The voice inside my head doesn’t stop.
It doesn’t stop talking, plotting, thinking.
It’s the ego, and it’s here to stay.
Most nights recently, It’s been hard to sleep.
I want to say it’s because I am in a high-stress point in my life, but it doesn’t feel that way.
For the first time, I can see a path to the other side.
I am grateful for the clarity I’ve earned by sitting still.
The voice inside my head used to control me.
It decided how I behaved, what I did for a living and how I perceived the world.
It made me miserable, because it wasn’t me.
If you are unaware of your ego’s grip on your life, you won’t be reading this.
If you are beginning to notice this voice inside your head, keep reading.
Choosing to Listen
The voice gets louder at night.
Some nights it gets so loud, I get out of bed and sit at my dark desk.
I pull out a notebook, open it and ask the voice “what now?”.
Sometimes it says nothing.
It’s just shocked I got out of bed.
Other times, it tells me to write and write.
Justify. Justify. Justify. Explain the logic, get to the answer. Solve the problem using the past and the known future I’ve created for you.
It could be at 11pm or 3:30am.
The more I ignore the voice the louder it gets.
Most nights however, the voice is quiet.
It doesn’t speak loudly but it whispers.
Those whispers are what I really pay attention to.
That’s my intuition.
I chose to listen to the whispers over the roar.
The quit voice doesn’t provoke me or make me get out of bed when I cannot sleep.
It doesn’t control me, and I listen to it very seriously.
That’s how I realized my calling.
The voice of the intuition is hard to hear.
You have to choose to listen to it’s cryptic messages and live in uncertainty and unknown.
It may not reveal any answers right away.
It’s patient.
It’s soft and warm.
It’s safe.
Most people have lost their ability to hear this voice.
It’s plea gets drown out in the chaos of the ego.
But the intuition never stops calling for you.
It will create an external reality in which you begin to hate, in the hopes you get the message to reflect, to pause, to go within.
The power of the intuition is incredible, it saved my life.
It can save yours too.
It’s when we consciously decide to pick the voice of uncertainty does our authentic life begin to reveal itself.
How to Stop Listening to The Ego as Truth
The ego does not survive in the present moment.
In fact, the ego does anything it can for you not to be present.
For example, I don’t listen to music in the car anymore.
I’ve created that space to be one where I observe my thinking and let it go.
I keep a recorder up on my phone, so when insight arrives I can capture it.
But sometimes, when I am feeling more frazzled than other times, my ego starts to pump music into my head.
As a last resort the ego puts a catchy song in my head so I become distracted away from the present moment.
And that song is always a Christmas song.
It makes me laugh, I can notice it every time and refocus myself once more.
When you begin to hear the roars of the ego, you start to see that it doesn’t speak the truth.
Becoming present and sitting in stillness, you see how crazy the ego really is.
How black and white its thinking is.
How quickly it gives you the worst case scenario, and makes you believe it.
How quickly it tries to justify itself.
The truth never needs justification. The truth just is.
Experiencing a satori (a moment of presence) snaps you out of the ego if mind and into your body.
The first time I experienced presence, I realized that everything is a paradox.
We have the conscious choice everyday to listen to the screams of the ego or let the screaming stop so we can hear the whispers of our intuition.
Remember, the ego isn’t an enemy, but an anxious sidekick you have to befriend and work with daily.
When in doubt, silence it out (nicely with presence).
More soon,
Iz Quane