human beings but even between species. When information is sung we seem to remember and access it far more easily than if we only read it or hear it in spoken word. That is why advertising jingles work so well! Learning about the world via song is a tradition that long predates reading and writing. Ancient cultures have passed down stories and wisdom for future generations through this unique vehicle of communication for thousands of years.
With this in mind, Bernadette wanted to create a Enneagram resource with a bit of a difference; something informative that at the same time was dynamic, entertaining and hopefully appealing to a new generation of Enneagram enthusiasts. She wanted to create a resource that helps to simplify the core messages each of us needs to hear in order to emerge from the fog created by the patterns of our minds and to put these messages to music so that they can be easily accessed when needed. She wanted to help us all bring the ‘complex’ back to the ‘primary’.
This is an album of nine unique songs that aim to capture, in both the lyrics and the music itself, the essence of each of the personality styles described in the Enneagram. Bernadette wanted to create songs that are experiential in nature - that as we listen to the choruses and deeply follow the messages they are pointing to, we can actually move closer to the present moment and into expansive awareness.
The Enneagram is an extraordinary tool which describes the nine ways that the mind habitually interprets the world as well as the emotions and behaviours that often result from these limited interpretations. When we are not aware of these habits we inadvertently experience life through a filter and this can often lead to suffering. The Enneagram also describes the nine different pathways that lead to freedom from these mental, emotional and behavioural patterns, helping us to find our way to the present moment, away from the confines of personality types and closer to who we truly are.
As we become more conscious of our particular ‘blind spots’ of interpretation that cause us to see life as a ‘problem’ and therefore cause us to suffer, we can begin to observe ourselves as we go about our day and through this observation can become more present to ‘what is’. When we are no longer clouded by mental and emotional habitual patterns, we can be fully here and now with life as it unfolds. Hopefully, having the pathways on hand in the form of a few catchy songs may serve to make it just that little bit easier to bring the patterns into consciousness and dissolve them. Now, those would be a jingles worth having stuck in your head!
In order to clearly convey the core elements of each personality structure, the songs on the album, Nine of Us, are not overly metaphorical or abstract and yet they are still deeply profound in their messages. Utilising simple imagery, the mental and emotional habits of each type structure as well as the defence mechanism that glues the structure together are expressed from the perspective of a person whose mind leads with each particular type. In the choruses, the pathway to liberation from each type structure is laid out through the use of beautiful, uncomplicated lyrics, aiding in the understanding that coming into presence is a beautiful and uncomplicated process. Being present is merely a dropping of the complicated drama created by the mind, which if left unchecked is constantly in the way. Presence is not something we need to struggle towards, but rather an ever-available state we can drop into.
The first song of the album begins with the sound of a ticking clock symbolising the mental creation of ‘time’; that is, the way our mind creates the idea of a past and a future in order to secure our identities and assure safety, sadly taking us away from the only time that truly exists - the present moment.
The final song concludes with the incredibly powerful and unequivocal statement, ‘I AM’; the only true assertion we can ever really make. We are not any of the identities we wear, not even our personalities, but rather at the core of our beings we are being itself, pure conscious awareness - all else is temporary.
Nine of Us is now available worldwide for digital download and streaming via iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify and all major online music distributors.
*To best support Bernadette, purchase your MP3 digital download of Nine of Us from the link below. Using a secured PayPal checkout, you will receive an email with a link to download the tracks. 85% of the purchase price will go directly to Bernadette (instead of the big corporations). Help her to fund future projects!