Voice

When I was little, I recognized that a wiser voice spoke to me, a neutral, genderless voice that would make guiding statements---in particular warnings, like “That’s not true,” or “Don’t believe that.”  This voice appeared in my dreams regularly, but was also quite active during waking hours in my very young years (up to age 6 or so).  The voice kept me company when I played by myself.  I spoke to the voice, my imaginary friend, and it spoke back, played along with my games and enjoyed my ideas.

As a teenager, like many solitary, hormonal creatures I struggled with anxiety, low self-esteem, boredom verging on paralysis, unquenchable passion and longing, obsessive infatuations and contempt for my lot in life.  I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes.  I wrote lots of poetry, some of it authentic, some of it inflated and false.   I couldn’t sleep for nights on end.  Then one night I noticed that there was a murmuring going on, like a river, underneath my conscious thoughts, and I decided to shut off my mind and listen.  As soon as I was sufficiently quiet, I could hear fragments, statements, breaking the surface, almost like the auditory version of dream symbols; in this current of voices, the guiding voice would predominate, then fade, then return; soon the phrases would be linked to speakers, longer stories would develop out of the fragments, and this creation would lull me to sleep.  I still use this technique when I have trouble falling to sleep.

As I grew older, into my twenties and beyond, I became less aware of the guiding voice; I would hear/sense instead a sudden intrusion of a word or phrase when I had physical contact with someone.  It would be the same voice, but it would be something about that person.  This latter expression of the voice, the “received word”, has been an uncommon occurrence but intense when it happens.  A woman from human resources was handing out the paychecks; her arm touched mine, and I heard/felt the word “pregnant”.  I asked her about this possibility, and she said no, laughing.  The next day, the same woman came and whispered in my ear: “You were right!  But I didn’t know yesterday!”   Another time, a massage therapist named Meredith was giving me a back massage; I told her that I used to be good at guessing a person’s astrological sign.  She invited me to guess hers, and just as she was pushing into my back I felt the word “Cancer” pushing into me, quite forcefully.  So I said it out loud, and Meredith replied “That’s right!”   At that moment I didn’t feel that I had so much “guessed” her sign as that it was provided to me with a great deal of irrefutable emphasis.

I don’t believe the random data I received regarding people on the peripheries of my life was significant information---that is to say, the content (this person is pregnant, that person is a Cancer) was not important; it didn’t alter the other person’s path or choices.  What feels significant, rather, is the energy of the voice itself, demonstrating that it can, when it chooses, tell me something objectively, verifiably true about something seemingly outside of myself; in so doing, this voice is getting my attention, reminding me that it can tell me reliable truths about myself.  I could and should attend to this intuitive voice when it speaks.  Perhaps because I had stopped attending to it, listening for it, the voice was forcing itself into unguarded moments.  Saying “Hey you! Remember me? Been here all along.  Right here.  Trust me.”