On Christmas Day, 1988, I was on my own in Edmonton, where I was living and working. My wife Leanne and our daughters were in Australia where her father was dying of cancer.

As the date for their trip had come closer, I had felt a growing sense of something coming forward in energy, something that would change my life profoundly. So I was expecting 'something' to happen while they were gone.

I had no firm sense of what that something might be. But I was a professional writer so, if anything, I thought it would involve writing a book, maybe a novel, around my experience of the meditation and the self-awareness concepts it taught (described in on channeling).

The last thing I expected was to start channeling music.

But I did. About midday. I had just returned home from a neighbour's when I was suddenly bombarded with intense pulsing energies. They 'felt' similar to the meditation energies that I had been working with for several years but there was a difference.

Lyrics came with these energies. They were forced into my awareness. But they were lyrics I already 'knew'. Lyrics I had heard in a middle-of-the-night dream two weeks before Christmas and written down.

That we were never parted
and that we are always one
and that we shall be together
upon awakening

and that love there truly lies
can no longer be denied
and we shall be as one
when transformation's done.

There was no sense of melody with the lyrics, but I somehow 'knew' it was a song and not a poem, but that made no sense. I'd long accepted that I was an idiot musant. There was nothing I could do with a song.

But I had no say in the matter. It was a song and it started active channeling that Christmas Day.

if i told you a tale
of transformation
a tale of some terror and woe
a tale of some beauty too

It turned out those lines from my dream were the chorus of a multi-part song, an epic hero's journey tale called Transformation.

Initially I thought it would a personal song, one around my own spiritual journey, my own hopeful transformation from my work with the meditation energies.

But again I had no say in the matter. The song insisted on creating a mythic rather than individual story — about awakening to universal truth and the relationship of the 'self' embodied in the physical world to the self 'embodied' in the larger universal presence.

Just a simple little ditty.

the tale is of a god
who dreamed himself a man,
who learned to wear the sorrow
as though it were his own.

The song started and remained acapella for several weeks before guitar chords and a melody started to push into my awareness. By push, I mean my hands were 'led' to find the chords on the guitar, 'led' to find a strum.

That may sound gentle. It wasn't. I was continually overwhelmed by the energies pushing the song forward. Their intensity. The deep emotions they triggered. It was an all-engulfing experience, and a deep mystery. What was going on?

his lives were of this veil
the illusion we call me.
his sorrows were of his own making.
his joys a short-term end.

The song was long, almost 15 minutes, and suffered badly from my inability to sing and/or play the guitar with any competence. I couldn't finger the chords cleanly, my strum was idiosyncratically mediocore, and I couldn't even change chords in the middle of a bar (which meant I had to complete the bar even though I 'knew' that was wrong).

The finished song had six parts, each generally longer than the previous part, each with a reprise of the chorus I'd heard in my dream. The lyrics were simple but told a story found in many spiritual traditions: a god lost in the dreams of physical reality, searching a barely remembered promise across many lives, finally called back to the light. Awakened. Transformed.

for the pain he had gained
could be given no name
while the promise lay unheard.

for the pain was the same
pain he had felt
when the promise was first given.

At the time, it seemed complete.

But several years later I did channel a novel, a comic spiritual-adventure that did come directly out of the meditation and the self-awareness it taught. Which — unlike the songs — made perfect sense to me as a writer.

It was called tHe PoEt and i*.

So I was surprised and a bit nonplussed when it turned out Transformation not only featured in the novel, but the song provided the book's multi-part structure.

Except the book turned out to have seven parts, not six.

Now it felt like the song must be missing a part. But it was years since it had channeled. So that seemed to be that. The missing part 7 was just an odd anomaly from what was, really, an even stranger but long-gone experience.

Wrong.

so there that's it my story's done
except for this one, this small postscript.
that you are the god my song spoke of
you are the god who dreams

spokesong

Transformation was one of the first songs that I worked up as 'spokesong', recording it as though I were reading a poem on stage. It was a skill I'd acquired in my younger days and I actually preferred the spokesong version over the original guitar version.

While I was working on this project, I was sitting at home one night with the CD player on random. There was a CD of ethereal new age music called The Silent Path by Robert Haig Coxon in the mix, left there by my second wife Ellen who taught yoga. Suddenly I was 'hearing' the spokesong version of the Transformation chorus read against a piece of music from that CD.

But I forgot the experience. At least once. Maybe twice. It wasn't until I had the experience again but as a deja vue that I figured out maybe I should pay some attention here.

So I used my computer and audio workstation software to put my spokesong version against tracks from the CD, played around and created a music bed that covered all six parts of Transformation.

And then some. The music just naturally continued past the end of part 6 into what felt like the missing part 7. But I had no lyrics for it and didn't expect any would come.

But they did. One night I suddenly felt the words pouring through and in a very short period of time I had the spokesong version for part 7. The new lyrics tied the whole song together. Now it felt complete.

you are the me
lost to the we
you are the missing chord

Except it wasn't. Complete.

As I worked on getting the new part 7 recorded as spokesong, I suddenly started wanting to sing a slightly different version of the lyrics, like a chorus behind the spokesong voice. So I tried it and an entirely new song called Awakening suddenly channeled forward.

It was the first 3.0 type karosong, a brand new asynchronous collaboration. The melody was based on Haig Coxon's song Towards the Light. The new lyrics echoed Transformation's lyrics and overlaid the main song's last three parts like a call and response.

but it’s over
time to come home
home where you’ve always been . . .

yes where we were never parted
and where we are always one
and where we shall be together
upon awakening

and that love there truly lies
can no longer be denied
and we shall be as one
when transformation's done

Awakening was a brutal song to learn. It was far above my limited vocal skills and took several months to learn how to phrase and sing it. In the later stages, I began to involuntarily but consistently yawn at the start and end of the song. Loudly.

A bit distressing, until I realized the yawning was part of the song, it's bookends. At the beginning, the yawning was the narrator literally awakening; at the end, it was the narrator — not having reached transformation — going back to sleep and setting up the final lines.

and repeat
until complete