phenomeNEWS - This Month's Music Review

This Month's Music Review
by Greg Ozimek
music@wwnet.net

Mantra Meditation: For Attracting & Healing Relationships
Thomas Ashley-Farrand
Sounds True

Forty days to New Relationships... 40 days to a New You... Thomas Ashley-Farrand creator of this excellent collection probably wouldn’t say it so blatantly, however this is the intent of his remarkable CD Mantra Meditation: For Attracting & Healing Relationships.

Thomas says that 40 is a special number of days. It is mentioned in the Bible among other places. Practicing the sanskrit mantras he clearly presents and intonates for us gets the ball (or chakra wheels, as it were) rolling for us. His formula is to use the mantras every day for 40 consecutive days and to then see what relationships happen.

The whole CD has a very good feel to it, it rings true and it has an inherent power that stirs from the depths of one’s soul (or, perhaps, from the physicalness of our bodies based from the petals of our many chakras).

Thomas Ashley-Farrand says his 40 day plan of repeating his prescription of easy to learn mantras will: attract a spiritually fulfilling (and desirable!) partner into your life, heal the relationships you now have with others, cultivate love and mitigate fear, anger and jealousy within yourself and much more.

Thomas Ashley-Farrand has been living at the high end of spiritual pursuits since the late 1960s. He was a full time (24/7) vedic temple priest who tended to the needs of his spiritual community for many years and also performed Vedic rites and ceremonies at least twice daily, as he continues to do to this day.

Many souls in our area will enjoy recalling a name, a personage, from the past who exposed them to his Divine view of Life and Divine gifts of song, Sadguru Sant Keshavadas. In 1974, Thomas received initiation from Sadguru Sant Keshavadas into the universal mantra for spiritual illumination, the Gayatri Mantra and other mystical formulas.

What’s so special about mantras? He said, “a mantra is a powerful sound formula that works directly with the chakras to process energy in a very specific way.

“A mantra initiates a vibration within a specific area of the body (the chakras or petals of the chakras) and that vibration acts to release blockages and tensions through the precise relationship of the mantra sounds to the chakras.”

Thomas’ CD, Mantra Meditation: For Attracting & Healing Relationships gives us what a trip to India would hope to yield. But, this is more than someone else doing it for us. Here are the actual, ancient formulas and descriptions on how to use them, given directly to us.

Let me know if you feel an inner connection with Thomas after intently listening to his CD program and beginning his 40 days of mantra repetition (the blessing of the teacher).

Thomas has a wish for all listeners to his CD Mantra Meditation: For Attracting & Healing Relationships. He said, “I hope my work helps everyone out there realize the vastness of their own spiritual potential and that these mantras can help them move steadily forward in a way that brings them deep fulfillment and great joy.”

Return to Love
Kathy Zavada
Precious Music

It’s a very good thing Kathy Zavada understands about life. A good thing she has a broad grasp and understanding of the sweeping range of life from a spiritual perspective with wholistic values.

It’s a very good thing.

Otherwise, how could her songs, some of which take us on a mini tour of life’s opportunities... how could they reach to everyone?

One song gives us hints of stories of people on the fringe – e.g., an old man in prison – making contributions to life... to the world, while he is in prison. Who wants to hear about that? Especially in an album filled with life and soul-inspiring songs? Yet, Kathy finds a way to pull it off; she does it by walking around the idea of love as something we each can give because we have it to give. Love is a part of us and is what we can give to each other, the world and to ourselves. This is true, but Kathy is convinced of it and convinces us in a subtle and meandering way in this song and throughout her CD.

With her Return to Love Kathy is able to use love as a theme to illustrate a fuller life in our relation to each other and also to mother Earth.

This spunky singer/songwriter/pianist was first welcomed into the community of song at the age of three when she started her professional career in Baltimore, MD as a lead singer of a children’s performance ensemble.

Kathy Zavada went on to become the youngest piano student accepted at the University of Florida at 13 years of age. She later went on to graduate with honors with degrees in Music and Psychology. In 1989 she began her professional recording career with her debut CD Heart Space. Return to Love is her 9th CD release.

Kathy said, “This music is very positive and uplifting in it’s message: you just feel better after listening to it.”

She’s right! I wonder if this is so because her theme indeed is love!

Nonetheless, Return to Love is also an inspiring showcase for her talent as a singer, pianist, songwriter, and producer of inspirational music as it displays her fine musical range from Celtic/Folk flavored tunes, rhythm and blues and also a few chants, to assembling backup performers. There’s something for all listeners.

Return to Love, it’s a very good thing.