wisdom within, ink

For redefinition, I was thrown back to myself, to my inner knowing… Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit

The Authentic Voice Project: Week 9 (“Super” Full Moon)… a week late, ooops.

Throat Chakra

I is for (Divine) Intervention/Intuition

(The original version of this post turned out to be very long. This is the condensed version which is more in line with the Authentic Voice Project’s format. However, I have included the full version at the bottom of this post.)

Many believe that god is not an external being, but that god is within. Every creature, rock, tree, is divine; as Krishna Das said in an interview in Sun, “There’s only one God, and we’re all it.” And we, as humans, can find and access this divinity – and its divine wisdom – if we choose. When the divine energy and wisdom of all things is in concert, powerful things can happen.

I believe Intuition is this divine – and sometimes inexplicable – wisdom, and that “Divine Intervention” (or Serendipity or Synchronicity) is tapping into knowledge we did not know we know and into sources of energy to which we did not know we were connected.

Throughout my journaling “career,” but particularly since I recognized this to be my life’s work, and even more intensely since I began grad school, I have been struck by life’s connections. Sometimes you can recognize the separate links as they appear (often in the strangest places) and connect, creating new knowledge and understanding. At other times, one comment or sentence can in a flash fuse together seemingly disparate events, books, people, dreams together to reveal new meaning and insight.

My most current experience is with my own definition of Finding Voice, meaning both the physical act of being able to speak up and out, and also as a symbol of finding and knowing Self, which is the theme of my thesis and memoir. I have always called myself a singer but I discarded this application of using/finding my voice in my studies and writing. But it was not to be so. A series of events, from losing my voice to a cold, to inadvertently connecting with a voice teacher on Facebook, to picking up a random magazine whose current theme turned out to be singing, have made it clear that my songs also need to be heard.

What causes these bizarre “coincidences”? I believe it is a divine wisdom, intuition – knowledge from a deeper/higher place – that causes us, and the world around us, to unconsciously move in a certain way. We must be open to it though. We must be seeking our potential and moving in a direction of growth and healing. And while I am not yet certain how this slight expansion in definition of “voice” will affect my writing and studies, I am choosing to trust the process. I am trusting this Divine Intervention and my Intuition.

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I is for (Divine) Intervention/Intuition (The Unabridged Version)

Many believe that god is not an external being, but that god is within. Every creature, rock, tree, is divine; as Krishna Das said in an interview, “There’s only one God, and we’re all it.” And we, as humans, can find and access this divinity – and its divine wisdom – if we choose. When the divine energy and wisdom of all things is in concert, powerful things can happen. I believe Intuition is this divine – and sometimes inexplicable – wisdom, and that “Divine Intervention” (or Serendipity or Synchronicity) is tapping into knowledge we did not know we know and into sources of energy to which we did not know we were connected.

This week’s post is an example of this. It is a convoluted tale with many different threads coming together from diverse and unexpected places and people. It is about “impossible” connections and happenings that, I believe, occur when wisdom/knowledge beyond our understanding is accessed.

My graduate thesis and memoir is about “Finding Voice,” with “voice” meaning both the physical act of being able to speak up and out, and also as a symbol of finding and knowing Self. Recently I was writing about some childhood memories where I was silenced in one way or another. I began to experience some sinus pressure while writing. The next day I happened upon this passage:

‎Many women have difficulty speaking, actually allowing words to come easily through their throats. Their sinuses are often blocked… ” – Leaving My Father’s House, Marion Woodman

This passage goes on to say:

The [sexual] chakra and the throat chakra are connected. Is it possible that when they fully forgive themselves for being sexual beings and fully let go into their creatureliness… Are their frozen tears the tears of generations of women who could not accept their creatureliness in their sexuality? When those tears flow will women be able to speak with clear, easy resonances from their feminine depths?”

I wondered about this connection between voice/silence and sensuality/sexuality. As a teenager I had often experienced an inability to swallow food in conjunction with stomach pains.

Then, while “chatting” on a Facebook group of former church members about the body-mind connection in relation to spiritual and sexual transcendence, one woman happened to mention she was a voice teacher. She said she has noticed that, “most peoples neuroses manifest in the way the use their voices, and most people don’t use their voices naturally and efficiently.” Suddenly I made the connection between singing and emotion. I have sung in choral groups and as a soloist most of my life but for some reason I hadn’t thought this was an important aspect of my story of Voice/Self and the silencing one can experience as a child – particularly a daughter – of fundamental/patriarchal religion. I did think it was interesting that as a teenager I was afraid that I would somehow lose my singing voice, as if unconsciously I was aware it might be the only voice I had, but to focus my writing on my singing still hadn’t seemed warranted.

I decided to write an essay, “The Story of My [singing] Voice” to discover whether my singing “career” somehow reflected suppressed emotion and loss of Self. (I can only figure such things out by writing through them.) Through the essay I realized my singing voice had, paradoxically, kept me both disconnected from my emotions and, albeit by a thin thread, connected to them through my physical, sexual/sensual body.

The morning I had planned to write the essay, I awoke with a raging sore throat from a dream where a mouse had bitten deeply into the skin at the base of my big toe. I looked it up and found that in reflexology this region is connection to the throat. Over the next three days I completely lost my voice. I then remembered that almost a year ago I had had a dream where a mouse bit my heel, which is the region connected to the pelvis. I knew then that the passion of my teen and young adult years, singing, could not be discounted in my story of finding and reclaiming my self as a whole woman and human. My voice, whether spoken or sung, is the “voice” of mySelf and I needed to investigate it to go further along my road to healing.

This past week my family went on vacation. While on the train I found a notebook in the bag I had dug out of the closet specifically for the trip. Looking for a blank page, I found this note from last summer when I attended the senior voice recital of a friend’s son:

I notice discomfort watching him showing emotion. Embarrassed for him. Find it hard to watch his face. Moved by music itself but interaction between him and female singer causes more discomfort.

Here it was again, a link between singing and emotion. Whatever causes an emotional reaction in us, whether it is discomfort, anger, or a knowing resonance, it is a clue to our own truth. While I had not consciously known when I jotted it down the relevance of this little note-to-self, finding it at this very moment gave me a message I needed. A little while later on the train ride, I found the magazine I had thrown in my bag at the last minute which I had recently “stolen” from a coffee shop (it was a old issue and I knew the owners were wanting to whittle down their piles of reading materials.) I didn’t open it before pilfering it, I just knew it was a great publication. The first article I opened to was “A Joyful Noise: Krishna Das On Chanting the Names of God,” and upon further inspection discovered that the theme of the whole issue was, yes, singing.

What causes these bizarre “coincidences”? I believe it is a divine wisdom, intuition – knowledge from a deeper/higher place – that causes us, and the world around us, to unconsciously move in a certain way. We must be open to it though. We must be seeking our potential and moving in a direction of growth and healing. And while I am not yet certain how this slight expansion in definition of “voice” will ultimately affect my writing and studies, I am choosing to trust the process. I am trusting this Divine Intervention and my Intuition.