HOW TO LISTEN TO GOD: A Simple & Easy Way

 Listening to God: A Simple & Easy Way

God loves communicating and uses many different ways to do so. God has always communicated with all beings and does so even now. This means that God communicates with all of us, at all times, even today. (It is a different matter, though, if we do not always or even often pay attention to God communicating with us or are even completely unaware of the fact that God actually does so.)

God is present everywhere, including within us. This means that one way that God communicates with us is from within us.

Now, how do we listen to this Indwelling God communicate with us today? One way of doing so—that is very simple and easy—is by listening to the Inner Voice, which may be said to be the Voice of God Within.

This essay outlines the idea and practice of listening to God communicate with us through the Inner Voice and highlights its value for our lives.

The Inner Voice, the Voice of God

Many years ago, I was at a retreat centre sort of place when I met a husband-and-wife couple. They had come from a distant place and were teaching people a very simple practice: of listening to the Inner Voice.  I don’t think I had ever heard of the ‘Inner Voice’ before this, and I joined them to learn what it was about. It turned out to be something that has made a huge difference to the way I now live my life.

The Inner Voice is the Voice that dwells within each of us. One might call it the Voice of the Universal Self or God’s Voice. God, the Power that has brought this universe into being and sustains it, dwells everywhere, being omnipresent. Surely, then, God must dwell inside us, too. The Inner Voice that is within all of us could then be said to be the Voice of the Indwelling God.

It is widely held that God spoke centuries ago to some revered figures. God, it is believed, communicated with these persons through words—spoken words and/or in some other form. Now, God may be considered as the loving Divine Parent of all of us. Just as a good, loving and just human parent communicates with all of their children, leaving none out, our Divine Parent, God, who is the very epitome of goodness, love and justice, communicates not just with some of God’s children but, rather, with all of them. This means that God ‘speaks’ to every single being that there is. This also means that just as God ‘spoke’ with God’s children in the past, God continues to do so even today. And one way God does so is through the Inner Voice, which is located within every one of us. Listening to this Voice is thus one way of listening to God ‘speak’ or communicate with us.

Listening to God

The existence of the Inner Voice, or the Voice of God Within, is not a mere unverifiable theological belief or dogma. Rather, it is something that we all can personally experience, and very easily at that, as a reality for ourselves. The way to do so is to listen to the Inner Voice ‘speak’ to us. Here is a simple method for this, as follows:

Sit comfortably in a chair. Close your eyes. Invite God to speak to you within yourself. Soon, in your head, you may begin to ‘hear’ a voice address you. It speaks not in audible words but in the form of silent thoughts. The Voice is distinct from your mind, and so, the thoughts that it sends out are distinct from thoughts that you consciously and willingly think. These thoughts emerge spontaneously, without any involvement on your part. The Voice from which these thoughts emanate may be called the Voice of the Indwelling God. This Voice may be said to be a principal way in which God communicates with us.

Some people may claim that they have heard God’s audible voice, that God has spoken in clear, audible words to them. This claim may or may not be true. But what can certainly be experienced as true is the Inner Voice, that is distinct from our own mind, ‘speaking’ to us from within us, in the form of thoughts, such as promptings, suggestions and silent guidance. This may be considered as God communicating with us from inside.

Importance of Listening to God

If the Inner Voice is a principal means that God uses to communicate with us, its importance for us is clearly obvious. Who wouldn’t want to know what God seeks to tell us? If there is something God wants to convey to us, surely we would want to know what it is, because intuitively, we know that it would be of the greatest importance for us. This is one reason why it is important to listen to the Inner Voice.

By listening to God ‘speak’ to us through the Inner Voice we can gain God’s guidance for every juncture in daily life and also for making important decisions. Turning to the Inner Voice, we can learn what God wants us to do in any situation.  When we feel low, we can listen to the Inner Voice, through which God comforts us and provides us direction. One can also turn to the Inner Voice to have a friendly, joyful conversation with God. One can probably think of several more benefits we could access by listening to God communicate with us through the Inner Voice.

Listening to God: A Practical Method

Listening to God speak to us through the Inner Voice is a very simple thing to do. Decide to be silent for a while. Sit comfortably, in a chair or on your bed. Close your eyes. Request God to speak to you from within. Try to quiet your mind by not consciously generating any thoughts of your own. Then, in a short while, you may experience some ideas emerge inside your head, being articulated by a silent Voice that is clearly not your own. Pay close attention to what the Voice says. It may speak to some immediate concern of yours. Or, it may talk of something from the distant past which is stored deep in your subconscious. If you want guidance about a certain issue, ask the Voice for it, and you will hear It respond. Listen carefully to what It says.

Really, this is basically all that Inner Voice Listening, or what could be called Listening to God Within, takes! It sounds exceedingly simple and easy, and it truly is! After all, God wants to engage in dialogical communication with us and has made it very simple and easy for this to happen.

Inner Voice Listening is something anyone can do. One does not have to belong to a particular group, identify with any religion or subscribe to a particular belief system in order to be able to listen to God ‘speak’ through the Inner Voice. It is thus an eminently universal spiritual practice.

Listening to God as a Regular Practice 

Listening to God communicating with us in the form of the Inner Voice can become an integral part of one’s daily prayer-life. Different people may have different understandings of what prayer is and how it should be done. My understanding is that prayer is a spontaneous dialogue between a person and God based on a close conversational relationship between them. Prayer is not simply addressing words to God; nor is it merely asking God for something. Rather, it is a two-way process of listening and speaking. In prayer, one speaks to God and also listens to God. Conversely, in prayer, God also speaks to us and listens to us as well. All four dimensions—of us speaking to God and listening to God, and of God speaking to us and listening to us—are an integral part of prayer. It is in this way that prayer becomes a dialogical relationship between God and a human person.

True prayer in its full form, thus, must also include us listening to God 'speak' to us, not just us speaking to God. And how does one listen to God? As outlined above, listening to the Inner Voice that dwells within each of us could be said to be a principal means for listening to God. The Inner Voice may ‘speak’ to us in inaudible words, through promptings, intuitive flashes and guidance. These could be taken as one form of Divine communication, of God communicating with us.

Since God is everywhere at all times, God is within us, too, and at all times. This means that we can listen to God communicate with us wherever we may be and at anytime we like, be it day or night. In this way, we can be in moment-to-moment communication with God. All we need to do is to turn our attention within and hear God ‘speak’ to us inside ourselves through the Inner Voice. In this way, we can ‘hear’ God wherever and whenever we want to.

To hear God ‘speak’ to us in this manner, we do not have to perform any particular ritual or adopt a particular posture or be in a particular place at a particular time or recite some particular words in a particular language. All one needs to do is to attentively listen to the Inner Voice ‘speak’ within oneself, which, I presume, will generally happen in the language that one is most at home with. And this one can experience at any time and in any place.

That said, it is good to have a regular practice of listening to the Inner Voice for a certain amount of time at around the same time each day. This gives our practice of listening to God greater regularity and focus. A good way to do so is to allot a certain amount of time—say between 20 to 30 minutes—each morning to the practice of listening to God through the Inner Voice.

After getting out of bed and freshening up, sit at a table with a clock placed on it (so that one is mindful of the time), with a notebook and a pen, and perhaps along with one’s morning coffee or tea. Then, in your notebook write down all that you ‘hear’ the Inner Voice ‘speak’ to you. You might ‘hear’ a few sentences and then there may be a silent gap, which may be followed by some more sentences again. If you do not ‘hear’ the Inner Voice speak for a while, you can send out a ‘prompt’ in the form of a question addressed to It, and soon enough you will hear It ‘talk’ to you. Carry on doing this till the allotted time is up.

One can listen to the Inner Voice without writing down what one hears from It—and that is, in fact, what one might naturally do as one seeks to hear from God at various points during the course of the day.  However, when one is sitting for one’s regular Inner Voice Listening session for which one has allotted a fixed amount of time, it is good to write down what one hears from the Inner Voice in a notebook that is kept specially for this purpose. Writing (and not typing on a computer or phone) can make a big difference in getting what we receive from the Inner Voice deeply internalized.

While ‘speaking’ to us, the Inner Voice may do several things: It may give us comfort if we are feeling sad or assurance if we are in doubt. It may provide an answer to a question that has been perplexing us. It may tell us to do something, meet someone, finish a task, go somewhere, buy a particular item, abstain from something, read a particular book, refrain from doing something, ask forgiveness of somebody, or many other such things. If we know this to be God’s Voice, we must abide by the instruction that the Inner Voice conveys to us in this fashion. After all, if this is from God, we ought to know it to be true and follow it.

One might be surprised by some things that the Inner Voice might tell us when we turn to listen to It. For instance, the Inner Voice told me to confess a wrongdoing that I had done perhaps more than a decade earlier. It also led me to apologize to someone I had been mean to. If I remember clearly, it also led me to make up with someone for whom I had developed a deep animosity. On an occasion of what I thought might turn out be a serious crisis, It gave me the assurance that all would be well.

A Note of Caution

One needs to distinguish the Inner Voice, or what may be called the Voice of God Within, from our own mind. Not every prompting that we may receive within may be from God. It could well be from our own mind, from the ego, and so may not be a wholesome prompting for us to follow.

One way to gauge whether a prompting is from the Inner Voice or from our own selves is to apply an ethical standard. If the prompting is fully in line with basic ethical values, if it conduces to the wellbeing of others and does not harm them, and if one’s conscience is at ease with it, it might be said to be from the Inner Voice.

If one is aware enough, one can intuitively recognize the source of a particular inner prompting: whether it is from the Inner Voice or from one’s own mind. This is also something that one can develop through practice.

Conclusion

Listening to the Inner Voice is a simple and easy method of hearing from God and gaining God’s guidance and assistance. It is something anyone can do. It is something everyone can experience for themselves as real and not simply hold as an unverifiable belief. It can make our daily lives much smoother, love-filled and joyful, communing with God as we go through the day. Try it out and see for yourself!