"THE LITTLE VOICE THAT KNOWS..."

I went for a walk today through places I used to know when I was apprenticing with Eddie Greenspan to become a criminal lawyer. As I walked, I remembered the Jeff that existed then. I remembered how he walked (quickly!), how he breathed (barely), how he framed the moment (egoically). I remembered what it felt like to inhabit another way of being.

I sat down near the courthouse to breathe into myself, to connect to who I was now. Such a different inner world, such a different lens. Back then I had no body, or at least no felt experience of it. I knew it was down there, working hard to push my head from one achievement to another, but I couldn't really feel it. I was all mind, all will, all knowing.

Yet now I could feel my heart beating, feel the rain falling on my head, notice when I felt cold and wanted to go inside. "I" was something more than cerebral constructs and brilliant strategies. I-body. I-soul.

I wondered what had carried me from one identity to another. What was the first step on the Soulshaping journey?

I sat with it and I remembered. The first step was the 'little voice that knows.' I called mine Little Missy, but the name didn't matter. The intention is what mattered. This little voice carried a karmic blueprint for my destiny and whispered sweet somethings in my ear whenever I dared to walk a false-path. I heard it when I was planning a law practice, in the wrong relationship, sitting in traffic on the way to work: "No, not that way Jeffrey...walk this way." Although it came through in hints and whispers, it had an odd sense of authority to it. A distant flute with the energy of a symphony.

Of course I didn't want to hear it. I wanted to be a lawyer and make my family proud. I wanted the illusion of economic security. I wanted to join the world after years on the outside. I wanted to eat lunch at the Law Society and get as far away as possible from where I came from, all those nagging memories of poverty and pain. The ego has such a wonderful way of erasing the past (if only for a moment....)

But the little voice persevered- dark nights of the soul, truth aches, agitation and despair. It knew who lived inside of me, and it refused to let me quit on him. It knew everything that mattered.

I would like to begin this blogging journey by honoring the 'little voice that knows'. We all have one, and it is the best friend we will ever have. Only now do I realize how much mine loved me.