The voice in my mind!

“What is that noise outside? I’m too lazy to get up right now. Should I go outside and check? Or it’s probably nothing. Ooh that smells nice! What am I smelling? What’s he baking? Cake? I smell vanilla, it’s probably a muffin! I need to finish this assignment. Yeah, but it’s just one more episode to go.”

This is a random conversation that the voice in my mind had all on its own. I’m quite fascinated at how it can only hold attention for a few seconds before it’s distracted and jumps on to the next hot topic. If I allow it, which I pretty much do all the time, it would continue till I maybe fall asleep or meditate. It has this need to narrate everything I see, smell, feel externally, internally. Do I want to believe everything that this voice tells me? Is it me talking to myself in my mind? Is that what thoughts are? Does it ever shut up?

If you say “hello” in your mind right now, you would hear it in your mind. If you’re the voice that said hello, then who’s listening? That’s how I differentiate between the voice and what I call ‘me’. It’s I who’s listening. When it comes down to it, we are nothing but an awareness.

Let me break this down, we are identified by our names as a baby. Also by gender, and then the jobs we do, etc., but they are all external things that describe something we do or are labelled as. Think of a common question we are asked in an interview, tell me about you/ who are you? We are asked this whenever we meet someone new. We start by telling our name and what we have done over the years. They all merely describe the state we are in but not who we are. As we grow and evolve, our jobs change, we might go from Miss whoever to Mrs., etc. Our jobs might change. Our appearances would change over the years but the self that is deep within you is constantly there. Then who is that self who we refer to as ‘I’, really?

We are the awareness that observes everything in our surroundings, to our thoughts, to our feelings and the things that unfold in a situation in our surroundings.

It’s raining outside, when I look out my window, I can see and hear the rain. I already know that it’s raining but the thoughts/ the voice in my mind would tell me ‘oh it’s raining’. Regardless if it narrates it to me or not I’m already aware that it’s raining outside, so is there really a need?

If you can take sometime to listen to your own thoughts/ voice in your mind, just observe it, don’t give it emotion or be absorbed by it, let it come up and pass through, merely taking a backseat in your own mind, you’ll realise most of the things it says are quite ludacris. If a friend of yours tell you the same things that your mind tells you, you’ll probably be concerned for them that they are going quite crazy. Then why are we taking our voice in the mind to be more significant or true all the time?

The more we meditate and are present, the voice has less of an effect on us as we are able to not give in and let it consume our mind. I’ll give a bit of an insight in to meditation in my next post.

Michael Singer, in his book ’The Untethered Soul: The journey beyond yourself', describes the voice in our mind and our relationship to it beautifully than my attempt of it in one post. If you have a chance, do check it out and I’m sure you would enjoy!