Music by Adrian DiMatteo from While You Are Awake

What’s the benefit of eating vegetarian if you’re vicious towards people? We feed ourselves and others with so many negative emotions and limiting beliefs. Emotional diet is just as integral to health as our physical diet. The way we think and talk about our world determines our experience of it, so why do we insist on consuming gratuitous violence, fear, sexual depravity, and mind-numbing humor as if it has no impact on how we feel? The science is in, and ancient cultures agree that healthy communication is essential to a happy, peaceful existence. It’s time to consider how sonic diet is impacting your life.

In the first place, sound can be physically damaging, with the CDC reporting that “Loud noise above 120 dB can cause immediate harm to your ears.” [Look back at Emma Camell’s ‘The Acoustic Ecology of the New York MTA‘] From the neurological perspective, we are hard-wired to respond to certain frequencies. A study published in Nature shows that oxytocin is released through a mother’s endocrine system when she hears her child cry, and Child Research Net published a statement supporting that, saying “It is true, and we often witness that babies who are cradled near the mother's left chest [close to the heartbeat] and rocked softly, fall into a calm sleep.”

But sound interpretation is not merely a physiological process. When a sound enters your mind, it becomes a subjectively interpreted mental construct. In other words - a belief. The placebo effect is evidence that health is often faith-based, and the Tibetan tradition often classified illnesses as “illusion disorders,” suggesting that sickness can arise from cognitive distortions of reality. Psychology itself approaches health from this standpoint, and psycho-somatic illness describes conditions that manifest in the body as a result of mental imbalance.

To dispel illusion, mantra recitation and chanting are practiced by millions throughout the world. The Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) also practice chanting and recitation of prayers and sacred texts. Mantra is a Sanskrit word deriving from ancient India. It literally means, “to save the mind from suffering and illness,” (Dr. Nida Chenagtsang, Interdependent Science of Tibetan Mantra Healing) and is often translated as, “mind protection.” Mantra practitioners recite verses from sacred texts such as Hindu Vedas or the Buddhist Tripitaka, which elucidate the nature of the universe and exalt transcendental qualities. One Sanskrit mantra reads:

Some mantras are thousands of verses long, expounding profound cosmological theories on consciousness and the nature of reality. Chanting these verses helps practitioners learn the teachings and keep the mind focused on the sublime. Wooden Leg of the Cheyenne nation puts it this way: “The bodily abstinence and the mental concentration upon lofty thoughts cleanses both the body and the soul and puts them into or keeps them in health. Then the individual mind gets closer toward conformity with the mind of the Great Medicine above us.”

Several thousand years ago, Gautama Buddha wrote, “All we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” Quantum physics agrees; the presence or absence of an observer can change the result of an experiment (see the famous “Double-Slit Experiment”), indicating that consciousness is not simply a by-product of physical reality, but plays an active role in determining it. Think about it: you need an idea before you can develop a prototype. You need inspiration in order to express yourself, and you need a plan before you can execute it.

Entire societies are built on abstract agreements established through words. We teach our young, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Even the police remind us: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.” Then we swear over a book to tell, “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Libel, propaganda, hate-speech and withholding testimony in contempt of court are considered criminal acts.

Constitutions, legal systems, municipal codes, and language itself depend on a shared consensus of what sounds signify. But words aren’t merely pragmatic, they carry emotional weight. We are conditioned through a lifetime of associations to assign emotional value to people’s words. Some statements are interpreted positively, while others are taken negatively.

The 42 Positive and Negative Affirmations of Ma’at refer to an ancient Egyptian treatise on truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. The list includes many direct instructions regarding the proper use and misuse of words and thoughts:

The Ten Commandments descend from this Egyptian wisdom, and one-fifth of them refer directly to speech:

• Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.

• Thou shalt not bear false witness.

In the Kogi tradition of Columbia, a person cannot practice divination who is known to be dishonest, prone to gossip, or who speaks ill of others. Women in the Mapuche tradition wear metallic headdresses which they jingle to block out the sound of another person’s gossip or direct verbal attack. Gossip is a form of bullying and Stopbullying.gov acknowledges the correlation between verbal bullying and increased rates of suicide. Maestro Manuel Rufino cautions, “If someone tries to get you involved in gossip, remind them: Who are you trying to hurt?”

Socrates offered three filters to determine whether or not something is gossip:

• 1 - Is it true?

• 2 - Is it good?

• 3 - Is it useful?

Social media has unfiltered the floodgates of human thought. It can be hard to sift through fake news, conspiracy theories, political mudslinging, and verbal cruelty that have become ubiquitous. Our impressionable minds are constantly exposed to misinformation, and without proper discernment, we can develop distorted perceptions of reality. Epictetus wrote, “Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them." So much division and polarization are bound to create an internal split, as people pit themselves against supposed enemies in the political arena. This poem expresses my sentiment:

Who would wish regret

in the heart of an enemy?

For to wish regret

in the heart of an enemy

is to wish regret upon the world.

And who would wish

to live in a world among regrets

even if they are not our own?

In Buddhism hatred, ignorance and greed are known as the Three Poisons, giving rise to all suffering states of consciousness, from jealousy to fear, laziness, anger, and so on. The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path propose a means of bringing an end to suffering. Among these, Right Speech and Right Mindfulness are fundamental pillars.

Indigenous people worldwide acknowledge that thoughts and words carry power. An old Cherokee story speaks of a grandfather who tells his grandson: There is a battle between two wolves inside us all - one is good, and one is evil. The grandson asks, ‘Which wolf wins?’ The grandfather replies, ‘the one you feed.’

Kawennontie of the Haudenosaunee confederacy, after which our own constitution is modeled, writes, “We have very sacred songs for many things, as the vibrations and our speech (for lack of a better word) reach into the hearts and minds of my people, as well as the vibrations are sent outwards to all creation and the four corners of the world and throughout humanity, downwards into mother earth and all that dwell there; roots, water, worms, the heart of momma earth etc., upwards to the sky and up to our star ancestors.”

There is an ancient Mayan salutation related to the word ‘paz’ or ‘peace.’ The word is pronounced “Pash,” and Maestro Domingo Dias Porta describes its significance:

"PASH in Mayan is the name of the month dedicated to music; this greeting means to radiate harmonious, musical waves, from the heart towards all beings in the 4 directions, giving it a deep cosmic meaning to the idea of peace. IN LAK'EH: I am You; AL LAK'EN: You are Me; a Mayan mantric formula of mutual identification, the basis of true peace, to tear down the mental walls of separateness and discrimination; is the Mayan key of understanding between beings and nations."

Becoming aware of every word and thought is no simple task. In many ways, it is the fundamental work of meditation. It requires constant vigilance to focus and direct the mind towards positive, solution-oriented thinking. With so much toxicity in the global conversation, it’s all the more critical to keep oneself in harmony. The same way you fast from fatty foods, fast from sarcastic language. The same way you avoid gluten, carbs, and sugar, abstain from gossip and blame. You are what you hear. Perhaps it’s time to change the channel.