This morning, after the meditation session, a participant had mentioned how she believed I had a calming tone of voice, which helped her calm her mind down. I was surprised to hear this, considering that it often takes me some time before I can reach a calm state of equilibrium. However, I also acknowledged afterward that the effort to relax was sincere on my part. Trying to relax is still an effort which requires great care, but it's not an effort as in trying to exert oneself or fight some kind of inner resistance. Understanding how I arrive at this "voice" is interesting to me, because it gives me a concrete example of the way meditation actually "works" on the things we do and how we do them.
First, a word about "voice": it strikes me as not so accidental that voice would be such an important aspect of the meditation. Meditation "guidance" requires a voice to punctuate the silences, but sometimes voice can, if used in an unobtrusive way, provide a grounding for one's thoughts. I have often tutored students, for example, who were much more grounded in speaking their thoughts than writing them in prose form. It's as though "speaking out loud" is an immediate form of feedback, or at least a more direct access to one's direct and authentic experience of the present moment. Voice is somewhere between writing on paper and keeping thoughts in one's brain. Whereas the former is a blank canvas upon which one can construct any number of sentences, the latter is the sometimes scattershot wandering thoughts. Voice acts as an intermediary: it is both a "form" and a "non-form" in the sense that it materializes yet does not leave any permanent trace the way writing does. The only way I can thus "pick up" voice is to attend to it now, in this moment. It's no wonder that hearing someone's voice can become a powerful meditation in itself.
The second point is about the relationship between voice and "manner". One's voice is not so easy to find. Obviously, if I am only mechanically reading from a script, my true voice isn't there: it's not an expression of what I am truly feeling or going through in that moment. On the other hand, simply saying what's on the top of one's head can also be a little bit inauthentic, because it doesn't stay true to the mind in that moment: it takes thoughts themselves to be one's true self. Only when I can treat the thoughts as pointing to a deeper awareness that I am not tied to thinking, and can release the thoughts in a spoken form that is really "my voice". Such a voice is authentic because it is true to the most authentic state of mind there is: tranquil and not dependent on particular thoughts or desires.
A lot of this reminds me of the writings of Peter Elbow (2007) on "voice" in writing. Elbow finds that the search to define one's authentic voice is next to futile, and he at some point gave up on defining it for his students. Instead, he would point out to students areas in their writing where he was most able to pinpoint their truest and deepest inspirations and thoughts: thoughts which spoke to the innermost experiential dimension rather than being reduced to a ploy or a passing cliche. Ironically or perhaps paradoxically, a lot of finding voice involves letting go of the confusing things we think we are, as well as how we identify ourselves.
Elbow, P. (2007). Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries. College English, 70(2), 168-188.
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