What is your quiet voice?
The are many voices in our minds that we lump together as our thoughts, however all thoughts do not come from the same source. The voice we are interested in is the voice in your head that is your best version, it is your sensible, truthful voice, it is the one that is wise and seems to have your best interest at heart. If we could listen to it all the time, if it was the dominant one, we would probably be a lot happier. Unfortunately it is not the voice that is front and center of our minds, it is not the voice that we hear it all the time, that is because it is very quiet and incredibly polite, it always speaks last, letting the others have their say first.
At the head of the table is the ego voice, it shouts so loudly and continuously, and over the top of itself, that the quiet voice gets drowned out, it is a mere whisper that is lost in the sound of the ocean. Not that we are blaming the ego, it is suppose to be loud, it is the inexperienced twin voices of the two year old, “I want that,” voice and the six year, “You shouldn't do that,” voice, and they are stuck at that age. It is there to protect you from tigers and loins (which is of course still a major problem in rural Sussex!”). It is there to make you panic, flee or fight, and most of all to protect you. It is the guard dog of your body, and it will snarl at everyone to get what it wants, and it is especially fond of barking at you.
As you grow up, the ego should be tamed by experience and if necessary meditation, this makes room for the adult voice which makes grown up decisions, it gives us the opportunity to take the leadership of our minds and start deciding what is for our long term good. It is the adult voice that creates plans, reality and decides how to invest our time and money for the life that we want. Though how we decide on our route through life is difficult, if we decide to build a house, we can plan each stage according to standard practice, we can phone experts and arrange when they turn up, it manageable because it break down into a series of tasks. However building a house is child play compared to deciding on the life we wish to lead and how we find out who we are, as there is an infinite number of choices, it freezes with the overwhelming choice. The adult voice is very good at execution, it is the third voice that decides between the demands of the twin voices of the ego. Give it a task and it will find the way, but we need more than that, we need guidance as to where we should be heading.
And where do we find the inspiration and intuition that illuminate our journey, we can look deep inside us and listen to the quiet voice- it is where ideas come from, it is where music, passion and love emerges from the darkness. It is quantum energy that sparks into life in the void. It is our connection to more than us, it is the gateway to our greater selves, or if you are not one to take credit, maybe it is the link to something more than us, to the eternal, the source or whichever version of the sense of bigness that you wish to feel or believe in.
And how do you listen to your quiet voice? Ask it questions, it loves questions and that is one of the reasons I love good questions. It fires up my quiet voice, it is the food upon which it feasts. And once you have asked your question, more than once if you want, you then listen and then ignore the first several answers your mind first gives you. It is almost certainly the ego, you will recognize it, it is loud and incessant, it will start every thought with, “I want”, “I need,” they are the signs of the ego, it is singular and self-absorbed. If it helps write down your question and let your answers flow through a fast rampage of thoughts, and practice more than once.
You will recognize the quiet voice by the contrast, like you see the stars against the night sky. The quiet voice is soft and kind, it cares about you. Do not be surprised if your quiet voice surprises you. Experiment with it, ask it any question, serious or silly, question your assumptions and most basic ideas, mostly importantly question what you know to be true.
Everything I write comes from that quiet voice. It needs my words, my knowledge to shine it's wisdom through, and it might just be me who thinks it wise, but I hope it is at least different. Everyone's quiet voice will shine through them in a different way, every person is a unique snowflake crystal for the light of that wisdom to diffuse through and create it's own patterns.
Every musician is playing the same song through their own souls, every story is the same just written with different words. We bring our unique reflections on something that is eternal, universal and static, because everything is really about connection in all it's many forms. The most important of which is the relationship between ourselves and the source of everything, it only in the contrast between the two we get to define ourselves.
Our human experience is the dynamic element that is life, we travel through time, we are the process of change and the quiet voice is the start and driver of the change. If you let it, it will give you direction, but it is not forceful, it is a breeze that swings a branch that moves some dirt, that starts to slide the stone that hit the boulder on the cliff, that causes the landslide of change in your life. That is why the quiet voice is the most powerful voice in the universe. It knows which butterfly to whisper to, that will change the path of fate.
