The Other Voice in My Head

I’m doing it wrong.

The voice in my head didn’t mince words. What “it” referred to wasn’t something innocuous like following a recipe; it was my whole spiritual life.

Sometimes I’m so confident. I write confidently; I live confidently. Other times I have no idea what I am doing or why or if it really matters.

This voice in my head isn’t solely mine: it’s a collection of every voice I have ever heard, human or divine. Thankfully this composite voice is not the only one in my head. God, pure and loving, lives there too.

Slowing down enabled me to hear this destabilizing judgment. At first, it made me want to give up altogether. But as I sat with it, I heard the voice of Love. That voice said, “Hmm. You know, that wasn’t Me who said that.”

God brought to mind a dear friend who appears to be doing life all wrong (and people constantly remind him of it). I imagined God seeing him and celebrating the successes others don’t see. I know God is proud of him.

And what about me, God? Are you proud of me?

Hafiz, a fourteenth century Persian poet, once wrote, “I am a hole in a flute that Christ’s breath moves through—listen to this music.”

And this is what Hafiz played me:

It used to be
that when I would wake in the morning
I could with confidence say,
“What am ‘I’ going to
do?”
That was before the seed
cracked open.
Now Hafiz is certain:
There are two of us housed
in this body,
doing the shopping together in the market and
tickling each other
while fixing the evening’s food.
Now when I awake
all the internal instruments play the same music:
“God, what love-mischief can ‘We’ do
for the world
today?”

Confident or not, right or wrong, up or down, it doesn’t matter. Whatever I’m doing, I’m not doing it alone. There are two of us housed in this body, and as longs as One of us knows how to love, the world will be blessed.