Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
An excerpt from the famous poem by Marianne Williamson.
I’ll circle back to the meaning of this. Pinky promise.
.
.
.
“Are these beams going to hold it? This repurposed shipping wood? Or are we going to see 100+ people crashing through the floor and the whole place cave in?
Maybe tonight no foot stomps, yeah?”
Not a line you’d expect in the midst of the pandemic.
But it was a reality on any given Friday night in Bali, at The Flow.
These words were shared sometime in August 2020.
Around the time of our 10th Open Mic.
What makes an open mic so unique that the finger snaps of the crowd shake the very foundations of a building?
For starters, a global pandemic.
When all else fails, Expression thrives
You see, every time throughout human history: in moments of crisis, the arts rise. As the world spreads messages of doom, individuals spread messages of hope and emotions and truth. Expression thrives when all else fails.
When everything crumbles around you, the storms of life rage and uproot, that’s when we look to express ourselves. To give hope. To help understand. To heal. To connect. An antidote to isolation.
So if there’s anything that is truly infectious, it’s to express in times of crisis.
Fast forward to this present day, 27th of October 2022.
Last Friday marked Voices Unleashed’s 63rd unplugged Open Mic. A night closed by Indonesian reggae legend Ras Muhammad and his brother Toke.
You might think: “who cares?”
You will, by the end of this post.
“As we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
Our purpose
The purpose of Voices Unleashed is for people to find their voice. Unafraid. Emboldened by the encouraging notion that we have one life and you have one voice. Your story, your path. And it is worth sharing that path.
If I would have to put Voices Unleashed into an image. It would be an infinite ceiling with lights. Some of them bright. Others dimmed. As some begin to shine, their radiance infects the nearest one. And so on. And so on. Continuing horizontally - across communities - and possibly vertically - across generations.
Why create a space like that? What does it matter?
Because life is not meant to be lived in the dark. The path of consciousness is sown with words like ‘enlightened’, ‘illuminated’, 'letting the light in’, and ‘step out of the shadow’ etc.
Why? Light is revealing. Light lays bare all. And when we see. We understand. And when we understand we find meaning. And where there is meaning, there is love. And love… What would we be without it?
To me, Voices Unleashed is love. Love for the individual who radiates. Voices Unleashed then becomes a symbol. An idea. Kept alive not by me or Nicole or Andrea but by the thousands of brilliant people that have come through and who’ve given and received in that space.
So here’s an ode to the many who have found meaning through VU - and an invitation to you, if you haven’t been, to come and experience and express. To do so in a space that connects you to something deeper.
To find a touch of ‘real’ in an increasingly surreal world.
The full poem “Our Deepest Fear” - Marianne Williamson
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear in that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the World.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel unsure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
As we let our own Light shine,
we consciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Share your Story
I realize it’s been a while since I’ve shared the significance of this space. So over the coming weeks, I’ll share stories of the Voices Unleashed journey.
These can be:
how-to’s on building community
it can be meaningful moments
poetic thoughts
and anything that does justice to this idea.
And simultaneously, if you, dear reader, have had an experience in that space that shaped your expression or your life in any way, then please tell others about it in the comments below. Or send me a private message if you want your experience to be highlighted in a separate post.
I went to the best Youth Performing Arts high school in my state. I used to secretly worship the theatre kids, choir singers, and ballet dancers. They kept cliques that were entirely inaccessible to "regular" students like me. Not to mention, they were cutthroat creatures, always in competition with one another. And I was the wallflower who watched it all safely from a distance. Wide-eyed and wanting. I knew I was deeply creative.
But how could I germinate in a cesspool of toxic teenage sludge?
What I yearned for was to be a part of a group that was supportive and accepting, with genuine camaraderie. I never thought that community would manifest years later, halfway across the world, and in the midst of a global pandemic.
Voices Unleashed is my church. It's family. It's the most fertile ground I've ever sat on. Alive and pulsing. A network of synapses lighting up, contagious, and connected.
A space like this, is not only important but necessary. It's unlike any other I've encountered in Bali or elsewhere. It caters to a need for human connection that I've only experienced through watching other humans express. A type of togetherness with strangers that's so rare (at least for a sensory-sensitive introvert like me).