(no subject)
The Universe Speaks LOUDLY if you listen. Tonight I listened. So here I am. Back. To a very old place.
My voice. I've both never had it and never lost it. Tonight with 3 intersecting strokes the universe painted the picture that showed me what it sounds like. A paint by color or perhaps by time more than anything. 3 strokes close together but also far enough apart to know they weren't a single one.
The first stroke is an old stroke comparatively. For the past few months at least I've spoken strongly and often about finding my own voice. I've made words and stories up around it and poked into it from a few different angles. Most of what I knew was that other people's voices had interfered with mine. In a very physical sense how I choose to package my ideas into words for others has been shaped by something other than my own isolated internal methods. I hard on precision and accuracy in words. I pounce on people who mislead with a slightly 'wrong' word. I press for precision and perfection in speech so the other side has to do no work. In other words -- I change what I want to say to fit my audience and I adopt what I think will land best. I adopt their words. And not my own.
Slightly less tangible or significantly more intangible in my voice is what I want to so. In my anxiety who is really saying that? Did that idea or action originate from me or did someone else plant it there and it grew not as a symbiotic relationship but as more of a parasite? In my coping mechanisms have I listened to other people when they say might aren't good and I should try other things -- like qigong, and meditation, or drugs, or volleyball. How many of the things I like doing are mine because *I* like doing them and not just because I let someone influence me into doing them and I adopted them by default? These too are my voice -- my practices.
Clearly, this stroke is rather broad and big and has been being painted for a while. But as large as it sounds right now consider it took me 30 something years to see this stroke. I can only imagine it has been underfoot the entire time.
The second stroke came in an unexpected form. A very unexpected one at that -- it came from a dream. But not my dream. Not even someone I am close with but rather it came from landlords dream. He stopped me and told me he wasn't sure he should tell me this but his wife told him to. He told of a dream (details left out because they aren't mine) where he was anxious and nervous about something and in the middle of his struggle he felt a calming, comforting, reassuring presence that wasn't easily identifiable. One that said hold still, you have to do this, but it is going to be alright. When the situation changed he saw that that presence was me. Upon waking from the dream he spoke of a blue haze engulfing everything. His wife later told me that the blue was the 5th chakra. And it was in fact the throat chakra.
The last stroke just happened a few minutes ago. mQ was here and we were talking about the first stroke. The idea of this voice. He was lamenting his version of it and I was lamenting mine. At one point we started we started to talk about how this drive for precision affected both us in the past and in the present and I started to open my mouth to describe it but instead I said "Do you want to see my version of that story?" And I lead him into the apartment into my main 'living area'. I told him the story about how my life was a pattern of protecting myself on the way in, failing to get rid of stuff after it had lived its usefulness to me, and the combinations therein. About how early in life I did both -- defaultly brought things into life and then never would get rid of them. How later I learned to protect myself on the way in knowing I couldn't get rid of things on the way out. And then how this apartment was the least piece about learning to get rid of things if they didn't work out. Relationships. Couches. This apartment. How each was a piece of the learning of a physical fractal embodiement of this idea of our drive of precision in conversation -- to protect on the front end.
At the end of this monologue standing in a mostly empty front 'room' of a studio apartment in the dark... mQ told me he noticed how calm I spoke. How soft and calm. He said in the 15 years I have known he has never heard he speak like that. And THAT is the third stroke. Not the story I was telling -- but how I told the story.
And it was at that moment it hit me -- THAT is my voice. THAT is the physical representation of my voice. The words are important but the energy and the tone and the loudness and the calmness are the voice. That same calmness my landlord spoke in his dream.
In those 3 moments the universe showed me my own voice. I didn't think into it. I didn't try to do it I just told the same story I had told to at least 5 people but I told it in a way that carried me in it much deeper than past ways. And because the landlord shared his dream with me as soon as the word calm dropped out of mQ's mouth I knew it was connected. I only knew any of this was important because I finally saw my voice-less problem a few months ago.
Without any of those 3 and especially if in another order it wouldn't have happened. So xie xie laoshi.
My voice. I've both never had it and never lost it. Tonight with 3 intersecting strokes the universe painted the picture that showed me what it sounds like. A paint by color or perhaps by time more than anything. 3 strokes close together but also far enough apart to know they weren't a single one.
The first stroke is an old stroke comparatively. For the past few months at least I've spoken strongly and often about finding my own voice. I've made words and stories up around it and poked into it from a few different angles. Most of what I knew was that other people's voices had interfered with mine. In a very physical sense how I choose to package my ideas into words for others has been shaped by something other than my own isolated internal methods. I hard on precision and accuracy in words. I pounce on people who mislead with a slightly 'wrong' word. I press for precision and perfection in speech so the other side has to do no work. In other words -- I change what I want to say to fit my audience and I adopt what I think will land best. I adopt their words. And not my own.
Slightly less tangible or significantly more intangible in my voice is what I want to so. In my anxiety who is really saying that? Did that idea or action originate from me or did someone else plant it there and it grew not as a symbiotic relationship but as more of a parasite? In my coping mechanisms have I listened to other people when they say might aren't good and I should try other things -- like qigong, and meditation, or drugs, or volleyball. How many of the things I like doing are mine because *I* like doing them and not just because I let someone influence me into doing them and I adopted them by default? These too are my voice -- my practices.
Clearly, this stroke is rather broad and big and has been being painted for a while. But as large as it sounds right now consider it took me 30 something years to see this stroke. I can only imagine it has been underfoot the entire time.
The second stroke came in an unexpected form. A very unexpected one at that -- it came from a dream. But not my dream. Not even someone I am close with but rather it came from landlords dream. He stopped me and told me he wasn't sure he should tell me this but his wife told him to. He told of a dream (details left out because they aren't mine) where he was anxious and nervous about something and in the middle of his struggle he felt a calming, comforting, reassuring presence that wasn't easily identifiable. One that said hold still, you have to do this, but it is going to be alright. When the situation changed he saw that that presence was me. Upon waking from the dream he spoke of a blue haze engulfing everything. His wife later told me that the blue was the 5th chakra. And it was in fact the throat chakra.
The last stroke just happened a few minutes ago. mQ was here and we were talking about the first stroke. The idea of this voice. He was lamenting his version of it and I was lamenting mine. At one point we started we started to talk about how this drive for precision affected both us in the past and in the present and I started to open my mouth to describe it but instead I said "Do you want to see my version of that story?" And I lead him into the apartment into my main 'living area'. I told him the story about how my life was a pattern of protecting myself on the way in, failing to get rid of stuff after it had lived its usefulness to me, and the combinations therein. About how early in life I did both -- defaultly brought things into life and then never would get rid of them. How later I learned to protect myself on the way in knowing I couldn't get rid of things on the way out. And then how this apartment was the least piece about learning to get rid of things if they didn't work out. Relationships. Couches. This apartment. How each was a piece of the learning of a physical fractal embodiement of this idea of our drive of precision in conversation -- to protect on the front end.
At the end of this monologue standing in a mostly empty front 'room' of a studio apartment in the dark... mQ told me he noticed how calm I spoke. How soft and calm. He said in the 15 years I have known he has never heard he speak like that. And THAT is the third stroke. Not the story I was telling -- but how I told the story.
And it was at that moment it hit me -- THAT is my voice. THAT is the physical representation of my voice. The words are important but the energy and the tone and the loudness and the calmness are the voice. That same calmness my landlord spoke in his dream.
In those 3 moments the universe showed me my own voice. I didn't think into it. I didn't try to do it I just told the same story I had told to at least 5 people but I told it in a way that carried me in it much deeper than past ways. And because the landlord shared his dream with me as soon as the word calm dropped out of mQ's mouth I knew it was connected. I only knew any of this was important because I finally saw my voice-less problem a few months ago.
Without any of those 3 and especially if in another order it wouldn't have happened. So xie xie laoshi.