Dear Hearts,
Today’s conversation was going to be titled The Lover and The Fighter, but at the last moment I felt compelled to write about something more pertinent to the present moment: the art of listening to your inner voice. Before we begin, let us start with a simple truth. The purpose of Avastavé is to encourage intentional living through the written word and accompanying audio recordings. It is my greatest wish that through these conversations, all of us are able to experience a deeper sense of fulfilment within the spiritual experience that is life. I do not profess to be a guru, only a human being learning to move in greater alignment with the forces at play in all of our lives. My hope is that we can swim beside one another through waters both calm and tumultuous until the river inevitably diverges and guides us along our own respective paths.
Lately, I have found myself thinking about noise. The noise of societal expectations, the noise of social media, the noise of endless advertisements, television programmes, algorithms tracking our every click, and products promising us a better version of ourselves. There is a great deal of noise in the modern world, so much so that many of us have forgotten what silence sounds like. Yet I believe that beneath all of it exists something quieter, something wiser. It may be convenient for a capitalistic society to convince us that intuition is irrational or that instinct cannot be trusted, but I have always felt that there are moments in life when we simply know. We know when a situation is wrong for us. We know when someone is genuine. We know when we are betraying ourselves to make others comfortable. These moments may appear insignificant, but they are evidence that somewhere within us exists a deeper wisdom that cannot be explained away by logic alone.
I have found that the removal of ego often helps us access this wisdom. In Gary Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul, he speaks about the soul as something distinct from the ego, and that simple idea helped me begin separating the desires of my ego from the quieter voice of my soul. The ego seeks validation, certainty, approval and control. The soul, however, seeks alignment. Whether you call it God, Divine Energy or the Universe itself, I believe there is a force that connects all living things. As someone raised Buddhist, I was fortunate enough to explore the beauty of many faiths without feeling compelled to abandon my own. Buddhism, for me, has always been less about worship and more about understanding the karmic principles that govern life. Through that lens I came to appreciate that while our beliefs may differ, many of us arrive at a similar conclusion: there are forces at work in this vast world that extend beyond what we can immediately see. Perhaps our inner voice is one of the ways in which those forces communicate with us. Not through dramatic revelations or booming declarations, but through gentle nudges that guide us towards the people, places and experiences that are meant for us.
Ironically, the greatest obstacles to hearing that voice are often not dramatic. They are found in our smallest daily habits. The twenty minutes spent scrolling our phones first thing in the morning that becomes an hour by midday. The endless consumption of content. The relationships that leave us feeling depleted rather than nourished. The constant need to fill every moment with stimulation. If you are seeking alignment with your inner voice, there are almost certainly areas of your life that require attention, and chances are you already know what they are. I know what they are in mine. There are people I deeply care about whose presence leaves me feeling emotionally exhausted, not because they are bad people, but because they are trapped in cycles of pain they have no desire to leave. Over time I have learned to limit my time with them, not out of malice, but because energy is finite. If I continually give myself away, I eventually have nothing left for the people I love, the work I care about, or the relationship I am trying to build with myself. Boundaries are rarely easy, but they are often necessary. Every unnecessary distraction, every draining conversation and every habit that distances us from ourselves adds another layer of noise between us and the wisdom we seek.
Perhaps the inner voice is not something we need to find at all. Perhaps it has been with us from the very beginning, patiently waiting beneath the expectations, the distractions and the endless chatter of modern life. The work, then, is not to become someone new, but to create enough stillness to hear what has always been there. To spend a little less time consuming and a little more time listening. To trust the feeling in your chest when something is right, and equally when something is wrong. In a world that profits from our distraction and constantly demands our attention, choosing to listen to yourself may be one of the most radical acts of all. And perhaps, dear hearts, the journey home to ourselves begins not with a grand transformation, but with a single moment of silence.
love always,
Avastavé by Dmitri Ruwan
Listen to the audio narration of this article here.
