The Choice of Voice

Jeffrey Mindell

Life is full of choices.  It's wonderful to be human and have the ability to choose, but sometimes I wonder who's doing the choosing.  Ever feel like there are dueling personalities within you?  There's that part of you that wants to make the sarcastic zinger to a friend who has done something silly, and the part that advises mature restraint.  There's the part that wants to eat the whole box of whatever, and the part that suggests that perhaps moderation may be a better road.

This all begs the question, if we are not always making the choices we say we want to make – who is?  How is it possible for us to say upon reflection, "I wish I wouldn't have done that, I didn't want to, but I couldn't control myself."  If we can't control ourselves, who can?  How do we lose control of ourselves when we are ourselves?

In my experience, there absolutely are dueling personalities within any given person.  The part that is self-destructive and works against one's self interest is the ego.  The part that works for the betterment of one's self and others is the higher self.  The tricky part is learning how to recognize what voice is speaking.

I'm no expert, but I have come upon a few, little tips that have helped me to recognize the voice of the ego.  First, the ego is dramatic.  It feeds off drama in your head and loves to create and be a part of drama of any kind.  Second, the ego is always making mountains out of molehills.  If you sort of realize that you're making a big deal out of nothing, you (ego) probably are.  Third, the ego loves to live in the past or the future.  Can't sleep because you're worried about something that may happen six months from now if fifteen other things go wrong first?  Replaying a painfull, childhood memory that has long since passed?  Welcome to Ego City.

Fourth, the ego always feels superior or inferior to someone else – both are flip sides of the same coin.  Fifth, the ego is horrendously impatient, it wants everything and wants it now and then when it gets it, it wants something different.  Sixth, the ego is excellent at convincing you that what is good for you is actually bad for you and what is bad for you is good for you.  Lastly, the ego is the master of disguise; once you catch onto it, it will disguise itself as your higher self or some other godly or superior voice.

Now the higher self on the other hand is basically everything the ego is not.  It is calm, infinitely patient, loving and compassionate.  When the higher self speaks (it may be a feeling rather than a voice), something just feels easy and freeing about what it is saying, even if you know that it is advising you to do something challenging.  When things just have a feel of flow or rightness to them, it's likely the higher self.  Listening to this voice is like building a muscle, but with practice I have found that the difference between the two voices becomes more obvious.

All that being said, none of us are likely to become Buddhas anytime soon, so don't beat yourself up if you fall back into ego once or ten bazillion times.  By the way, the ego loves to beat you up for not listening to your higher self.  Any self beat up of any kind has ego written all over it.  The higher self may recognize that the best choice was not made, so it commits to learn and grow from the experience and moves on.  The ego holds on to thing forever.

It's always a choice, to choose which voice to listen to, and the choice of voice can mean the difference between living a stressed-out, frantic life or a calm balanced one.

Jeffrey Mindell is a poet, writer, lawyer and cartoonist, but not necessarily in that order.  He can be reached at jmindell@gmail.com