Your "Whisper".

As discussed in the last post, each person has unique gifts that they can offer in service to others.

Along with these unique gifts, inside each person also lives a deep DESIRE to share them - what I like to think of as our “Whisper”.

Our Whisper communicates to us with the singular goal of helping us live as our highest Self - healthily, fully, and in service to others.

We all hear the Whisper - “Go help that person”, “Apologize to that friend”, “Start this project”, “Write that book”, “Exercise”, “Meditate”, “Pray”.

Similarly, we also know what it feels like to deny our Whisper; shame, depression, apathy, anxiety - all a result of rejecting or numbing this call.

The language used to describe our unique offering and the importance of expressing it varies across religions, cultures, philosophical traditions, modern psychology, etc. but broadly speaking, we’ve been working for a long time to understand this desire to manifest our highest potential as humans.

It is what the Ancient Greeks called the Daimon - “a divine voice” believed to exist in each person that specifically prevented “acts opposed to a person’s true moral and intellectual interests”.

In an Abrahamic religious context it would be called our Soul - who we “really” are; “the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, will, and by which our bodies are animated”.

In a developmental psychology context it is what Kurt Goldstein (and Maslow, Rogers, Etc) would call Self-Actualization - “the desire to become more and more of what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming”.

Or what Carl Jung would call Individuation - “the process by which every living organism becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning.”

What is most important though (and the point of this post) is the fact that for thousands of years people have recognized we all have it - a deep yearning to live joyfully, righteously, and in service to others.

It’s my belief that our time here on Earth is about working to manifest our Whisper - listening for and cultivating this call.

In the next few posts I’ll begin looking at ways to “nourish” our Whisper - examining what various religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions prescribe for both identifying it, and living in such a way that it can be fully expressed.

“The desire to know your own Soul will end all other desires.” - Rumi