Listening to the Quiet Voice Inside

Even when it tells you to move to a different city

Photo by David Hofmann on Unsplash

One day last July, during a meditation session, I felt a small voice ‘say’, “It’s time to move to Victoria.” And then the next day, “Your time in Nanaimo is done.” Nearly every time I sat, the calm voice reiterated this instruction.

My response? “But I don’t wanna move to Victoria.” The city struck me as loud and noisy, crowded, expensive, and—this rankled especially—so damned colonial. After years of learning about the impact of colonization on Indigenous people, I had a visceral reaction towards moving to a city that downright celebrates its English-ness. “Sarah,” one friend quipped, “It’s called Victoria. What did you expect?” (Fair point!)

Even as I protested, I knew I would move. Victoria is a beautiful city. It’s been ranked one of the top mid-sized cities in the world (current population: 400,000) and one of the most walkable. It has cooler summers and warmer winters than Nanaimo; it also has (somewhat) less rain.

How can I resist when this is what February looks like

I didn’t think, “Should I move?” I didn’t wonder where I should move. Most of this process wasn’t about me at all. It was about following the instructions I’d been given.

Letting life lead

When you make your life an experiment that includes elements of mysticism, as I have for the past 15 years, “what I want” becomes irrelevant in the big picture. I still choose what to wear or what to eat for dinner, sure. But I take Eckhart Tolle’s phrase “Life is the dancer and you are the dance” seriously. Every day, I aim to feel into what life wants from me, more than what I want from life. After all, I tried that long ago, and being a Type-A, high-achieving creative landed me in bed, unable to move for several months.

I’m not trying to sound super-spiritual here. In fact, moving was kind of a self-serving decision, in that I’m just trying not to make the same mistakes I’ve made before.

So, Ariel and I moved to Victoria two weeks ago. I looked at some quiet places on the edges of the city, but none of those worked out. I wound up in a tiny but bright condo…with three construction crews in a one-block radius. More lessons in acceptance (and also, noise-cancelling headphones).

I’m still not entirely sure why I’m here, though I was delighted to find that my new place is one block from the office of the retina surgeon who has been monitoring my right eye since last summer. That alone would be cool, but a week after I moved here, I learned that I might actually need retinal surgery, like, soon. (Or maybe not. I don’t yet know.)

I’m sure there are other reasons life brought me here, but I’ve also learned that the little voice is nothing if not pragmatic.

“Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.”
—Eckhart Tolle

What is that voice?

Is it intuition? The subconscious? The superconscious? Elvis? Bowie? Guides? My higher self? “God”?

I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. For simplicity’s sake, I call it ‘intuition,’ but that may or may not be it. All I know is that it answers questions, as long as my thinking mind—the part of me that wants to know the answer—is quiet.

How to hear the quiet voice

Learning to hear the quiet voice is simple but not easy at first. It’s not a thought. It’s not an external voice (usually). Here’s what has been true in my experience:

1. The thinking mind has to be quiet to hear intuition’s whisper.

2. Don’t try. Just allow your mind to release sounds and thoughts.

3. Intuition is neutral. It has no emotional charge, no excitement or dread.

It’s that simple (and that complicated). Keep meditating—this is far and away the best way to learn to hear the inner voice. A couple of years ago, I told my teacher that I had lost the little voice that had guided me for more than a decade. She suggested I double up on meditation, and within a month, I could hear the voice again.

Keep practicing fierce presence. Spend time in nature. I realize that being mindful is harder than ever right now—I’ve had to double down on my practices, too. This work is also now more essential than ever.

With everything that’s happening, why bother?

Humanity is at an inflection point. Either we’re going to go extinct because of greed, selfishness and war, or we’re heading towards a massive spiritual opening. Maybe, probably, both. (Or maybe something else. What do any of us really know?)

It’s super-easy to get caught up in the chaos, to continue reading the stories and social posts that fuel the painbody, but as I wrote in November, action taken from a place of hostility is futile (responsive anger is a whole other ballgame).

We can’t directly control what’s happening; the only thing we can control are our own actions—and even those aren’t really autonomous until and unless we develop profound self-awareness.

As Tara Brach says, self-awareness isn’t always good news (I can attest to that…oy.) But the bonus of developing self-awareness is an inner peace that allows us to remain equanimous in extremely uncertain and difficult times.

It takes a concerted effort to step back, to still the mind for 10, 20, 30, 40+ minutes. When we make that time consistently, though, we can begin to hear that quiet voice, and taking action from there is far more effective.

The thinking mind is a jackhammer.
Intuition is a whisper.

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