Posted by Steve Wolf.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed<\/em><\/p>\n You\u2019re gonna have to serve somebody<\/em><\/p>\n Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord<\/em><\/p>\n But you\u2019re gonna have to serve somebody\u201d\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n by Bob Dylan<\/em><\/p>\n When I was 25 years old, working toward completing my final year of classes for a PhD in Psychology, I had a bushy beard, smoked a pipe, wore three-piece tweed suits and fancied myself to be a young Sigmund Freud, our grand patriarch of Psychotherapy.\u00a0 I believed I\u2019d be a great therapist because I believed I was really good at figuring out people. I trusted that I really knew what was going on with people beneath the surface of how they presented themselves.<\/p>\n Then I found out that my (first) wife was cheating on me and It rocked me to my core.\u00a0 Here I was, believing I was a young Sigmund Freud, who acted like he knew what was going on with people; yet, I didn\u2019t know that my most intimate companion, lover and best friend had been having an affair for six months. \u00a0I was so out of touch that I had no idea that she was living a lie.\u00a0\u00a0 So, in addition to being overwhelmed by the emotional chaos of waves of anguish, grief and rage from betrayal and abandonment, I was even more disturbed by the fact that I could no longer believe my own mind.\u00a0 I was smart enough to recognize that I certainly could no longer trust my judgment when it came to \u201cknowing\u201d or understanding what was going on with other people, if I didn\u2019t know what was going on in my own relationship. So I initiated what was to become a three-year process of Jungian Psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n I discovered what I have come to recognize as the voice of the higher self, which I now refer to as the voice of the King or Queen.\u00a0 It\u2019s like an internal guidance system, a voice of \u201cRight Action\u201d that comes from an intuitive place.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s a thought.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s a feeling. Sometimes it\u2019s a \u201cknowing\u201d that is neither thought nor feeling, but simply an awareness that comes to my attention.\u00a0 Over the years, I have come to trust and rely on this \u201cVoice of the King\u201d to guide me through the thousands of choices and decisions that I make each year.\u00a0 I have also come to rely on this same voice that Psychoanalyst Otto Reich referred to as \u201clistening with the third ear\u201d or \u201cpsychoanalytic listening\u201d to guide me in my work as a therapist. (https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/3606729\/Reiks_Theory_of_Psychoanalytic_Listening<\/a>)<\/p>\n I believe we all have access to this voice.\u00a0 In the 12 Step community it is referred to as one\u2019s \u201cHigher Power\u201d.\u00a0 Others refer to it as the voice of Consciousness itself.\u00a0 Regardless of what you call it, I believe this \u201cVoice\u201d knows what choices to make.\u00a0 Sometimes we may be really clear what choice to make. Sometimes we hear it and sometimes we don\u2019t.\u00a0 Sometimes we listen to it and sometimes we do not.\u00a0 In my work as a therapist I attempt to guide clients to identify and follow through on the voice of their Queen or King to support them to choreograph the choices they must make.<\/p>\n A first challenge is to differentiate the Voice of the Queen or King from the voices of other\u00a0 internal \u201ccharacters\u201d who have attitudes, desires and points of view which may not be alignment with the Voice of the Queen.\u00a0 One way to accomplish that is by identifying particular thoughts, feelings and body sensations as NOT being that intuitive voice we are listening for.\u00a0 Once we\u2019ve identified a voice as the voice of a character we utilize a Mindfullness, breathing practice to center ourselves to assist us in making the choice that most represents who we are.<\/p>\n