Whose Voice?
I can’t hear it, my own voice.
It’s been a hard month. I think I feel like this every holiday season. The days are short, mired in darkness. I think it’s natural for us to want to say bye to the world for three months. Bears do it. Wake me up when things wake up.
And yet. There’s so many plans and so much expectation. I find myself drinking a lot to cope. The introvert and the chronic worrier in me finds socializing hard without it. But then everything gets murky. Memory, my words, your words. So many words and emotions exchanged. So much energy and laughter. Movement and heat. Moments and bodies shifting around.
It’s hard to just be when there’s so much to do.
Post holiday season, it just feels like I’ve woken from a dream. A very exciting, emotional, exhausting dream.
And despite all the words I’ve spoken, it’s hard to remember the ones that were truly mine.
When I love someone, I value them so much, I absorb their words and opinions and feelings too much. Words become ideas. Ideas become our reality. It’s a scary thing when something so easily put out into the world can venture and change so much of our internal world. And once it’s in there, it’s so hard to get out.
And I know this means I need to get back to my meditation practice. That’s one of the things that comes with teaching - it becomes harder to find time for our own practice, but it becomes all the more important. Because when I can’t find the time for stillness, when I can’t find the time to listen, I can’t hear myself. I can’t hear what my heart is really craving. While I’ve gotten a lot better at tuning into what my body needs - movement, rest, food, water, nature - I’ve still got a long way to go on getting to know my heart. It’s because all my “wants” are so loud. Imagine trying to hear a whisper while you’re rocking out at a concert. That’s what it feels like.
I’m tired of the wants. I am in need of the needs.
My heart needs peace. She said it with an exasperated sigh. And then a second time, gentler. Peace. What does that look like? It looks like reminding, remembering, and returning to myself. It looks like replacing guessing, assuming, and putting other’s needs before my own (a habit I picked up from my Dad. Thanks Dad!) with asking, learning, and accepting what I need in this situation most. It looks like replacing rescuing, mothering, and intervening (a habit I picked up from my Mom. Thanks Mom!) with listening, being, and not reacting. It means focusing my energy on people and places and actions and words and ideas that bring me more energy - but the right kind of energy. A renewable energy. Not the kind that burns hot and fast and quick, but the kind that’s sustainable, restorative.
It means speaking from the heart, rather than the head, where all my memories of things people have said that have made me question myself live. It means noticing the thought, and hearing the thought in the voice that said it, so that I know it’s not my own. It means being curious about what could happen next if I didn’t judge what was happening now.
When we speak of the past, we cannot go back to our past selves, to the past moment. To retell and analyze something over and over again is our mind’s natural response for protection, but it does us a great disservice. The wonderful words we could speak about this moment are wasted. What is my heart saying about it now? Emotions last for 90 seconds, and yet we choose to hold onto it, wrap ourselves in it like the emergency rescue blankets they give you after a traumatic event. We don’t need to hold onto the blanket. Our bodies have moved on. It’s our mind we have to convince. And when we use our words to speak of expectations of the future (a perfect precursor to disappointment) it is also a disservice. We keep lending our voice to misplaced energies. We try to go back to change our current feeling. We try to fast forward to predict our future feeling. What about now? Why make a date with happiness for next week?
Voicing others’ thoughts, opinions, and feelings don’t give me peace. They make me wonder even as the words are leaving my mouth. A quick reaction, a sharp remark, a fearful question. We’ve been taught so many useless forms of self-protection that keep us guarded, separated. Where in your life could there be more ease? Can you give voice to that? What need have you suppressed and pushed down to the bottom of your heart, weighing it down like an anchor, so that it can no longer move freely? Can you give voice to it so that it can?
Peace is simple. It’s just not easy. Yet. Because most of us weren’t taught it. We were taught to become replicas of our adults instead. And most of them weren’t taught it either. Riding a bike, learning to swim, even learning to walk was unfathomable at one point as well. But with repetition, it can become effortless. Start by saying one truth a day - one thing your heart really wants - and bring power back to your voice. Allow the others to arise and and dissipate like fog over the lake of your mind. Peace is our natural state. Everything else is a distraction, a memory, an illusion. Open your hands and observe the power being placed there. Hold onto it, scorch it into your palm so that it leaves a mark. Sit, and be still - except for the finger that runs over the scar.
Its top is not bright;
Its bottom is not dark;
Existing continuously, it cannot be named
and returns
to no-thingness.
-Lao Tzu
