As I understand it, most of us carry on a running dialogue with ourselves in our head constantly. I suspect some of us have more, um, “lively” inner commentary than others, but I’ll assume that’s not an indicator of relative quality and move on. I have noticed different levels of inner voices, corresponding to varying degrees of accuracy. I’m curious to know if I’m alone in this.

At a relatively meaningless level, there’s the normal monologue that goes on in your head nearly all the time. It’s this commentary that most meditative systems are trying to shut up. There are those sayings that come from some forgotten childhood experience and serve no useful purpose, those that pop like a firecracker through seven layers of private jokes and movie quotes while you try to carry on a professional conversation about credit card fees, those that rehash the plot of your favorite TV show over and over. This category is mostly background noise. That’s not to say you can’t get useful information from it, but it takes an application of conscious thought and a trained psychologist or at least a self-help book. These insights aren’t fully formed. Most of them aren’t insights at all. They’re ingredients. They’re also the most familiar voices.

In a category of its own, the “something just isn’t right” voice is terribly useful. Popularized (and exquisitely captured, I must say) by Gavin DeBecker in his classic (yes, I’m telling you, go out and read it now) “The Gift of Fear”, this is the voice that tells you not to get in the car, to avoid the poorly-lit hotel lobby, not to hire that babysitter. This is the one you can sometimes quash because you don’t want to seem foolish and the one you hope you never hear. These are the immediate gut reactions to situations. They don’t ask permission, and many times you get near-instant feedback. I suspect this one is, for the most part, a lizard brain function that leeches information mostly from your senses and a bit from your higher brain functions to tell you lizard brain things, in no uncertain terms.

The intuitive voice, the one we think of when we talk about these kinds of things, seems to have two modes – an indoor voice and an outdoor voice. The indoor voice is those only somewhat articulate inklings, gentle and easy to miss. It’s connected to emotional and physical reactions for most people, but I think the source of this one is from rather higher brain centers than the visceral fear instinct. It’s subtle. It’s easy to miss, easy to talk yourself out of, but you can learn the most interesting things from this one if you listen to it, learn to winnow it out from the louder, more practical thoughts that often argue with it. Meditation often does the most interesting things to this voice. In fact, a lot of people hear it either mostly or exclusively while meditating.

Sometimes it’s more urgent. Especially if you’ve been trying to solve a problem for a long time and throwing tons and tons of information at it, the intuitive voice can speak loudly in a burst of insight about a specific, well-known problem. It’s the volume of voice we talk about in connection to the invention of the sewing machine or a sudden brilliant business move. It is Eureka. There is definitely frontal lobe involvement when this voice talks. My theory is that part of the reason it’s so loud is that it’s often connected to some external trigger (assuming we count dreams as external – at least external to the worrying on the problem at hand), so when everything falls into place with a “snick”, concrete sensations and events from outside anchor it to experience. That makes it easier to remember, often easier to test.

My favorite and most hated voice in my head, however, is the one I refer to as The Little Voice. It is fleeting but incisive. It’s certain. And it is never, ever wrong. It says things that I should always listen to, it speaks with 100% confidence, and it has yet to steer me wrong.

And I have yet to listen to it with the trust it deserves. In most cases, I don’t manage to follow its advice at all. I tell myself that’s because I can’t tell the difference, but that isnt’ really true. But it’s scary. I don’t know where this one comes from – I mean, it’s gotta come from me, right? Right? – but it feels alien enough that I shy away from what it says. When am I ever that certain about anything? The Little Voice is absolutely sure. I’m not, and I rationalize it away. Then I regret it.

That’s too bad, because besides a practice of meditation, the best way to encourage any of these voices except the first category is to listen to and act on them. I often wish The Little Voice would appear and tell me what to do, and it stays stubbornly silent. I can’t help but wonder if it’s in a snit because of all the times I heard it and went the other way.