By Noelle Sterne
I’d just come from lunch with a friend. I had a fierce headache and didn’t understand why. After all, wasn’t she my dear, longtime friend? Hadn’t I been looking forward to our lunch to catch up and giggle and break our perpetual diets?
When I lay down on the sofa and tried to meditate, many feelings surfaced. I was surprised, even shocked at them: anger, resentment, disgust. The answers came. I hadn’t admitted to myself that we had both changed and grown in different ways. We no longer had that spark of commonality, camaraderie that had made our get-togethers so delightful. I was increasingly interested in the latest spiritual teachers, and she was increasingly interested in the latest Jimmy Choos.
Before, we’d united in delicious criticisms of everyone we saw and knew. Now, I strived to see the good in all, or at least not speak ill of them. Not that she wasn’t a generous and thoughtful person. She was. I still loved her insights and sense of humor.
But . . .My emotional and physical reactions were talking to me.
If you’ve had similar experiences, listen.
If you find yourself resenting your job, friends, goals, even leisure activities, and you get angry at yourself for choices you’ve made, listen. Your mind and body are telling you that you haven’t been on track.
We have been given many touchstones that signal whether and when we’re on track. As we acknowledge that we have them, cultivate them, and pay attention, they’ll guide us unfailingly.
Here are several important ones.
Touchstone: The Appeal to Our Mind
Our minds know. And protest, defend, reason, and rationalize for not doing what our infallible touchstones tell us. Jesus knew this. In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas (verse 70), he cautions us to follow our innermost leanings and tells us why we should:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you.
If you do not bring forth that within you, what you do not bring forth will kill you.”
When we deny what’s in us, as spiritual teacher and author Bruce Wilkinson reminds us in The Dream Giver, we will reap sadness, anger, frustrations, and illnesses. Wayne Dyer knows the cost of keeping our “music” unexpressed. He says in The Power of Intention:
“That silent inner knowing will never leave you alone. You may try to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, but in honest, alone moments of contemplative communion with yourself, you sense the emptiness waiting for you to fill it with your music.” (pp. 151-152)
Touchstone: The Message of Our Inner Voice
Our Inner Voice is a flawless touchstone. The brilliant children’s author Shel Silverstein says it eloquently and simply in the widely reprinted poem “The Voice” from his book of poems, Falling Up. Most of us taller children can surely benefit from its message:
There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
“I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you—just listen to
The voice that speaks inside. (p. 38)
Our Inner Voice can be accessed in many ways, as you may know—through quiet, meditation, in nature, or by just asking. Then listen. You may hear words or sense feelings. You may notice a headline that’s the message you need or suddenly hear or think of a song lyric that holds the answer. You may just feel impelled to act.
Whenever you feel perplexed, stymied, disgusted, angry, uneasy, anxious, frustrated, afraid, sick, or any other way that’s uncomfortable or unbearable, and your great and powerful rational mind isn’t coming up with decent answers, ask your Inner Voice.
The more you turn to it, the more you will rely on it, trust it, and recognize its wisdom. It’s always available and always on your side. It knows what is absolutely right for you and is your ultimate friend, ally, guide, and support.
How does the Inner Voice feel? When I get quiet enough to ask in all humility, the Voice is immediate. It’s also certain, calm, strong, and nonjudgmental. It ignores all my “What ifs” and “Buts” and hones in on solutions. Sometimes the answer is only a word. And that’s enough. Other times the answer floats in as a sentence, or trumpets as a declaration, or winds around as a mini-lecture. However the response appears, the feelings that accompany the Voice are unmistakable.
Touchstone: The Messages of Our Body
The answers of the Inner Voice prompt sensations in your body. Feel them. When I hear the Voice, I feel a lightness in my chest and sense of well-being. All fear in my stomach is gone, and I feel a blissful peace.
When I’m not following the Inner Voice, my body tells me in other ways. In that lunch with my friend, my head ached fiercely. The minute after I agreed to critiquing a story as a “favor” and knew the story was really a mini-novel, I felt a sinking in my stomach and shortness of breath. When I met a neighbor I’ve never particularly liked and nodded to her dinner invitation, as soon as we parted my palms went cold.
But when I had a conversation with a stranger in the parking lot and we could hardly talk fast enough about common spiritual interests and made a coffee date, I glowed. When I was offered a dream-job project editing a heartfelt memoir for a former client I’ve always been fond of, my heart beat faster with grateful anticipation. And when on a winter Saturday I decided not to attack chores that have loitered on the to-do list for a year and a half and instead devote the afternoon to writing a section in my novel, my energy skyrocketed and I couldn’t wait to get my fingers tapping.
Deepak Chopra in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success points us to the touchstone of our bodies. He suggests that we ask ourselves, “If I make this choice, what happens?” And he advises us to wait for the answer—given in our body. If our body “sends a message of comfort,” we’ve made the right choice. If our body “sends a message of discomfort,” we haven’t (p. 43).
Our bodies tell us.
Touchstone: The Messages of Our Emotions
Our emotions are also faultless guides to our best choices. My friend Shelley recently told me that a long-ago college acquaintance, Tanya, asked her to a party celebrating Tanya’s newly-awarded partnership in a law firm. With much stammering, Tanya lamented how busy she was and implored Shelley to organize the refreshments. Tanya directed that they had to be “top of the line.” Shelley couldn’t even fathom why Tanya called her—they hadn’t been close in college—much less dropped this rather large task on her. But Shelley, slightly flattered, consented.
The moment she hung up, Shelley said, she felt great anger. First it was at Tanya for her nerve and assumptions that Shelley would remember her and help her. Didn’t Tanya have other friends? With the raise of her partnership, couldn’t she afford a party planner?
Then, more accurately, Shelley knew her anger was at herself. She had ignored her body. As soon as she heard Tanya’s directions and supposedly dire plight, Shelley had felt a little sick and mentally pulled away. This, she confessed to me, should have been enough of a sign. But she ignored it. Her emotions, and body, were telling her to say no, but she said yes.
I’m pleased to report that Shelley called Tanya back, wished her the best, and politely bowed out. After the conversation, Shelley felt another dramatic emotion—elation. As she told me, “I stood up for myself and honored my real emotions.”
You can probably recall similar or parallel experiences to Shelley’s. In any situation or decision, when you feel mad, sad, glad, or any other emotion, heed it. Your emotions are telling you the truth.
Touchstone-Focusing Questions
Several touchstone questions can be helpful for knowing whether you’re making the decision that keeps you on track. Chopra in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (pp. 42-43) suggests we ask ourselves two questions for any choice:
“What are the consequences of this choice that I’m making?” And he points out that in our hearts we already know.
“Will this choice that I’m making now bring happiness to me and to those around me?” Again, we know quickly by listening inside.
Once we’ve made the right choice, other questions can confirm it. The answers we receive in our minds, bodies, and emotions have been variously described as being “in the flow,” “in the zone,” “in the pocket,” “at one with.” Whatever the description, this is a state of completely absorbed concentration in a given event or creation. Known in Eastern traditions as overcoming the duality of the self, the concept was originally introduced to the West by psychology professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi as a major concept of positive psychology.
Combined with Chopra’s two questions above, you can ask other questions that help you ferret out and intuit your best choices to know if you’re on track with any activity, task, or event. For me, the greatest “flow” activities are writing and meditation (and sometimes making a gorgeous lasagna). As I’ve made increasingly better choices, given myself more writing time, and noticed my bodily sensations and emotions, I’ve developed these touchstone-focusing questions:
- Are you unaware of time passing when you’re engaged in the process or activity?
- Are you unaware of your body during this time?
- Do you feel completely immersed in the activity, even to not hearing doorbells or feeling hunger?
- Do you feel a sense of joy and peace during the process?
- Do you get annoyed at your body for becoming tired because you just want to keep going?
- When you leave it, do you have a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment?
- Are you eager to get to it very soon again? Tomorrow?
Learn your own mind-Inner Voice-body-emotions touchstones for straying or staying on track. As you do, you will make many more choices that are right for you. You’ll be happier, more fulfilled, and more giving to others in the right ways at the right times that bless you both.
Noelle Sterne is an author, editor, writing coach, and spiritual counselor. She has published over 300 pieces in print and online venues, including Author Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Children’s Book Insider, Funds for Writers, Transformation Magazine, Unity Magazine, Women on Writing, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest. Noelle’s invited blogs on Author Magazine’s “Authors’ Blog” on writing, creativity, and spirituality can be found at http://authormagazineonline.wordpress.com/. A spiritually-oriented chapter appears in the new book Transform Your Life (Transformation Services, 2014). A story appears in the forthcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul: Touched by an Angel (October 2014). With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, for over 28 years Noelle has assisted doctoral candidates in completing their dissertations (finally). Based on her practice, she is completing a handbook for doctoral candidates struggling with their dissertations on their largely overlooked but equally important nonacademic difficulties: Challenge in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015). In Noelle’s book Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), draws examples from her academic consulting and other aspects of life to help readers release regrets, relabel their past, and reach their lifelong yearnings. Her webinar about the book can be seen on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95EeqllO NIQ&feature=youtu. Noelle’s website: www.trustyourlifenow.com.
