Access your inner voice in the morning

Just as life simply *is*, i.e. not constructed, but real, so is obviously our life purpose or anything related to us as living beings. As a result, all the answers related to questions concerning our lives lie deep within us. When we are born, we are perfectly connected to our body and senses. When you observe a child, you notice that it acts instinctively every single second and takes action based on its intrinsic impulse, its inner sensing and knowing. The child is just the way it is, and the child itself does not question who he is, or doubt about his capacities, or judges what it does: the child simply *expresses* itself. We perceive this way of being as pure, as "just the way it is supposed to be".

However, we well know that we have lost that pure state. We start to move away from it as soon as adults instruct us about what to do and what not to, about who and how (they believe) we are. While we are well in this pure state of being when we are born, pretty soon we become socialised beings, and our minds get infused with the constructs of society. This develops into a continuous chatter of the intellectual mind.This chatter acts like a parasite that disturbs us from accessing the pure state underneath, and thus needs to be quieted down. This is basically our challenge.

In his book, "The four agreements", Don Miguel Ruiz describes this chatter as "the voice of knowledge", from the Toltec wisdom point of view. Of course, like us, the adults and the society who influenced us, have themselves been influences by their elders. When you roll back to the very origin, Ruiz uses the biblical story to describe the first humans being negatively influenced as Adam and Eva. They originally used to be in a pure state, but unfortunately became contaminated by false constructs, i.e. lies, as soon as they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Since then, these lies are the knowledge that society passes on onto us, and that we acknowledge as true. We put our faith in it. A parent or a teacher tells us as a child that we are silly, we believe in it. A jealous classmate laughs at us saying we have the ugliest voice ever, or that we would never be able to sing properly, and we integrate it. We might have heard our parents repeat that life is not about fun, but about hard work, this adds straightforward to what we believe as true. Or we have been told that girls don't speak loud, and we find ourselves speaking low as grown up women. All these concepts, beliefs, opinions form our Tree of Knowledge. As this tree becomes alive and loud, it continuously hooks all our attention, and we can see only that. As long as we continue to believe these concepts, we nourish the tree. Then we become who we are today. And dramatically, some of the things we build our life upon are partly based on false opinions, on erroneous beliefs, on fear - i.e. on lies .

The good news is that, our other voice that arises from our original pure state still exists. This voice is a "knowing", instead of The voice of Knowledge. Our "knowing" is quiet, and yet clear. I will call it here our inner voice. To be able to have access to it, however, we need to quiet the loud voice of Knowledge.

We are best connected to our inner voice when we are far from the business of daily life. This is for example in the morning, when we just woke up, but just haven't started thinking about what needs to be done during the day, or what problems we need to solve. The time of waking up is also the moment in which we remember what we have dreamed of in the night, and we might still have images from that dream echoing in us, and even still partly be transported in the atmosphere of the dream. Often, we dwell only shortly in this precious moment and very soon get busy about our day. In this way, we switch away from a precious capacity of perceiving, sensing and being suspended within us without action. In a hurry, we quickly switch on the button of the voice of knowledge. Often because our duties, our work are calling. Too soon.

These times of pandemia are challenging.

For some of us who are lucky enough to still be alive, and now have plenty of free time at home, without the pressure of early work or duties, these times give us an opportunity to reconnect with our inner voice.

This is the time to own this precious moment when you wake up in the morning, and spend it in a way that will help you explore your inner self.

Exercise

So, when you wake up, first spend time on your own. If you have a partner, decide that you will communicate with him afterwards.

Sit up in your bed for a precious time alone, close your eyes and dwell there for a few minutes.

Ask yourself:

- How does my body feel?

- What atmosphere of the night and of the dreams I had reverberates in me, and what did I dream of?

- In this state, what thoughts arise in me?

Then take your journal to write down what comes to you. It does not matter, whether your text is organised or not: just write the things that come to your mind one after the other.

Make sure you do not judge or evaluate what you write. Everything is right.

When you finish writing, read your text again and notice how it relates to your current life. What seems interesting, surprising, precious, new, vitalising, clarifying to you.