The Voices in Our Head

How to Silence the Ego and Listen to Your True Self

“Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.” ― Sogyal Rinpoche.

My inner chattering voice won’t go away this morning. I try to distract myself with a podcast, but the incessant voice keeps interrupting me.

“Do I need to rewrite this article before publishing? Will everything go smoothly with my upcoming travels? Will sales and cash flow pick up anytime soon? Will the pain in my right elbow and knees ever disappear?”

Your inner voice might also ask.

Why am I reading this article? Will it help me in a way that none of the other million articles out there couldn’t? But it’s true – I do hear this voice in my head. Let me just read a bit more and see what this is about. I like the way he writes.

We all have inner voices.

Buddhism calls it the internal “Chattering Monkey” and tells us that silencing this voice is the first step on the path to enlightenment (or nirvana).

Where do these voices originate?

These voices emanate from thoughts stored in our subconscious minds since birth, and our minds create these thoughts to protect our fragile selves. Our environment—parents, teachers, friends, society—forms our minds from an early age.

The inner voice can sometimes be helpful.

When we are young and feel the effects of boiling water, we create and store a memory that tells us we can’t go near hot water since we might get burnt, and that’s painful. Our inner voice warns us of impending danger when we are older and approach a hot kettle.

However, as our anxiety and fears grow over time, most of the voices become futile and develop into sabotaging self-limiting beliefs. We start giving ourselves negative feedback, and our lives are now orchestrated by a despotic voice continuously putting us down.

When I was ten years old, an art teacher humiliated me and my artwork in front of my classmates. I immediately created a voice that told me I should avoid creative thoughts, as I was worthless in that area.

Whenever I attempted to draw, doodle or even view art pieces, a voice would mockingly tell me to get serious. I avoided being creative for almost 35 years only because I listened to that voice in my head.

In 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who studies the brain, had a massive stroke that caused her language and other left-hemisphere functions to shut down gradually. She described her experience and what she learned in her now-famous and compelling Ted Talk.

After her stroke, she entered a euphoric state of mind in which, although she was less able to function, she stopped the chattering voice and left her mind completely silent. She explained in detail what happened to her brain:

“Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my job — it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those— they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful.”

However, Taylor’s inner voice also saved her life, as she went on to describe in fantastic detail how, during her stroke and in all her confusion, she was able to hear a voice that directed her to find her business card, which had her office number, so that she could call a colleague for help.

So, what do we do with our inner voices? We can’t silence them.

We must become aware of them and try to decipher which one serves us and which one doesn’t by developing certain practices:

1) Become aware that the voices are not ours

First, we need to be aware and accept that the voice in our heads is not ours. The voice won’t disappear no matter what we do, even if we become enlightened gurus living in mountain-high caves.

We must recognise that the voice represents our fears and desires, which grew from our past conditioning and how people reacted to our actions.

“I’m not that voice,” I keep telling myself.

2) Labelling the voices

When we give the voices names, it becomes easier to recognise that they don’t represent our true selves. For example, when idling away and avoiding a task, I label that voice “Procrastinating Mo”.  When my voices tell me my writing isn’t as good as that of another writer I admire, I call that voice “Loser Mo”. When I’m anxious just before a long impending flight, that voice can be “Worrier Mo”.

When I hear any of those named voices, I know they won’t serve me and quickly subdue them.

3) Meditation

I’m no Meditation expert, but my practice has helped make me more peaceful, less stressful, and more mindful. I use the breath technique, which is not too complicated. I sit still for twenty minutes first thing in the morning.

I’m not always successful, as thoughts wander in, but completing my practice gives me a glimpse of the inner peace that I want to achieve, even if I am in a euphoric state for a few minutes.

4) Mindfulness

In this age of digital distraction, where our attention is being constantly hijacked, we quickly lose focus and succumb to the numerous voices that run around in our minds. We are usually never present in the moment. We might be doing one thing yet worrying about a completely different thing.

When mindful, there is a certain beauty and simplicity in losing ourselves entirely in what we are doing. At this moment, the voices shut down and allow our inner selves to connect with the world. This could be a three-hour writing session, an early morning espresso where we are alone and most people are asleep, or drinking in the beauty of a Mediterranean sunset.

5) Journaling

This is an old tradition for a reason; it is one of the easiest ways to rid ourselves of too many thoughts, or in this case, multiple and confusing voices. There is something cathartic and therapeutic about putting words on paper to clear our heads.

For the past ten years, I have consistently journaled early in the morning. This practice has allowed me to monitor my thoughts and feelings and recognise how I sometimes become enslaved to the incessant voice in my head.

We have many voices in our heads, but we are one being. These voices belong to the Egoic material self and are entirely separate from our being—the higher spiritual self.

We need to learn to remove the noise of these voices, focus on the music that flows and allow our true selves to come out and dance.