What does the inner voice sound like?

July 6th 2017

What does the inner voice actually sound like? And how can we tell the difference between it and the other voices we hear?

How do you know the difference between your inner voice and the other voices in there? Sometimes it feels like we’re crazy because there are competing dialogues inside our mind. When I talk about the inner voice, which one am I talking about? It’s an age-old question and I’m going to speak from experience and also a little bit about what I’ve learnt from others as well.

Your Inner Voice

The inner voice is a small, still, quiet voice. It never fights to be heard. It is non-judgemental. It will never put you down and it will never put others down. It has a feeling of truth to it and it has a feeling of certainty to it. It doesn’t talk incessantly. It’ll just say it once. It’s not trying to get your attention. It’s always broadcasting to you. It’s always answering questions. It’s always talking to you. It’s a radio station that’s always there, and your role is to tune in to its frequency. You don’t have to pull it out of the shadows or anything. It’s always there. You’ve just got to find a way to connect to it.

It’s often surprising because our thoughts are so common and familiar to us and the way we think is so familiar that when the voice of the soul, when your inner voice speaks, it has an element of surprise to it because that’s not how I normally think, I wouldn’t have thought of that. It’s also very surprising with its insight around certain situations. It’ll bring a new perspective, a whole perspective. It’s not a voice that guides you to selfishness. It’s a voice that is connected to the whole, the Great Spirit, all that is, divine consciousness. It’s a different dimension to your mind and your thoughts. And that dimension is what connects us all back to each other.

That voice that I hear in my inner stillness and the voice you hear in your inner stillness is connected to the same divine intelligence. It’s like the ocean and we’re all just ships on it but the ocean is the same. And when you tune in to what the ocean wants to tell you it doesn’t pull you into selfishness and wanting you to think for your own good and for your own benefit. It has a benevolence and a quality that connects rather than disconnects. It will look after everyone. It won’t just look after you, and it will never crumble other people, it will never trample on other people for you to get what you want. It’s so much more than that. It’s so much more powerful. It’ll find solutions to things that seem so constricted and tangled.

You’ll be left thinking it’s so obvious now that you mention it.

It feels like an old, wise woman or an old, wise man that’s been around for thousands of years. Nothing can surprise her. There’s no drama big enough that’ll make it skip a heartbeat. It’s this wise, benevolent guide, and it has a very gentle quality to it. Gentle as in it’s not forceful but firm in its certainty. When someone’s certain about something and it comes from a very strong, still place, the communication is often clear and concise. And that’s the inner voice. It’s clear, concise, certain, surprising, still, soft, benevolent.

The voice of your mind

The voice of the mind is so different. The voice of your mind is the voice of fear and separation. It’s got a whole different quality to it. The voice of the mind changes. It’s very clever because it always wants your attention. It wants you to listen to it. It’s very important. It has very important things to tell you. So it pulls your attention, it can be loud, and it can be persistent. It can be really persistent in wanting you to hear it and follow it. It’s got a taste of desperation in it if you’re not listening to it, if you’re not following it. It will separate you from others. It will want you to get ahead. It feels competitive with other people. It can be demeaning. It can be ego-building. It can put you up on a pedestal and make you feel that you’re so amazing and everyone else is mediocre. It’ll pull you into superiority or inferiority because of fear, and it can’t give you information that it has not consumed previously.

It traverses the well-trodden path. It is the voice of what seemingly can be reason and logic, based on information that’s being consumed in your past. It can only draw on what it knows. The unknown is the one thing that terrifies your mind. And so that’s why it’s the voice of fear because it will tell you don’t go there. It’ll tell you don’t try that, you’re safe here. Underlying all the things, all the conversations that it has going on, underlying all of it is the sentiment you’re safe and you’re protected if you just stay here, if you just stay in your comfort zone and don’t venture out into the dark.

The voice of the mind can shift and change, so it can be quite clever in that it can sometimes just be quiet and very benevolent and enticing in its calmness. But if you go against it it becomes a raging mess. The inner voice is so constant. It’s just the same radio signal broadcasting to you, and it’s your onus, your responsibility to tune in to it and listen to your inner voice.

It takes effort

It takes effort to hear your inner voice because your inner voice can only be heard in a certain amount of stillness, and the stillness is the quiet that will be there when the voice of the mind is calm, quiet or ignored. That stillness that pulls you to the frequency of your inner voice is the stillness of the mind. When the mind is too loud and manic and panicked, it’s impossible to hear your inner voice. It literally is impossible. You need to tune in deliberately and with conviction put the voice of the mind aside to hear what the inner voice has to say.

The mind will answer your questions from fear and authority. It wants you to have what you need which is mutually exclusive to other people having what they need, whereas the voice of your soul, your inner voice, is rooted in abundance of all things.

The inner voice doesn’t fight for your attention

I think one of the main characteristic of the inner voice is that it doesn’t fight for your attention. It can only be heard in stillness and quietness. It takes effort to hear it. And it will resonate with certainty and truth.

And it often says what you don’t want to hear.

For example, I was trying to decide whether I was going to do a business course which was a one-year commitment and a lot of money, and everyone around me was really supportive and saying yes, do it, this is going to be amazing. Do it, it will give you knowledge that you don’t have. It’ll be worth it. Do it. Everyone was saying, do it. And something inside me –  I really wanted to do it, I really wanted to do this course – was just tugging at me.

I was actually scared to tune in to my inner voice for fear that it might say not to do it. And sure enough when I tuned in and I asked the question do I sign up to this course now, it was a no. It said wait. It said wait one year which just seemed so long when you want to do a course and you want to do it right now and you’re running out of time or you know, the mind’s got you in fear about missing out, the fear of missing out (FOMO!).

I’m now at the point where I always follow the inner voice. I’ve not followed it enough to realise that I should always follow it. I’ve stayed in relationships too long when it was saying get out, and now I just always follow it.

So, I waited a year to do the course, and when I signed up a year later it just made complete sense why I needed to wait. I was in a much clearer space of mind. I was able to dive into the course with everything I had. Nothing was distracting me. It was just the perfect time to do that course. And I had to wait a year which it knew at decision-making time, but I didn’t.

Find stillness

When I had asked initially whether I should do this business course, I had to find stillness away from what I wanted to do. Because my answer was yes, say yes, say yes, just say yes, it is the right thing, do it now. And I had to let that go and find the stillness and the silence away from my own opinions and feelings about what I wanted and what I thought was right. I needed to hold the vessel open, an empty vessel, so that whatever comes from the inner voice is received clearly. So you’re not asking a question that you’ve already answered.

You’re asking a question with emptiness to receive an answer. And it’s so often not what I want to hear, but I have to follow it every single time.

That’s the surprising element of it. The voice of the mind will want you to head in the direction of safety which can be safety from other people’s judgments. That’s really key, and we’re going to talk about that next week. We’re going to talk about how to deal with other people’s judgments when dealing with your inner voice.

I hope you have got an idea about the difference between the inner voice and the voice of the mind. They’re very, very different. The voice of the mind is the one you’re used to. It’s the one that’s always there.

The voice of your inner being, your inner voice, is very different in quality, and it’s very easy to believe that it does not exist simply because you’ve not experienced it or heard it. But if you consciously make an effort to tune in to it, you will hear it, and it is the one relationship that you must develop.

It is the greatest relationship you will ever have, that one with your inner self, your true being.

Sharanya

xx