This is Part Two in a Series of Articles called Name That Entity

Part One is a lengthier introduction to loaded Questions about Hearing Voices, Communicating with Spirits, Receiving Divine Guidance, and Listening to Intuition -- be sure to read Who are you talking to when you talk to yourself?

Does This Sound Familiar? A reader/new friend sent me a great email that sums up the many questions you're probably thinking right now concerning communicating with your Spirit Guides:

They never exactly seem to answer. Actually, they do answer, but not with "clair"-anything. I ask myself a question and I get the right response but it seems like both the question and answer come from the same voice, my own...

A Tree Falls in a Forest... In Buddhist teaching tradition, the Master guides the Student to arrive at his own answer via the path invoked with a deep riddle called a zen koan. This mental stumper doesn't lead to any one answer -- the riddle is meant to prompt you along the path to wisdom by engaging you in generating even more questions.

A classic example is the old "If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" Actually, that unfolds all kinds of metaphysical Mysteries...

The point is: Relax your expectations. There is no one Answer. The Shifting Path to Mystery and Wisdom is uniquely created and experienced by each one of us, individually. The Big Answers may never come, but we get closer to Knowing by a series of accumulated, smaller questions.

Let me ask you:

What does the Voice in your head that you identify as Yours sound like?
Does it sound like your speaking voice?
Does your speaking voice always sound the same, or does it change from one situation to another?
What role does the context play?

Do you use the same voice when you're...

Playing with children
Baby-talking your pets
Dealing with a customer at work
Talking to your boss
Making a prepared important presentation to a group

How does the sound of your voice change when you're...

Drinking at a bar with your friends
Riding on a roller coaster
Talking to a date over dinner in a restaurant
Whispering to someone in a library

Does the voice you call your own change when you talk to...

A stranger
Your parents
Your co-workers
Someone you have a crush on

What do Voices sound like when they clearly are not making a physical sound? When you read an email from your mom, do her words on the screen "sound" like her? You're not physically hearing her… So how do you know what her words sound like?

If it's someone you know and have heard speak often, then your mind assigns that Voice to the words. But where does it get that Voice from?

The Sounds of Silence Okay, stretch this concept of listening and assigning sound to silence even further: When someone Instant Messages you in a chat room -- someone you've never met before, seen in "real" life, or spoken to on the phone -- what do her words sound like?

Do her words in your mind come through in Your inner Voice or does it "sound" different somehow? What voice does your mind assign to her, and how did you come up with that voice?

I doubt that you are consciously aware of this process taking place -- you don't have to decide. It's an automatic response -- still a creative choice that your mind is making, just not consciously.

This is a fascinating phenomenon. Pay attention to it, and the process begins unfolding in complexity and nuance. It's like the layers of an onion -- you can peel back each one to discover the next; they're all transparent; they're distinct and easier to separate than you might have imagined before trying it.

Is this magic? Are there special effects involved? Are the individual moments when you hear these kinds of voices blockbuster-movie-worthy scenes every time they occur?

No. Of course not. As magical as the Voices in your head may seem, put under the microscope in this way, you see that they are not booming voice-overs accompanied by computer-generated image wizardry.

The sounds of the voices you hear with your inner psychic sense are not physical sounds at all. On a daily basis, they are commonplace, ordinary, and extra-ordinary. [Emphasis on the ordinary.]

This sense of sound-that-isn't-really sound is clairaudience.

You ARE Clairaudient You possess the psychic or intuitive ability called clairaudience. It is a perceptive ability than you can consciously choose to develop and to work with in your everyday life -- just like any muscle you have, it can be strengthened. Most of us are blessed with arms that work because we work them. In extreme cases, total lack of use will cause a muscle to atrophy and become less than useful; with weight-training and curls three times a week you can have more bulge in your biceps than you need for practical purposes...

You use it all the time, constantly. Your mind and your consciousness is so saturated with it that you've discounted it. You've dismissed it. You go looking for Major, supernatural, big, huge, loud, mind-blowing phenomena outside yourself and you're frustrated when you don't find much to write home about.

Psychic abilities don't happen outside of you -- they're inside. They're no big deal, in a way. They're small, they're constant, and they slip in and out of your consciousness, going about their task of serving your Spirit and your Mind and your physical senses at a level you're not paying much attention to.

The truth about Magic and the Supernatural I'll share a major secret with you -- magic is found in the mundane. I don't care for the word supernatural because -- what is that? How can there be any such thing as supernatural? Isn't everything -- all creation, all realities -- found huddled up under a canopy called Nature? What exists outside of Nature?

Super Common Divine I have a new term or descriptive phrase for you -- consider it as a replacement for what you now call supernatural : super common divine.

The common denominators of divine, spiritual experience in human form all fall within what I call the super-common. Screw supernatural, okay? It's an impotent word that undermines your god-given gifts; it sabotages your spiritual power by taking what you already perceive at the psychic, intuitive level and placing it outside your experience, above you, too big for you, out of your reach...

What, you think you're not special enough? Bullshit, okay?

'Scuse my Frinch, but that is B as in bosh ;S as in sabotage... No wonder you can't find the supernatural -- you've been entirely misguided - about its name, what it looks like, where to find it, and whether or not you should even believe in it at all.

Guess what? Yep, you've heard me say it before, but I'm going to keep on saying it because every time I ask my Guides what to tell you, they say keep repeating the Message: You are already everything you've ever wanted to become. You've always had the power. You are living your life's purpose right this minute, every breath you take. You are imminently worthy.

This is why some major television network broadcasts The Wizard of Oz every year and has for years, since before most of us was even born. The wisdom bears repeating; and though we've heard the Message, we need to have it reinforced. We benefit from being constantly reminded.

Now back to our Program:

What do written words sound like? Do you hear a different voice when you read Shakespeare than when you read Anne Rice? Now, you may have actually heard Anne speak before, in an interview or something… But Anne often writes in first-person from the point of view of male characters...

Do you hear Anne or do you hear the Vampire Louis or Lestat?

If you've read Anne Rice's books and you've read Shakespeare, then if I set two typed pieces of paper before you, one with an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet and one from Interview with a Vampire, could you not identify which page belongs to which author?

Could you make a deeper identification -- go in another layer:

That's Claudia speaking, in the scene where she screams at Lestat and tells him how much she hates him for creating her…
That's Juliet speaking, in the balcony scene…

Whether or not you see Tom Cruise when you read Lestat, or some other entity conjured from your own personal associations -- whether you picture Juliet as a beautiful actress you've seen in a local theater or one of many film adaptations, or you visualize the boy in drag who would've undoubtedly portrayed her in the original production in Shakespeare's time… well, that's another set of conversations we can engage in down the road, when we talk about your inherent clairvoyant abilities and what your spirit guides look like…

For now, let's stick with clairaudience...

You see where I'm going with all this, right? None of these Voices really exists outside of your mental processes…

A Final Blast of Questions: What do I sound like, right now, as you're reading my words?

Are these words coming to you in your inner voice, or are you hearing my speaking voice? I haven't started podcasting yet, so where are you getting my voice?

Are you sure you know what I sound like? Are you sure you know what you sound like?

Are you still sure you aren't already hearing your Spirit Guides?