About 25 years ago I studied to listen to spirit. I'd always been empathic and intuitive, but I wanted more. I wanted to hear my spirit guides. I wanted to be special. I worked hard at my studies, and practiced diligently. When the voice of spirit came to me, it didn't shout grand and glorious messages, instead, it whispered little things like, "don't try so hard" and "we're not that far away." I never got a sense that some Other Being/Thing/Energy/Entity was kicking me rudely out of my body and taking it over for the good of all. It never felt separate.
When I go back and read the spirit messages I recorded years ago, I can see the problems in life I was struggling with at the time. Even if I couldn't hear life-changing or spectacular answers, I could see how life was somehow on my side, spirit was somehow on my side. The messages may have been about simple matters, but they were kind and loving and inspiring and I can feel the same sweet energy in the words now as I felt at the time. When I first started to hear the voice of my angel, it repeated, "It's all right, it's all right, it's all right," a reassurance that brought me to tears. I still feel the sense of relief I felt then.
Listening to spirit started off seeming like an experience that can only happen to a lucky few, and ended up being something that is available to us all. Learning to listen to spirit has been about stripping away expectations, about surrendering to what life seems to want of me, and watching it all change as I change. When I am in the 'zone', whether working, walking in nature or putting out the garbage, what spirit has to say seems pretty mundane. Ordinary. Nothing special. In the 'zone' wisdom feels like wisdom with a small "w" rather than Wisdom with a capital "W." When out of the zone, I can see moments of deep inspiration and beauty in the words that came through. Nothing ordinary about it.
I've had my doubts over the years. Was my angel's voice the voice of a single angel? I don't know. Are each of the voices of the devas single divine entities? I don't know. Yet each is the one I heard that day, and each is what called to me to listen. Resolving those doubts wasn't about getting Final Answers for Once and For All. It was about looking back and seeing the inspired moments, seeing how much I am changed as a result of the effort, and knowing that in ten years it'll all look a lot different than it does now.
Some of those inspired moment were Big. Big enough to prove to me beyond doubt that we are a whole lot more than we think and have access to a whole lot more than we think.
One time I had laryngitis. Bad. I could barely whisper. But my routine was to take a walk around the ponds and bring my little cassette recorder in case the spirit moved me. I thought I was nuts to even bring it, but I stopped in a quiet spot beside the balsam poplars that smell so sweet and waited with the recorder running to see what spirit was saying. I spoke in a strangled whisper, sure that when I got home I would be unable to hear the message, but I went ahead with it anyhow. In a small part of my mind, as the dictation went on, I became aware that my voice had become stronger, stronger to the point that the laryngitis had vanished. In that same small corner of my mind I wondered if it would stay vanished after I turned off the tape. After the session, when I switched off the recorder I spoke a word or two aloud to see. I couldn't make the words loud. Some inner switch toggled the laryngitis back on. I sometimes puzzle over that and what it means. Was my perception broader in the zone or out of the zone? Could it be that easy to turn off an illness? If so, why don't we?
I have no answers, except to suggest that the session was inspired.
Well, that's is what inspiration is. Listening to spirit. Being with spirit. Letting spirit move us and move through us. When we sit still long enough and allow life to move through us without too much resistance, something lovely can happen.
The links on this page are to some of the words I've heard over the years.
