One of the things I really love about the Native American flute is the peace it offers me. This peace becomes my experience when I play the flutes and when I make them. But it wasn’t always the case. At first, when I discovered the Native flute many years ago, I realized how peaceful experience it is. But soon after that, I realized I had a personal problem that this instrument uncovered.
Soon after I discovered the Native American flute, I decided to make money on selling flutes and selling my own music. It took me a year to realize this was an emotional problem I had to deal with.
Today, in this short blog post, I share my personal story with you.
Discovering the Problem
Soon after I learned how to play the flute, I started to compose my own flute album – which was self-released – it’s called “Awakening”. Today, it’s available to download for free on Jamendo under Creative Commons licence. But I composed it not for any artistic purpose, but just to make money. I’ve seen people making their own music and making a living out of it. They were selling music, and selling concert tickets. I thought I can do the same.
At the same time, I begun to make flutes to sell them. I invested a lot of money and bought heavy and loud machines, learned the basics of woodworking, too. And I started making flutes to sell them.
I wanted to organize flute playing workshops and make money this way, too.
And I was doing all of this not because I found all of this wonderful and pleasant, but because I needed money at the time, and I’ve seen others making a living this way. So I decided to copy the ideas of others.
After a couple of months, I started to question my reasoning – I realized that I used to copy the business ideas of others in the past, and now I was doing the same. I was planning a business not because I enjoyed this type of business, but because others were successful and I was hoping I will be successful, too. Suddenly, the Native American flute became not a source of inner peace, but a source of stress and a “money maker”.
As soon as I realized this, I stopped doing what I was doing. I closed one of my websites, I sold the machines, I released my music for free.
Here I was, thinking about recording albums and selling my music; teaching how to play this instrument; making flutes and selling them; and so on, so on. In general, I was figuring out a way to make a lot of money with the flute. By doing so, I missed the point. I forgot the reason why I became interested in Native American Flute in the first place. And the reason was that this instrument offered me peace of mind.
Finding Peace Again
I realized that I’m not really interested in playing the flute in public, like doing concerts. It wasn’t “me”. What I really enjoy is to play the flute for myself. And I wasn’t happy with mass producing flutes with loud, powerful machines. I prefer to make branch flutes from time to time with hand tools mostly, and I prefer to consider this a hobby, not a daily job. And I wasn’t really happy about composing music and releasing albums for monetary purposes. While playing the flute had led me to discovering the pleasure of producing stock music, I was no longer interested in making a living with the Native flute itself
All of this led me to realize I was very easily influenced by the environment, or at least by the things I saw all around me. I was having troubles “finding myself”, instead I used to copy things around me, hoping they will work out. Today, I produce stock music as a hobby, and I play my flutes for my personal benefits. I no longer feel the urge to sell flute music, compose albums, or mass-produce the flutes.
FluteCraft itself was meant to be a money-making website. In the end, after my “realization”, it became a source of knowledge. I still enjoy writing tutorials and articles – as a hobby, it’s far more pleasant website :).
While I still seek myself and my place in the world, I am now aware of the way my mind works and the way Native flute benefit me personally.
The peace offered by Native American flute can often calm our mind down enough for us to see beyond the mist of daily thoughts, worries and expectations. This way, a flute may work as a tool of meditation. Once your mind is calm, it’s easy to see things clearly. This is what happened to me. I don’t want to tell you there’s something spiritual and healing about the flute, like New Age would comment.
Rather, I truly believe that the Native American flute has this way of offering us personal psychotherapy, just by helping us clearly see out thoughts.
An Instrument of Peace
In the past few months, I came up with a personal realization that Native American Flute is truly an instrument of inner peace. Today, I enjoy playing the music composed in the past, but also music composed by others such as Carlos R. Nakai. And I also enjoy total improvisation. I still make flutes, but only branch flutes in small quantities, usually three or four flutes per year.
This peace of mind, this calm the flute brings, is the greatest benefit of the flute. And this calm mind is just like a calm body of water. With no ripples on the surface, I can clearly see the bottom. Just like that, within my mind without ripples, I can see the clear path of my life. This was the greatest teaching of the Native American flute.
Play the flute, and let it bring peace to your mind, heart and soul – this is how you find yourself. I believe we already know all the answers, we just need to learn how to access them.
“Coping” others was my personal problem which I continue to deal with for this day, hoping that one day I will find myself again. The flute became my personal tool of “healing”. This is my story – but I’m sure others has their own stories, when the Native American flute became their tool of personal healing and therapy.
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