Who Is That Still Small Voice, Anyway?

by Laura Dent
February 24, 2013

[Play clip of Bill Cosby:  Noah – Right]

So, who is that still small voice, anyway?

As Bill Cosby as Noah says to the Lord, “Who is this really?”

Much closer to my experience, there’s a passage from Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love where she says:

“I DO NOT EVEN BELIEVE IN YOU!”

(that’s actually slightly sanitized for church!)

and the voice very calmly responds: 

“Who are you talking to, then?”

So, who are you talking to, then?  Who is this really?  Who is that still, small voice, anyway?

Sorry to disappoint you – I’m not actually going to answer that question, just explore it.  As my husband Noel says, it’s the questions themselves that are more fascinating than any answers we could possibly give.

And, I’m going to explore the possibility that what matters is not so much what we call that still small voice, but that we listen to it:  to learn to discern that voice, to cultivate our connection to it, and to heed its wisdom. 

Then, at the end of my talk today, I’ll invite you to join me in a very simple spiritual practice to cultivate your connection to that voice.

As I was preparing for this service, I was wondering, Where does that phrase, “still small voice” come from, anyway?  We heard that phrase in the hymn we just sang, “Blessed Spirit of My Life.”

I found the answer in this book, When God Talks Back:  Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, written by Tanya Luhrmann, who was my roommate at Harvard. 

Tanya approaches this subject with what she calls the “anthropological attitude”:  she’s investigating a culture, and trying to see what makes them tick.  As she says, the divide between believers and nonbelievers in this country is immensely painful, and damaging.   So, she’s doing what she can to bridge that gap, at least to have a conversation with the “other side.” 

These evangelical Christians are people who seek a personal, intimate relationship with God – to have “coffee with God,” as they say.  And they learn that to do that through a regular series of practices and prayers. 

As I was looking into this book, I turned to the chapter, “But Are They Crazy?”  I found it interesting that I would turn to that chapter! 

And lo and behold, I found this passage at the beginning of the chapter, a reading from the book of Kings:

“And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind, and after the wind, an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire, and after the fire, a still small voice.”

I was struck by the synchronicity of finding that passage in Tanya’s book.  It also resonates somewhat with my experience, as I’ll describe:  that the LOUD voice of the strong wind, and the earthquake, and the fire, is not likely to be the voice of the LORD.  The Lord, or God or Spirit, or Higher Power, is more likely to speak in that still small voice.

The hymn we sang earlier, “A Core of Silence,” concludes with the words, “And name it nothing, much less God.” 

That’s a rather startling line!  Only at UU would we sing a hymn that says “don’t call it God!”  While that may be liberating for some of us to hear, that we don’t have to call it God, I can’t help wanting to add a disclaimer:  “It’s OK to call it God if you want to.”

Then we heard a reading from Anne Lamott saying, “Nothing could matter less than what we call this force. … the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard … .  Or for convenience we could just say “God.”

Sometimes I use the phrase, “God, for lack of a better word.”  Personally, I tend to gravitate to the word “Spirit,” to describe that inner voice of wisdom.

Noel and I both sang in the Mystic Chorale, a community chorus in the Boston Area.  Once, at a Gospel concert – mind you, half the chorus was Jewish, so we weren’t singing from church belief, more as a multicultural chorus; we also sang songs in Swahili.  In front of a huge ecumenical audience, the director Nick Page said:

“Praise God!  If you don’t believe in God, Praise the Universe!  If you don’t believe in the Universe, Praise Love!”

As Anne Lamott says, “Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to.”  The important thing, she implies, is that we pray.  She simplifies the three essential prayers:  Help, Thanks, Wow.

It occurred to me as I was preparing for this service, that here at HUU, we seldom pray – as such.  The closest we come, in our regular services, is the Joys and Concerns, where we share what’s really going on for us.  We say afterward, “Let us contemplate, meditate, or give a prayer …” for these joys and concerns.   Certainly nobody says from the pulpit, “Let us pray,” and we all bow our heads and say the same thing – “Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name …” as I did growing up in the Episcopal church.  And maybe that’s just as well.

I wonder if, as UU’s, perhaps some of us are triggered by the word “prayer,” as we might be by the word “God,” from the baggage of the dogmas that many of us have outgrown.  Still, I wonder too:  are we missing something?  Do we need prayer, on some level?  Is there room for “prayer,” or if we don’t want to call it that, maybe meditation, or contemplation?  I’ll leave that question open, and I’d like to hear from you in the community dialog.

I’ve carved out some room for “meditation” here at HUU, with the Religious Education program I’ve been leading for the past couple of years.  We’ve been exploring chanting and meditation in a variety of traditions.

What I believe is, for myself, no matter what I call that voice – God, Spirit, Higher Power, Higher Self, Inner Wisdom – what matters is that I listen to it. 

By “listen,” I mean three things:

To learn to discern the voice of Spirit,
to cultivate that connection,
and to heed the wisdom of the Spirit voice.

For some time in my life, I had an internal Spirit Guide that I called the Black Queen, an African woman.  So, I had an experience of that old joke, “God is white.”  “No she’s not.”  

I cultivated this connection with the Black Queen through dreams and visualizations and dialogs.

When the Black Queen said to go to Africa, I went!  And what I found there was:  a sense of my roots in the human family, and I learned to take myself less seriously.

When a voice like that speaks, you heed it.  Like when the Lord said to Noah, “Build an ark,” he built an ark.

I can now assimilate that Spirit Guide voice into myself, and hear it more as my own voice, speaking as higher self or Spirit.  I’ve also been exploring other ways of listening for the Spirit voice, through chanting and meditation. 

Now I’ll describe further the three steps I mentioned in learning to listen to Spirit:  to discern, cultivate, and heed the voice of Spirit – or God, or whatever works for you. 

First, to learn to discern the voice of Spirit, here are a couple of clues that I’ve found work for me:

•  Spirit tends to speak softly, and speak once.
•  Spirit tends to speak in second person, as in, speaking to me as “you.”

When I hear a loud, repetitive voice that speaks as “I,” I’ve learned to recognize that as the voice of Ego.  It’s usually saying some form of:  “I WANT I WANT I WANT.”  The voice we usually identify with, as “I,” is often the one that can take us off-track from our highest good.

Whereas, if we listen for it, the voice of Spirit, tends to speak in second person, to “you,” as in Elizabeth Gilbert’s:  “Who are you talking to, then?”

For a quick example, once when I was about to take off into doing something that I knew deep down was not such a great idea, I heard:

“Take NO further action.”

Stopped me cold.  I know by now to heed that voice. 

When I hear the voice of Spirit, whatever form of guidance it gives, I sometimes feel a surprise – as if, I wouldn’t have thought of that!  Or, perhaps, I hear what I know I need to, even if it’s not quite what I want to hear.

So the first step is to learn to discern the voice of Spirit, and even that is sometimes tricky, because the ego – at least in my experience – can try to disguise itself as Spirit.

The next step I would say is to cultivate that connection to Spirit through a regular spiritual practice – whether it’s prayer, meditation, journaling, or even just taking a few deep breaths.  As I said earlier, I’ll show you a very simple spiritual practice at the end of my talk, so you’ll have a tool to take with you to connect to Spirit.

For me personally, I do a meditation every day called the Calm Heart meditation.  I sit like this, with my left hand on my heart, and my right hand raised in gyan mudra – thumb and forefinger circled.  I sit like that for five minutes with a certain breathing pattern, synced with my heartbeat.  The feeling is, “I pledge to keep a calm heart even through this” – whatever this might be in my life at the moment, whether great upset, or great joy.

Sometimes I listen for the Spirit voice, or perhaps ask for guidance.  Sometimes I just observe my mind rattling on – yes, it still does that, and I can return to the pledge – to keep a calm heart, even through this.

You can learn to approach Spirit proactively.  In the book Mindfulness in Plain English – the best introduction to meditation I know of – Bhante Gunaratana says, “Meditation takes gumption.” 

It takes determination to sit down and practice whether you like it or not.  The ego wants to run the other way, because it fears being exposed.

It takes courage to listen for the voice of Spirit.  Sometimes you have a feeling you’re not going to like what you hear, and that’s when it’s the most important to listen.

Which brings me to the third point:  most important of all, that you heed the Spirit voice.  

When the Black Queen told me to go to Africa, I went.  

When Spirit told me “Take NO further action,” I stopped.  Of course there’s the child-ego part of me that says, “you mean, for now?”  I heard – silence.  And then I heard:  “You will know when it’s time to act.”

So that assuages that insistence, like telling a child who is saying, “are we there yet?  Are we there yet?”

“No, and by the time we get there, we’re going to call it here.”

And now, true confession time.   Here’s a recent example of my learning to discern the Spirit voice. 

This is a hard thing for me to admit, and to share in front of you, and I like to think that that means it’s all the more important.

This year, when I was launching the second year of the meditation program, I was meditating on that and got an internal:

“NO!”   [whispered]

and that stopped me short.  That was like the “Take no further action” voice.  

I was in quite a quandary, because I had already sent out the announcements and worked out the schedule and let everybody know about the meditation program.  And yet I had to recognize that if I was getting a “STOP!” message from Spirit, I was going to have to cancel the whole thing. 

So you see, learning to discern Spirit can still be tricky.  I wasn’t sure if that “NO!” was really guidance from Spirit or just the deep hollow voice of fear.  And even that uncertainty was kind of a clue that it might not be Spirit, because usually when I hear Spirit, I know. 

I also wondered if this could be a warning not to succumb to the ego trip of, “Look how spiritual I am” – which can be the most insidious ego trip of all.  Look how many gurus have fallen.  Or even popes, for that matter!   The pope recently resigned!

So, I approached Spirit again, with a deliberate request.  I said, “Tell me now, and I’ll cancel the whole thing if I need to.   

“So, do I do this meditation program?”

And I heard a cautious, “Yes …” [whispered]

With the immediate caveat:  “Cleanse yourself – always.” 

And with that caveat, I trusted that voice, and proceeded – still somewhat nervously, but I took that to mean, be sure you’re not doing this for ego’s sake, but acting from a desire to be of service.

Now I think maybe that NO! was telling me I wasn’t ready yet.  Only when I was ready to surrender, and willing to hear No, was I ready to hear Yes. 

And now, I’d like to invite you to join me in a simple practice for connecting with Spirit. 

In the meditation program, what I’m leading now is the Sufi practice of Heart Rhythm Meditation, based on this book, Living from the Heart, as taught by this couple, who are based in the Sufi tradition, Puran and Susanna Bair. I’ve studied with both of them in courses and workshops.

Puran is a computer scientist.  In fact, the Sufi teacher in America, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who initiated my brother as a Sufi, referred to “Puran’s computer mind.”  He’s very rational and scientific in his approach:  he talks about the benefits of the practices to strengthen the physical heart in the body, and the measurable electromagnetic field generated by the heart – whereas Susanna talks much more about the emotional aspect of living from the heart. 

I saw a video of an interview with the two of them that cracked me up. The interviewer asks them to explain Heart Rhythm Meditation.  Puran says, “Oh, it’s very complicated.” 

And he’s right – there’s a whole series of different breath patterns and meditations and visualizations for each of the four elements – Earth, Water, Fire, Air – that we’re exploring in the meditation group now. 

Then Susanna says, “Actually it’s very simple.  You just put your hand on your heart and say, ‘What does my heart want?’”

And she’s right too – it is very simple.

So, I’d like to invite you to try that – a 30-second practice. 

[Talk through slowly:]

Sit upright … feet on the floor … close your eyes … put your right hand on your heart … go inside … breathe deeply … find your heartbeat, if you can … and say, “What does my heart want?” and listen for the response.

[time 30 sec]

And now just note your experience … open your eyes softly … keep your gaze down for a moment … take your hand down, and rejoin the room.

So now, there’s a tool you can turn to any time, for listening to Spirit, based in the body:  “What does my heart want?”

I encourage you to learn to discern, cultivate and heed the voice of inner wisdom, that still small voice – whoever you conceive it to be. 

[Dialog]

[Benediction:]

Go in peace and seek the still small voice within.

Blessed be.

Book list and links:

Bill Cosby:  Noah  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bputeFGXEjA

Elizabeth Gilbert:  Eat, Pray, Love:  One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia   http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/eat-pray-love/

TM Luhrmann:  When God Talks Back:  Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God  http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Talks-Back-Understanding/dp/0307277275

Anne Lamott:  Help, Thanks, Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594631298

Mystic Chorale:  http://www.mysticchorale.org/index.php

Bhante Gunaratana:  Mindfulness in Plain English http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-20th-Anniversary/dp/0861719069

Puran and Susanna Bair:  Living from the Heart:  Heart Rhythm Meditation http://www.appliedmeditation.org/Living_from_the_Heart/living_from_the_heart.php  

Chalice Lighting:

Direct your attention within. Let your aloneness expand and become your home, greeting you like the quiet dawn. As a result of this turning inward, you will hear your own, inner voice; you will see a piece of your life, a natural possession of yours. Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.  At its source, you will find the answer to your question.

Rainer Maria Rilke, adapted from Letters to a Young Poet

Reading:

From Anne Lamott:  Help, Thanks, Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.

Help.  Thanks.  Wow.

You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word “prayer.”  It’s certainly not what TV Christians mean.  It’s not for display purposes, like plastic sushi or neon.  Prayer is private, even when we pray with others.  It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding.  Let’s say it is communication from one’s heart to God.  Or if that is too triggering or ludicrous a concept for you, to the Good, the force that is beyond our comprehension but that in our pain or supplication or relief we don’t need to define or have proof of or any established contact with.  Let’s say it is what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds.  Or let’s say it is a cry from deep within to Life or Love, with capital L’s.

Nothing could matter less than what we call this force.  I know some ironic believers who call God Howard, as in “Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name.” …

My friend Robyn calls God “the Grandmothers.”  The Deteriorata, a parody of the Desiderata, counsels us, “Therefore, make peace with your god, / Whatever you conceive him to be – / Hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin.”

Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to.  Let’s just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us.  We could call this force Not Me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800.  Or for convenience we could just say “God.”