The Lesson in Losing My Voice
I lost my voice the first weekend of my meditation teacher training. So, I sat back, kept to myself, observed, and stayed quiet through the first three days.
I was forced to do what I usually would never do.
When I walk into new spaces filled with new people and new information, I like to be front and center. I like to make myself known. I want to be a part of it all. I want to soak it all up as soon and as much as I can.
When I started to feel my voice slipping away (something that has happened nearly every single year during the fall since I was young), I felt a lot of resistance.
I felt fear that I was going to miss out. I felt fear that I would miss out on making connections and making the best impression on this group of strangers I know I will soon come to love as family.
I see now that this is just an illusion created from my mind.
It is a seed that was planted long ago that told me that it was not enough just to be.
I am entering this training with the desire to start fresh with my meditation and maybe even my entire perception of self. Who am I? Does the Nikki with a voice versus without a voice change the self within? Does it even matter how others perceive that self?
I’ve been studying this stuff for long enough to know that the I is much different than the Nikki I perceive myself as, as well as the Nikki that others perceive me as. It’s interesting being aware of the subtle nuances within it all especially when entering in a 200 hour training made to explore the mind.
Not having a voice is forcing me to deepen my understanding of listening. Not necessarily the listening of others but listening to myself.
I am one to externally process – while I meditate and journal and spend a lot of time going inward, I also share pretty much everything in my mind verbally or in writing to others. Whether that’s a daily phone call to my Mom sharing the details of my day or a voice message to my best friend processing whatever thing is present in my mind at that moment, or sharing online; I like my voice to be heard.
And when I can’t speak, it’s a bit of a wake up call to show me how much I use my voice as an instrument to express myself.
But right now, I’m being called to listen.
Instead of sharing and processing with others, I’m being invited to be quiet, listen and sit with my own mind. It’s fitting as this weekend I started a meditation teacher training.
What would happen if I took the performative aspect out of my practice? What would happen if I didn’t share everything with others and just kept to myself a little bit more? What if I didn’t approach this training to make friends with others but rather with my own mind?
The thing is, I know my voice will come back. I know in a few days I will be singing in the shower, sending voice messages and catching up on small talk with anyone I meet. I’m sitting with all of these things because it’s encouraging me to look at things in a different way and simply plant the seed of, “what if I approached this in a different way than I normally would?”
You can plant that seed but you don’t have to do anything with it. You can go back to how you have been doing things as soon as you feel like it. But the simple act in questioning that things could be different and there are other approaches will expand your mind just 1% which allows you to see things in a different way easier the next time.
Things are not always as they seem – we know that. The way we live our life is most often habitually but that does not mean it is permanent. We can always change our approach. We can always choose something different. Or we can stay the same. Neither option is good, or bad. Sometimes it’s good to try something new just to see what it’s like but other times it’s good to stay the same because you know what works.
The next ten weeks, while I am in the container of this meditation teacher training, I am committed to play, experimentation and trying new things. I am a creature of habit and often fall into autopilot a little more than I would like. I have daily routines that have become so integrated they feel like breath but they feel a little stale. I see myself so clearly but I wonder, how can I expand the perception of my own self? I have things that I like and that come naturally to me but can I push myself to dig deeper and uncover something new?
I want to use this container to try something new and fail. And something new again and succeed. Failure and success is not the object here but rather the space to find something new – that works better than whatever I was doing before – and sticking to that.
It’s good to switch things up.
Whether it’s a new hairstyle, morning routine, style of teaching, way of expression – it pushes us to see past the constructs of our own reality; and thus, mind.
The energy of pure potential and complete openness that I feel right now is similar to that of which I felt in fall of 2020 when I started The Artist’s Way. That 12-week journey pushed me to dig deep into the type of life I wanted to live and how I could actually live it. Looking back, that experience planted seeds for this experience as well as the life I have been living for the past two years. In a way it foreshadowed so much of what I’m doing right now. I wonder how this is foreshadowing something in my near or distant future?
For most of my life, I feel like I am searching for stability, routine, a clear knowing and a feeling of security within myself, my life, my expression, my ambitions but right now, I am craving the unraveling of everything I thought I knew about myself. I want to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Maybe I’ll find that the things I know about myself are still true but I want to create the space for them to no longer be true so I can discover something new – about myself, about the world, about anything.
For the next ten weeks, I intend to walk through life with a beginner’s mind. I would like to be open to new perspectives, perceptions and realities. I am open to all that life has to show me and I hope I am able to move past the ways in which I have been operating that no longer serve me or the the mission of ending the suffering of all beings.
My time in New York so far has felt like pure, raw potential energy. It is alive and it is constantly moving. My only job is to surrender into the waves of this potential and let it take me wherever it pleases. It’s fun. It’s spicy. It’s exciting. And yet, I feel the most grounded and centered that I have in the past two years. What a beautiful contrast.
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