“When you prepare yourself to be discerning, when that is your goal, you tune in to yourself and watch for all the signs and signals — both inner and outer — that will assist you.” – John-Roger

This article was first published in the New Day Herald in July 1990.

There are many “voices” that speak to us.

The Voice of the Mind

When you listen to your own inner voice, most of the time, you are listening to your mind. The mind is taking its information out of the ego. The ego is a product of the mind and the emotions, a composite of all your experiences thrown together and stirred around, and then recycled through your consciousness in forms you may not readily identify. It can get tricky.

If there was a time long ago when you felt hurt and upset, and a friend took you out for an ice cream sundae, and you felt better, you may have linked those two experiences together in, your consciousness. At another time when you are feeling similar emotions, the “inner voice” may say, “Take care of yourself.” So you go to the ice cream store and have a sundae, and then you have another. You don’t feel better, and when you get sick, you say, “But my inner voice told me to have a sundae.” It probably didn’t say, “Pig out!” That’s something you added on to the inner message which was “Take care of yourself, feel better.”

The Voice of Spirits

Sometimes the inner voice is not like your voice nor is it a voice that you can recognize. It may not seem to come from your experience, either. This can more subtle. When you hear a strange “voice” telling you something and think “God told me,” it might not be God at all, it might just be some flunky who happens to be passing through. In the Spirit world, there are spirits that float by and can move in and out of your vibration. You may be picking up information they are giving out.

The Voice of Other People’s Thoughts

You can also hear the voice of other people’s thoughts. Sometimes, you will voice a thought and someone else will say, “I was just thinking that!” And you think, “Oh, my goodness, that thought just occurred to me even though I didn’t want that thought. Perhaps it wasn’t mine at all.” It’s pos­sible. If a thought feels foreign to you, keep in mind that you may be picking it up from someone else. If you suspect that a thought is coming from someone else and you want to let it go, you can wave your arms in front of your body in a cross-hatching, cutting motion. That can “cut” (change) the energy around you. When you have the intention of breaking energy fields between you and another person, you will start to break them. However, you have to ask yourself how much you want to break the energy fields between you and others, because you also learn, grow, and serve through interactive experiences.

You may be thinking, “How can I protect myself 100%?” But do you want to do that? If I were protected 100%, we couldn’t share anything. So I have to take on trust and faith in God that the sharing that I do with you or with all the people I interact with is going to be good-good for me, good for you, good for others. As I share with one person, others may benefit from that.

The Voice of Experience

There is another voice within. It might be called the voice of experience. It doesn’t come as words. It comes as a feeling-idea like “I shouldn’t go there. I don’t know why. It doesn’t feel right.” Something inside of you is linking up a present level of experience with a past level of experience and is guiding you. You have to learn to trust that. If you truly do not understand where the “warning voice” is coming from or what it is basing its information on, you can move into the experience-being very watchful-and if you discern what the “warning” is about, get out. This is called “discerning the Spirit.” You can learn to discern the Spirit by discerning the environment you’re in, by knowing when to stay and when to leave.

The Voice of the Traveler

When the Traveler speaks to you, almost 100% of the time, it is dealing with you in the Spirit world and will not play itself out in this material/ physical world. The Traveler is interested in the Soul transcending back into God, transferring back up to the Spirit God. The Traveler is not so interested in your body, money, relationships, etc. Those areas are your 10% to handle and are the levels here from which you learn. Your experience here is what you’re to learn, and is the vehicle through which you’ve come to evolve and learn discernment.

The Traveler will often say, “Whatever you do is fine with me.” And it really is because you’re the one doing it. But if we are going to be together physically, that is a different story. There are questions to be considered: How long will we be together? How much is it going to cost? Who’s going to be responsible for the money? Who’s going to keep records?

When people deal with me in the physical world, they often say, “Wow! You are really businesslike.” Yes. In this world, I want to be as secure as possible and I do that through knowledge. Some people are okay with letting things occur by happenstance. I know they will do that anyway, and in the meantime, I like to have as much information as possible so I can make the wisest choices available to me., so that I can discern the Spirit to the best of my ability and follow Spirit closely.

Discerning the Spirit

When you prepare yourself to be discerning, when that is your goal, you tune in to yourself and watch for all the signs and signals-both inner and outer-that will assist you. Sometimes when you are unclear you may seek out other people to assist you. If you seek out people who are lower in evolution than you are, they can assist you right down the path of destruction. Then you say, “Why did I go to them? Why did I listen to them?” A more important question might be–why did you do what they counseled? You can listen to someone and not do what they say. You can listen to someone and also listen to your own inner wisdom saying, “This doesn’t feel right. I don’t think I’ll be moving in this direction.” That’s discernment. You hear what people say and match that against the sounding board of your own experience. Then you make your own decisions.

The Voice of the Emotional Spirit

There is another kind of “voice” you might hear within and that comes from something I call the “emotional spirit.” You might go to a ball game or a pep rally or a political meeting or something where there is a gathering of people who are all sharing a common emotional experience and you fall into their point of view. You be­come caught up in the emotional fervor and know that they are right! Not only that, you know that everyone who does not share that point of view is wrong! Then you move on this emotional response and you get hurt. Later when you are by yourself and the emotional energy of the group is gone, you think, “How could I have let that happen? How could I have believed that?”

When the Spirit Moves Upon You

Another experience similar to that one happens in spiritual gatherings and in churches sometimes is one where people say “the Spirit moved upon you.” The Spirit moves through the heart rather than through the emotional content. When the Spirit moves upon you, something that was tentative inside becomes solid. Something that you may have thought about Spirit or about God becomes firm inside and you know that you know that you know. Doubts disappear, clarity appears.

Sometimes you can move out of that experience and move back into doubt and the confusion. You are not in the direct experience of Spirit anymore. That’s okay, you can’t expect to live there 100% of the time. But if you have that experience enough-perhaps through spiritual exercises-the knowledge of Spirit becomes more and more solid in you and you learn to discern the levels of the material world and the physical consciousness (mind, emotions, body, imagination) as being no more than what they are, and Spirit as being just what it is: your true home. You always get to choose where you place your consciousness and attention. Do you choose the material/physical world? Or do you choose Spirit?

Baruch Bashan

John-Roger