Silencing The Noise To Hear The Divine
The truth is, all those voices inside my head, those voices that are admonishing me, instructing me, judging me, making me feel guilty, those voices I identify with the word of God, are not the voice of God. They are merely the echoes of those who taught me about God. They are my thoughts, not God speaking within me. Everything I think is my own thoughts, and all that I am is a combination of those voices of others I have internalized.
But if I can quiet my mind, if I can free it of all those voices of others who sought to explain the world to me, there resides a voice within that is not me. It flows within me, like a spring from which I can always quench my thirst. It does not ask to be named, does not demand to be heard. It simply is. It is not me in that I do not control it, would never seek to control it.
When I can quiet my mind, when I can silence the voices of others who have instilled in me their own beliefs, when I can silence the voice I call “me” that is constructed of the myriad understandings and misunderstandings of what others have tried to tell me, there is a voice that is mystical and sublime. It is a voice that does not command but is forever there should I be willing to be enlightened. It is the voice I, more than any other, wish to communicate with.
When I am fortunate enough to hear what it has to say, I feel that I am where I should be. When I hear it, I feel what it says is important enough and joyful enough that I ought to share it with others.
Indeed, it calls out not merely to be heard by me but for me to communicate to others. The most sublime moments of all are when that voice inside of me that is not me is in communication with the voice that resides within someone else that is not them.
What shall I call it? What shall I call this voice which has spoken to me in my most contented moments of solitude, which speaks in my most elevated moments of communion with others?
Why should I name It? It does not ask to be named. It tends to resist any label I try to place upon it. Wiser mortals than I have described it and warned against trying to place a name to it. And yet, those who see much, those who have heard the words of the wisest amongst us and who sought to explain those words to the rest of us, might have a name for it. And if I might dare to presume too much, if I might attempt to name the nameless, I might use the word God, knowing full well the endless trouble I have started by trying to bring Heaven down to earth, an inexpressible and unknowable truth down to human intellect.
Call it what you will. More important, do not dismiss it because someone describes it in words that do not appeal to you. Remember that people will attempt to name the unnamable. Know that their words are mere fingers pointing towards something that cannot be named. Do not mistake the road sign for the destination.