Looking and Seeing

  Spirits don't talk to me. Sometimes I sense spirits, that's usually as far as it goes. Very rarely, there is a Voice that makes a statement. Most of the time this happens in a dream. The Voice is clear and calm. It says one sentence and then it is gone. This has happened maybe five times in my life, maybe more. I don't pay too much attention unless my own voice isn't yammering...

“How rare is that?”

(To borrow a phrase used often by two of my friends.)

Talking and speaking are different from one another too, just as looking and seeing are different. 'Looking' can be frantic or casual, you can do it with your mind or your eyeballs. Seeing is dynamic. It uses more of the senses than just sight.

Talking implies that there are two parties involved. Speaking can involve only one party. It is one thing to talk to yourself, quite another to 'speak' to one's self. Chew on that awhile.

(I'll talk, you chew.)

Recently someone read me the riot act for my 'sometimes less than kind verbal skills'. Most people hate being criticized. I will pay for criticism if I don't get it for free. I can 'hear' compliments, but I want to 'listen' to criticism.

Back to sometimes hearing a voice... No, it is not the voice of God. It's just some dude. I'm not going to worry or wonder where the voice comes from. I already have too many things to think about. (Hmm, maybe if I examined how I felt about 'things', I wouldn't 'think' about things so much. Just a thought...)

Anyway, the Voice caught me off guard yesterday. I was watching a movie. Four words interrupted the movie. I don't know where they came from,

“Stop looking, start living.”

The Voice didn't say, “stop watching, start living,” or“stop listening, start living.”

I know what I heard.

The Voice was not a commentary on the content of the movie. Nope, it just popped out of somewhere. As usual, when this voice spoke, I knew exactly what it meant...

Stop looking for ways to make things better, start absorbing life.

Stop looking for justification for not doing what you need to do.

Stop looking for what you want, live out your needs.

Stop looking, stop just observing and SEE.

Absorb what all your senses are telling you.

Look in the mind later, not first.

First and foremost, live your life.

It is the mind that looks. The eyes, working as the window to the soul, see. I feel blessed to have this voice speak to me on rare occasions. God help me if I heard voices all the time like some other people do.

Dang, considering how much I talk to myself, it could get 'real' noisy in here...