E024 - Do you speak in a phony voice?

My friend, who isn't into meditation, asked why I speak slowly in some of my videos, and if I was disingenuously putting on a phony meditation voice. Great question!

Watch the video below, or enjoy the written version.

Well, hello, welcome to another blog. What an episode is it gonna be!

I have some startling insights, some incredible facts and actually,... you know what, I really don't. But this is gonna be an interesting episode.

Firstly, I dressed up, I wore a little bit of a snazzy suit.

Secondly, a really normal friend of mine who is not really into consciousness per se, asked me a really interesting question. He very gently confronted me, I would say. And he said something along the lines of, "I watched one of your episodes. And why do you speak slowly in that meditational voice?" And he said, "Its just what you're speaking like this to me right now. And then you slow down like that and talk to the camera. It seems a bit disingenuous," he said.

And I am of course leaped to the defensive! (I joke a little bit). And I thought it was a great question and I'd like to explore that. Why the meditative voice? And one of my rebuttals or answers to him was "the way that we talk is usually in our heads. And that's the way we've always talked. We've known each other almost for our whole lives and we're were really good friends but we have a very particular friendship. We do work together and the way that we relate, it's very cognitive and that's okay, that's awesome".

But there are other ways to do it but it's not the way he and I communicate.

And so, why the meditative voice? Is that a piece of snakeoil salesmanship? A phony, put-on, "I am very spiritual" and the slower I speak, the more spiritual I am?

No. Here's the thing, we are infinitely capable of experiencing reality from different parts of ourselves. And we drift in between these states all day. You could be in a ragey part, angry with your spouse or partner or friend or you could be in a stressed one. I'm worried about money, I'm worried about clients, I'm worried about that. Or you could be sad and low or you could be hyper, super excited about new potentials or you can be sleepy. And these are not just physiological states, literally the locus and the focus of our awareness is in a different part of our being. And if we're in our heads a lot, then it's just up here up in the little clouds up here, whoop, let's get on, let's get a little rational. And I think here we are in 2020 and it is encultured in us to be in our brains, in our heads, mentally focused and that's normal. And we are the most distracted humans that have ever existed, I'm guessing because I've only ever been here. But with our smart phones and endless amounts of media, there are so many ways to get distracted. But you'll notice if you get up onto a mountain, that things begin to shift. The locus of awareness shifts, how reality feels shifts. And so too with voices. I've mentioned this many times but one of the great cores of mystical traditions from Islam to mystical Christianity, to Buddhism, to yoga traditions is what Loch Kelly calls a ten inch drop from the head to the heart. And it behooves us too to embody. What does that mean? That means, for example, feeling the lower half of my body as I speak, if I and you right now, let's per the experiment. If you can maintain contact with the feeling of your feet right now, while you listen, pay more attention to the feet than to listening and I'll do the same with speaking. It changes the way I speak. I speak a little bit slower. A

nd if I give myself permission not to speed, to not fill in the spaces, to make YouTube content, that's gonna get you interested by speeding along from point to point and drop down into the body. Then something different happens. It's not normal, I would say cause normal is fast for the most part. But our sped up civilization doesn't seem to be working out that well. And that way of being for me is potentially at the root of the distraction of the planet and this way of living inequitably. I'm speeding onto the next thing, acquiring the next thing, saying the next thing, filling the space all the time. What happens if I don't fill the space? Will you get bored of this video? Must find more content quickly, fill the hole. And what if I take the risk to drop into heart-mind or Oculus Cordes of mystical Christianity, the Heart of Hearts from Sufism? Or a Hallmark Card in Western tradition, in other words, it's really corny, that heart thing.

But for me to do it here is vulnerable.

Here we are again, if you've enjoyed this one, in fact, whatever you feel about this episode, please drop a comment. Is slowing down and allowing silence, is that just crazy stuff and I should get a day job? Or can you feel this? Are you feeling me? Do you resonate?

Does it matter to you where your awareness sits in your being? Because just as much as it's important where our awareness is sitting, the same applies to where we speak from. Maybe there is a way of speaking from somewhere more connected and deeper that holds some potential.

Thanks for watching.