“There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound ofthe genuine in herself…There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. Nobody like you has ever been born and no one like you-will ever be born again-you are the only one.

“If you cannot hear the sound of the genuine within you, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born. You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences, and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

“So the burden of what I have to say to you is, “What is your name – who are you – and can you find a way to hear the sound of the genuine in yourself?” There are so many (voices and) noises going on inside of you, so many echoes of all sorts, so many internalizing of the rumble and the traffic going on in your minds, the confusions, the disorders by which your environment is peopled that I wonder if you can get still enough – not quiet enough – still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom the sound of the genuine in you. I don’t know if you can. But this is your assignment.

“The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams (and) your ambitions that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you. Because that is the only true guide you will ever have and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself.”

by Howard Thurman