The voices inside your head...are you.

I hear vocies inside my head all the time; and they often take the shape of an actual person. I hear the parents in my class wondering what we are doing during "room time" on Friday afternoons. I hear Paul asking me why I don't come to zazen on Thursday mornings.
I've always known that these aren't actual voices, I know that these people aren't inside my head, but I recently realized that these "people" are me, these "voices" are my own, and sometimes they have something to teach me about myself.

It was a Tuesday night, and I was worried about how far behind we were in terms of what the kids needed to know for our upcoming unit test. In my head, I pictured two parents talking on the yard after school about 'room time:' what it was, why the kids did it, how much time was spent on it. Then an actual parent popped in to my head and said, "What is this room time thing all about? Why is my kid spending half an hour on 'room time' on Fridays when he could be doing math or writing?"
At first, I got worried. I tried to justify 'room time' to the parent, to explain the importance of unstructured free time in the classroom.
But then I stopped myself. I said to myself, "Don't worry, that's just the parents talking. That's just them not understanding about the importance of 'free play,' and creativity."  I decided to dismiss the comment as silly parents worrying for nothing.

But then I realized that it wasn't the parents making the comment, because the parents... were at home. They were watching Downtown Abbey. They were tucking their kids in to bed. They were not inside my head at that moment, they couldn't be.
And when I saw that they couldn't be inside my head, I saw that the only person who could be inside my head at that moment, was me. The parents were not the ones saying these things, I was.

See, before I saw that, before I saw that the only one making these comments was me, it was easy to dismiss the comment as just the parents and their misunderstanding of things. I could ignore these questions, just blame them on the parents, and use this to avoid whatever issue I was having with the situation.

But then it happened with Paul. It was Wednesday night. I was excited because I knew that I got to sleep in the next day. (During the practice period, on Thursdays, there's only a short 'interval' after the first zazen, so I can't really leave the zendo without feeling like I'm disrupting zazen). As I was imagining sleeping in 'till 6, Paul popped into my head. He was sitting across from me and we were having imaginary dokusan.
"You don't come to the zendo on Thursdays," he said.
"No, I don't," I answered. "I get 'trapped' in the zendo on Thursdays and can't leave on time to get home in time to get ready for school."
He raised an eyebrow and looked off in to the corner of the room, "But you don't come and sit in the gaitan."

"Darnit!" I thought. I'm going to have to explain this to Paul. I'm going to have to justify to him why I don't sit on Thursday mornings.
And so I did. I started to explain to him about the gaitan and how it felt to be in the zendo... and then he suggested that I sit at home.... and then I started to freak out because I didn't want to do that and then I freaked out some more because I thought Paul was going to challenge me about the fact that I didn't want to sit at home....
But then I thought, "Wait, Paul is eating dinner right now. He's probably laughing about something or talking with someone over dinner in the dining room. He's not here, he's not the one questioning the fact that you don't sit on Thursday mornings, you are. Paul probably doesn't even notice that you don't sit on Thursday mornings, but you do, And clearly, you have some issues with it."

And I saw that this was about me. That I was making up Paul. But that I was making up Paul not because of things that Paul thought, but because of things that I thought.

At first when I saw this I thought, "Okay, if you want those voices inside your head to stop (and I often do), I can just stop them, since I'm the one making them up."
But later I kind of saw that sometimes these voices inside my head are something I need to listen to, to notice, to sit with.

It's true, a lot of our stories are totally delusional and they probably often come from our experiences with others and so there are definitely times where it seems totally appropriate to ignore these voices inside my head, to see them as the delusions that they are. But it's starting to feel like they can also be litle messages, little 'hey look at me' flags from your self saying "This is coming up for you, see it. It isn't those other people, it's you."