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I have been listening to a book by Susan Jeffers called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It’s a little dated, mind you, but so is the Bible y’all and many among us would argue there are plenty of useful resources in there despite it’s age. One of the things she talks about is the “internal chatterbox” which is often nattering away in the background of our lives, undermining everything we do, every choice we make, all our relationships, every goal. It is a bummer, man. Many of us, probably most of us, know what that little BLEEPER sounds like.

She also talks about paths to cultivating and following the voice of intuition, which is very hard to discern when we have been listening to a mantra of stress all of our lives. She has some brief recommendations to get there, and I realized a few things as a result of reading her book:

1. Meditation is the path to paying attention to, slowing down, and eventually reframing the “internal chatterbox”

2. (and more relevant in the path to finding faith) - That internal voice of worry and fear is the mechanism that drowns out the voice of Good (or God)

There is a saying in recovery and spirituality circles that prayer is how we talk to God (or Good) and meditation is how we listen. Until this week, I always thought that the voice of God (or Good) was most likely to show up while I was meditating. Now it occurs to me that meditation is just how we change our relationship with that internal chatterbox, so that we can turn the volume down on it (ideally through kindness and compassion) and turn the volume up on intuition (i.e. the presence of Good or God in our lives).

Duuuuuuh.

I’m not sure how or why I never put these two things together, but it makes a lot of sense. I have often wondered what in the BLEEP is intuition? How am I ever going to tell the difference between that and following my worst fears to conclusion? Turns out meditation is the game changer. I knew it had lots of benefits and value, and that has certainly demonstrated itself in my life already, but I never had the simple, somewhat obvious thought that the internal chatterbox drowns out the voice of God (or Good, for the spiritually squeamish out there).

My internal critic would like to offer another duuuuuuuuuuuuh but all the self-help teachers out there say I should be nicer and more compassionate toward myself. How could I possibly know that when raised in a fear-based culture? Who would’ve taught me that, other than Susan Jeffers or some other resource I sought out on my own?

One thing I am so grateful for is all the spiritual teachers out there in the world seeking to make the world a better place. For all the negativity in some parts of the internet stratosphere, there are many, many others offering wisdom, information, and healing to help all of us find the light while floundering around in the dark.