This is another blog in the “Surviving the Awakening” blog series. You can find the link under the Categories section on the left-hand side. The title sounds rather dramatic, I know. For the remaining ego part of us, watching all our ego-stories get blown up in front of us or taken apart is dramatic. The deeper stillness in us just sort of watches and smiles. It’s always watching and smiling. Not too much disrupts the stillness. I suppose nothing ever really can.
Speaking Truth: Nothing Else Arises
Being awake means it becomes very easy to speak your truth. Nothing else really wants to come out. Talking in ways that defame others becomes harder and harder. Saying things that you’re not supposed to say to others gets harder and harder. This is especially true with specific knowledge that you will be able to tap into about a lot of things and situations. If you’re not supposed to share that insight with someone, your voice may even lock down.
However, for the most part, it becomes exceptionally easy to state an opinion or view. You’re less hung up on the reception that it gets. This is simply what feels true to you in the moment. And the more open to that you become, the more often you’ll actually be well-received. Most people aren’t used to hearing something real being spoken. Instead, useless topics about other people, distant places, what was on TV last night, and the weather fill up meaningless and empty conversations. It’s part of why people feel so disconnected from each other. They don’t even know how to talk about something that’s real. They’re too busy avoiding their own lives.
Showing Up and Speaking Up in Your Own Life
I was at an Earth Day festival in San Francisco this past weekend, and there was a Native American woman talking. She said one of the most important things you can do is to show up for your own life. I can’t agree with this more. No one else can live your life, but you. In spiritual awakening, you’ve been thrown out in the middle of your life, and you’re surveying the damage. You can the see the beauty and the wreckage. You have to take ownership for all of it. In so doing, you can address what needs to be addressed, heal what needs to be healed, and open what’s ready to be opened. One of those things will most definitely be your voice.
Which can be shocking to others if you’ve been a quiet person. You may not become overly talkative, but you’ve probably given up a lot of power in relationships by not speaking up at times. This alone will shift your relationships. If you’ve been a chatterbox for most of your life or a gossip, you may suddenly be much more quiet, but what you do say will carry a lot of weight. You may have a lot of people paying way more attention to you where before you probably got ignored a lot. Speaking up in your own life is a powerful thing, and you’ll have a lot of things to reckon with as your life re-aligns to who you really are.
Channeling and Speaking Divine Truth
The more clear your voice becomes, the easier it is to say a lot of things. The less judgment you have about what you’re saying, the more you can access deeper levels of knowledge. When I really hit my stride in a blog, I don’t know what I’m going to write next. It’s a very vulnerable place. There’s a lot of situations where I go in without knowing what I’m going to say; I just trust that what comes through will be what I need to say. And in spaces of high integrity and energy (if I’m working with someone one-on-one in a session), I can switch into a place where I’m channeling a lot of divine truth for someone else. I can’t say exactly how much channeling I do because I’ve integrated a lot of awareness. The idea that it’s coming from someplace else isn’t very present for me. It’s like what I say is from me and also not from me. That to me is much like the divine truth to be in this world, but not of it.
Ultimately, this is true for all of us. For those of you in spiritual awakening, it’s becoming a very real reality, and if you’re supposed to be a mouthpiece for the divine in this lifetime, you will have a lot of Truth flowing right out your lips so long as you don’t try to judge it or stop it (and trying to do either will become extremely uncomfortable).
Talking and Vulnerability: Just Keep Talking
I’ve blogged a lot about the power of vulnerability. In every way that we learn to consciously open ourselves in situations, we learn about the power of vulnerability. This isn’t a naive thing. You don’t open yourself to every situation. I believe that Jesus has a great line in the Bible that you trust in the Lord, but you tie your camel tight. The world is imperfect still, and many people do very unkind things (like stealing your camel–I hate it when that happens :). That said, the number of times that most of us are in really bad places and should avoid all vulnerability is actually very small. The ego likes to think that it’s constantly in danger. That’s how you are kept under control. But for this blog post, I want to empower you to talk your way out of it. The words won’t always be right, but they will start to come.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and in my ebook, finding someone who is really open and receptive to a talking and active listening practice is very helpful to get started. But once you’re awakened, you probably just gotta keep talking to anyone who will listen. You’ve got a lot of great things to say, and plenty of other people need to hear them–even if they don’t know it yet.
Jim the Jabberbox
I think spirit has been training me for a lot of writing and speaking for sometime. While my big spiritual awakening didn’t come until August 2007, I started to talk about spirituality back in October of 2006. To me, it was one of the drivers for my awakening–one of the things that got the energy moving in me to overcome the inertia of fear and stagnation in my life. I started talking to a couple new friends, and then I got connected with a great spiritual meditation group and teacher. With a couple of friends, I probably did 90% of the talking for awhile, so I have deep gratitude to all the people who listened to me while I figured out my words.
After I woke up, what flowed out of me was a lot of Truth–big T for sure. For those of you waking up, you know what I’m talking about. You may even be scared by what you know, but I assure you that it’ll be okay. You do know what’s true, and the world needs to hear it. There’s so much useless chatter that we have to start to fill some of the space with a different set of stories–stories about love, compassion, and true strength. These are the stories that need to replace superficiality, materialism, and hate. And truly in your own awakening, talking about it will help you to embody this change that’s happening. It will help you to integrate the whole of you and come to terms with the purpose that you’ve chosen to fulfill in this lifetime. Your voice is a powerful, powerful tool, and it’s one that it’s time you come to own.
1 Comment
For some reason this blog sparked a memory of an experience I had last week while speaking with a coworker. I was acting out a scene from a movie called Waking Life for her. When I touched her shoulder and made eye contact and spoke a few words, I felt this energy, this "butterfly in the stomach" sorta feeling. It was intense, but I'm pretty damn sure I said some powerful words because all she could say was "wow!" She may not have known what she felt, but she felt it!