I’m sitting listening to music and reflecting on my day. What to write about? What to say?  Speaking has always been one of my passions. I often say I can talk for England. Sometimes I have to remind myself to let the other person get a word or two into the conversation. I love words. I love the different sounds, the musicality of lyrics, even without the music, the emotional range that words can express. I was born talking I suspect. Or at least broadcasting the energy to communicate. Yet so often I’ve felt uncomfortable with words. I’ve felt like no-one was listening. Or that my opinion was unnecessary or even unwanted. Perhaps because I love speaking words I want to use them over and over again. Is that boring?

One of the phrases we use is to tell someone to ‘speak your mind’ or another is to ‘say your piece’. These invites are often made when we don’t really want someone to say what they are thinking or feeling. It’s like a piece of reverse psychology. An invitation to speak that carries the implication of not listening anyway. Then we get frustrated that someone won’t speak their mind or feelings. You keep it all in we say. Tell me we ask. But our intention is usually to debate what is said instead of to accept it. Speaking is really tricky. There are so many social conventions, conditioning and rules that what we communicate is usually only a fraction of what we might actually want to say.

As a medium & psychic I’m used to people reacting at times as if I’m a bit weird. Sometime I smile to myself when I’m saying something and getting the ‘weird’ reaction in the person’s eyes. Because I’m usually thinking ‘if you think that’s weird I definitely can’t share this with you’. So I’m censoring my communications. A nice way to say this would be that I’m tailoring the content of my discussions for my audience. There is an implied convention that I can only talk about what the other person can accept. I feel that particular convention is such a limitation. It trains us to communicate in familiar patterns. Any subject outside of those patterns i.e. the topics we can talk about & those that have to be hidden, is never opened up to the light of day. If we don’t discuss something it’s easier to deny it exists. Many things spring to mind but the one I’ll mention since I’ve experienced it personally is equality for women. What an effort to discuss something that should be a natural right for 50% of the world’s population. How much rubbish is spouted by people out of fear that the status quo might perhaps be changed for them if we recognised that women contribute as much as men to the human race.

So how about when I talk about speaking to people who have died? Or to aliens? Or angels? You don’t have to share the same world view as me but do I really have to keep my experiences to myself because you aren’t ready to be open minded? It’s taken me a long time to find my authentic voice. Writing has helped. Teaching has helped. Radio broadcasts, lectures & church services have helped. Would it be so hard to listen for a little while to a topic you don’t understand or know very little about to see if there was something in what was said that could inspire you to find out more? Rather than challenge each other to ‘speak our minds’ it would be wonderful if we had conversations based on speaking what is in our heart. We could explore how our world views differed. We could be mindful of how each other’s heart experiences have shaped our point view. In the moment we could recognise that we might have different positions on all sorts of topics. In that same moment we could also recognise and embrace that having different viewpoints is the point of communicating in the first place. I believe our human need to speak to one another is because we have lost that intuitive ability to ‘read’ the energy of our self and others. We have lost the focus on the heart centre of the other person. So thoughts and feelings are no longer clear. A space for gaps, lies and half-truth has crept in.

Practicing speaking mindfully from the heart is all about speaking our own personal truth. No matter what that truth is. No one else has to agree that it’s truth for them. It isn’t actually about agreement. Speaking from the heart is about sharing who you truly are without judgement or reservation. Then we can learn to actively listen to one another. If we heard the truth of each person’s heart perhaps we would consider, at last, that unconditional love, forgiveness and gratitude is the way to reach a peaceful sharing of ourself, our humanity and our world. Strip away the layers of convention, activate your listening ear and speak in your own voice. You might find that you have many valuable things to say.

Day 138 of my blogging challenge.