What’s the most valuable piece of music you’ve ever heard? I don’t necessarily mean the best music. I mean the piece of music that’s had the most profound impact on you.

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about a piece of music for the last couple of days that I’d consider my most valuable. It’s “Moonlight on Havasu Creek,” by Nicholas Gunn.

As usual, it filled me with sadness, enough this time that I decided the only thing I could do was write about it. No matter how many times I’ve heard it over the past few years, it can still leave me with a pain in my heart, struggling to breathe just a bit.

Ever since I was in grade school, I had heard about Native Americans. I never found the subject particularly interesting until a Texas history class in 7th grade when we got to learn many details about the differences among tribes. For the first time, it was like going beyond the generic version of “Indians” I had in my mind from American pop culture, especially the stupid children’s games in which Cowboys were the good guys, and Indians were the bad guys.

Over time, my knowledge of Native Americans grew with more details, including the tragic historical injustices done to them. I came to have a general sense of this injustice, but only on an intellectual level. I never really felt it in my gut, in my heart.

That all changed when I heard “Moonlight on Havasu Creek,” not instantly, but after a number of hearings, in a moment of indescribable beauty and understanding, a sudden expansion of consciousness.

I often fall asleep with music lightly playing in the background for relaxation. One night, I awoke briefly to hear my station on Pandora playing this track, which I had previously appreciated just from a musical standpoint. As I half-consciously took in the sound, the incredible gentleness of the flute accompanied by an undercurrent of light drumming and chanting, I began to feel what I can only describe as a mix of beauty, pain, and love.  Then, with the strike of the piano at about the 3:50 mark,  I was overwhelmed. I felt the dignity of a people for the first time. This was the very thing that had been missing from my intellectual understanding of Native Americans all these years. I felt connected to them as I had never been before, and I was overcome with grief.

Perhaps the reason I never felt like this before was that the culture as a whole was almost always presented in the context of war and historical events. But, in retrospect, that by itself misses the mark. The historical aspect, as significant as it may be, masks something more permanent, a timeless sense of the humanity of a civilization, with all the hopes, dreams, fears, and suffering.

Certainly, no civilization is perfect. Everyone has their flaws. But I once learned in an environmental psychology class that Native American culture, along with Buddhism, contains one of the most explicitly earth-friendly spiritual doctrines, as opposed to religious texts that describe the earth as something to be controlled, mastered, or exploited by people to serve human purposes. In Native American conceptions, people are only part of this system, part of a great cosmic harmony, certainly not masters or owners of anything.

This view is exceptionally conducive to sustainability. But more importantly, It speaks to a profound gentleness. The earth is treated as precious and sacred.

By contrast, the U.S. government, as an insidious method for making Native Americans go extinct indirectly in addition to direct killing, implemented  policy to exterminate bison. This would strike at the very heart of Native American survival, eliminating an otherwise sustainable source of food, clothing, and other necessities.

How cruel we human beings are to one another. How cold and calculated we are in the execution of our cruelty.

Yet, we are multifaceted beings. There is something more compassionate in our nature, something that must be cultivated and actualized from potential. Education is part of it, but this expansion of consciousness must occur beyond simple intellectual understanding. It must take root in our deepest emotions.

This is the value of music, to go beyond the intellect, expand our heart’s consciousness, and make us better than we were before.

The irony in this case is may be that this music is not purely Native American. It includes elements of classical and electronic, brought together into the all-purpose category of new age. But what does that matter? I’ve heard many pieces of pure Native American music without being so moved. Maybe others would have been moved by some of those pieces that didn’t speak to me. It’s as if Gunn translated something I didn’t quite understand, putting it into a musical language that was more familiar to me. For that, I am truly grateful.

I don’t know if Gunn ever consciously intended to compose a piece of music that would do this, but the love he put into his work has enabled me to feel love for millions of other humans whom I’ve never met. His music closed an illusory cosmic gap that hid the fact that we, all of us, were always connected.