With our modern busy lives it can be hard to slow down enough to hear the quiet voice inside us which can guide us. To be honest, I’m not sure how many times I even heard that voice before the first time I attended a 10-day meditation. Yet that one day, probably in the middle of the 10 days, in the middle of an hour-long meditation sit, a clear voice said within me, “Write your cousin a letter.” Very loud and very clear, that’s all that it said. And so, after 15 years of silence, I contacted my cousin.

Since then, from time to time, I’ve heard that same voice. It’s not too common for me and it’s rarely as clear. But every so often it is. Only tonight did I thread the commonality between that meditative experience, my ayahuasca experience (where that voice is so clear that you’re essentially having conversations with it), and the experience that Quakers are led to practice in their meetings for worship.

Buddhists might call it “walking on the path of Dhamma,” and Quakers might call it “listening to the Light,” and those at an ayahuasca ceremony might perceive that they’re receiving wisdom from Grandmother Ayahuasca. Use the vocabulary that works to your experience. What they share is an active perception of an inner wisdom that can guide us.

“If we heed the advice of the Spirit or Light within us, we get more counsel. If we ignore the advice, God ignores us until we decide to seek his counsel and direction.”

De-Christianize the language as needed