June 28 – Listening: How do I Hear the Divine?

I believe the divine is inside all of us just waiting to be heard.  That inner voice is our divine… You all know about that inner voice right? The one that tells you not to take a certain job or that you need to check in with one of your children.  Some people might call it their gut or intuition or their guardian angel.  Shel Silverstein even wrote a poem about it:

The Voice

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
“I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you–just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

And if Shel Silverstein wrote about it then it has to be a thing, right?

The problem is, sometimes there’s so much noise in our heads we can’t figure out what that voice is saying.  If I’m going to be honest, most of the time my inner voice gets drowned out by the hundreds of other voices in my head that are reminding what I need to be doing, with whom, and when I need to be doing it.  (Please tell me I am not the only one…)

This is a true shame because my inner voice has never led me astray.

Do you have this issue?  You know your inner voice holds the answer, but you just can’t hear it?  I’m not sure why, if this voice is always right, she can be so hard to hear.  I know that when I’m pretty sure I’m right in a conversation, I tend to speak louder.  I may even yell.  Wouldn’t it be nice if our inner voice did that too?

What can we do to try to raise the volume on our inner voice?

What I have found that helps me is long walks… the longer the better.  When I was training to walk a half marathon and walked 5 and 6 miles regularly, my inner voice and I were besties.  Walking on the trails at Suwanee Creek park, I would zone out and enter my own little world, a place I lovingly refer to as Kateland.  There, my inner voice would keep me company as I wandered along.  She helped me realize that I needed to paint more and stress less.  She opened my mind up to the idea of quitting my job and home schooling my son – something that I never could have otherwise imagined.

So many answers were available when I just was willing to listen.

Kate Hlava