Moving On with a Master Musician (Ten Years After)
by Kazarian
Well it's not Led Zeppelin. That was my reaction when I first heard the music of Gabriel of Sedona. I was a fifteen-year-old punk, steeped in a culture of “drugs, sex, and rock & roll.” My father had played me a tape of Gabriel's first LP, Unicorn Love. At the time I didn't understand what he was singing about. It sounded so strange and different. It was a sound and style that I wasn't used to. It was my introduction to Gabriel of Sedona's unique genre of music, “CosmoPop.”
Six months later I was visiting my father who had just moved to Sedona. Not long after I arrived, I was invited to play music with Gabriel of Urantia & The Bright & Morning Star Band. We met one sunny summer morning in a humbly equipped rehearsal space with a terrific view of Cathedral Rock. Gabriel had also invited a local keyboard player to come and try out for the band. After playing for a while, I began to realize that there was a lot more to this band than just music. This meeting of musicians was not just an opportunity to jam. This was my audition too. The gig: moving on.
That day, the anonymous keyboard player and I both came to a proverbial fork in the road of life. One road continued in front of us, maintaining our way of contributing to the problems of the world—actively or passively perpetuating imperfection in seemingly harmless ways. For me it would have been remaining idyllically static in high school and living a blissful adolescence in a quaint sea-side hamlet of the Pacific Northwest. The other road stretched around a corner into an uncertain future of service-based planetary solutions and proactive opportunities. The keyboard player chose to stay the course of a familiar life, but, like Robert Frost, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
July marks the ten-year anniversary of my involvement with The Bright & Morning Star Band. In that time, I have experienced heights of harmonic creativity and the joys that can attend truly beautiful and moving music. I have also experienced the loss of fellow band members who have chosen to deny their musical gifts, and I wrestled with my own feelings of inadequacy regarding my place in a band of destiny. Serving as a musician has been like riding waves of agony and ecstasy, experiencing both but never settling into the trough of one or the other.
Through these times of music and emotion Gabriel of Urantia has served as my mentor, counselor, and spiritual leader. I am continually astonished by his incredible depth, insight, and wisdom. It is an honor and a blessing to work and serve under him. He has always encouraged and supported me in becoming a well-balanced individual and a true musician. I think he is a global visionary, a musical master, and one of most misunderstood artists on the planet. Why is that?
Gabriel of Sedona & The Bright & Morning Star Band are about change, as is CosmoPop. I have discovered that true change is difficult and is often met with a great deal of resistance. Gabriel continues to promote global change despite planetary obstinacy. Out of the 150 or so songs of his that I am familiar with, one phrase is used more often than any other; “move on.” Together, these two little words become a challenging commandment, reminding us that lack of psychospiritual movement leads to psychospiritual atrophy. CosmoPop effectively creates forks in the road of life.
Below are the lyrics for a CosmoMystic song, “Edge City,” to be released this summer on Gabriel of Urantia & The Bright & Morning Star Band's next CD, Energy Master. It is the very first CosmoPop song that I played on that day of destiny when I chose to open my ears, heart and mind, and gently step off the beaten path. It is a song of strong encouragement and a call to decisive action, a song of faith in God and living a balanced life of true spirituality. Most of all, it is a song of growth, and change, and a call to move on. The complete lyrics of “Edge City”:
Every spoken spirit form that rides the wind of time
Joins the thoughts of the chosen ones, programmed by the I AM. (AUM)
And all that joins the thoughts of love, help to create the whole.
Only gentleness, truth, and harmony can be the only goal.
Move on, move on, move on, move on.
Flash of light, flash of hope, build your dreams on destiny's song
It can be done when you truly know, the mind of right and wrong.
So don't pretend, oh fallen friend, you know the way to go
Or that you are so perfect like, the very perfect I AM (AUM)
Come out of your edge city, come off the cosmic cloud,
Humble yourselves to the greater lights,
that have always led the I AM's (AUMS) crowd.
Move on, move on, move on, move on.
You’re so blind, to that scar, deep within your soul
You justify your actions in your self-righteous goal
And your myth goes on and on, blind to the core
Pointing your finger to the ones you love, that don't even keep the score
Accept the fact that you are loved, that angel’s only tool
Is your thought of security, resting in the Surgeon's school
Walk gently through the cosmic breeze, do not bend a reed,
Rest in Him, on Spirit's Child, who always knows your need.
Move on, move on, move on, move on.