It’s the 11th of December, 2015 and I am living in Savannah, Georgia hand-delivering a termination-of-lease letter to my landlord. I am moving west, somewhere in Southern California I believe. I don’t know where yet. But I do know I must move to where it is warmer.
It’s the 11th of January, 2016 and I am being guided to go to Massachusetts by a psychic artist living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I don’t know why yet. But I do know I don’t believe the guidance.
It’s the 11th of February and I am already moved into Dartmouth, Massachusetts and am signing my name to a contract to spend the next year just over the border in an artist’s studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I don’t know how yet. But I do know I’m a few blocks from Providence (Rhode Island) and I’ll take that.
It’s the 11th of March and I am reading an email telling me about a service called Cell 411 that will eliminate the need to rely on those who say they are there to protect me. I don’t know who will yet. But I have complete trust.
So what in the world is going to happen on the 11th of April? I don’t know yet. But I do know it doesn’t matter, whatever it is – will be exactly what needs to happen.
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I also know that my body and my mind are in severe need of some rest. Following the voice of your soul is never easy. Listening to the voices is always traumatic in some way. If you haven’t read my last essay, which is actually Part 1 to this story, I recommend you do so here. If you are one who does follow your intuition more often than not, then you know what I mean. Soul work is physically and emotionally draining.
But it always works for the best in the end.
I have been paying attention to my gut all my life, at times and especially at first, without even realizing it. I’ve come to realize every pivotal point in my life has pivoted on a choice. A decision I wasn’t certain about making. I just knew I HAD to make it.
For instance, I wrote a letter to my parents when I was 17 telling them I could not follow their faith any longer. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I do know that it hurt them. Our family was, and is, very strong in the Roman Catholic faith. Even though I then spent many years as an agnostic, this decision was the first real step I took along my own spiritual path. My first step toward an inner self-reliance. At the time, I had no idea. I just knew that what I was experiencing in the church did not feel right. It upset my whole being in some way.
My two sons, Ryan and Devin, exist as who they are because I made a decision to ask a certain pretty girl who worked for me out on a date. And then, when Stacey Lynn Garland told me she was pregnant, I had no second thoughts about the fact that we should be married. In fact I didn’t even have the first thought about it – I just knew this is what was to be. There was no question. So we eloped, once again causing anguish and uncertainty among my family and to some extent hers.
The same knowing was present when I came to the decision that the marriage had to end 19 years later. However, the actual knowing came years before and the pain of my inability to act, in any way, was inflicted upon everyone involved.
There are other examples, but I think you get the point. Following the voice of your soul, the guidance of your inner self in not easy; is not understandable; and it will eat away at you until you do that one thing. The one thing you know you must do. Act. Take the action.
But how do you really know that it is your inner self, your soul, your God speaking to you?
That is the question is it not?
There is no one answer either. It is different for each person and it is something that takes practice noticing. One of my greatest teachers when it comes to listening to the voices has been Sonia Choquette. I have an old cassette (yes!) course of hers put out at the time by Nightingale Conant. It’s based on her book Your Psychic Pathway. I refer back to it when I find my focus or resolve to wane.
One important distinction to be made: When I use the words ‘hear’ or ‘listening’ in reference to your intuition (voice of your soul, inner self, higher self, God, the divine, etc.) I am not specifically referring to an auditory experience. Communications from that which we call God come in many different forms and can be accessed in many different ways. There is no one way and there is no right way. There is also no wrong way. There are many ways people access their higher self that are similar to how other people have the experience, but it is uniquely personal and individual.
There are four steps that I follow (thank you Sonia) in my process of listening to the voice of my soul. They are:
Be OPEN to who I am
EXPECT to hear the voice of my soul
TRUST the voice of my soul
ACT upon what I hear
Here is how this process unfolded for me over the past couple of months and explains how I ended up in the cold of New England and not some warm and sunny Pacific beach a few thousand miles away.
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So about six months into my new career as an artist, I started to have nagging feelings that I need to make yet another major change in my life. The feeling began as a thought here and there. Then the thought began to develop followers. I arrived in Savannah in October of 2013 because I followed my intuition. There wasn’t just one, there had been a whole series of messages – pivot points – and choices that led me to some major life changes.
I choose to leave and divorce my wife of 19 years.
I decide I need to move away from the area I have lived in my whole life and put my house up for sale. (But the Universe has other plans for me first)
I ‘allow’ myself to physically and emotionally fall apart: Alcohol addiction, serious weight gain, depression, lack of purpose, acute pancreatitis, and neuropathy.
I donate one of my kidneys to my sister Michele. (Which allowed me to repair my out-of-shape body)
I hit alcoholic rock-bottom: My pancreas begins to shut down and I place myself into rehab for a month.
Three years after putting my house up for sale I finally ‘allow’ myself to move over 700 miles away from everyone I know and start anew. I find a job and an apartment in the fourth week I am down there. I find good people and a good life. I complete my healing process.
13 months later, in February of 2015, I decide to quit my “day job” and become the artist I know I am meant to be.
Six months after that…..well this is where we started is it not?
I always knew Savannah may not be my final stop. I figured I’ll give it a few years and go from there. I started to feel like I needed to move to somewhere that was warm for more of the year. Savannah has a great climate but I felt it was a bit colder than I expected during January and February. I was also having both physical and mental issues with the humidity and the accompanying mold. Also, quite frankly, there wasn’t anything or anyone to keep me anchored in that port city.
That feeling of needing to move soon became accompanied by feelings that I needed to get my financial house in order. I sense (and I’m not alone) that the U.S. is about to have a major economic crisis even greater than what we experienced seven to eight years ago. How did these feelings come to me? They started to arise through information obtained which I wasn’t looking for, and which began to resonate deeply. Choices became available and when I followed the feelings and made decisions, the next steps kept unfolding in front of me.
I spent a lot of time educating myself about finance and investing. I ended up forming a new holding company for my retirement plans and moved what little money there is into much safer investments. This whole process took a lot more of my time than I thought at first and did not give me much time to think about where I was going to move and when I was going to do it. So as fall began to turn into winter, I had not come any closer to figuring out where to go than when I first made the decision to move.
I thought about Asheville, North Carolina. I thought about Austin, Texas. I thought about Southern California, down near or in San Diego. I even thought about Mexico! However, when I use the word ‘thought,’ what I mean is that I researched these areas looking for living and employment opportunities. It was a very intensive process.
Ultimately I pretty much decided on the San Diego area. Particularly Carlsbad. This is what I would tell everyone when I began to let my moving become news; around the beginning of October. However, I was still keeping all my options open as deep down, I really did not have any concrete feelings about one place or another.
This is when the universe and the divine power that runs through it began to actively allow the path to unfold before me. By the end of November, I had not lined up any real options for living arrangements or employment, but I knew that I could not let myself linger, so I just arbitrarily picked the end of January as my move date. I made the decision to consciously pay more attention to my higher self; to look and listen for the voice of my soul, and to get off my butt and just act!
You see, I am OPEN to the idea that I am more than just this physical bag of bones with an intellect and ego stuffed inside its skull. Having had past experiences I knew that if I only began to ask more questions and pay more attention, everything would work itself out. It always has.
Of course, that is always easier said than done. The endless ‘but what ifs’ that run through the mind and the endless details – both real and imagined – that show up can be overwhelming. This allows the fears to arise and then before I know it – nothing gets done!
Nonetheless, I consciously opened myself up to awareness, knowing full well that I could EXPECT to be offered guidance. So I acted and on December 11th I dropped off my termination-of-lease notification to my landlord for the 31st of January. Now it was time to get super serious about selling off or giving away what I hadn’t yet got rid of yet and packing up all the rest.
After the Christmas and New Year holidays, I had made a lot of progress on the shedding and packing of possessions. I had the back rooms of my apartment mostly cleared and moved the rest up toward the front. But I was running into a continued lack of progress on the whole “Where am I going?” issue.
In fact, I was starting to get desperate. I was set on Southern California, but to be honest, I had been having quite a bit of hesitation about the whole thing. Doubt. For some time, I had been having a growing feeling of unease about the whole move. Yes, despite the fact that I outwardly showed confidence and decisive action.
There were two major points of contention I was having with that part of the country: The cost of living was becoming a monster in my mind with each passing day (Rents are just insane – $1,000 a month for a room perhaps with kitchen privileges, perhaps not) and the natural gas leak at Aliso Canyon near Los Angeles. The fissure at the Southern California Gas Company site, which began in late October, had been sending an estimated 100,000 pounds of methane into the air each hour. There has never been a gas leak of this size, and for this long. Even though the location was over a hundred miles away, and even though the authorities were saying there was nothing to fear (Ha!) – it was making me feel uneasy. I was already on alert regarding the drought and ongoing atmospheric geoengineering going on in California.
All the little signs that I was receiving, but not paying attention to like high rents, drought, chemtrails, having to live far away from the beaches, natural gas leaks. Well, they didn’t matter, my MIND was made up. I was going there no matter what!
So now, along comes another message, in the form of some intuitive guidance from someone who I hadn’t really asked for guidance. I know this artist, her name is Nell-lynn Perera. She lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We’ve been having conversations through Facebook since the beginning of November. I had seen her posts, due to similar friends through an artist’s group to which we both belonged, and for some reason, one day decided to share something I thought might be of help to her.
On the 10th of January, we were discussing my move and she brought up the idea that perhaps I was being presented with this kind of information “because that isn’t where I was supposed to be headed for my benefit.” She urged me not to walk into a disaster area where my health could be compromised, saying those that live there already don’t have a choice – but I do.
I mentioned to her that I had been thinking about that, but…..
So she then said, “If I think of anywhere or somewhere I’ll let you know.”
I should mention that Nell creates mostly abstract art in many different media. She’s also a poet and a model. She’s also got a very keen sense of intuition and considers herself highly sensitive to energy and information that does not emanate from herself. She’s psychic. Like we all are, but she is very highly attuned to it.
In fact, she creates these amazing abstract portraits of people that come directly from her intuitive senses. Very striking and very well-appreciated. Nonetheless as soon as she said she’d “think” of somewhere for me I thought, “Well okay, but I’m still going to Southern California.”
About 22 hours later, on the 11th, I get a message that simply says, “Massachusetts.”
“Hmmm, ?????” I write back.
“Whats with the questionmarks. I said I would give a place.”
“Oh I know. Just wondering where you came up with MA.”
“question that cannot be answered. call it guidance.”
“My youngest son lives there now.”
“ha. what are the odds.”
“But it’s cold up there.”
“then second choice: Florida.”
The conversation went on for a few more minutes and then we said goodbye.
So what am I to do with that kind of information? I’ll tell what I do. I say to myself, “I’m still going to Southern California.”
But it was too late. The message had been delivered and I couldn’t un-deliver it. As the 11th of January turned into the 12th and then the 13th I could not keep from thinking, “What if she is right?”
So I started to adjust my daily apartment and job search to include Florida. Way down in Florida – where it’s warmest. There are not many apartments, or jobs, available in the Florida Keys. Yet, for $600 a month I found myself a room on a pier. Nice huh? Just a tiny, little room. No toilet or sink.
But I’m still going to Southern California. I was trying to forget my conscious awareness. I was already forgetting about the next step in the process: The TRUST part.
By Monday the 18th, I was completely distraught. I couldn’t help but think, “But what if she is right?” What if it is Florida? What if, God forbid, it is Massachusetts?
So I decided to use a tool. In accessing one’s intuitive powers, often times it is useful to use tools. People use tarot cards, angel cards, divining rods, crystals, gems, pendulums, I Ching, Reiki, tea leaves and so on. Actually. anything can be used so long as it is something one is comfortable with understanding how to use it and how to read it.
Most times I just know when I am getting information. It just comes as a feeling. Usually, that feeling comes in conjunction with a sign or a series of signs. The signs could be visual, auditory, through a scent or just as I said, a knowing. This time, I used a tool I’ve used only on a few occasions but has always been accurate for me. Accurate, as long as the right question is asked.
I asked Google.
So now that maybe the smile has left your lips yet the doubt is still lingering behind…..remember – a tool is a tool. Ever use a coin as a screwdriver? A toothbrush to clean the cracks in the soles of your sneakers?
The key, for me, in using a tool like an Internet search engine is that first and foremost I meditate and put myself in the right frame of mind. I ask the universe for an answer to my question. I ask that the answer is very specific, I ask that it come in a form that I can understand; that leaves me with no doubt that yes, this is the answer; that sticks out like a neon sign. I set very specific intentions.
I do this because the universe (God) will always answer your question. It’s just that the answer may not come in a form that you expect. For instance, if you just ask God, “God please help me decide if I should marry this person.” You may be looking for the answer to come in the form of something someone says to you and your answer shows up as a line on the billboard you noticed driving home. You may expect the answer today and it comes next month.
In order to access the information of your higher self you must be OPEN to it; you must EXPECT it to come, and you must ASK the right questions using the right words.
So I prepared, I asked as I noted, and I asked that the answer also show up on the first page of my monitor screen and it is not something I have to link to in order to see it. I typed in the question…..
If she is right, then exactly where?
Nothing became apparent through the first eight listings/links. In the ninth, however, my answer sat waiting for me. Right there in the third line…..
Harvard.
For those who don’t know, Harvard is in Cambridge, Massachusetts – just outside of Boston. Other than the fact that this is in Massachusetts, and it was the first location name to show up on the page, this answer had MEANING for me. I had just been to the campus of Harvard University in September visiting my son Devin. He was living in Dover, Massachusetts working on a cooperative farm. We visited Cambridge one day and ended up at Harvard, even visiting a museum on campus.
There was no doubt. It was the first sign.
The first thing though my mind, quite literally, was, “No fucking way! I cannot believe this! I am NOT going to Massachusetts. I’m still going to Southern California.”
On the next day, the 19th, I started searching craigslist for apartments up in Boston. Just in case.
All day long I’m finding expensive ‘rooms.’
Then just as I’m about to give up I come across a listing I missed. A ‘room,’ but in a cooperative living arrangement. It peaked my interest for several reasons:
For one, the price of the room was under $800 a month and it included everything – even food!
The picture of the front of the house showed a porch with a multi-colored flag draped over the railing, it said ‘PEACE.’ Did I mention I am all about peace? Have been for years. In fact, the signature tag on my emails reads, “Take care and seek peace.” It has for at least about a decade.
The color of the house is purple. Did I mention the color of the 1905 Victorian house that I had rented in Savannah? Yep, PURPLE.
As I looked further into the cooperative arrangement, I began to feel more and more like this was ME they were looking for – and they only allowed 11 residents!
And then the kicker: I pasted the address into Google maps to see exactly where this place was and it turns out to be just a couple blocks off the campus of…….yep, Harvard. In fact, it was just a couple blocks from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology that Devin and I visited. I passed right by the place (unknowingly at the time) while we tried to find a parking space I didn’t have to pay for.
There was no doubt. It was the second sign.
Why, because it had MEANING for me.
But then later that evening, there was doubt again. I could not wrap my head around the idea that I’m supposed to go to Massachusetts, where it is freakin’ COLD!
So after a bit of contemplation, I realized I had made a mistake. I made a mistake in asking my question! I have HOPE!
You see, in my question, I stated, “If she is right…” I assumed that she was right. I didn’t specifically ask if she was right. I assumed it and, therefore, my answer must be incorrect. I would need to verify the answer.
So, knowing that I am not stupid and that rephrasing the same question would likely yield the same answer (note the sly smile) – I decided to just be direct. Which is always the best way to be, and should have been the manner in which I asked to begin with. So I prepared like I did before. Only, this time, I asked that my question is answered in the same manner as before but with one difference, the answer is a clear “Yes” or “No.”
I typed into the field…..
Is she right?
The first word in the first listing was the word……
Yes.
There was no doubt. It was the third sign.
I did not curse. I did not whine. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and accepted. This is where I am going. It has been determined.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Now three confirmations are more than enough. You do not need three confirmations to trust in the voice of your soul. When you become accustomed to listening, you learn to trust immediately. TRUST is the third part of the process.
But just for good measure, the divine source of All That Is in this universe decided to make sure I did not have any more doubts. I was given yet another, a fourth sign. My son Devin called me later that evening, he caught me as I was walking to a movie downtown at the SCAD Trustees Theater with a friend, Beverly. So I told him I’d call when I got home.
Devin was working and living at Powisset Farm and even though the season was over, they let him and his friend stay there during the winter. He had called to tell me that contrary to what he was led to believe, they were not going to let them live there the next couple of months because of some renovations the trustees of the cooperative decided to undertake. I told him that sucked and asked him when he needed to be out. He said to me that he needed to be out the following weekend, the end of the month. He had nowhere to go as of yet and nowhere to put his furniture and things.
Hmmm. Funny how that is the very weekend I am moving up to Massachusetts. The very weekend I am going to need to find a place to stay and a storage unit to put my belongings in until I can get settled. Yes, very funny how that worked out didn’t it.
There was no doubt. (As if there could be) It was the fourth sign.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Now as it turns out I do not end up near Harvard. I do not wind up at the Cambridge Cooperative Club (their opening wasn’t a certainty after all). My son Devin decides to go back to Pennsylvania and hang out with his Mom for a while and he is able to keep his furniture in the barn at the farm after all. Heck, I do not even wind up living in Massachusetts! I land there and stay for 11 days. On the 11th day, I sign a lease for an amazing artists loft in an old mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (just under four miles over the border) and move in the next day.
But none of that matters. I am exactly where I am supposed to be “for my benefit” as Nell put it. I was open to knowing who I am. I expected to hear the voice of my soul. I trusted the voice of my soul – even though I most definitely did not want to listen to what it was telling me. Then finally, I finished the process of listening to the voices: I ACTED upon what I heard.
But I am disoriented. Only 11 days prior to when I am supposed to leave Savannah, Georgia for Southern California I uncover one of those pivot points I talked about. I change my mind and 12 days later I am in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
Do you remember that email I told you about in the very beginning of this story? The one about a service called Cell411. It was developed, in part, to allow people to create their own safety net. Do you know that it usually takes police 10 to 20 minutes to respond to a call for help? If you are being robbed or raped or assaulted, the damage is going to be done by the time they get there. So who do you turn to?
I am in a State (and a state) where I do not know a soul. I am starting new and although I knew this would be the case wherever I moved, it means I must rely on myself. But I never have to rely solely on myself, because I have a service I can rely on that will provide me with everything I need, exactly when I need it, and from exactly who is supposed to show up to help me.
Yes, it’s those voices. The voices of my soul. That is to who I turn.
Do I know what will happen on April 11th? Do I even know why I am here?
Nope, not a clue – other than to create some art, do some writing, tell some stories, make some music and continue to BE.
To be what? To be me. A divine spark of All That Is in the universe. A creation of God made in the same likeness – that is – made to create as well. To be the best that I can be. The kindest and most compassionate human I can create.
Someone up here in New England needs my help. Maybe it’s just me that needs the help. I don’t know. We’ll see.
I suppose I’ll just let be as providence decrees.
Take care and seek peace my friends,
Vince
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Unless otherwise indicated, all images are copyright vincegreen111058.
I’ve been writing this blog on and off for over a year now. I think it may finally be time to explain the title. Which may then help explain me, to you.
What does it mean to follow the voice of your soul?
What does it mean to have intuition?
What does it mean to allow God into your life?
Three ways of asking the same thing. There are even more ways to ask that question. In fact there is really no need for me to spend a lot of time on it because it is a question ingrained into our very being the moment we are born. We want to know, almost immediately after we have observed the world around us, how should I act now? What do I do?
Mostly, at the beginning, we react. We learn to do what we think we need to do in order to get the reaction from others that we think we need in order to function and survive in the society which we emerge. Phew! It is a long and drawn out process of course. One that takes some people 10 to 20 years to figure out, some 20 to 30 years, some 30 to 40 years, and for some – it takes their whole life. They do not learn the answer until the final moment in their final breath.
Now let it be said that there is no one set-in-stone answer to the question. The answer comes in the way of a combination of answers that are used to form the way we think and behave. For many people, the answer to that question comes directly from what they learn from other people in the society: The parents, the family, the community, the school, the friends, the workplace, and so on. Sources are provided and maintained that can be used to guide the response to the question. Most often these sources are formed out of the societal institutions of religion and government.
There is one source of information human beings have always had to answer the question: That voice inside of them. For the sake of brevity, I will simply state that there are two voices we hear inside of ourselves. One is the voice of our mind, that which comes from the physical brain in our bodily form. Over the past couple hundred years this voice has been known as the Ego. It comes from our intellect. It forms as the connection between our physical body and the physical plane of existence we live within.
The origin of the second voice we hear inside of ourselves is harder to pin down. Some say it comes from the heart. Some say it comes from our soul. Some call the source of the voice their Higher Self. Some use the words Inner Self. Some call it the Divine. Some call it God. Regardless of what this voice is named, we can agree that the voice is not ours. Well, it does seem like it could be ours (which in fact I believe it is) yet it also seems to be coming from somewhere other than our intellect and our brain.
To me, this is the voice of God. Personally, I call this voice my higher self (or sometimes the voice of my soul) as I believe we are constructed not of physical matter, but of spiritual matter. I believe we are multi-dimensional beings in what we have decided to call “time and space.” This version of me, Vincent James Green the third, is one of those dimensional beings that make up the whole of me. I don’t specifically know the other dimensional beings that make me whole because then the construct that enables me to be Vincent James Green the third will have been broken and well, then basically I will be dead to you; but not dead to the real me, and not dead to the real you.
All human beings have these two voices, these two sources of information that helps them decide what to do in the next moment, and the moment after, and the moment after that.
Unfortunately as our species has “evolved” intellectually, we have learned to rely on the one voice more than the other. In fact the voice of our higher selves has been slowly degraded over the past couple thousand years. This voice, this intuition, this gut feeling, this psychic connection has been labeled as not-real, not-scientific, not-accurate, not worthy of consideration because it is simply coincidence, happenstance, luck, chance, or it is just plain ooga-booga!
But it was not always like that, in fact the indigenous peoples of this planet, you know – the ones our species has been culling, have always had a very keen sense of the importance of their inner voice. In fact I believe they have allowed their inner voice to be the leader and the guide of their intellectual voice. They have allowed their inner voice more weight when a decision is to be made as to what to do next.
Fortunately, there seems to be a slowly-gathering movement among our “civilized” societies toward becoming more aware of this inner voice. The movement probably gained significant momentum in the 1970’s. I doubt it ever really went away. People did not ever forget the voice of their soul. They just ignored it and allowed it to take a back seat to the progress of our societal renaissance and industrial revolution.
***~*~***
My life has been one of knowing, forgetting, and then remembering. Just like yours, and every other person to visit this dimensional plane we call Life on Earth. Beginning in 1994 with the sudden death of one of my brothers, Tim, I began the process of remembering.
During this process I have been reminded of how many times during the “forgetting stage” I actually listened to the voice of my soul. Each time, I never attributed my actions, my doing, to the correct voice. Truth-be-told I never really attributed it to anything. It was more a matter of life just rolling past me, taking me along for the ride. I never dreamed I actually had a hand in creating everything around me; everything that happened to me; everything I did.
What do I do?
There is that question again, confronting us each and every moment of our lives. Which voice do you listen to? Do you even acknowledge the different voices? Many people do not. They choose to ignore the voice of their soul. When they encounter those that do listen to the voice of their soul, those that do follow their intuition, and those that do actually allow God into the mechanics of their life they often view them with a good measure of doubt.
“Geez, that girl is pretty weird, isn’t she?”
“Odd fellow that man is, wouldn’t you say?”
“Some people sure march to a different drummer, don’t they?”
***~*~***
So there you have it.
“Don’t mind me: Just listening to the voices.”
Take care and seek peace my friends,
Vince
UP NEXT: Specific examples of how I’ve listened to the voice of my soul and allowed the Divine to work through me (what it means, how it manifests itself and how it usually hurts first!).
__________________________________________ Unless otherwise indicated, all images are copyright vincegreen111058.
Don't Mind Me ..... Just Listening To The Voices 