We pledge to walk together In the ways of truth and affection, As best we know them now Or may learn them in days to come, That we and our children may be fulfilled And that we may speak to the world In words and actions Of peace and goodwill. The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” Each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do– determined to save the only life you could save.
Pretty powerful, no? I wonder how many of us have a story of exodus, of leaving a place that felt like slavery. Of leaving a place with feelings of great fear, and sorrow, and relief. Of leaving even when those around us did not want us to go, or even tried to stop us. Of leaving because we had to. Once I left a job in that spirit. Living in New York City and finishing my PhD dissertation, I already knew I would not continue in my field and was somewhat at loose ends. I took a holiday position with Tiffany & Co, the jeweler, and was seduced into staying beyond the Christmas rush because they kept promoting me. Three or four years later there I was, loose ends ever looser. I felt I was unraveling but saw no future. One day Tiffany passed me by for a promotion and when I found out, I quit. Right on the spot, I simply quit. I had unraveled to such an extent I did not see the end coming. My boss was frantic. How could I do that? They needed me; I was such an asset. When his pleas had no effect he called in the next boss, who told me his own story of being passed over and how it would turn out alright. But I left nonetheless. No other job in sight. One Saturday I just walked out of there. I felt afraid, but tremendously free and calm. My life could get on a new track, and I knew I needed that. As I look back on it I see that the twists and turns begun that day put me on the path to ministry and even to where I stand now.
One day I finally knew what I had to do. I think a time comes when we do know what we have to do. We have an inner voice, a wise inner voice, which knows a great deal. I believe that the deepest aspirations of our hearts are connected to our best selves and listening to our hearts’ desires put us in touch with our own authenticity. The trick lies in locating it, hearing it, trusting it. For we have lots of other voices too. Voices of fear; voices of obligation and their relatives–the should family; voices of judgement and criticism; voices of need. How do we determine which is our wise, knowing inner voice, the one which speaks on behalf of our most healthy best interests and the goodness of our aspirations?
Why don’t we hear that inner voice? What gets in the way? Time and space. How many of us give ourselves the time to stop; the time to pause and check in with ourselves? How many of us make a place for that in our lives? Oh yes, we are very busy, our time is stretched thin, our obligations and responsibilities crowd in. Oh yes. But who ever told us that the desires, the needs, the demands of our work, our families, our friends, even our hobbies took precedence over us? Who ever told us not to make time, even a very short time, for ourselves? And why did we believe them? When did we stop taking care of ourselves in our rush to take care of everybody else?
Or do we really want to listen to our inner voice? Maybe it will tell us something we don’t want to hear. Maybe it will tell us to make a change, or to let go of something, or to move beyond our fear, or to feel that pain, or to confront problematic assumptions and expectations, or to look at that which we regret, or to re-define ourselves. Maybe it will move us off a comfortable, if not completely satisfying, status quo. Maybe it will push us to grow. Who wants to put in that much effort?
Why don’t we hear that inner voice? Our ways of relating to other people. We learn how to connect with others, how to get along, (or not get along), from our families of origin. What we saw in our childhood homes is often what we replicate in our adulthood. It takes honesty and awareness to identify those learned, habitual patterns that do not serve us well and, once identified, it takes courage and strength to make changes in them. Some of us get caught in nets. Attitudes, opinions, feelings expressed by others catch us up and we become extricated in them, to the point that we increase them in each other. We lose sight of what is ours and what is not. Here’ s an example. Sometime last spring I led a small group discussion on the environment at a Network for Spiritual Progressives meeting. Each member of the group was to share what he/she understood as the issues and what, if any, involvement each had. As people spoke of the earth, and particularly climate change, a sense of despair, helplessness and anger grew. Each person seemed to have more of it than the next. We were swept away in a net and in the tide of group feeling, it became unclear what each individual felt and thought. We lost ourselves and became something else. But not necessarily anything representative of any one of us. Have you ever experienced such a net? It’s hard to hear an inner voice when one is netted. Yet it’s hard not to take on each other’s feelings and ideas, especially when expressed strongly, and with intensity.
It’s hard to extricate ourselves from a net and as often as not we need the assistance of someone outside the net in order to do it. Someone who can see the net more clearly than we. I’m told this is a true story. Off the beach in a place like Florida, a whale became caught in the nets of the fishermen. As the whale struggled to free itself it only caught itself more. People on the shore could see the situation but didn’t know what to do. Finally some divers swam over and began cutting the net away from the whale. At times they had to swim quite close. But the whale allowed it and when they had accomplished their task, it is said, the whale bumped each diver with her face, (as a gesture of thanks?) and then swam away. We get by with a little help from our friends.
Some of us are sponges. We soak up each other’s feelings and opinions until we’re saturated with them and in the soaking up we relieve others, like a sponge wiping water off a counter. Sometimes love comes in the form of a sponge. In my favorite show, The Phantom of the Opera, there is a song, sung by the lovers, in which the man says: “No more talk of darkness, forget these wide-eyed fears. I’m here–nothing can harm you, my words will warm and calm you. Let me be your freedom, let daylight dry your tears. I’m here, with you, beside you, to guard you and to guide you. . . . Let me be your shelter, let me be your light . . .” and the woman replies, “All I want is freedom, a world with no more night. And you, always beside me, to hold me and to hide me. . . “ He’s her sponge, soaking up her fears, pledging to take care of her and make it all right. How do you make acquaintance with your inner voice when full of another person’s stuff? How do you make acquaintance with your inner voice if you have allowed, or desired, another person to take over your feelings? Is that love? Or is it sponging? Can anyone ever make the world completely safe for another, regardless of how much we may want it so? Some of us tie knots. For whatever reasons, we cannot, or do not, express ourselves yet we cannot, or do not, let it go. We tie a knot, which often resides in the pit of our stomachs, or in the center of our hearts, causing pain like a stone in our shoe. These are the kind of knots that we can’t always untie and sometimes have to cut away. When I was a kid I had long hair and when my mother would wash it, it would get all tangled. (Did we not have conditioner in those days?) Drying in a towel would tangle it further. Then she would brush it. Ouch, ouch, ouch, as she worked to smooth out the knots. Sometimes she had to take the scissors to big wads of hair. These knots we tie are unfinished business we have with each other. They appear as grudges, or the memories, disappointments, the angers that wake us up at 4am as we rehearse them, over and over. Knots are confusions and feelings we don’t know what to do with. We work them like a kitten works a ball of yarn, and we get just as tangled up.
Why do we not hear our inner voice? Because we have no time for the activities which would allow that voice to emerge, such as meditation, or walking, or taking a bath, or creating something, or . . . . Because we keep a lid on it when it does speak up because it tells, it asks, too much. Because we relate to other people as sponges, nets and knots and we lose ourselves in them. But what if we did hear that voice? What if we did? How would we recognize it? How would we distinguish it from the other voices of fear, obligation, should, judgement, criticism, need? The voices of our past? Our inner voice tells us what we really think, what we really feel, what we really want to do. Our inner voice, because it is in sync with the deep aspirations of our hearts, has a different tone about it. It comes with a different atmosphere, if you will. The inner voice that speaks from our most authentic selves speaks with authority and clarity and strength and peace. Voices of fear, or obligation, or criticism, or need speak with a different tone, a tone of anxiety. If those other voices are not heard, or do not get what they want, there is a sense of panic. What will happen then? They are very dependent on outcome, of things going a certain way. There’s even a physical reaction, for me an upset stomach. There have been times in my life when I have had to make big decisions and I have not known what to do. Do I stay or go? Choose door 1 or door 2 or door 3? Deal or no deal? In trying to find my inner voice I would come upon all the others as well. So I flip a coin and see how I feel with the answer. Heads means deal, tails means no deal. What do my voices say when it comes up heads? If I feel unsettled, unsure, upset, anxious, I know I’m hearing the other voices. If I feel calm, relieved, “Oh yes, this is the right choice,” I’m hearing the inner voice tied to my most authentic self. One mark of that inner voice is the atmosphere it creates: peaceful and clear. It enables us to be with the present fearlessly.
The consequences, the results of following it are another mark of our wise inner voice. What happens when we follow what we think is our inner voice? Do our actions cause destruction? Harm? Damage? It’s pretty easy for the many other voices within to deceive us into choosing them. Only when we experience the results of our choices, both our internal feelings and the external consequences do we know, and sometimes not even then for certain. People end relationships, or don’t enter them at all, due to the fears intimacy raises in them. People claim justification for discrimination, dominance, murder as the voice of God. How do we know which voice speaks? By what standards do we assess the consequences of our actions? By holding up our personal, or communal or even societal ethics as a measuring stick. What are our values and what do they say? How do they compare to the results of listening to any particular voice? (I realize that personal, communal and societal ethical values may not always be the same and in situations of ethical conflict, how do we know, how do we choose the most compelling ethical stance? By the extent of damage and destruction brought about by any particular choice.)
I say damage and destruction because sometimes listening to our inner voices can cause pain to others. “You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible.” Pain, even hurt, are not the same as damage and destruction. One can act with respect and integrity and still cause pain. Some of us know that all too well.
The inner voice of our best selves reveals itself when we consider how we feel when we follow it and when we look at the results of following it through an ethical lens. Why is this important?
Unitarianism and Universalism both carried, from their beginnings, a profound optimism about human nature. Universalists insisted that, love being at the core of the universe, humans would do well to treat each other with love. Unitarians insisted that humans could be trusted with freedom of belief and of thought. Both Unitarians and Universalists insisted that human beings are not fatally flawed. Thus we can rise to our best selves and in doing so we co-create heaven in the here and now. Part of rising to our best selves is knowing ourselves. From Shakespeare to Socrates, from Buddha to Bob Dylan, from Hillel to the gnostic Jesus, self-knowledge has been recognized as essential to ethical living and to happiness. The ability to hear that inner voice, the one connected to our deepest and best aspirations, is an important indicator of self-knowledge.
“I think I’m afraid. Of course we are,” Gretel replied. . . . “You think we should turn back?” To which . . .Gretel answered, “We can’t. We forget the breadcrumbs.” So, they went forward because they simply couldn’t imagine the way back. (Excerpt from The Two Gretels by Robin Morgan.) May it be so.