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Issue 75 –

DISOWNED SELVES – Our Lost Heritage
Part 1
by

Drs Hal & Sidra Stone

We humans are a most delightful mélange of energy patterns or selves. Some of these energies are familiar and comfortable, some are curious or unfamiliar, and some are downright distasteful. In this series of articles we will examine the development of the latter energies – our disowned selves – and their effect on our lives.

Disowned selves are energy patterns that have been partially or totally excluded from our lives. They can range from being angelically spiritual, creative, and mystical to being lustful, selfish, and even demonic.
Our disowned selves can be detected by the intense, often uncharacteristic emotional reaction we have to others. The following examples will illustrate this:

• a man who was an honest, sincere, and faithful husband for thirty years was outraged by a woman he encountered who “had no sense of loyalty or commitment, whose idea of a relationship was a two-day sexual involvement with someone whom she would never see again.”
• a dreamy, spiritually oriented young man perceived his financially successful older brother as “almost demonic in his pursuit of money, power, and women.”
• a thoughtful, gentle, and kind woman couldn’t bear her boss who was “cruel, selfish, and only interested in results.”
• a tough self-made man couldn’t “stand wimps or victims. They make me want to puke!”

These examples clearly convey the intense emotions attached to the disowned self. These emotions are the result of the tremendous energy in the disowned energy pattern itself, as well as the energy utilized in keeping it disowned. It is no wonder that intense feelings come into play whenever we see a disowned self reflected in someone else.

Before we explore our disowned selves further, one important distinction needs to be made: In general, the term for a self that is not conscious is an unconscious self, but not all unconscious selves are necessarily disowned . An unconscious self is simply unconscious – no energy is holding it down or maintaining its unconscious status.

However, every disowned self has an opposite energy with which the ego and the protector/controller are identified. For example, a woman who has buried a disowned self associated with uninhibited sexuality may, in fact, consider herself to be a morally upright, highly disciplined person. This opposite, morally upright energy, in conjunction with the protector/controller, is constantly holding the disowned self at bay. Ultimately, however, we have no way of knowing that a self is disowned until we become aware of it.

The Development of the Disowned Selves

The disowned self is an energy pattern that has been punished every time it has emerged. These punishments might have been subtle – a raised eyebrow, the withdrawal of attention, a “that’s rather unattractive, don’t you think?” – or they may have been powerful punishments such as beatings or public humiliation. Whatever the nature of these repressive environmental forces, the result is the same: A set of energy patterns is deemed totally unacceptable and is, therefore, repressed but not totally destroyed. These energy patterns live on in our unconscious.

In Jungian terms, our disowned selves are a part of our shadow. When we see them reflected in others – when we see someone unashamedly living out an energy pattern similar to one we have disowned – we feel this disowned pattern resonate within ourselves. However, this pattern has been associated with pain and punishment in the past, so we want it to go away as soon as possible.

In order to quiet our internal discomfort we must rid ourselves of the corresponding external stimulus. We must kill off the person who is so audaciously living out our disowned self, whether we do it literally – as in a Jack-the-Ripper-style murder or symbolically – such as sitting in judgment of someone. Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter painfully but clearly illustrated the price paid for living out the adulterous disowned self belonging to the Puritan community in which she lived.

One woman we worked with, Jane, had been taught to disown her sexuality: From an early age, she was punished for any evidence of flirtatiousness or sexuality. She learned to bury her sexuality, and this energy pattern then became a disowned self. By the time she reached adulthood she had learned to dress soberly; value her objectivity, rationality, and independence; and perceive her sexuality as an incidental part of life. Nevertheless, her sexuality did exist someplace in her unconscious.

One evening Jane went to a party where she encountered a woman – flirting outrageously, dressed in a very revealing décolletage, and surrounded by men – who personified Jane’s disowned self. An interesting thing happened: Jane’s disowned self began to vibrate sympathetically with this woman’s. Jane had always been punished for behaving like this woman, so she became acutely uncomfortable as their two energy patterns vibrated with one another – the one unashamed and flamboyant, the other a hidden and unrecognized echo of what it might have been.

To remove the source of her discomfort Jane judged “the other woman”: “I’ve never seen such a disgusting, vulgar exhibition in my entire life! Isn’t she ashamed to walk around like that? I’d think her husband would be embarrassed to death!” Just as Jane expressed herself with great vehemence and self-righteousness, so do we use judgment to eliminate the vibrating energy of our disowned selves.

Issue 74 –

Disowned Instinctual Energies

and

The Voice Dialogue Process

by

Dr Hal Stone PhD

In working with the Voice Dialogue process keep the following basic thought in mind. When you are working with a new client always start working with one of the primary selves and continue this process until there is some semblance of The Aware Ego present. Once this has happened, it is much safer to work with selves that are disowned or unconscious.

It may be however that someone will say that they have a killer critic that they want you to work with. Don’t go after a “killer critic” or after “demonic” energy no matter how badly the subject wants you to do so. It is one of the great dangers of this work — especially when a Killer Energy may be a primary self. People are afraid of their violence and rightly so. Many clients are quite fearful of losing control of their emotions and they want you, the Facilitator, to work with their killer energy so that they can feel in control of it again. So let’s look at a bit of theory so you can better understand this problem.

In growing up, for each of us, there is a kind of war going on between our instinctual energy that wants us to be free, and the rules and regulations that we learn to obey, that want us to block our instinctual development. How strong these are depends on our genes, and of course also on our environmental training. Because of this war many selves develop that provide us with ways of acting out our impulses, and other selves which block our acting out impulses.

For example, let’s say that Jane grows up in a family where she is made to behave herself in a more extreme way, and so she identifies with “Good Girl/Nice Girl” or with “Good Mother” or “Voice of Responsibility.” If these Selves become too strong, then Jane will not have learned to react in the world in a way that can properly serve her. She can’t create proper boundaries. Getting angry becomes akin to a sin. A phantasy or daydream that has anger or sexuality as part of it may be experienced in a very dark way. So finally what may happen is that her natural aggression and her natural sexuality may become her enemy, and it then explodes in her in a violent way. Her nice girl then tries harder and harder to control this behavior and life can feel very threatening indeed.

Working directly with this kind of aggressive, or sexual, or what the subject often feels as “killer” energy that is nuanced by one’s family, academic and/or religious background, can indeed be a frightening experience. You must first determine whether or not this particular client at this time in her process, should be exposed to this level of emotionality and are you, the Facilitator sufficiently experienced for the job.

The safer way is to not work with these energies directly until the subject has an Aware Ego process that is strong and stable enough to be able to handle this kind of material. Instead, try facilitating her “Nice Girl” or the “Good Father” or the “Over Responsible” Mother. Work with the Selves that require the client to be controlled all the time or the “Voice of Rules” that determine what rules that Jane follows. In this way Jane gradually learns to develop an Aware Ego process in relationship to a few of the major primary selves that insist on positive or controlled behavior. With this separation and clarity, the instinctual energies can slowly and carefully begin to emerge without anyone having yet worked with them directly.

One final thought — the most important of all! The goal of this work is not to learn to talk to voices. This is only the method of Voice Dialogue. The goal is the awakening of the Aware Ego process which allows us to live our life between ever widening and ever deepening oppositional energies, and thus gradually neutralize our ideas and feelings about what is good and bad. In this way we are lead to a gradual lessening of judgment and the chance to live what is, rather than believing our judgments about how they should be.

Issue 73 –

How Strong is Your Inner Critic?
An informal rating of the power of your Inner Critic
by

Hal Stone, Ph.D. & Sidra Stone, Ph.D.

People have often asked us how they can evaluate the strength of their Inner Critics,

so we have come up with these questions below to ask yourself about yours.

This rating scale will give you an idea of what your Inner Critic sounds like

and how much it interferes with your sense of wellbeing.
To be rated on a three point scale of:
Rarely (1)    Sometimes (3)    Frequently (5)

Scores of 1 – 45 — Small Inner Critic
Scores of 46 – 75 — Medium Sized Critic
Scores of 76 – 100 — Very Strong Inner Critic
PLEASE NOTE: This is not a standardized psychological test.

	Rarely (1)	Sometimes (3)	Frequently (5)
1. I wake up at night worried about the mistakes that I made the day before.
2. I replay conversations after I’ve had them to see what I’ve done wrong.
3. I don’t like the way my clothes look on me.
4. When I’m with other people, I wonder if they’re critical of me.
5. I’m cautious about trying anything new because I’m afraid of looking foolish.
6. I’m afraid people will laugh at me.
7. I worry about what other people think.
8. I often feel inferior to other people.
9. I wish I had a more attractive body.
10. When I look in the mirror, I check to see what’s wrong with me.
11. When I read over something I’ve just written, I’m not satisfied with it.
12. I’m afraid that there’s something basically wrong with me.
13. I wonder what other people would think of me if they really knew what I was like underneath.
14. I compare myself with other people.
15. I seem to attract judgmental people.
16. I question my decisions after I have made them and think that I might have done better.
17. “When I say “No”, I feel guilty.”
18. When I take a test like this, I’m sure that I’ll look worse than other people.
19. I avoid taking risks if I can help it.
20. When I think about self-improvement I feel that there is something wrong with me that needs to be fixed.
Totals

Total Points: ____________

Issue 72 –

Near Death Experiences (NDEs)

by

Dr Hal Stone, PhD.

Over the past three or four years my personal studies have been focusing increasingly on writings concerned with the issue of what it means to be a senior in our society and on the issues that go with it. In particular I have been reading extensively in the area of Death and Dying — Life after Death — The Dream Process in later years, and also the study of Near Death Experiences which have become known as NDEs.

A NDE occurs when someone has been either declared dead or where the vital organs stop for a period of time where life energy no longer appears present. Whether people actually die or whether they are in a near death state with no vital signs can’t really be known. They are far enough gone however to have left ordinary consciousness and to have experiences from “the other side” that are definitively of a different order of reality.

Based on composite estimates of major polls, it is estimated today that about 10 million people have had such an experience. This is a startling reality of our time because the experiences they have show remarkable similarities and these individuals, by and large, are very much changed in their consciousness. I personally have never had such an experience. Sidra however herself experienced an NDE event in 1968 when she was spending some time in Guatemala and Honduras and suffered a major fall after not eating for 24 hours.

The study of these events goes far far back into pre-Christian times but the work was popularized by Raymond Moody in his classic book on life after death published in 1975. In this book he interviewed a large number of NDE survivors and began to lay out the map of their eerily similar experiences. The literature today is, to say the least, extravagant and difficult to keep up with.

One of the leaders certainly is a man whose name is Kenneth Ring and he has been a leader for several decades in the whole field. Recently he was interviewed by Jeffery Mishlove who has been doing these interviews since the mid eighties. He interviewed me in 1988 and does a wonderful job in the interview process.

This brings us to the present time and this mailing. A very dear friend of ours, Deborah Morris, sent us a DVD that carried an interview with Kenneth and also an article to go with it. We feel that this work is extremely important to all of us and contains material that will be an eye opener for most of you who read it. He includes an exercise that you can use that is based on what happens in the early stages of the death process that is really quite outstanding.

Some of you may find this kind of material too far out and unreal. For those of you who may feel this way I end with this story.

“Two female cannibals had their large cooking pots set up outside their little house. Mary was older and Janie was younger. They stood in silence, each cooking their very large soup. Finally, after several hours, Janie speaks and says — Mary – I’m getting tired of my husband. Again silence for an hour and Mary finally responds –Oh, then just eat the rice!”

So for those who don’t like something about the soup we are selling here just don’t eat the rice! I hope you won’t throw out the whole soup because these are deep issues and we in the world of consciousness development need to eat many different soups to find those that really belong to us. So we hope that you enjoy this presentation I was so very pleased that John Coroneos wanted to present this material to you.

With love and best wishes to you all from Sidra and myself. By the way, at this moment it is five days since I had a brand new pacemaker installed at the hospital in Santa Rosa. It was actually a close call and had it not been done when it was I would have been writing to you from the other side. This is not a sure thing because Steve Jobs hasn’t really had time to work on things there. So I am pleased to be here, in my physical body, and share all this with you.
 

For the video interview with Kenneth Ring and Jeffrey Mishlove, plus a discussion and exercise, visit
http://www.wanttoknow.info/nde/near-death-experience-lessons

For the full 5 part interview with Kenneth ring and Jeffrey Mishlove, visit
http://nhne-nde.org/resources/jeffrey-mishlove-interviews-kenneth-ring/

Issue 71 –

 

Some Thoughts About Prophecies

by

Hal Stone

 

This is a time of great change in the world; it is also a time that coincides with dates mentioned in a number of prophecies, some ancient and some recent. An old friend and colleague of ours, Reginah WaterSpirit, wrote to us asking for our thoughts regarding prophecies and how we might deal with them. Reginah included the following ancient Hopi Prophecy in her letter; it is one you may well have read. It is actually a beautiful prophecy, one that seems to speak directly to this current time of major change in the world.

 

This prophecy deals with the need for letting go of old ways and of moving with the ever-quickening flow of the river. The problem is the current profusion of prophecies and doomsday scenarios that are circulating around the world. Reginah’s real question to us was: how does one deal with these prophecies? People are frightened, anxious and vulnerable. How can people maintain their balance in the face of these kinds of predictions and end-of-the-world scenarios?

 

Hal has been interested in prophecies for many years now and has given this topic much thought in the past. Reginah’s question prompted him to re-visit this issue and he answered her enquiry so beautifully that I would like to share his thoughts with you all. I will begin with the prophecy that started this conversation.

 

Sidra Stone

 

THE ANCIENT HOPI PROPHECY

 

“There is a river flowing now very fast…

it is so great and swift, that some will be afraid.

They will try to hold onto the shore;

they will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.

 

Know that the river has its destination,

the elders say we must let go of the shore,

push off into the middle of the river,

keep our eyes open and head above the water…

and I say keep your eyes open and celebrate.

 

At this time in history,

we are to take nothing personally,

least of all ourselves — the moment we do,

our spiritual growth, our great journey halts.

 

Gather yourselves.

The Red Way, the way of the lone wolf is over.

Banish that kind of struggle from your attitude.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner

and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

 

Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya

 

 

 

HAL’S LETTER

 

Dear Reginah,

 

We live in a time of great fear and insecurity as well as a time of great excitement.  Old forms are breaking down and this creates a sense of chaos around us. The more chaotic we feel the more the selves come in; the selves that try to restore order.  The hardest thing is to live with our vulnerability close to us all of the time. We must learn to carry the tension between our vulnerability on the one side and our use of work, activity, and the many ways we find to make ourselves feel better on the other side.

 

We must learn to pay attention to – and to be accountable in – our relationships.  In this way we begin to use relationship as a teacher and we surrender to the process of relationship itself.

 

We must learn to surrender to higher powers that are available to us and we must learn to ask them for guidance in bringing us the insight and clarity and direction that we so yearn to have. The Organizing Intelligence of the Universe that becomes known to us primarily through the dream process has provided me with this guidance for many, many years. This is only one of many paths that are available to us to secure this guidance.

 

We must remember that the Mind is just one of our selves, even though it is one of the most significant tools we have to lead an effective life on earth. For too many people, the Mind remains the One God; these people are denied access to the worlds of feeling, emotion, spirit, and imagination because the Mind cannot experience these other worlds that lie within each of us. The Mind can conceive of them but it cannot experience them.

 

We must learn to listen to our dreams and to share them with friends.  With time, the dream process begins to express the Organizing Intelligence that lies within each of us and we have a new kind of base to stand on and from which to receive new ideas and guidance and revelation.

 

We must learn to pay attention to our judgments and use them as teachers.  Whoever and whatever we judge gives us a direct picture of those elements within us that have been disowned. Judgments come from our primary selves and they have much to teach us once we learn their underlying meaning and teaching.

 

We must keep in mind that knowledge comes to us primarily through our primary selves. Wisdom, however, is a product of the Aware Ego Process. Wisdom comes as we learn to stand between opposites and feel both sides of each of the many, many opposites that live within us.

 

We must learn to dance with life and to dance with death.  We must learn to feel and move to the different beats and rhythms of life just as later on we have to learn to dance with the different beats and rhythms of death until one day we feel the continuity of what happens “here” and what happens “there”.

 

One of the ways that many people have of not living with their vulnerability and insecurity in their life and relationships is to write and re-write warnings about the end of the world and then to tell us how to behave.  Many of these writings have the ability to totally de-stabilize us and create a feeling of mass hysteria and anxiety.

 

Writing such prophecies may make the writer feel secure and non-chaotic for a time. Since indeed none of us knows what is going to happen in the world, we ultimately come back to the need to live life as fully and as simply as we can, to feel this amazing journey we are all on together, and to go on living with an ever-increasing development of consciousness. In traveling this path, we must always make sure that we stroke our cats at appropriate times and remember to floss our teeth when we realize that the appointment with our dental hygienist is only a few days away 😉

 

There is one final thought – final at least for the moment. Most spiritual teachings ask us to become more loving and more compassionate. We are led to believe that trying to become this kind of person is the only way we can really solve the problems of the world. I give to you opposite advice. Do not try to be loving or compassionate. When you try to become loving, you disown the parts of you that are not loving. When you try to be compassionate you will disown the parts of you that are not at all compassionate. It is in this way that we create the “garbage dumps” of the psyche; “garbage dumps” that are probably invisible to us, but likely to be seen clearly by people outside of us. If you don’t believe that you have these garbage dumps in your own psyche, I suggest that you pay attention to your dreams and daydreams for a period of a few weeks. I think there might be some surprises in store for you!

 

If we separate from our primary selves and embrace those parts of us that are disowned then we embrace the world of all energies. It is all in us! All good and all darkness are inside of us. As we embrace all of who we are, we cannot help but become more loving and compassionate because we have met the outer villains of our life and have come to realize that they are all a part of each of us.

 

So I say to you to love when you love; hate when you hate; be irritable when you are irritable; be in grace when you are in grace. The key is to not be married to any of them. The key is to learn to dance with each of them and feel the tension of all these opposing energies.

 

On the most practical level, when you read a doomsday scenario you have one other option. Write him or her a letter and ask the author if it would be possible for him or her to share some of the recent dreams they have had and, if you are really courageous, see if it is possible to learn something about their daydream process. It is good learning.

 

This started out as a short email in its first iteration. It has become a much more lengthy statement. Thank you for writing to me and giving me this chance to express and clarify some of my thoughts on this subject.

 

Much love,

Hal