Do you talk to yourself? Write it down. Carry a small notebook with you wherever you go so you can be your own secretary, taking down the notes, the words, the ideas you are speaking in your own mind. Sitting on the bus right now, a few minutes before I started writing this, I was thinking of a friend who is going through an interesting and challenging life adventure right now who recently started a blog. As I thought about him and what he is writing these days, I said to myself, as if I was talking to him, “Do you talk to yourself? Write it down!” Since I was listening to myself, I took my own advice and wrote this down in the small notebook I carry with me everywhere.
Listening to my own thoughts, paying attention and then putting them on paper is like tapping a keg of beer. I take the pen, the word spigot, and wield it just so to release the words, to let their inky flow fill the page, the papery word mug that is soon full of a cool and frothy literary brew. Sometimes, I take a swig of what I write and am amazed that it tastes pretty good.
Take dictation from yourself.
I am wondering if learning to take dictation from my inner voice helps and allows me to get at my own thoughts and feelings which I can not access from my usual, waking, conscious mind.
I am thinking that an artist combines a keen eye for reality with a gift for expression (writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, acting, composing, performing, and on and on), with an attentiveness to that inner voice.
I am suspecting everyone is an artist to one degree or another, that all people can perceive, be attentive, then express the result. The great writers and painters and performers do those three things so well, other people will pay to read, to listen, to watch. Everyone can do these three things, I think, well enough to have fun and maybe, just maybe, experience some healing.
I am experiencing the health and healing writing my own words can foster. I’ll make a deal with my exercising relatives: I will exercise for every day per week they write at least one paragraph in a journal.
Voices in my head? No. Not voices. A voice. The voice. Am I crazy? Not if I recognize it as my own.
Put yourself in a context of prayer, corporate worship, fasting, feasting and the voice you hear may be at least part of how God answers prayers.
Do you talk to yourself? Write it down!
