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.—1 Kings 19:11-12.

What is the still small voice?

I believe that everyone has it. I call it my intuition, and in its guidance, it’s never wrong. My problem is that I’ve gotten out of the habit of listening to it. It doesn’t need to be nurtured, but my capacity to hear it and to follow it needs to be cultivated, since the voice is easily ignored. Most of us have learned not to trust our innermost selves, and so when we hear our innermost voice speak to us, we don’t trust that voice, either.

My intuition, which I can also know as my inner guidance, as my inward conceptions, as my inspiration, and as my creativity, is something I often substitute with my intellect. Reason can be a useful tool, but it makes a terrible master when it’s devoid of compassion. Were that not so, the world wouldn’t look the way it does. The root of ‘rationalize’ is ‘rational.’ It’s so easy to twist my logic and justify my decisions using the intellect. When I do that, I’m just taking a shortcut around my conscience and short-circuiting my standards so I can do what I want to do anyway.

The voice is often drowned out by my instincts, by things like greed and lust, by ambition and appetite for various things. It’s buried by my fears and my anger, and by my other emotions. Emotion clouds my seeing the way sand in a jar of water prevents me from seeing light shine through the glass. My heart, my emotions, are often closer to this intuition, but the heart can be treacherous, too. It can mislead. There’s a saying that the heart wants what it wants. When the heart wants, we often throw reason and intuition out the window. My feelings can cloud my judgments, or even masquerade as that inner voice.

Emotional pain, too, can distort this voice. And this is why forgiveness is important. Unless I let go of my grievances, my judgments against myself and others will prevent me from hearing the voice within.

So, sometimes I have a hard time hearing the inner voice. Yet at other times, another voice – the voice of my ego – imitates it. That’s why it can be important to bounce what I think my intuition is telling me off of other people, off of someone whose feedback I value, just to make sure I’m not deluding myself.

What’s my role in this process? To listen. It takes practice listening to my gut. Listening is a skill and an art. It’s more important than speaking. And the more I practice it, the better I become at listening.

At first, I might not hear the still, small voice. I might not hear anything at all. Or I may hear the noise within my mind, the shouts and screams and screeches of the war going on within my own psyche. This racket may terrorize me so much that I swim back to the surface world of my conscious mind and allow myself to be distracted by people, places and things. Yet if I persist in listening, the clamor dies down like sand in a jar of water sinks to the bottom. I’ll eventually hear the silence, of which the still, small voice is but one octave.

If it were a light, it would be a pinprick at the end of a long, dark tunnel. If it was a sensation, it would be a gentle riffle of the wind. You would only see it as its fingers tease the leaves on a tree, not the lips which breathed it, the source of which remains forever a mystery.

The still, small voice usually speaks second. It often waits. It only speaks if it’s listened to, which is another way of saying that it only seems to speak if I listen for it. Yet it’s always singing its sole note, a song of peace, of love, of joy.

It’s often drowned out by a louder voice within myself. And so I can’t hear it. I don’t hear it. I won’t hear it. Yet when I let these voices die down and hear them for the lies they are, I’ll finally hear the truth. For I can only postpone hearing the truth. I can’t plug my ears forever against it. That means that in the end, you’ll hear it, and wonder why you waited so long. Though it will never force you to listen, eventually, you’ll choose to turn off the noise of the world – which is just the noise within your mind – and listen, I mean, really listen, to your true voice. That’s right: the still, small voice, in the ultimate sense, is really just your voice, whispering to you that you’re alright, that all is well. That’s the opposite of the voice for fear, which seems only to warn us about the dangers of the world and its war for survival, and which tells us that others will sooner or later let us down, and that we’ll never be enough.

The voice I listen to is my choice. But there’s only one voice that reminds me of my true self, and of the essence of reality. That natural state is – despite all contrary messages – an unpredictable, unsurpassable, and incomprehensible benevolence. It may be hard to believe that the world is jacketed by paradise, but what have I got to lose by tuning in?

When I do, the still, small voice becomes a thundering chorus. A choir of silence? A thundering stillness? How can such things be? In the reality which surrounds the cacophony of the world – which is just a projection of my mind – all things are possible.

© 2024 by Michael C. Just