Egoic voice in head

Suffering has three parts: greed, aversion and delusion. By hating the voice, you are suffering. If a younger brother brings aggravation, a younger brother can also bring kindness. Having aversion for one and greed for the other is suffering. Both will make the voices stronger.

Instead, be aware of your breathing and simply observe that conviction of a persecuted self may be a deeply constructed delusion arising out of a forgotten craving and delight:

Venerable sirs, whatever has been brought into being, is fabricated, willed, dependently originated, that is inconstant. Whatever is inconstant is stress. Whatever is stress is not me, is not what I am, is not my self. Having seen this well with right discernment as it actually is present, I also discern the higher escape from it as it actually is present.

Firstly, take comfort in the fact that you're not the only one suffering from such a problem.

From this page, I found out that the actor Anthony Hopkins suffered from this too. He purportedly said:

"I’ve always had a little voice in my head, particularly when I was younger and less assured”, he said. “While onstage, during classical theatre the voice would suddenly say, “Oh, you think you can do Shakespeare, do you?” and he added; “Recently, I was being interviewed on television and the voice inside my head said to me, “Who the hell do you think you are. You’re just an actor, what the hell do you know about anything”.

Apparently, hearing voices may or may not be related to mental health conditions, so it's good to get it checked with a medical professional.

Meghan Jisho Caughey, a sufferer of Schizophrenia (which may not be your condition) reported how Zen meditation helped her in this blog entry:

So this is what I have found during the hours on the cushion. First of all, let me say, Zen practice, for me, is hardly ever relaxing. I don’t do it because it feels good. Just in the last few years, due to a better medication, it does occasionally feel somewhat peaceful. But much of the time, it is simply uncomfortable to sit there, and stay on the cushion.

I sit, and the internal voices often get louder. It‘s challenging.

I want to stop; I want to pay attention to the voices. They are seductive.

I try to count my breaths, if I can count to four, it is unusual.

I switch to listening to sounds meditation. External sounds---the bird in the tree outside, a car, the wind in a tree, my dog’s snoring. This actually works quite well fairly often when I am hearing voices because it competes with the voice; it changes the focus if I can do it for a little while.

Sometimes the voices or a body distortion will be really stubborn. I am just stuck with it.

There I am, on the cushion, no escape.

So what I have learned to do is just to be there.

I learned this in sesshin.

Just to be there. Moment by moment. With all the Stuff. Whatever.

I found out that it wasn’t going to kill me. And then I found out that I could choose my attitude toward the Stuff. Chose the feeling–tone. So now, the practice goes something like this:

I’m sitting doing zazen and the scary perceptual stuff comes up, And I recognize it, and I say to it, “Oh, so it’s you again!” And I lovingly tell it,” Well, I’m putting the welcome mat out for you, just come right on in!” And the scary stuff gets kind of smaller and not so scary, and sort of shuffles off into a corner, not so bad, after all.

Still, there are times when I just have to sit and it is like I am sitting in a snowstorm, or a war, except the energy is inside. So, one might ask, why do I sit—if it is not peaceful—and there are not more moments of bliss?

Sometimes I ask myself this question, and what I get in touch with is that by sitting that I somehow connect with my True Nature. For me this is especially meaningful, because for years I thought that my True Nature was my disease, schizophrenia. But deep down, I could hear something else: Buddha Nature.

When I was in my early forties—I am now fifty-one—I took the Precepts and Refuge in the ceremony called Jukai. I was given two Dharma names by my teacher. One name, Jisho, means compassion for all life. My teacher made a point to say that I must have compassion for myself. The other name is Ahimsa: nonharming. This meant to me that I could no longer act out self destructively, regardless of what the voices told me to do. I had to change my life.

I owe my life to this practice. My gratitude is beyond words. To sum it up, I would say that my practice with schizophrenia is just moment by moment, stay on the cushion with whatever comes up, and it is all workable, if you just stick it out.