Classical music performance has long been regarded as the domain of talented individuals. This pervasive mindset can hinder individuals from realizing their full musical potential. This problem stems from habitual performing and teaching practices based on the body-soul division, which overlooks the importance of the embodied body as a musical agent. More significantly, this issue has been replicated by the habitual performing and teaching practices of musician-teachers, who often overlook the intrinsic qualities of the performing soul and body in favor of automatic, habitual, skilled movements. How can we, musician-teachers, then break our habitual chains and resurrect the body-soul unity, so that musicians can achieve essential life-span development and learning through performing music? In this project, I aim to understand what I call, "the transcendent self" as the intrinsic measure of body-soul unity in the context of musical performance and its pedagogy. Through autoethnographic narrative inquiry, utilizing the life story interview method as a methodological lens, I drew on the 30-year pilgrimage of a classical cellist as a vital testimony.According to the life story narrative, her pilgrimage towards soul-body unity was initiated by her own awareness of the soul-body division, which she believed stemmed from her family and educational environment as a student. Through the long liminal process, she found her unified, transcendent soul-body in performing music. She indicated that the state of the soul-body unity speaks to music that speaks for itself, wherein the performing body and soul, and eventually the self and music become coalesced and transcendent. In my crystallization of the study, I redefine the “self” as "the musical capacity within" and conceptualize the three selves: inhibited self, liminal self, and transcendent self, to represent the journey of experiencing the body-soul and self-music unity in the art of performing music. Further, this “transcendent self” can reflect the theory and practice of an essential pedagogy based upon the inherent quality of the musician’s soul-body unity. This study implies that every individual musician, at all levels, retains an inherent, malleable musical capacity that can be restored through the unity of soul-body/self-music, which is the pinnacle of the ultimate musical entity. From a capacity-building perspective, I envision that this study will enable students and teachers to open their own doors to ultimate lifelong growth and transformation by overcoming the long-standing barriers in classical music playing and its pedagogy.