The Voice Inside

Be a good boy, and always let your conscience be your guide. ~The Blue Fairy

 The other day I saw Jiminy Cricket on my walk. Just sitting there, as he does, not upon my shoulder, but upon the curb of the street. I took his picture, and wondered the message of this visit.

Most of us know who Jiminy is. He is the talking cricket created to be Pinocchio’s conscience (I’m speaking Disney version here). Upon meeting Pinocchio, he advises….The world is full of temptations. They seem right at the time, but they are sometimes the wrong things. In which Pinocchio says, I’m going to do right. The cricket says, I’m going to help you, and anytime you need me, just whistle.

As a teenager, my father played the part of Jiminy, but it became important for me to hear my voice. And overtime, I did. The voice, which I call the Voice Inside, is a relationship. In Pinocchio, Jiminy began the relationship with having a heart-to-heart with his new friend. At first Pinocchio is eager to listen, and be a good boy. And, as we know Pinocchio gets himself into a little trouble. He is swayed by good guys who are really bad, and by a place called Pleasure Island. Jiminy tries to stop him, but he succumbs to these temptations anyway. In the end, after much trial and tribulation, and upon saving Geppetto from a terrible fate, Pinocchio is deemed by the Blue Fairy to be a good, selfless, and brave boy, and turned into a real boy, no longer a puppet.

This is often how the relationship with our own conscience develops. In the beginning we are eager and open to “be good” and then temptations strike. Parts of ourselves, unknown to us, get us in all kinds of trouble. As we create trouble, we begin to see our donkey ears and our donkey tail, and think, I’m a jackass.  Sure, some shame, but hopefully more self-awareness. Becoming self-aware is the great opening to transformation, and to deepen and expand our transformation we have an opportunity to become aware of another force pulling us, actually the only force, and it is that of our conscience, our inner self, that Voice Inside, our inner Jiminy Cricket, and it wants us to be real. No longer puppets being pulled by the whims of our unconscious tendencies. It wants us to be awake, to live fully, and continuously expand and awaken.

 When you cease to be, real being comes? ~Rumi

 Where are you in your relationship with your inner self, your Voice Inside? Some of us hear many voices, and this is one of our great conflicts. We don’t know what or who to listen to, and often we need to go off in these misdirected directions in order to finally become clear of our voice. To finally cease to be, as Rumi says.  How, we might ask? We are already on the journey of becoming real. To wonder where we are on this journey and becoming aware of it, and our relationship with our inner-self, is a beginning.

Namaste, Nikki Di Virgilio

www.nikkisacredspace.com