YouTube: The Whispering Soul
Audio: The Whispering Soul
From a teaching point of view, it’s a lot easier to talk about the soul than instruct someone on how to actually experience it. Yet, it is the experience that transforms belief into knowing, a vital component to our spiritual understanding.
The pioneers of New Thought referred to the silence as a state of inner communion with the spiritual source of one’s being. This communion is an intuitive experience that comes through stilling the anxious busyness of the intellectual mind and bringing the attention to the original, unadulterated spring of life welling up as one’s being. I have compared this stream of incessant thought to encountering a river to be crossed. While most seem to be stopped at the bank, it is possible, and essential, that we wade into this river and cross to the other side. This is not an actual span involving distance, but a state of inner stillness that is achieved through releasing mental distractions.
Two phrases I find helpful are peace, be still and I am. Peace, be still encourages a mental and emotional letting go of distracting images. I am is a statement of alignment with pure being, the “river bank” toward which you are moving. The Old Testament refers to it as “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). In this episode, Elijah found the Lord was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in a still small voice. Though we are forced to speak of this inner connection in metaphors, it is a homecoming that every person instantly recognizes as their natural state of being. It may at first be fleeting, but we recognize its simplicity and natural warmth as the very womb of our being.
Our experience at this level is the recovery of a familiar place we have never left. Though we have been engrossed in the winds, the earthquakes, and the fires of external religions, programs of self-improvement, and perpetual efforts to acquire that missing thing that promises to be the fulfilling element that brings our peace, our search ends only when we learn to listen to the still small voice of the whispering soul.
J Douglas Bottorff 
“Though we are forced to speak of this inner connection in metaphors, it is a homecoming that every person instantly recognizes as their natural state of being. It may at first be fleeting, but we recognize its simplicity and natural warmth as the very womb of our being.” I read this soon after enduring the slow torture of completing half of a 6-hour course in Defensive Driving for an insurance discount. (If you have ever done this, you will relate!) I needed that “simplicity and natural warmth [of] the very womb of our being” to recover my sanity, before returning tomorrow to finish the course. Thanks for this comforting description.
That is funny. We live in a world of driving tests, kids eating Tide, and root canals. It’s good to know there is at least one sane “safe space” at the very core of our being. Good luck with the rest of your test!