“I think, like many other people who feel an inner calling, you sometimes feel out of step or out of harmony with those around you. You may find a few souls who you feel very connected to, but not necessarily connected to the mass, with everyone.”

From a young age, Michael Stillwater is someone who has always stuck to that inner calling.

At thirteen, he borrowed his mother’s guitar. Realizing he was a lefty, he rebelliously re-strung the instrument, ending his mother’s musical career (or so she jokes) and embarking on his own.

By the time he reached high school, he knew conventional schooling wasn’t for him. He dropped out and migrated from Washington D.C. to California, enrolling in an experimental alternative school called Pacific High in the Santa Cruz Mountains. During one’s senior semester there, students are asked to leave the school and find someone to apprentice with, in the direction they want to go.

Michael naturally thought he would go find a great guitarist to fill this role. But one day, while walking in Santa Cruz, he stepped into the Integral Yoga Institute, which just happened to be an ashram of Swami Satchidananda.

It was this beautiful mansion down on Ocean Drive. The rooms were empty of furniture—just this beautiful room smelling of incense, and set up for doing the yoga practice and so forth.

As he walked around, he heard a guitar in the distance. Following his ear, he went upstairs and found someone sitting there playing the guitar left-handed. He felt immediately at home.

“How does one live here?” he asked the guitarist.

“You just move in,” was the reply, as simple as it sounds.

Without skipping a beat, Michael contacted his school and got the approval to finish his school year in the ashram. There, he lived and learned, spending his days studying Sanskrit, chanting, yoga, and meditation.

Looking back, he describes that it all happened “from an inner directedness of trusting that in following the song inside of me as I heard it, it would lead me right to where I needed to be.”

Course on Miracles

Out of the depth of his yoga years, Michael felt drawn to create music that would open hearts.

Again, in following that inner voice, the musician came across a book with a teaching called "A Course in Miracles". It was the late 1970s, and he was based in Marin County, California. Flipping through the pages, he saw the words as a big book of lyrics just waiting to be set to music.

“Lyrics of simple messages and teaching that, in the simplest form of it, would be lessons and catalysts for the heart to open.”

In 1978, he began a regular musical gathering that integrated his Course in Miracles lyrics, Sufi chants, and melodies from other traditions into easy-to-repeat chants that everyone could join.

“I loved the power of everyone singing together, I didn’t need to be there singing my message to everyone, I wanted to be there in the circle, and set something going and then just relax and be in it with everyone.”

The gatherings grew into what became known as “Heaven’s Song,” and became incorporated into church. For a decade, Michael facilitated these group heart-opening songs in Hawaii.

Spontaneous Song

After ten years in Hawaii, Michael transitioned into period of inwardness. After a peaceful divorce with his first wife, he moved back to California and then Washington State, and began exploring spontaneous songs with people in hospice care.

It began with his father’s death. When the doctor informed him that his father’s organs were failing, Michael asked him if he had told his father the news.

The question struck a chord and, to his surprise, the physician began to cry.

“I’ve never been able to tell any patient they are dying, because it brings up my own fear of my own mortality,” the doctor admitted.

At that moment, something shifted in Michael.

“I realized that I wanted to spend time with people who were dying. That I needed to get down to the roots of any fear I might have about death. But also, down underneath it, where it meets the mystical truth that I know so deeply must be…. and to meet people, regardless of what their beliefs are, as they’re approaching that threshold [of death]. To meet them in the music, which has no boundaries.”

He began spending time in hospices. At times, he would play music for the dying and their families. Other times, sitting in silence was all that was needed. Often, he would leave the room without playing a thing. But more often than not, at least at the very end, someone would ask, “Will you sing a song?”

“And instead of singing a song I knew, I would sing a song from the unknown.” Michael described.

“I would sing from the mystery of the moment of feeling empathic connection between all of us. And these songs would be about the love that was just so present in the room but wasn’t being spoken.”

Beyond the families of the dying, Michael found himself spinning songs for the hospice workers.

“Often, in the doorway, would be the nurse, the chaplain, the doctor, or social worker. And over time, I found myself drawn to be with them and their groups… Because for the families, they have this experience once with a loved one. Or a few times. But for the medical person, it’s every day. It’s over and over, and so much grief and stress is not dealt with. So the music has come in to serve that dimension as well.”

Beyond Performance

It’s powerful to think about the life that can emerge when one follows their deepest sense of knowing—that inner voice. For Michael, this was the path that made the most sense.

Yet in performing, it can be easy to get caught up in an emphasis on self-image and expression. But, Michael points out, “What happens when your performance is for service? The service is to let go of needing to be the one that it’s all about.”

After experiencing the empowerment that comes from tapping into his own inner voice through song, he wanted to share that with others.

He noticed, “Little children all around the world are singing songs they make up all the time. It’s universal. And it’s also universal that at some point, for most people, it stops. That capacity for song-making gets minimal, or is reduced to doing it on your own, but not in front of other people.”

So, he began creating environments where people could return to the song-maker inside of them. Not to become a lyricist, but to remember and reconnect with our humanity.

Today, through both song and film, he seeks to “catalyze the memory of the creative pulse inside of us.” Especially for those who believe they don’t have it.

Inner Harmony

From recording over a dozen albums, raising consciousness through community singing, supporting strangers-turned-friends and their families at the end of life, producing a multi-award-winning film series, and re-sparking the inner song in many, Michael Stillwater speaks with shining authenticity.

And he practices what he preaches.

During the Q&A, he blew us all away with a beautiful impromptu song for Prakash and Shruti:
In the 90 minutes of the Forest Call, the honesty imbued in Michael’s words, voice, and vibration shifted us all a little more towards inner harmony.

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Michael Stillwater is a multi-talented musician, performing artist, filmmaker, photographer, mentor, and husband. He currently resides in Switzerland with his wife Doris.