Do you know your Voice?

If you can experience solitude rather than loneliness- at least most of the time- you have that capacity because you have had satisfying experiences with others. Solitude becomes possible and comfortable because you have had the experience of… “being alone while someone else was present.” You have the ability to carry the other…with-in.

Intimacy….the basic issue seems to be that you can not love someone else until you know and love yourself. But there is more to it then just a sense of self-worth, I think there also needs to be a sense of self-efficacy. BELONGING- self-worth… MASTERY- self-efficacy

According to Nathaniel Branden there are 6 pillars to the thing we call self-esteem.

• The Practice of Living Consciously • The Practice of Self-Acceptance • The Practice of Self-Responsibility • The Practice of Self-Assertiveness • The Practice of Living Purposefully • The Practice of Personal Integrity

In intimacy you risk being who you are, and risk facing another person as they are. A true encounter with another… the level of intimacy between people can never really be deeper then the level of intimacy one has with oneself….

“Radical conversation has emotional, imaginal, sexual, and spiritual dimensions as well as verbal ones. And the conversation is approached not only with skill and intent but also with innocence and wonder. Neither the other nor the self is a fixed thing. The bottom is never reached. One hopes to be forever surprised."

“Listening- our ability to truly listen to another is the gateway toward intimacy … “
 - Michael McKnight

Solitude is the reflection of the primordial silence, the womb of creation.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light; and there was light”

I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name. . .
I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;
I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound
and the sound of the name.
I am the sign of the letter
and the designation of the division. . .
 - The Thunder: Perfect Mind - Nag Hammadi Library, gen.ed. James M. Robinson, 1990

I will come back to this in light of the above and what will be below, and let the dance of the Shekinah unfold.

To truly listen to another ... What does it mean to listen? Is it to hear the voice of another? And what is the voice we hear?

It is said that metaphorically voice describes an energy pattern revealed when expressing opinions, beliefs, values, and desires. Each individual's voice represents his or her unique energy pattern for motivation, cognitive processing and experiencing life. Our voices represents our inner uniqueness, it is as unique to each individual as is our fingerprints. To truly listen to another is hearing more than just words, it is hearing a soft song that rises from the soul. It can fill us with longing and even frighten some for it rises from the sea of our unconscious, from the depths. It will however stir us to the core. We may fear hearing this song for we may feel overwhelmed by our feelings. To speak with a pure voice is to speak the Living Word, to speak with the voice of the Infinite Divine. To speak with a pure voice is to enact the truth. Our desire gives rise to thoughts, which arises as voice in the mind; then, speaking our thoughts we manifest them, and actions follow our speech. When we use our voice we create the future. By knowing our own voice we can better understand ourselves. Knowing about other's voices helps alleviate knee-jerk blaming that often occurs when our needs are not met. By familiarizing yourself with “voice” you begin to shift focus away from “things happens to me” reactive attitude to the more progressive “I make things happen.”

Speech has power, yet how little we know and understand this phenomena.

Says Marci Segal in her book “Creativity and Personality Type”

“Voice is your expression of your energy. It is influenced by where you are in the cycle of creating your environment, your emotional state, your physical state, your motivations, how well you exhibit culturally appropriate creativity, how your brain works, and how well you are able to use messages from your unconsciousness. In essence, knowing your voice helps you to facilitate, nurture, inspire, and welcome creative contributions of others. It also gives you the freedom and strength to grow beyond yourself.”

The learning curve for voice usually unfolds in the following pattern;

1. My voice is the only voice, and I am right. Before we know about voice, we think that only our way is the right way to perceive and act.

1. I know all voices are vulnerable. Mine is best. As we get to know about voice, we begin to affirm our strengths and see how they may not have been affirmed by others. So we proudly display how our way of thinking and acting is better than others are.

1. My voice is different from hers. I wonder if that's why she suggests what she does. The further we investigate voice, the more we appreciate and seek to understand rather than judge.

1. My voice is one of many. I need to hear what the others have to say for a fuller picture. Here we see a complementarity and balance in the different energies.

1. Our voices are all so different. What are some ways that we can maximize our shared experience? The greatest challenge of all is how to tap, welcome, and help other people to share their breadth of perspectives available to make better decisions better and faster.

She explains further; “When your voice is well known to you, your capacity for hearing, feeling and seeing the perspectives of others increases. By honouring other's voices you can tune into their wisdom and appreciate their gifts, especially when they are different from your own. As a result perspectives are more easily shared, challenges and involvement activities meet a variety of needs, conflict strategies are more accessible and problem solving activities are more productive. Basically leadership and teamwork is easier, and greater levels of success are attained and sustained when different voices are welcomed and encouraged.”

From this can be seen how much our voices shapes our lives and our interaction with others, thus indeed creating our existence. But let us explore voice further ...

"The Nine Long Nights of Odin" as represented in the Old Norse poem, " Ha'vama'l ."

I know that I was hanged
On a windy gallows
Nine full nights,
Wounded with a spear
And given to Odin -
Myself to myself -
On that hanging-tree
Which no man know,
Or from what roots it runs.

Neither with loaf did they succour me
Nor with horn.
I peered down;
Screaming I took them;
I fell back thence.

Odin ascends the gallows as a victim, but descends as a god. He breaks through the passivity of being at the mercy of the fates, and takes control of his own life and weaves his own days.

The poem thus represents the nine long nights of agonies of the self when it is inactive and in the grip of the overwhelming forces of the process of Individuation. The cry at the end is the primal cry of man as he suffers the stages of initiation into self-knowledge. The cry he utters represents the way in which an individual expresses and channels the different aspects of the inflowing external world. A mandala of sound .The individual takes the unrestricted power of creation, and moulds according to his individual ability.

There are some that speculates that in tracing the etymology of and history of the word Wyrd, there appears to be a connection between Wyrd as the powers that determine the future, and the "word" as spoken, and as written. In Old Saxon Wyrd was spelled "Wurd". In old German it was "Wurt". These words derive from a verb that comes into Old English as "weorthan", meaning "to become", or "turn into". "War", an Indo-European root word developed into the verb "weorthan". "War" was recorded to have the meaning; choose or will to, to speak, and to wind or turn. Winding and turning are the motions of spinning, the symbolic employment of the sisters of Wyrd. Through its meaning of "to speak" "war" developed into "word". It seems that at an early stage of conceptualization "willing", "speaking", and "becoming" were in a sense synonymous. Perhaps once recognized intuitively when language still reflected the meaningful relationship perceived between things in the world.
(Rune Games - Marijane Osborn and Stella Longland)

We have forgotten most of what power and meaning speech contains. Yet as can be seen from even the etymology of our words, this was not always so. We have been socialized to use speech to lie, to impress others, to persuade, to sell, to "make nice," to manipulate, to promote our agenda. Instead of bringing us intimacy, our speech is being used to bring is division, separate us from others and mostly from our source of being, and takes us further and further away from our authentic selves. The inhabitants of our world are suffering from fear and loneliness amidst of millions. We no longer trust the words of others and no longer listen to the words that rise from our souls and intuition. Our voice no longer reflects our authentic selves and as a result we suffer depression. What then could we be if we spoke with a pure voice, and what is our pure voice?

En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos,
"In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God" (John 1:1)

The Holy Letters emanated at the outset of the First Day are channels of Or Ain Sof (the Light of the Infinite), and they are the expression of the Living Word (Logos) arising from the Wisdom of God (Sophia); thus, they are the Sound-Vibration emanating as twenty-two Cosmic Energy-Intelligences. This is the Cosmic Torah emerging from the Primordial Torah, of which the Written Torah and Oral Torah is a revelation in the consciousness of humankind on earth; and we may say the same of all Scriptures of world wisdom traditions.

The Written Torah is revealed in the human mind by God’s Spirit, and is the activation of the human and divine intelligence in us; the Oral Torah is our expressed understanding of the Written Torah, and generates pure speech. Thus, the Written Torah corresponds to Adam-Intelligence (Hokmah/Tiferet) and the Oral Torah corresponds to Eve-Speech (Binah/Malkut) ...

Creation and God, and Eve (speech/desire) was directed into materiality; thus, unconsciously, the Human One turned away from the True Light (God) and became attracted to the dimmer lights of material existence. Therefore, the Supernal Body of Light became a spiritual body of light, which gave rise to an astral body or light, and finally to the physical body – the most dense manifestation of light. These are klippot, husks of admixture and darkness, which is to say obstructions to pure speech.

God is Pure Being, Pure Consciousness and Pure Energy, Supernal, and so also is the essence and nature of our Soul and Self; in the Ignorance this being-consciousness-energy is directed into materiality, darkness and chaos, and thus souls become bound to the gilgulim (cycles of transmigration). The streams of incarnations are, in essence, flows of speech based upon the misperceptions of our intelligence – the inability to recognize and realize all that appears as the radiant display of our soul and Source of Being (God). This, basically, depicts the unenlightened condition.

Of the sin of Adam we may say, it is ongoing; our present unenlightened condition being the result of it.

Now this is all quite natural and could be no other way, for emerging from Primordial Unconsciousness in the process of individuation, souls naturally begin in the Ignorance and the Ignorance is necessary for the individuation and awakening of souls. The egoistic condition is rather like a chrysalis phase in the development and evolution of soul-beings; it is necessary and yet ultimately must be shed and transcended (as demonstrated by the crucifixion and resurrection). The purpose of this process is the generation of authentic individuals – the individuation and awakening of souls, which allows a conscious unification with the Divine Fullness of Creation and God; for until we fully individuate and awaken we cannot maintain our individuality and the presence of awareness in union, but rather we fall unconscious.

This is reflected in our early experiences of the Gnostic and Light Transmission, the Divine Revelation and Rapturous Union we so deeply desire; like the disciples at the Transfiguration, we fall asleep or unconsciousness, unable to maintain the Presence of Awareness to remain fully conscious in union with the Light-continuum and Light-presence. Basically speaking, we are overcome by self-grasping, attachment and aversion, and remain in our bondage: we are not ready or willing to Pure Speech.

Pure Speech arises from Pure Being-Consciousness (Intelligence) and is a state of Pure Energy (Pure Desire).

How can we come to the purity of speech? We must learn to look and see the inner intelligence of all that appears – the Pure Energy-Intelligence within and behind all appearances, whether internal or external. We must learn to look and see beyond the klippot of the physical, astral and spiritual, into the Supernal Essence (the Pure Energy-Intelligence), for in the depths of our being this is what we truly desire: Divine Rapture. - Tau Malachi
http://www.sophian.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=386

Indeed what we most deeply desire is Divine rapture, and in our searching for intimacy that is what we long for. We search for this intimacy not only in our relationships but also in the relationship we long for in our communities and families. The power of speech is our primary tool to cut through the baggage of verbal junk

that perpetuates the polarizations that infect human discourse. By means of right speech, the images and beliefs that separate one person from another, one nation from another, we can make it possible to receive another healthier image of humanity than the ones promoted by greed and consumerism. The healthy relationship we are searching for, is a balanced, healthy human community that nourishes the potential of each of its members, which connects to nature and life on the planet in mutually enhancing ways.

“He who really knows how far our generation has lost the way of true freedom, of free giving between I and Thou, must him[her]self, by virtue of the demand implicit in every great knowledge of this kind, practice directness--even if s/he were the only person who did it--and not depart from it until scoffers are struck with fear, and hear in his voice the voice of their own suppressed longing.”
(Buber 1988, 69)

Kathleen Damiani elucidates on this in a wonderful thought provoking discourse;

How do we activate the voice, the vibration of experience, the cellular memory of connection with nature, the realization of the circuit of vital cosmic rhythm that moves us, dances us, turns us to each other? We have to slowly, carefully, unwind the serpentine vital--our emotions, interest, needs, and desires--from its ivy-likeclinging to images of deity, demons, archetypes, even from Soter and Sophia, from Jesus and Mary, from Buddha and Mohammed, from Krishna and Kali, from the Goddess and Themis and Maat, from Athena and Zeus and all the rest of humanity's inventions. We have to separate our emotions, our identity from them--not because they are bad or false or wrong--but simply so that we can have a relationship with them, to account for them, to set up a dialogue with them in which we ask them questions. As we engage in this process of encounter, standing off, questioning, becoming ourselves different from them, the alchemy of Sophia becomes activated. It is through asking, through really wondering what the heck is going on here, that we change our gods, our societies, our relationship to self, nature, and each other. We need to move our gods as we too begin to move. We re-situate them, de-idolize them against a background of mystery - they become objective to us, known, and consequently stand apart from both ourselves and the unknown.

I move with roaring, howling, and radiant might.
I move with the infinite and nature's powers.
I hold the love of the Lord of Lords.
I hold the fire of the soul. I hold life and healing.
(Rig Veda X.125.1)

We need to bring each other into existence by turning to each other, drawing forth what is within the other, and holding each other accountable for what is expressed, what is desired, and what is made by human speech and hands.

We turn to another, we turn to understand or grasp the past, not to swallow it and identify it with ourself but rather to come into relationship with it. Think of a constellation of magnificent stars, some here, some there, some large, some far away. The task is not to combine all stars into one amorphous stellar glob, but to recognize each one, to relate--through conscious witnessing--one to the other to the other, so that a pattern of connection can reveal its exquisite design. Another way of looking at our future spiritual destiny is to imagine that when each person's humanity--the salt of their unique experience and perspective--is brought into existence, related to, that awareness itself becomes a kind of electric energy with the individuals as the positive and negative points that make a continuous circuit ...

People like to give names to some clusters of thoughts because these beliefs seem to be true as well as alive. Making the image a "person" brings the meaning up close, in a non-abstract, vital way. People then feel comfortable expressing their attitudes and thoughts about life and death by means of such named images. Why? Because they are suitable containers, filled up with our hopes, expectations, and needs. These named images are "persons" because they evoke feelings of aliveness, of love, inspiration, and the capacity to organize the mixed bag that life is. They seem to lead us somewhere - into states of altered consciousness, into understanding, inspiration, healing or whatever...

What are other persons, named images, used in our culture to unify feelings and thoughts about life and death? God is the C.E.O. of images in western civilization. God is an image that was named (and also intentionally not named) by our ancestors in the ancient Near East. God is the unified form that expresses a cluster of beliefs and attitudes about life and death, an image fueled and sustained by billions of people, the focal point around which religions are shaped. Before the Christian era, the Olympian gods and goddesses were images that constellated the feelings and attitudes of the early Greeks. The multiplicity of images in polytheism provides a richly textured variety that reflects the diversity of human response to the unknown mystery of life, a variety which includes the feminine.

... the capacity of the mind to penetrate through the images it creates. This penetration involves activation of thinking, what I will call inquiry. When inquiry begins, we notice that we have questions and wonder - about

everything. This inquiry begins a journey in which circulation begins. As we begin to question, we feel ourselves begin to move. With this movement we feel resistance from others. We begin to notice hostility to our questioning. And so the adventure begins. This adventure culminates in moving, in a circuit, or spiral which has the effect of radically altering the landscape of the ordinary. This adventure is the only way that power can be effectively unleashed and used by the individual for the restoration of authentic community and the healthy transformation of society--one which fosters health and nourishes the fulfillment of individual potential.

For Sophia herself is but an image produced by psyche, by the human mind. She is the image of the image itself. She is the image that reveals the knowledge of how the mind creates these named persons or images. Sophia leads us to the ultimate scandal, the final tabu of Western civilization: the knowledge of the secret name of God. (See also comments; http://verewig.blog-city.com/the_return.htm)

Through us, she speaks the secret name of God not to usurp "his" power or rule in his place, but for the sake of clear perception, for the sake of the knowledge that will free us from slavery to the causes of our personal and social misery. She offers us protection and guidance in the path of gentle unraveling that leads the soul to the shocking and liberating freedom from its own constructions, including its idea of "God" or divinity. She holds us close, wrapped in her exquisite veil, the final comfort, the last womb of darkness before we are born again. This second birth is not into another belief system, not into another image, but a springing to life and liberty, the place of freedom: in the knowledge and possession of the power of our own mind, using thinking to create, to lead, to construct - and then to dissolve our constructions. Inquiry frees us to experience the Mystery, the divinity perhaps of the God that is NOT the same as our belief about it, not the same as the image we have of it. We will not be able to experience or even relate to the Mystery of life unless we can free thinking, free the psyche or mind, from its slavery to belief and image.

The second coming is our humanity. Out of the alchemy by which we participate in creating and dissolving thought structures, our humanity is born. We redeem the redeemer by freeing the Voice of humanity. born of the union of our vital soul and the culture. The divine is restored to its human source: its primal power and majesty revealed in history. The secret name of God is spoken: Humanity.

It all begins with our uplifting our thoughts, words and deeds (speech) – directing them in harmony with the Will/Desire of God (or Enlightenment).

In much the same way that through proper breathing we may discover the energetic breath or radiant holy breath within and behind our physical breath, through right speech we will discover there is vital energy within and behind our speech – the very same Divine Energy as the Holy Breath. Thus, right speech and proper breathing go hand in hand with one another – for my breath is not right when my speaking is not right.

This is a simple and obvious truth, for if I allow my heart and mind to entertain falsehood, then my speech will express falsehood, but if I rest my heart and mind upon truth, then my speech will express the truth. It is simple and it is easy to turn the heart and mind to Truth (God), I must only be willing and desire the Truth and Light.

We have let the mind and imagination run wild a very long time – through many lives, and it may take some time to tame the mind and heart, and to master the mind and heart. Yet, from the very outset of the spiritual path, we can begin to pay attention to our speech, and seek to speak wisely, drawing our speech into harmony with the Messiah and Holy Spirit, the Light-presence and Light-power in us: we can practice holy speech.

What is holy speech? It is the speech of the Mother of Life (Eve), speech that expresses the good, speech that expresses the truth, speech that is spacious and kind, speech that is loving and compassionate, understanding and forgiving, creative and uplifting – speech that is purposeful and meaningful. As the old saying goes, “If you do not have something good to say, then don’t say anything”; likewise, if you don’t have something purposeful and meaningful to say, then it is better to be quiet.

In our culture and society speech is often devoid or purpose and meaning, we need only listen to our speech as it typically occurs in modern media (such as the “news”) and in general socialization and ask, “Did any of that need to be said, was any of that actually purposeful and meaningful?” We may think that vain and idle speech is harmless, but if we observe it more closely we will find that it not true – quite swiftly in a mindless exchange of speech admixture and negativity can enter in, and we are pulled down rather than uplifted. Thus, holy speech includes self-restraint and paying attention to the speech we involve ourselves in, both in terms of what we ourselves might say, as well as the speech we choose to listen and hear – and we may say, in seeking holy speech, holy company is wise, for as we entertain the speech of others we are speaking too, in our hearts and minds, and our outward speech is likely to follow suit. - Tau Malachi

“Listening- our ability to truly listen to another is the gateway toward intimacy … “

Intimacy is the gateway to our authentic selves from which our desires, thoughts and finally our speech may arise purified through the fires of love. Intimacy means truly engaging in conversation whether silent or otherwise.

Subtle Fire

Within the womb of silence
I awake
starry brilliance
swirls within and without
throughout me
whispers of many voices
welcomes
past, present, future
all unites
in one remembering
one intimate moment

I am touched
becoming
being
one

Gently warmly enfolded
urged to speak
with subtle searing fire
the one word
that burns away
the thin layers of separation
love

Sunburst -  John Gavrilis

tags: intimacy  solitude  voice  speech  power  sophia  gnosis  creativity  womb  void  god  spiritual