What was a little Chris dreaming of as a boy?
Where I came from had 7 “ of rain a year and there was one hill in about 400 sq miles. I dreamt of hills and green valleys. I now live in northern NSW in Australia; we had twice the annual rainfall that the outback has, in one day last year!
Was he happy?
No. I felt an acute sense of isolation. My natural clairsentience shut down extremely early because I wasn’t ‘met’. As a child my heart wanted to sing and express joy but it wasn’t safe. As an adult I now create safe environments for people to lovingly express their truth.
When did you realize you could sing?
When I left home to go to university I shared a house with some musicians and found that I could sing and play quite a few instruments naturally.
Tell me about your path, have you ventured far on it, and describe the journey so far?
My path could be seen as a reading list of the last 3 decades of ‘new age’ attempts to know truth. It wasn’t until I recognized, and started to release the separated aspect of myself, namely the spirit, that I was able to really come into a gentle connection with my heart. The spirit is the part of us that continually strives, be it for recognition, enlightenment, distraction, thrills, numbness, and it’s all the same on one level, anything to keep us from reconnecting to our soul. Really it’s not about discovering anything new, it is simply about reconnecting with the divine truth that is already inside us. There is only one path and that is the loving path. The many paths I went down were all a distraction.
What is your favourite instrument and why?
At the moment it’s the piano, it changes over the years. It has moved from guitar to percussion to oud, it has been flute, double bass, and woodwind. Now when I play the piano there is a lovely feeling of grace and connectedness when I put my fingers on the keyboard. My next album ‘Walk with you Heart’ will definitely have piano as the main accompanying instrument. I still love singing with the shruti. The shruti is a simple reed drone instrument that usually accompanies Indian classical singing. It’s like a squeeze box without the keyboard. I have always loved the feeling of freedom that comes from singing with this simple instrument so this always features in my concerts and workshops.
Are we really all Angels?
Yes, there is the divine in all of us, but it is up to us to contact it. When we do turn away from the distractions and the numbness and allow ourselves to start to feel, (however painful this is at the start) we will come to feel that divinity is inside ourselves. So yes, we can truly sing ‘We are all angels’. What is your greatest challenge/fear?
Challenges and fears are different. My greatest challenge is to stay truly gentle, and heart connected and to be continually in the energetic freedom of being able to observe and not absorb. This gives me the ability to express true compassion. Considering the momentum of the world, its search for distraction, and the momentum of old patterns and paradigms that push one to seek solace outside of oneself… this is an ongoing work-in –progress. Fear holds us back. Fear drains energy from us and does not give us true perspective. So it is important to identify fear, work through the energetic holding pattern it leaves you in and release it. The idea of this process is often much harder than the actual letting go because fear’s job is to keep us trapped, whereas the specific problem is the framework fear is set in. When we attach to this framework we become it.
Travelling the world as you do, what inspires you and your music?
Usually a sentence or a phrase spoken in truth is enough to ignite a whole song, There is usually a lovely feeling from within that accompanies this, its like the words are presented on a silver platter, my body feels the grace and truth of the words and the rest flows out. The musical phrases that are the key melodies to new songs happen in the same way.
What makes you sad?
Let’s look at what this word really means. Sadness is an emotion and so is happiness. Joy is not. Joy does not rely on any outside force to help sustain it. It is a beautiful emanation that comes from within, a state of being. Emotions are the energetic opposite to feelings. Feelings indicate to us what is happening inside our body, it is important to know how we feel about things. Emotions take us out of our centre and we become emotional. As we truly start to turn inside we can start to heal the issues that moved us into emotions. For example. in the past whenever I saw a father and son movie I would feel great sadness but since I have reconnected to my inner child this literally does not happen anymore. When you feel sadness, release it, don’t attach to it. Attaching to it buries the issue further into your body. So if you have, even unknowingly, attached to your sadness or are striving for happiness you have moved out of your centre. All we need to do is to connect to our innermost and just be. When I am truly connected inside I can feel the karmic interplay of what is being played out in the world, so I can feel this, but it does not effect me .So I must not move out of my centre and into my emotional body, if I did this it would be harmful to myself and also those around me, because as we now know, long term emotional patterns become the cause of disease in the body. Now if I had been asked what brings me joy, then that is different. How nature provides me with a continual reflection of my inner reality is a joyful experience. To feel the inner depth of light and awareness being reflected in the path of butterflies dancing in front of me, or the kookaburras song perfectly timed at a moment of joy, or the feeling of swimming in absolute gentleness, feeling the water around me magnifying that stillness many fold, there are many joyful experiences to be had.
Who have had the greatest influences on you as a person?
The executive producer of my last three albums Serge Benhayon. More than anything Serge has helped me to hear with the “ears of the heart” rather than the ‘ears of form or the intellect’. What a great education this has been. I have eventually understood the enormous responsibly that a musician has. We are accountable for whatever we are connected to, believe or indulge in. I always make sure I am in an energetically clear space when I am recording otherwise it will come through my music and affect the listener. Even sincerity is not enough when presenting music that is going to be listened to. In the same way that true love has not an ounce of emotional sway in it, music that truly serves and heals will also not have, nor lead people into any emotion whatsoever. Music that is truly from the heart will NEVER penetrate the enteric body; it will present itself and offer its energetic content. Music that is not from this inner heartfelt awareness will ALWAYS penetrate the etheric body and impose itself upon the listener. This then encompasses all music composed with any influence of drugs, religion, alcohol, gurus, or with any emotional intent. So I now have only 3 albums left on the market as I found the other 10 albums I have released wanting in some aspect of presenting musical truth. I know that this must seem a bit ‘intense’ but the energetic truth is there to be felt, and the responsibility of all musicians to know the ‘ears of their heart’ grows. Jenny, my partner of 14 years is another continual great influence in my life. She brings ongoing clarity to my writing, recording, work and personal development.
What are you striving for, if you feel the need to even strive anymore?
Striving is very much the old me. I have striven for enlightenment when I was a renunciate, for strength when I was practicing martial arts, striven to cathartically release the old pains. All striving comes from the separated part of us, the incarnating spirit. Now my task is to continually surrender the old patterns, be still, gentle and heartfelt. In this way all striving stops, we realize we are already there and work and relationships can be conducted in harmony, grace and joy. This is a completely different experience to how we are normally brought up to be, to ‘make’ something of ourselves in today’s competitive world where you can never really ‘be the best’. It’s actually amazing how much more work you can get done and how smoothly things run when you stop striving. Striving takes a lot of energy and is disharmonious for the body.
How important is a direct connection with others to you?
A great question. We are born with beautiful voices and we are born clairsentient (able to feel spherically.) A lot of my work helps us rediscover our natural beautiful voice and to do this we release the ‘grip’ of the mind, and its constant imposing and restrictive nature. When this starts to happen our intuitive awareness is nurtured, and within this reawakened intuitive self we ARE directly connected with others. This is our divine nature and it is the way we are meant to live. Children live naturally in this way until the world we create numbs them.
You can hear the Angels, can you/do you see them?
Yes, occasionally.
Describe to me your idea of eternal bliss?
Another great question as it highlights the illusory nature of what we have been conditioned to believe we are looking or striving for. Eternal bliss is a trick. I had a student once who was continually ‘ blissed out,” a very tall strong man dedicated to his path of ‘seeking truth”. Eventually, (and it took a while) he was able to feel what the bliss was covering up, and it was the pain of separation. This man had meditated a lot, but his style of meditation actually took him away from the very self he was wanting to connect with. It took him outside of himself, whereas the stillness that leads us in grace, to joy and harmony, resides within. The old meditative practices belong to a bygone age as most of what we, and certainly I, used to practice belongs to a bygone age. The purpose of meditation is solely to connect to the inner heart, it is not to take ourselves anywhere else than that, because then we are looking for something outside of ourselves to rescue us….this is giving our power away. Simply connect to your inner heart and THIS enables you to live soulfully. Bliss is an illusion but we can all experience joy and harmony now.
