A Friend on the Voice of the Heart and Eating Chickens

A friend of mine wrote this beautiful piece on the 'silent voice' within, and related her experience of it to a topic we're all familiar with. I wanted to share it with everyone here, as her words are truly beautiful!



These thoughts are by Heidi Maycroft:

To me, at this time, no other literary work is as helpful in realizing our potential for awareness as “The Voice of Silence”.  Now, to define the ‘the voice of silence’ and what it might mean to me at this time (keep in mind as one learns, perceptions change; hence the term LEARN I am using as “become more aware of”).

When one becomes aware of a thing (thought), it could be said there are dimensions of aware-ness. Awareness concerning one’s personal self and how ‘thoughts’ we receive and then expand (grow) upon  affects us, and ultimately, how that thought we think about affects those we share the thought with (consciously and unconsciously); all the way to that thought affecting our neighborhood, city, country, earth, the cosmos and beyond,  might be said to be levels of awareness.

Here is an example of the voice of silence;  I use a controversial topic on purpose to prompt more reader “feeling”.  Weather I eat chickens or not is not important for this exercise. It is how I arrived at a decision, not the decision itself that I wish to explore.

Eating Chickens and More:

I am a Michigan native of European descent from a Catholic background. I’ve just given you information on which to ”judge me”. If you are from Michigan and have a similar background as me, you can identify with my environment. If you are of similar decent, you can identify with some of my nature. If you are a woman you can identify more, and if you are 48 you may be feeling really close to me right now; right up until I tell you I have listened to “the voice of silence”; exercised my Free-Will and I no longer want to be part of the group that I was in where we eat chicken together at Mc Donalds. As a matter of fact, with my new awareness, I might even feel inclined to mention something to you that might open your mind too about eating chickens and all that it implies. More than likely however, I will remain silent to you if I feel me bringing up the killing of chickens is going to create conflict between us.

Through nature and nurture, it is a fact I have eaten chicken the majority of this life. Right or wrong is not the issue here, nor is it debatable, it is a fact I have eaten many chickens. Therefore, it could be said many chickens have died by my hand. No, I did not personally kill those chickens, in my mind it is worse; I relied on someone else to do the killing for me; I paid someone to kill for my benefit.

Now I can fill up this page with arguments on the above statement for and against paying someone to kill chickens for me. The debate is useless, because my awareness of my feelings regarding the whole situation has changed, which prompts new thinking on my part; first recognizing I am a hypocrite (this is always hard to swallow); then changing my thinking to grow my new awareness.

Yes, the voice of silence, when I have settled my arguments with myself is the heart in this case. It “feels” like I do not want people killing chickens for my benefit (not a benefit to me anymore, but maybe some people doing the killing think it is a benefit, so I show them by my actions it is not something I want to continue). In my own mind I do not want that chain of events linked to me. I am not going to go into the arguments; you already know them. It does not matter to me what others might ‘feel’ about my decision; either they are of the same mind, or not. That is not my business. My business is what I think, and aligning my increasing awareness with my actions so I do not remain a hypocrite in my own eyes.