Within six months of my first hearing an inner voice, I heard a voice again, but this time I was not by myself.* Seated on a floor chair at a group meeting that had just ended, I was told to speak three words to a person seated across from me—a man I preferred to keep at a distance. I refused. When I went to stand I found that I couldn’t physically move. After a moment’s consideration of my need to get up, I agreed to the request, and the surprising outcome was a major turning point in my life, as told in A Flower for God.*
At the earliest, the information that I received was for and about me. In time I would have awareness of aspects of others’ lives, but by then I was sharing my life with the man for whom I had the message, whose prior years had given him the experience from which he made a reasoned guess of what was happening with me. Relying on him, and guided by my own inner sense of trust, I accepted that information was coming through me of which I was not the source. This intuitive response would serve me for the many years ahead when this ability was the foundation of my work.
As I was exposed to different people and groups, spiritual foundational learning was being put into place. Those who had ability with inner voice told me I was doing fine but offered reminders of when to challenge a voice and how to be faithful to a voice by not allowing my views or judgment to alter the message. It was better to be truthful about what I heard and wrong about the situation than to do any editing. Then a quote by Meher Baba would ultimately help me look back upon my experience and see that the inner voice was a first step in a pattern of my new life unfolding.*
Now, twenty-five years later, I find my inner voice a way of living so familiar that I cannot imagine being without it. Is it always accurate? I’ve settled on this answer. At some level of guidance, it is always accurate, but at my level of receiving, what I hear may not be what happens. And sometimes days, months, or years later I understand and feel its rightness.
My realization is, “Being a listener to words heard within us may reveal inspiration, intuition, and guidance, or nothing, but our openness offers possibilities.”
* Inner Voice Part 1 June 22, 2016
* A Flower for God moving toward publication
* Inner Voice Part 1 June 22, 2016