# Voices of the Soul: Understanding and Embracing Internal Dialogues

- Show: [Stillness in the Storms](https://stillnessinthestorms.com/), a podcast with Steven Webb
- Episode: 106
- Published: 30 November 2023
- Length: 21:35 (about 22 minutes)
- Subject: Inner Peace Foundations, Buddhist & Spiritual Wisdom
- Web page: https://stillnessinthestorms.com/episode/voices-of-the-soul-understanding-and-embracing-internal-dialogues
- Listen: [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/voices-of-the-soul-understanding-and/id1467889656?i=1000637087559), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5Q4LN7Ev2CwTMzxj8jlFmN), [MP3](https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/ceded1ef-f249-47f7-88d6-52d2ad491192/Voices-of-the-Soul-Understanding-and-Embracing-Internal-Dialogu.mp3)

How many voices are arguing in your head right now? I call mine the ten thousand, and I am tired. They do not go quiet just because you sat down to meditate.

People go on silent retreats and still come back suffering. There is the snake in the dark that turns out to be a rope, and once the light is on you cannot unsee it. Somebody once told me I had a chip on my shoulder, and the truth was I did not think I had the right to ask the world for anything. I held deep shame about my accident. Reducing suffering is the honest goal. Getting rid of it is not on offer.

**One thing to try:** Name one voice in your head. Just name it. That is where it starts loosening.

## In this episode

- (0:00) The ten thousand voices, and being tired of them
- (1:58) People who go on silent retreats and still suffer
- (3:48) The shifts that gave me actual freedom
- (5:01) The snake that turns out to be a rope, once the light is on
- (7:18) The four vows, and getting free of victimhood
- (11:43) Reducing suffering, not getting rid of it
- (15:00) Being told I had a chip on my shoulder
- (18:24) Not feeling I had the right to ask the world for anything

Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: [stevenwebb.uk](https://stevenwebb.uk)

Thank you for listening.

Steven

## The question this answers

How many voices are arguing in your head right now?

I call mine the ten thousand, and I have no idea if that is the number. Ten years of active practice and I have not silenced a single one of them, and I am tired.

## The heart of it

- The spiritual journey is not about removing voices. It is about adding one to the conversation.
- Reducing suffering is the honest goal. Getting rid of it is not on offer.

People go on silent retreats, do remarkable things, and come back and still suffer six weeks later. I watch people doing well and catch them on another day and they are struggling.

There is a Zen line about the snake in the corner of a dark room. Somebody puts the light on and it is a rope. Turn the light off again and you cannot get the snake back. That is what these moments are like, and once they land you cannot unsee them.

> Your angst is your liberation.

Jun Po Denis Kelly

We spend the first half of life growing these voices. The one that decides. The one that protects. The one that wants. Everybody has different ones turned up loudest.

We used to chant the awakened vows in the mornings with the Mondo Zen lot, and the first one is that however innumerable beings are, I vow to serve and liberate them all. I told Doshin and Jun Po it did not land, because I am not liberating seven billion people. They said, what about the beings within? Serve and liberate them. It does not say silence them.

Somebody once told me I had a chip on my shoulder, that I thought the world owed me something. It annoyed me for weeks. She was not right, and nobody is a hundred percent wrong.

The truth underneath was the opposite.

> I did not think I had the right to ask the world for anything.

Because I held a deep shame about my accident. I was the idiot who dived off the wall, so I did not deserve anything I got. At an air show a year afterwards, servicemen offered to lift me into a fighter jet and I said no thank you, at nineteen, when of course I wanted to.

And when people called me an inspiration, my voices said, look at you, look what you did. What they actually meant was, look what you did with it.

## One small thing to try

Name one voice in your head. Just name it. That is where it starts loosening.

Then say hello to it and ask what it wants, and wait. That is what liberating them looks like in practice.

> You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Pema Chodron

## Questions people ask

### Will meditation quieten them?

Not in my experience. They have less effect on me and I am entertained by more of them, and none of them has gone.

### Is playing the victim wrong?

It is comforting, which is why we do it. I sit in the cage with the door wide open, telling everybody they have no idea. Recognising that is different from not doing it.

### Where do I actually start with mindfulness?

Stop in the street and look at a rock. Wonder how it formed. Watch a leaf and consider what those atoms have been doing for thirteen billion years. In that moment, nothing is wrong.

## Transcript

[0:00] I want to talk about my 10,000 voices. And I don't know if there's exactly 10,000, but boy, do they feel like that. And I'm tired. And all these voices just, they don't get quieter in meditation. They don't get quieter the more I go on my spiritual journey. They have less effect, but I haven't managed to silence one of them. And when I set out on my spiritual journey, I set out to reduce my suffering. I am now arguably 50 years in because I'm 50 years old. But actively been about 10 years in now and I haven't managed to silence one I I'm entertained by a few more nowadays I I laugh at a few more nowadays. I enjoy some of them and some of them just still drive me insane. And these voices all serve a purpose. And this podcast episode is just about... What goes on inside of our minds and the journey, what it means. And I just want to share some thoughts with you. On a good day we can feel a good amount of empathy and compassion for others. On a bad day we're selfish and we're narcissistic. And and it comes and goes. And it's sometimes exhausting, sometimes entertaining and just sometimes And I suppose I thought when I started the spiritual journey that I would join some Buddhist group and I would meditate and I would do some humming and I would be able to silence my mind and I would sit cross-legged. Okay, I can't sit cross-legged because I'm paralysed but...

[1:55] Even that, I had a voice that was like, you'll never be liberated. You cannot sit down cross-legged. And I see people around me that go on retreat, go on silent retreats and they do these amazing things and and they still suffer. They still come back three weeks later, six weeks later. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm struggling. And I see many people that are doing really well in life and you talk to them on another day and they're struggling and I'm starting to realise. That's life. There is no freedom from suffering. There is no bliss. And there's the paradox. The minute you realise that, you do have a little bit of freedom. And I'm starting to realise the spiritual journey is not about avoiding. It's about adding. Adding the voice to the conversation. We spend the very much first part of our lives developing these voices whether we like them or not. The voice to make decisions. The voice to protect us the voice to Give us compassion the voice to give us desires and what we want. All those voices come up and each person has a certain louder degree of each voice. Imagine a spectrum analyzer when you see the music playing. Each one of those lines is a different voice and for each person different ones are stronger. Some have more creative voices, some have more. Critical voices. But they're all voices. And I think it was the voices I didn't like. It was the voices that, no, that's not true. It's the voices that I disagreed with I didn't like. The voices that were telling me where the liberation was. And brings me back to the quote by my teacher, Jun Po, which is, your angst is your liberation and so listen sit down listen to the voice and the critic that you don't want to listen to because they might have a point. They may not have a point, but they might have a point.

[3:52] And what if they do? And I think about the most seismic shifts in my life. The ones that have really given me the freedom and liberation. The Kensho moments. Kensho is, as far as my understanding goes, it's a Buddhist word for enlightened moment. You suddenly see something that you didn't see before and you cannot unsee it um you know it's it's like when I was six years old, I had a Kensho moment maybe in six And suddenly I was reading instead of going one word at a time, I suddenly realised these words make a sentence. And I was like, holy crap, this is right. This is reading. And I I never forget that feeling I bet when you I bet when you think about it, you have those feelings as well. Those little moments where something just clicked. And once it clicked, there's no unclicking. And and I think a good analogy I've heard you several times, Ken Wilber's used it, and that is you're in a dark room and in the corner there's a shadow and there's a coiled snake. Then someone comes in and turns a light on, you realise it's just a pipe. Well, if someone turns the light off, it's really hard to see the snake again. You've been enlightened. That's a really good analogy, actually. Now I see why they use it. But it's it's that realisation that... None of these voices are the problem. And these voices, you could say our thoughts None of the thoughts are the problem. None of the feelings are the problem.

[5:32] It's how we use them and how we react to them as they occur to us. I think when I'm going into my victimhood, when I'm going into my poor me... And I do it quite often I It's kind of quite rewarding, actually. It's kind of quite nice. It's quite comforting. You know, I'm locked in my or I'm in my cage with a great big wide open door and someone says, come here, the door's wide open. I'm like, no, I'm okay sat in my cage. You have no idea what's happened to me. You have no idea how bad my body's been. You have no idea how terrible my life has been the last week. You know, you'll never guess what happened to me when I walked in that shop the other day. And I do it. And I complain I moan. But their thoughts, their voices, they're part of the cycle.

[6:26] And a spiritual journey is not about getting rid of them. Spiritual journey is about being okay with them. Do they have a lesson? Can we move on from them? What can we learn from them? And and the same as there's so many poems and things like that it's Every person is our teacher. Every person is the Buddha. Underneath the thoughts. Underneath the thought funnel I spoke about in a few podcasts ago. Underneath all the noise. In the silence we're all Buddhas. I can remember when I met my Mondo Zen friends. Incredible friends. I'm still friends with them now and We used to do a chant in the morning, and I miss doing it because it set me up in the nice way of nice framework for the day. It gave me that space that I needed to to be I don't know, free of victimhood, I suppose. And one of the one of the things we did was the four awakened vows. And number one was, however innumerable all beings are, I vow to serve and liberate them all. And I had a real problem with this. I I really struggled with this. However innumerable beings are. Talking about beings out there, I thought. I vowed to serve and liberate them all. I thought I literally my job was to liberate all the seven billion people in the world. And I said this to Doshin and jimpo and I said, that doesn't resonate with me.

[8:05] And they said, yeah, what about all those beings within? Perhaps he's talking about voices perhaps you're All those beings within, you know, serve and liberate them all. It doesn't say silence them and get rid of them. Serve and liberate them all. So that voice that says, hey, I need a bit of a protection Ask the question why and wait for an answer. That little voice that says, you know, you shouldn't be hanging out with those people. Silence yourself and wait for the answer. Because the Western world and... The way we've butchered Buddhism and butchered the whole enlightenment thing. It's like you go go there for a weekend, pay three thousand dollars and we'll give you the tools to be enlightened. No that there is no. You know, we cannot even sit down now for a 20 minute video. We've had to bring out shorts.

[9:05] Our attention span. I'm sure someone's going to bring out micro meditating. Meditate less than three seconds every three days and you'll have the same, I don't know, reward as meditating for 40 minutes every morning. All you need to do is listen to this music. No, I'm not selling you that that's It just doesn't work. Cannot see it ever working. It's spiritual bypassing 101. All the thoughts that's going on. Recognise all the feelings that's coming up. And be okay with them. I think that's the key. Just be okay with them. You don't have to do anything with them. I talk about this a lot. I talk about this in during my meditations. You know, shit arises. You don't have to do anything with it. And the Buddha said it so adequately. He said, look, if someone gives you a gift, you don't have to take it. So someone throws an insult, it's up to you if you take the insult and walk around for the next three weeks ago oh they call me ugly. They call me this.

[10:12] They call me that they No that's your choice. They did it once. You're doing it a thousand times. And everybody's got an opinion. Let them have an opinion. It's their opinions their problem. But it's easier said than done, right? Easier said than done. So I put my head down at night and I lie there and I put on a meditation or I sit there and I breathe and I observe my thoughts and I take myself off to some astro planing across the universe with some quietness and all that to fall asleep, which really just basically means just to try to quiet my thoughts. I'm not even very good at it. I'm terrible at The easiest way I find for once they put on an audio audible book. Boom. 15 minutes. Put it on 15 minutes. Bang. I'm asleep and Which is the problem because the Audible book is probably brilliant. But I'm not hearing it because just hearing a voice externally just quietens the voice internally. So, I don't know. I'm not confessing. I've got a podcast here. I've done over 100 episodes. I've got one of the most popular Inner Peace Meditations podcasts on the internet, especially in Australia. And I'm telling you now, I haven't got the answers. I haven't found how to reduce my suffering. No, that's that's not entirely true. I found how to reduce my suffering.

[11:47] I haven't found how to get rid of it because there isn't. You'll have momentary things. You want to reduce your suffering? Practice mindfulness. But don't let anybody sign you up to some courses and I'll in my opinion. The next time you're walking down the street, stop and look at the look at something really mundane like a rock and go, that's a nice shaped rock. I wonder how that formed. And spend a few moments with the rock Look at the leaf that falls well Wonder what that leaf is going to do next, the atoms and the molecules from that leaf. Wonder the journey of 13.7 billion years, each one of those atoms in the least already done. That's mindfulness. In that moment, the world's fine. In that moment, is there a problem? No. So the spiritual journey and mindfulness and meditation just gives us the ability to jump in when shit's happening pema Shrodrin You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

[13:02] You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. And if you think about that, and really now what that means. So I think what she means by that is, you know, the voices, the sounds and the feelings, the emotions, the thoughts, all those things. It's just weather. Grab a coat. It's all weather. You are the sky. Everything else comes and goes. How brilliant is that? And like Ram does, says, quieter you become the more you hear. And it's true because what he realizes I was listening to him the other day on one of his audible books when I was driving somewhere, so I didn't fall asleep um And he was saying about, he just tried to quieten the voices and get rid of them, and the best you can hope for is just being entertained by them.

[14:05] The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it. You are the sky. Everything's fine. It's the weather that varies. It's our thoughts about it. It's our feelings about it. You know, why can two people look at the same thing and one have a trigger and one one not Obviously it's not the object. It's the story. It's the ego. It's the past. It's the triggers. You know, one person can literally um have a fear of red cars. Another person can love red cars. Why? Perhaps something happened to somebody. It's not the red car. Okay, I'm probably going to a terrible analogies now, but the point stands.

[15:00] All those voices, all those feelings can't liberate them all. And I can remember when somebody said to me about me having a chip on my shoulder. And she said, the problem is with you. You think the world owes you something, Steven. Oh boy, that was... I didn't like it. But I was going through my spiritual time, so I was, no, don't react. Just be cool. Be Zen Master Stevie. Which I'm not. But be. And I thought, well, I'm triggered. I'm really annoyed by your comment. Why am I annoyed? And I asked that question, why am I annoyed? Why is that voice want to shout her down?

[15:48] So I sat with it for a few minutes. And I said to her, do you know what? You may be right. I left it that But it really bothered me for a couple of weeks. Do I think the world owes me something? Do I have a chip on my shoulder? And she wasn't right entirely. But nobody's 100% wrong. If the feeling arises, there's something there. Well, it took me back to when I was on an air day in Farnborough. It was a year after my accident and somebody pushed me up towards a fighter jet and there was a small queue and the guy said, do you want us to lift you in? Would you like to sit and I said, no, thank you. I'm okay. Of course, it's a fighter jet. I'm 19 years old. Hell yes, of course I want to sit in it. But the other voice is to know, don't hold up the queue You'll be trouble. You'll be hassle. You'll be this. And I spent most of my adult life being disabled not wanting to make trouble, not wanting to hinder anybody, not wanting to bother anybody. It reminds me of a time when I was in Tremlets and I was looking at all the magazines.

[17:16] This was when you had Top Shelf magazines. I suppose you had them in America as well. And I remember looking at the magazines. I was looking around at different shelves and all that. And this lady must have been twice my age. I was about 25 and she must have been 50, 55. And she said, would you would you like me to pass you one down? I said, no, no, no. I'm perfectly fine. No, seriously. And I wasn't even really looking at them. I don't think I would was anyway. Maybe subconsciously, maybe. Who knows? And she said, no, no, no, it's fine. And she passed one down to you. Would you like to look through it and see if it's the one? And I was so embarrassed. I just wanted to die. I could not get out of that shop fast enough. I just wanted to die. Those voices of shame and all those other things. I digress for a moment. So I was in the middle of a time when... I needed a new electric wheelchair, but I was frightened to ask people. I thought I had to give something in order to get something. How have I got the right to ask anybody for anything? And I sat with this chip on the shoulder and I felt like the world owes me something. But she was the opposite. It wasn't. I felt like I didn't have the right to ask the world for anything. And the reason being is I held a deep shame because of my accident. I was the dumbass that dived off the wall. And because of that, I'm paralysed because I'm the dumbass. So therefore, I didn't deserve anything. I didn't deserve anything I got. And I always felt like I wanted to give back.

[18:57] And when people would say you're an inspiration, you're doing really well and all those other things, the voices inside of me would go, yeah, that's rubbish. Look at you. You're an idiot. See what you did. And I used to listen to those voices so loudly, albeit I didn't understand what they were telling me. But really, they weren't saying, I think you're an inspiration because you're a dumb ass that dived off the wall. They were saying, I think you're an inspiration because what you did with it. So again, it comes down to... Whatever happens is what you do with it that counts there's Whatever situation you're in, how you handle it counts. Whatever voice that rises is what you do with it or do nothing with it. Most situations you don't have to do anything with. And you might not like the options. I think this is really important. Just sometimes we get paralysed through thought because just the voices are slightly too loud.

[20:01] So this podcast has ended up a little bit longer than I thought. I just want to thank you and I thank all the donators. You really make a difference. All you people that have bought me a coffee on buymeacoffee.com forward slash Steven Webb. There's a link in the podcast notes. There's a link underneath the Youtube video. I just want to thank you with the bottom of my heart. Thank you for bearing with me and Liberate your voices. Say hi to them on a daily basis. Be entertained by them. It's the noisiest orchestra committee that you will ever come across. It's like being in the room with 10 000 people and you can't silence them because they're within.

[20:52] Let me know. Message me. Go to my website, StevenWebb.com. Message me if this resonates with you in any way. Deeply, deeply grateful to anybody that donates. I don't have a sponsor for the podcast and I don't ever intend to. This podcast is brought purely by you guys for love and they help you and support you give the reviews. Take care. I love you.

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