Spiritual Inner Voice

Listen For the Spiritual Inner Voice That Whispers Your Name

How often have you been too proud to ask for help because you couldn’t admit to yourself that you needed it?

Or you were unwilling to open yourself to another for fear they could not hold your tender heart?

Or you stoically hid the pain of what you judged as failure, ashamed to acknowledge or even talk about it?

How many times along the way have you buried the memory of fear and shame, hoping to never see them again? How many times?

Trials return when the lesson goes unclaimed, waiting only for resolution, and unwilling to be ignored. The lesson was meant for us—an opportunity to choose again.

Direct experience is the best teacher, and the only experience we can really call our own. The lesson hard won through loss and dark detours is wisdom earned and genuinely ours to share.

Often it’s only when life takes us to a place of desperation, paralyzing uncertainty, or collapse that we ask for help–and are willing to listen for an answer.

Critical Inner Voice and Relationships

But what do we listen for? We listen for inner guidance, direction, and the knowledge that there is a way to navigate this world. We listen for an authentic voice that we recognize as our own.

Like you, I have experienced challenges and difficulties in life, and what I have judged as failure. When I first heard the low whisper of my own inner voice, I wasn’t sure if I could trust it. But the voice spoke quietly of things I struggled with, and led me to heal the places where I felt inadequate, unworthy and afraid. It helped me to heal my relationships with those closest to me. I learned to listen.

This kind of listening is our 7th sense, the ability to listen for the Divine, the still small voice that speaks with quiet authority and compels us to listen closely for the wisdom of the heart. We must silence the noise and distraction of the outer world to hear this voice and understand how it communicates with us.

Finding our way on this journey through life takes everything—body, mind, heart and spirit. It’s a commitment to stay present, pay attention, and listen for what calls to us.

Falling In

When we calm our minds and let the outer world go silent, everything falls away, and something becomes available that wasn’t available before–higher order thought, deeper insight, and the awareness of a deep connection to our own wisdom.

When everything around you seems to be falling apart, you fall in. You know you are not alone. You know you have strength and inner guidance to carry on, your own North Star, an internal reference point.

When we forget who we are, we become lost in the world. It is useful to be reminded that we have a direct communication link with the Intelligence that created us. The memory of God in us is completely unchanged by our forgetting—it’s right where we are, guiding us unerringly on our path.

Who doesn’t want to be plucked out of the insanity of this world and dropped into a sacred container so they can remember who they are?

Who doesn’t need a place to go where they can recover themselves and be restored to their right mind?

Who doesn’t want a deep and abiding connection, one they can turn to for solace and peace?

Finding our way in this world requires the clarity of a quiet mind to listen for Divine guidance, and appreciate the miracles that are within our grasp everyday. Here we find the answers we seek, everything we’ve been looking for. It’s the way to peace.

A Portrait in Falling In

There are places on the land that are sacred, where time slows down.

Walking in silence, my mind loosens and tears fall.

Exposure to the elements, gathering wood, making fire awaken an ancient memory.

Kneeling by the fire, bright with warmth and illumination, I express appreciation for life and love. Cedar, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco, symbols of gratitude and devotion.

In sacred space, connected to Earth and Sky, I fall in.

Journal open, I listen without strain for guidance that comes through the Fire.

When God talks, take good notes.

Laying more wood on the red-hot embers, and with a gentle breath, the light returns.

“Take this burden from me,” I whisper, offering a prayer of gratitude and a handful of loose sage to the fire. Smoke billows up into the dawn sky.

Looking around, nothing has been added or taken away, yet the world has become clear.