is there a small still voice to listen within us?
By jobmoone
@jobmoone (442)
Philippines
March 25, 2010 11:10am CST
I met a person that tells me if I had heard within myself a still voice that keeps saying good things for myself. a voice within me that will help indeed in times of doubting if I just listen from it. Is it really true?
4 responses
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
25 Mar 10
This is called your 'conscience' (a word that means 'with knowledge'). Some people will tell you that it is the 'voice of God within you' and this may be true. It is certain that 'no man is an island' and that we are all connected to and affected by other people and also need to listen to and respect and care for the world we live in.
The more that you are quiet and listen, the more that you will hear and understand. What is difficult at first is to distinguish between the voices in our heads that are really just selfish or the things that our parents, teachers and bosses taught us NOT to do. Some people will tell you that Satan also whispers in our ear, telling us to do evil things. I don't believe in Satan as a person (and I could explain why but it would take a long time).
'Hearing a still, small voice' is really about being in tune with others around us, our environment and our Creator. The 'voice' is really our brain putting ideas into words and deciding when it is true or when it is just our own imagination is the difficult bit. This is when it is good to pray and study religious texts to discover what accredited teachers have thought about the problems we are encountering.
Everyone has to discover 'God' for themselves. They may begin by following a religion or by rejecting all religion but if they really seek the truth, the truth will find them and make itself known. It's a bit like listening to a weak radio station against a lot of background noise: eventually and with practice, you can learn to hear the true voice that speaks in everyone's heart that will listen.
@roughneckjon (175)
• United States
25 Mar 10
Great response. I'm glad you were able to explain it in great detail. I'm still learning about all of this and it's very interesting to me.
@roughneckjon (175)
• United States
25 Mar 10
I think it depends on what kind of mood you are in. I've been told the opposite of what you have from a psychology instructor I had this last term. We were on the topic of positive thinking and I had asked her how I can become more of an optimist. She said a good thing to do is have little post-it notes around the house that have positive things written on them and to also tell the inner voice to shut up when it's being negative. So, I believe everyone has an inner voice. Your mood and way of thinking are the things that affect it and determine if it's going to be a positive inner voice or a negative one that needs to be quiet. Hope this helps a little bit. Have a good day, jobmoone, and you chose a great topic for discussion. :)
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
25 Mar 10
Your inner voice can be negative. Mostly, it is repeating the things that your parents, teachers and bosses might have said (sometimes we know people so well that we can even hear them telling us off!)
Some people call these negative thoughts the 'writings on our walls'. Everyone lives in a room (or comfort zone) of their own creating and most people bound it with warnings and negative thoughts ("Good people don't do that") that we inherit from others.
Your psychology instructor is on the right track. We need to establish SMART goals (look up S.M.A.R.T. to see what I'm referring to) in our lives and a good way to do this is to think positively about ourselves, our world and our goals (and physically putting positive statements into and around our lives is one way of doing it.)
The 'still, small voice' that the discussion refers to is something different, however. You can only hear it for what it is once you learn to filter all the positive and negative voices that crowd our heads and assign them to the proper sources ... 'these restrictive thoughts I have are because my mother didn't approve' or 'I am hearing that I shouldn't do this because, somewhere, I heard that it was a sin.'
Once we learn to recognise the source of our thoughts and 'internal rules', we can begin to discern what comes from outside ourselves and whether it comes from whatever we define as 'God' or 'Creator' or 'connection with the Universe'.
