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       Day 6
       
       "These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they 
       grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world." 
               
       Self-reliance often means following our quiet, inner voice 
       more faithfully. It means not just listening to what we 
       say, or even to what we think, but paying more attention to 
       what usually lies beneath our consciousness. Picasso himself 
       knew that what he wanted to express wasn't his own idea:
               
       "To know what you're going to draw, you have to 
       begin drawing. . . . When I find myself facing a blank page, 
       that's always going through my head. What I capture in spite 
       of myself interests me more than my own ideas."
                       
       Picasso wasn't aiming to express his ideas 
       but ideas that seemed to be beyond him. He understood that 
       self-reliance wasn't about absolute control and knowing the 
       answer ahead of time, but diving into the unknown and 
       trusting himself to navigate.
                       
       Write about a time you listened to that inner voice, then a 
       time you ignored it. How did each turn out? How did the 
       conversations with your inner voice differ? How can you 
       become better attuned to those subtle nudgings?
       
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       The inner voice.  How quiet it can be and how deaf I can be to 
       hearing it.  I know all too well when this voice speaks to me and
       I know all to well when my thoughts are too loud to hear.  I have 
       come to trust this voice, but I don't always heed its suggestions.
       
       An example of a time when I did listen to this voice was when 
       I was going out to lunch with some of my colleagues.  There 
       was this angry lady preaching about God and harassing 
       pedestrians about how they don't believe in God and they were 
       going to go to hell.  She was  being loud and making people 
       upset.  For some reason, I was drawn to talk to her.
       
       I went up to her and said in a soft, calm voice, "Hi, how are you 
       doing?"  She looked at me with suspicion and said, "these people, 
       they are going to hell!  They don't know God!"  My response to her, 
       which came out of nowhere, was, "God loves you and thats all 
       that matters."  She looked me in the eye and initially I saw 
       bewilderment and then that turned into something like realization 
       or something.  She turned and quietly started walking down the 
       street.  
       
       I went back to my colleagues and they were like, "what was that 
       about?"  I just told them, "I think she was lost."  And that 
       was that.
       
       It was just so bizarre and I don't normally do things like 
       that.  I don't even like talking to strangers, especially on 
       the street.  It just felt like that was something I was supposed to 
       do at that moment.  My mind didn't even really feel like it was in 
       the fore-front, rather, it took a back seat while my ghost was 
       hacked and being operated remotely.  I was a passenger and 
       could only experience the happenings.
       
       That was an example of when I listened.  An example of when I 
       don't is for another time.  It has been over 20 minutes and I 
       gotta go.
       
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