our signature voice...

The late poet activist priest, John O’Donohue, whose voice itself was liquid poetry spoke of finding our ‘signature voice.’ What a lovely thought…that within the cacophony of the outside world...a world that wants us to think it knows best...there exists within us something that is uniquely ours...our voice. 

The Voice Within

It takes a long time to sift through the more superficial voices of your own gift in order to enter into the deep signature and tonality of your Otherness. When you speak from that deep, inner voice, you are really speaking from the unique tabernacle of your own presence. There is a voice within you that no one, not even you, has ever heard. Give yourself the opportunity of silence and begin to develop your listening in order to hear, deep within yourself, the music of your own spirit.  John O'Donohue - from ANAM CARA

Being in relationship with my dreams has taught me aware that we have two signature voices, the one that wants to be heard in the world...to be heard by the world and the one that comes to us each night in our dreams.

So many of our voices have been silenced, shamed or seduced into believing that we had to speak a certain way in order to be heard, to find belonging. Our dreams show us that this isn’t true.  To learn to speak again from our truth, our vulnerability, to even rediscover what that is for each of us, becomes the beautiful work of a lifetime...our signature voice.   

Miriam Therese MacGillis, O.P. was a colleague of Thomas Berry, both social justice activists and ecologists.  The following quote is referring to the earth and our relationships with it.  It struck me that it also speaks to our signature voice.  Sister Miriam says, “To think we can worship while extinguishing the revelation of the divine in the earth is illusion.  Each interiority carries an aspect of the divine another doesn’t.  Humans have the capacity to recognize it.”  

The world needs our unique voice...our signature voice...will be diminished without it.  That may seem hard to believe when we can often feel so invisible and unheard.  So how do we find our unique voice and when we do... how do we learn to speak again? 

Here’s where I have found our other signature voice can help...through our inner voice, the one that comes to us through our dreams.  Each night there is another voice that has not been shamed into silence, that is still connected to our true self….that is “the revelation of the divine” in each of us.  We only have to be willing to let our dreams speak to us...and let them be heard...let them be our trusted teacher. This ‘signature voice’, which in dreamwork we refer to as the ‘voice of the soul’ is what our dreams want to help us recover.

Mary Jo Heyen is a certified Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients throughout the country and abroad in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com.