Given Suzuki's statement at left, why would anyone in their right mind strive for something that they understand will lose its elevated status once they attain it? Is it like Groucho's famous " I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member?"

Perhaps it is more like becoming familiar with something - something that does not easily give such familiarity. The daily practice - and for a musician playing in a spiritual context this would not mean playing every day, rather it's more like an acknowledgement of the path they are on, every day - gradually forms the familiarity, sometimes producing no noticeable change for many years. In my case, it was twenty years before I wrote my first real music, Earthgate.

As Suzuki states, it is something wonderful, and at the same time, by its very existence, nothing special. To make more of such a gift than it actually is would take away from it. To diminish it would also reduce the attainment. It may perhaps best be conceived as having reached sanity, which, while clear and untroubled, is indeed a challenge to capture in a world which not only continually informs you that you are not in charge, but also continually puts you in situations where you must make a choice or die.

Carlos Castaneda was given an excellent teaching on this point: his teacher Don Juan described to him the human experience as consisting of the Tonal and the Nagual. The Tonal was like an island containing everything one could conceive of, surrounded by the great infinite mystery of the Nagual. A warrior's task was to 'clean' their island of the Tonal and have it so well tended, with nothing pending, that they could then slip off into the infinite Nagual and nothing would go amiss during their absence. All would be waiting for their return. Otherwise, he said, such an experience was either unavailable, or very dangerous in terms of sanity.

One can 'leave the island' through playing music, as the song takes us somewhere we have never conceived of. The essence of the daily practice, then, is to prepare the ground for the return, a seamless shift where once again one becomes nothing special.