"I could hear the howl of a wolf from across the river."

-          Kent Heder

Knowing the Voice of Your Own Thoughts

My friend Kent Heder was enveloped in the quiet night as he lay in bed in Western Montana.  He was thinking about how loud the silence was.  "When it's this quiet sometimes it's hard to fall asleep." He thought.

Then a flash of inspiration came streaking through his mind at that very moment, "Perhaps this is how the term "deafening silence" came to be."

"There are lots of people in today's world that haven't an idea about deafening silence," he mused as he lay there thinking about his great fortune to be having this experience.

Kent is a young man; only twenty-years-old.  He's been living along the edge of this river under a "Big Sky" for a little more than a year.  He stirs a little in his bed and then drifts into memory again.  It wasn't long ago that almost everyone he knew spent morning, noon and night with ear buds stuffed into their head.

"If they could see me now," he laughed!  His friends from his old world would be horrified at his current life.  "Boring" is what they would call it.  But he saw it as a wonderful opportunity.

For the first time in a very long while he now recognized the sound of his own thought voice.  He could tell the difference between his personal thoughts and others being inserted by outer voices.  That's one of the astonishing changes that he's noticed in his life lately.

"Maybe I've become comfortable in my own skin." Kent thought as he stirred again.

Then, a distant sound shattered his dark blanket of silence.  He had to shift his senses from the internal to the external as he searched for an answer to the intrusion.  

There it was again. 

Now he could recognize it!

The sound was coming from across the river.  It was a lone wolf calling out in the night for some company.  It was a rare experience for him.  "How many people get to hear the howl of a wolf during their lifetime?  How many people have so many external thoughts rushing into their minds that they couldn't hear it if the sound reached their ears?"

Can you tell the difference between your thoughts and the howls from across the river of your consciousness?   If you can, you're ready to receive enlightenment; the little flashes of inspiration that will help you discover and live a life of fulfillment.   Give it a try and see the difference it will make in your life.