Voices

Where do we look for the truth? And how do we know if the answers we find are the right ones? Which voices do we listen to?

Several centuries of mankind and so much to show at the end of it…. science, technology, mathematics, art, culture, religion. Each one is an attempt to explain the universe that we see around us. And there is as yet so much that we have still to understand. So much that we have only the vaguest of ideas about, a faint glimmer of understanding, so much that seems unbelievable and silly even…..and yet the concept of Earth as a sphere seemed ridiculous at a point of time. It would be naive to assume that the things we haven’t found a way to explain don’t exist at all.

Science and religion have waged a war for years. Various ways of understanding life and predicting the future have held popularity and died away. Some of them continue to conflict and co-exist. All over the world, people are trying to find answers to questions that have persisted….Who am I? What am I doing here? What is the meaning of life? Is there an afterlife? Is there God? Where are we going?

I don’t claim to have any of the answers. But I’ve been looking for them for a long time and I think I might find them by listening to voices that have been speaking for years….the voices of intuition. I see some common reactions when I discuss this with others. There is the all-out scepticism, the retorts about ‘mumbo-jumbo’. Some fear the ‘dark arts’ and things that don’t fit into their daily frame of reference. However, there is almost always a strong interest, a fascination with that which is not directly visible to our eyes. The Celestine Prophecy predicts a worldwide awakening to things hitherto unexplained by science or any of the ‘rational’ thought processes. I can see that happening all around me.

I like to think of a nice metaphor to illustrate this. Think of a house with 5 people in it. These five people live in it, interact with each other and make decisions on how to run the house. Each of them has a way of looking at things, unique strengths and shortcomings. Four of these people have had the power divided among themselves for a long time and have been allotted roles in decision-making. The fifth one has just a voice but no one hears it.

These five people are:
My mind: Intelligence, logic, intellect, rationale
My heart: Emotions, feelings, attachments
My body: Physical sensations, whatever can be touched and felt
My people: Family, friends and anybody who had an influence on me.
My intuition

The first four have their say in some way or the other. In a lot of people, one of those is a dominant factor and overshadows the others. Intuition barely has a say for most people or when it does, it is attributed to the emotions. I am making a distinction here between emotions and intuitions. One is what we feel for the world around us…it is an expression….of love, hate, anger, surprise, betrayal, fondness etc. The other is what is internalized from the world outside us…it is impression…messages that come into our being, which we don’t listen to because we are conditioned to believe only in what comes in through our eyes and ears.

Since I’ve started listening, I find my awareness of my intuition has increased. I cannot say my intuition has improved because it has always been there. It is like I suddenly realize that the voice has been there all my life, only I never chose to listen to it or acknowledge its presence. It is akin to tuning into radio frequencies and stopping at one point and realizing that what you’d written off as white noise so far is music.

I’ll take the metaphor further. Someone I know says that she never experiences intuition and she always wonders whether what she hears inside her head are her fears and/or her wants. I know that feeling, I used to experience that too. It is like the heart sometimes speaks the words of intuition in her voice…..so what we think are our emotions are our intuitions. I look back at the people I gravitate to and now I’m able to see which of those are people I chose because I liked them and which of those I was compelled to meet to fulfil a higher pattern.

The mind and body play these games as well. Fear itself is a joint effort of intuition, mind and body. Science has broken down the fear instinct and explained how it is a legacy of our animal ancestors to sense danger and be physically prepared to run, defend or attack. In a lot of ways the distinction between mind and intuition blurs and I really can’t say which is which.

I’ll end this by saying that we are incomplete until every force inside us finds a voice. If you give a person a chance to speak, he will eventually say something. It is just up to each of us to figure out whether we do want to listen to what our intuition is telling us.

Also cross-posted on IFSHA.