Interview

The sound of unity

Interview with Monika Cyrani

Why do you sing, why do you write songs?

I sing and compose because I love to create sound, to be sound. It makes me feel alive, is cleansing, clarifying and uplifting at the same time. It nourishes my heart. And I am happy to pass on this nourishment to other people with my music. To everyone who benefits from my music.

Why do you love being sound?

Because I love to expand and become very wide. Something magical happens when you merge with the sound, when you surrender to a tone. But the heart has to be there for this magic to happen. In music, I experience a world beyond good and evil.

What do you think is the most valuable thing about music?

For me personally, music is a great teacher of love. It resounds and forms a bridge of sound. Because no matter what language we speak, where we come from, who we are, a sound sung together helps us to recognise that we are all connected in our deeper selves. It invites us into its vastness, freeing us from the narrowness of our frozen opinions. It invites us to sink deeper, deeper into ourselves. Music gives us wings and shows us that they are not theirs, they are ours. In my sound seminars, or when we sing together in my concerts, I realise how much people love this experience.

But I can hardly imagine people who have different views getting together and striking a common note. How do you think, would it be possible?

We could only find out if we started an experiment. People with different views and opinions come together. Sitting in a circle. Everyone expresses their point of view and instead of throwing nasty words at each other, we take a deep breath and feel what we feel. Fear, anger, hate, sadness. Everyone stays with themselves. Don’t point the finger at the other person. Feel what you feel and start to give it a sound. Freeing our feelings in sound creates a purified inner space where we can come back to ourselves. In our centre, in our body, in our deep breathing and above all in our heart, in love. Of course, opinions still differ, but perhaps we realise that throwing insults at each other leads nowhere. It only leads to division, only to war. Personally, I am definitely in favour of ‘peace despite differences of opinion’.

The kind of sound work you are inviting people to do is also a kind of non-violent communication. But people who are open to it would have to come together for that.

Yes, of course. People who have decided to stop poisoning themselves, their lives and their hearts. People who don’t want to be slaves to fear, but beacons of love. Who want to live their spiritual potential. Who long more for peaceful coexistence than for being right. I believe we all have to learn to accept that we are knitted differently. One of us is afraid of a bear, I’m afraid of a mouse. One person is not afraid of illness and death because he believes in God, while the other panics when he gets a cough. But how do we all want to live together here? It takes our hearts to long for peace in the world. And this peace begins within ourselves. We can make peace with everything that is within us, even with hatred when it is there. That is self-love.

One of your albums is called ‘Self-Love’. Would you be able to say that you love yourself?

Yes, I think I can say that. But that doesn’t mean smiling all the time. I also love my fear or my hatred when it arises. And if I can’t love it at the moment, condemning myself with it, then I also love myself with my condemnation. That is the essence of love. It loves. Loving our hatred is perhaps the greatest challenge for us humans, because we have learnt that we are evil when we hate. But that is not true. We are very hurt and feel powerless when we hate, and we are very afraid of something threatening to us. It is hopeless to say that it is this person’s fault that I feel this way, that I am afraid or angry. There is no solution out there. There are people walking around who believe and think all sorts of things. I can’t change them. But what I can change is my thinking, which stresses me out, which makes my psyche sick. Self-love leads me to my deeper self, to the light of my soul power.

In some of your songs, you also sing about the deeper self that you are talking about now. What exactly is that for you?

We are the deeper self in our essence. I have a beautiful story about this. It is the story of a wave that has not learnt to realise that it belongs to the great sea, that it would not exist without this sea. It therefore often feels very lonely and separated from the other waves and is afraid of dying. Sometimes the sun shines very intensely and touches the wave with the sound of its warmth. And when the wave doesn’t want to prove how terribly lonely it is, it can really enjoy this wonderful sound. It can surrender to it completely, let itself fall completely into it. She becomes one with him. In this surrender, she suddenly senses the depth of the sea beneath her and feels that it is her own depth. ‘What beauty and greatness I am,’ she says and feels a sense of security she has never felt before.

A beautiful poetic description of our deeper self. Is it the so-called true self that you also sing about in your songs?

Yes, it is the divine self that knows the truth. It knows that it belongs to a great sea and arises from it. And that it cannot die in it. A wave is lost in the sea and reappears as a new wave. Or it rests in it when there are no waves. It does not exist on its own. In the song ‘I am you’ on my new album ‘Fire of the Heart’ the deeper self sings to the little self to remind it of the light that it is. I often explore this theme in my songs. ‘The Star Within’, another one of my albums, is also a reminder of this. As with the image of the sea, it is the same with the image of the universe. The stars are the waves here. There is not a single star that does not belong to the great wide universe, just as there is no wave that lives on its own. Everything is interdependent and forms a unity.

Why is this experience of unity so important to you? Why do you write songs about it?

Because I want to share this experience. I want to let it resound in a song. But also because I know how much it hurts when you don’t feel like you belong, when you feel completely disconnected from everything and empty. I know that very well from my own life, especially when I was younger. That’s why I’m keen to encourage people who feel lonely or despondent, perhaps through a song like this, to remind them of a deep inner truth that is inherent in all of us.

Do you prefer the word unity to the word God? Do you believe in God?

Sometimes one way, sometimes the other. But I don’t believe in a chastising God, as the religions have taught us. That is a very old and distorted image of love, of God. For me, punishment has nothing to do with love. Love cancels out error. It transforms our consciousness of separation. That is the power of true love. I believe in God as our primal source of love, to whom we are always connected as the waves in a sea of love. If we would remember, we would no longer be afraid to let ourselves fall. If a wave lets itself fall, it falls into the sea from which it comes.

You also offer sound journeys in your seminars or sound sessions. If someone doesn’t know what that means, how would you describe it? What happens when you act as a medium?

My gift as a medium is something like an antenna to the more subtle, spiritual world. When I put myself in a deeper state and dive deep into the sea to remain in this image from before, I open up a soul space with my voice or sounds. The client can often also perceive this space, for example during a sound session. They feel their deeper being or their angel accompanying them. Or they receive images that emerge from their soul, which are an important supportive message for them. Or he simply feels an infinitely beneficial energy and I receive images that are supportive for his life situation and communicate them to him in sound or speech. The experience alone is infinitely touching for many people and is perceived as very healing.

Do you also use this gift of mediality when you compose or only in your sound work with clients?

With both. Music in particular is an excellent medium for communicating something that is beyond our understanding. I simply love working with sound in connection with my subtle perception and using it to remind myself and others who want it of the light of our deeper self.

The interview was conducted by Patricia Biondo.