Two Voices Inside
Dos Voces Interiores
A student describes an ongoing inner dialogue between two versions of themselves: one fearful and self-critical, the other spontaneously loving and accepting. The teacher explores which voice is more real, and what it means that both are being witnessed.
Two Voices Inside
A student describes an ongoing inner dialogue between two versions of themselves: one fearful and self-critical, the other spontaneously loving and accepting. The teacher explores which voice is more real, and what it means that both are being witnessed.
I wanted to ask you about something related to integration. I've been feeling this for a while, both in meditation and outside of it. There's a spontaneous conversation happening between two versions of me. Me number one and me number two. Me number two speaks to me number one in an incredibly loving way. They both feel like me, but number two feels more like me, more mysterious. I don't know where it comes from. Me number one is the one who says things like, "How can you accept me and love me so much if I'm a mess, full of tension, full of fears?" It occurred to me that there seems to be a process where me number one gradually integrates more of number two: the effortlessness, the lovingness, the acceptance. Like me number one trusting more and more. I don't know exactly what the question is, but I wanted to share that.
You're wondering about this process and how it relates to integration, and perhaps whether you could integrate the loving voice even further. Is that what you're wondering?
Yes, but I suppose the question is: is there something more I can do? Because it seems to be something that just happens gradually.
The loving voice is more real
I think there are two things here. One is the psychological process. I have a sense that this more loving inner dialogue is fairly new. Is that true?
Yes.
It's probably a part of you that is, in a sense, awakening. It is more aligned with something that is more real. You said you think you are both of these voices, and I would say you are more the loving one. It is more real.
Ultimately, you are neither of them, and at the same time you are both. But I think it's important to keep that process going, to pay more attention to the loving voice. And also to notice that all of it is happening inside of something vaster. What is aware of the two?
Right.
What is seeing both voices?
But notice that not as an intellectual exercise. Really notice it when you're experiencing that dialogue. Notice that it is happening inside of you. You are noticing the loving and the non-loving parts of you. Try seeing them more as parts of your psyche or mind. You are seeing them. In that sense, you cannot be either of them.
I would say the loving one is speaking more truthfully. It is a voice that is aligned with something more real.
Yes, and it does feel more real, more me.
But neither of them is you. You could not describe this to us if you were either or both of them. Who is describing this? Who is seeing it? The answer is very short and easy: it is you. It is "I." The problem is when we think "I" is this or that. But what we are is consciousness. It has no color, no taste, no shape, no form. And it has all colors, all shapes, all forms, infinite possibilities.
It is important to know that the loving inner voice is speaking more truthfully, that it is coming from and aligned with something truer. But at a certain point, it will become irrelevant what either of them is saying. You won't need the loving voice. You won't fear or be hurt by the unloving voice.
When the obvious becomes obvious
In fact, that is already happening now. But it will become increasingly clear. When I say "at a certain point it will happen," I mean it simply becomes very obvious, like "of course, two plus two is four." You struggle with a question until it becomes obvious, and then you wonder how you ever didn't see it. It will have that quality. It will be like: this was always true.
That is why it is not something you can attain or achieve. It is not a state. You have always been what you are, and you were never what you're not. But right now, you believe you are something you're not, much of the time. I'm sure there are many moments when you are not caught in that belief. But at a certain point it becomes so obvious that nothing can fool you anymore. You cannot go to your mind and construct an avoidance story, because the truth is simply too clear. It is a huge paradigm shift.
A shift bigger than Copernicus
It is even bigger than the shift when humans believed the sun went around the earth. There was a before and after in history, and there was enormous resistance. Humans did not want to accept that the earth wasn't the center of everything. This is a similar thing, but it is a new and bigger shift. Once you know it, you see it. We believe something that simply is not true, and once that belief falls, you cannot buy into it anymore. It usually falls progressively, but then at a certain point it really snaps. You may still try to believe the old story, but it just doesn't have that pull anymore.
The division of I and not-I
It is as simple as this: you believe that your essence, that the "I" which right now is experiencing itself as a subject, is a thing. You believe it to be part of what you are experiencing. We experience sights, sounds, sensations, and then the mind comes along and says, "This is over there, this is here. The body's sensations belong inside of this thing that I call I. The thoughts carry an image of a person, and that is what I call I." Then it has images of things that are not I: other people, objects, dialogues about I and not-I. All of experience is constantly divided into I and not-I.
So now there is this vague boundary around what I call "I," and the rest is "not I." But actually everything that I call "I" is being experienced in the same space as what I call "not I." What can happen is that what I call "I," what I and others might refer to as the body-mind, is recognized as a part of me, but not as "I" itself. That can become so obvious: the body-mind is appearing to me, inside of me, as a part of me, at the same level as everything else. And there is something closer, something that I can refer to as "I," that is not that.
Then the attachment to the belief "I am the body-mind" starts to lose its pull. It has less and less energy behind it, until eventually that pull breaks.