Sometimes I wonder if we have the answers inside us, all along. Like we know, somewhere in the deepest parts of ourselves, where we should be headed, or who we should be with. Something like intuition or conscience, or maybe even God speaking through our cells.

Have you ever had a moment where you suddenly knew, beyond a doubt, what to do? Like some strange force pulled you, pushed you, gave you clarity?

It’s like seeing a random person on a walk through the park and realizing this has happened to you before—you crossing paths with this specific stranger—in a dream. Like deja-vu. Like something scary and wonderful and will make you seem like a crazy person if you try to explain it.

Sometimes I wonder where that little voice in our head comes from.

Is it our inner selves, pushing at our bones, begging to be freed? Is it the darkest parts of ourselves, the ones we hold back and try to pretend don’t exist? Is it our deepest desires, constantly in conflict: what we need vs. what we want?

I’m not sure.

But when I shut off my mind for a moment (practically impossible for a writer like me) I feel my heart calling to me. I feel words shuffling themselves around in my brain, preparing for a poem, a sentence, a line, a caption, organizing themselves to make sense when I write them.

I feel the answers. Somewhere deep in my bones in ways I can’t explain. I find clarity. I find direction. I start to feel at peace about a decision, or feel like I am leaning in a specific direction.

And it feels like only when I quiet myself can my heart speak and simultaneously listen.

But how do you know if your heart is telling the truth?

Or what if it’s not about listening to my heart at all, but letting my body and brain work in tandem? What if I must stop following that beating muscle that pulls me based on emotion, based on connection, based on relationships that have hurt and healed it over time?

What if I’m supposed to quiet my mind, and in turn let my heart do the listening?

Not speaking, but listening. Waiting. Absorbing.

If I silence the rush of thoughts, can my heart hear what my brain is trying to say? Riding on logic and reason? Guiding me with its intelligence and wealth of experience? Knowing, long before my physical self even acknowledges the truth, what the answer is?

Maybe I need to shut up.

Stop this rambling. Stop these words flowing through my head to my fingers to the page. Maybe there are certain things we are not meant to understand. They just happen. We just follow. We just embrace them as they come.

All I know is that when I tell my mind to stop, to pause, to stop thinking and processing and planning—I hear. I listen. I feel. And there’s a tug in my heart, that conscience, that inner voice, that God-speak, that intuition, that calling to my heart.

And this time?
I’m listening.
 

Featured Image Credit: Alef Vinicius

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