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DREAMS, DAYDREAMS AND

THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

by

Drs Hal & Sidra Stone

 

As we mentioned earlier in this article, dreams and visualization have always played an important part of our explorations. At the very beginning Sidra, in particular, was deeply impacted by a series of visualizations that initiated her into some of the very deepest waters of the unconscious. With time the work with visualization became less important to us as Voice Dialogue and the dream process became more primary. In recent years, however, we have found ourselves placing even greater emphasis on the dream process for ourselves and with our clients. We have also enjoyed working with daydreams as we discovered how daytime fantasies provided a gold mine of information about what was happening in people’s lives (including ours).

 

What we first became aware of, was the fact that when people began to develop an Aware Ego process and were able to stand between opposites, the nature of their dreams began to change. They became clearer. They become more organized. We have always known this at some level, but somehow our understanding and appreciation of this process changed. We watched clients begin to decode their own dreams in relatively short periods of time, depending, in large measure, on the strength of the Aware Ego process.

 

As this process continued, we saw that the intelligence of the unconscious began to manifest in an ever more powerful way, and we found that the dream process itself was becoming the teacher for people. We had experienced this earlier in our own lives as we watched how the unconscious organized itself and seemed to have its own agenda for our development.

 

What is this intelligence? Where does it come from? What does it want from us? And how does it manifest in our lives?

 

We became aware of the fact that the dream ego, or how the dreamer appears in his or her own dream, gives us a picture of how the primary self is behaving. This seemed to be true of most dreams, though not all of them. Occasionally the dream ego would represent not the current primary self system (or operating ego) but instead, the disowned self.

 

Then we began to ask for the daydreams or daytime fantasies of people. These are different than the visualizations of guided imagery. These are not deliberately sought after like visualizations; instead, they are going on all of the time in peoples’ lives even though many have no awareness at all that they are, in fact, daydreaming. They play like background music – and nobody knows who put it on.

 

For example, imagine that you are driving in your car and someone passes you and then cuts in front of you. You are angry and, in your mind, you begin to talk to that driver, expressing your outrage at what happened. This can go on for long periods of time and can totally destabilize you. Some people will continue this daydream and imagine that they drive after the other person and deliberately crash into him and hurt him. Others will have just a momentary flash of fury or a fleeting image of destruction.

 

The “you” of the daydream generally gives us a picture of your disowned self. Your primary self may be calm, controlled and rational. The disowned self that emerges in your daydream is an energy that carries the rage, anger, and resentment that is generally kept under control. We found that by listening to people’s daydreams and by making them aware that they are having daydreams, they begin to get a picture of the disowned self.

 

Once the picture is clear, then there is the chance to explore the self. In this example, there is a chance to learn how to stand between the control and rationality of the primary self that continues to drive carefully and the more uncivilized part of us, the angry, destructive self that can be so frightening to the rational, controlled side.

 

Rather than trying to change ourselves – which is always a problematical thing to do – what seems to be required of us is a surrender to the unconscious itself as we learn to trust that the intelligence it makes available to us has a plan and direction for us. The surrender we refer to is not that of a passive child who gives up all responsibility. It is, rather, a surrender to a kind of knowing that is not ordinarily available to us. The deeper problems of life can seldom be solved by the rational mind alone. We need the mind, it’s true, but it is only one of our resources.

 

The ignition of this intelligence is not the same as having a particular religious, or enlightenment, experience. It is an ongoing process that seems to us to be continually wishing to clarify and deepen the Aware Ego process. It wants to help us see who it is in us that is living our lives so we can learn to take over from that part (or self) and live our life with ever more choice. This is not short-term work. As we’ve said, it is a process that continues forever!

 

We are well aware of the fact that not everyone remembers dreams and we can only be grateful that there are so many different approaches to consciousness that can be utilized in the journey of personal growth. Yet, we cannot help but be amazed at how often the act of standing between opposites will initiate a dream process or to deepen an already existing one.

 

Where all of this leads is to a natural and organic movement within us whereby the unconscious itself becomes our teacher and gradually the bonding to the outside teacher diminishes in strength. The role of the outer teacher changes to that of a consultant to process. Finally, even this is no longer necessary and the inner teacher takes over completely. We have had the deep satisfaction of watching this happen to more and more people. And so it is that Hal has revisited his Jungian roots, and this work with dreams and daydreams has become one of the basic elements of Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves.

 

One of the greatest surprises for us as Hal approaches his 80 th birthday and Sidra approaches her 70 th birthday is the ongoing nature of this intelligence as it continues to unfold and bring to both of us new understandings of matters both personal and transpersonal. It has helped us prepare for aging and it continues to help us with all the gifts and the challenges that come at this time of life.

 

God, the Greater Intelligence, the élan vital, the Organizing Principle of the Universe, manifests in many ways. We feel privileged to have been a part of this manifestation in the work that we have shared over the past 35 years. Others have discovered this organizing mystery in their work with the physical body, in their work with the stars, in the work with cell structure and in a variety of spiritual practices. For us this Intelligence has found us, as we have found it, in the depths of human relationship. And as we observe the various manifestations of this intelligence all around us, and as we feel the organizing principles behind them, we cannot help but feel assured that God is indeed a mathematician.

Issue 34 – April 2008

Partnering in Relationship

by

Drs Hal & Sidra Stone

 

In the last ten years, we’ve begun to think of our kind of relationship as a partnering relationship. A partnering model of relationship is a non-hierarchical way of being with someone. This way of thinking about relationship can be applied to all relationships but its primary focus has particular application to ongoing primary relationships. In addition to being non-hierarchical it is also seen by us as being a serious Joint Venture in both a personal and business sense.

 

As part of this Joint Venture, both people must be surrendered to some level of a psycho-spiritual process in their own personal lives and also surrendered to such a process in their relational lives together. It is important here to understand that the surrender is not to the other person but to the relationship itself.

 

The ability and willingness to surrender to the process of relationship has a number of major consequences. For one thing, your partner/friend becomes your teacher just as you become their teacher. Another way of thinking about the Partnering Model is simply to think of it in the sense of Relationship as Teacher.

 

There is another consequence to this process. We gradually learn to embrace the disowned selves that we carry for each other. This happens over a very long period of time. Ultimately we come to the discovery that in each of us lives an introject of our partner. Sidra is learning about the energy configurations in her that correspond to Hal. Hal is learning about the energy configurations that correspond to Sidra. This is a very exciting process and one that allows a continuing conscious separation of the two people and a yet deeper clarity regarding the whole issue of bonding patterns.

 

There is an extensive ongoing learning process where both people must learn the basics of the psychology of selves, the Aware Ego process, the consciousness model, the work with bonding patterns, the understanding of energetic realities, and the relationship to the physical body. There evolves an ever deepening relationship to the spiritual dimension and, hopefully, there is some connection to the dream process that is shared in the relationship. We have seen that, over time, the dreams can become an increasingly powerful inner teacher both in our lives and in our relationships.

 

The concept of a Joint Venture also has major consequences. Every aspect of relationship involves a joint decision making process. There is nothing wrong with one person being responsible for taking care of finances. It is simply that the other person cannot abdicate responsibility for finances. The other person must not become an unconscious daughter or son just because someone else is taking the major responsibility for a particular area. In a partnership, both partners are liable – even if one has a special expertise or interest in one aspect of the business of living.

 

In this light, an ongoing partnering relationship can be seen in part as a serious business venture between two people, one that requires a good deal of time and energy. We strongly recommend business meetings where the business issues of life can be dealt with. That may sound unromantic, but if there aren’t regular business meetings, then the business of life – the requirements of everyday living – have a tendency to invade all available space and to be handled unconsciously.

 

We live our lives most of the time out of our primary selves. This changes as we do our psycho-spiritual work. We begin to have a choice about who is going to live our life – or, as we like to say, who is going to drive our psychological car. As partners we must decide over and over again who is going to do what and when. Who is going to call the friends about the party? Who is going to take the clothes to the cleaner?

 

Default, unconsciously decides whatever partners do not decide consciously together. This is analogous to the default position on a computer. The computers we use came with default settings for each application; there are hundreds of default positions. They work, but they’re generic. If you want to use the computer in a more personal, creative and artistic way, then you must learn how to change these settings so that you have real choice as to how it will operate.

 

If you wish to have a more creative, imaginative and sensual connection to each other, you need to be constantly handling the business and personal decisions – determining what belongs to each of you at a certain time and then working out who does what. In this way, you do not live your relationship via default positions, which simply means through your primary selves. Instead, you are a team – constantly working together to support the Aware Ego process in each of you. The gradual integration of whatever it is that the partner carries for us greatly enhances our ability to make conscious decisions and choices.

 

The psychological work is essential to discover who is running our lives and who is living our relationships. The spiritual work is essential because without a sense of spiritual reality/ God/ Higher Intelligence our lives cannot expand beyond purely personal considerations. The work with energetic reality is essential because for a truly satisfying relationship, the primary energetic connection must be between the two people involved.

 

All of this is an ongoing process that can last forever. One of the greatest surprises and delights of our aging process is the amount of change that remains for us in a true partnering relationship. The continuing support of our dreams is truly awesome, and the profound power of the Intelligence of the Psyche becomes more and more of an everyday affair accompanying our ongoing and ever-present dance with the world of bonding patterns.

Issue 33 – March 2008

THE ENERGETICS OF VOICE DIALOGUE  

by

Drs Hal & Sidra Stone

There have been a great many periods of excitement in our adventures together, as we’ve developed this body of work. Certainly one of the most profound and most gratifying has been the Energetics of Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves. Hal was first introduced to the world of energy by the work of William Brugh Joy in 1974 when he made his first public appearance at the Center for the Healing Arts summer conference. It was a truly seminal moment in the world of consciousness because large numbers of students flocked to Brugh and were introduced to the body’s energy fields and shown how to work with them.

 

At that time the energy had to do with healing. Hal was not interested in becoming a healer per se, but the world of energy was opened to him by Brugh and, over the next few years, he developed his own style of energy work that he called field clearing. It has always been a significant part of our lives and our work and has helped us move through difficult physical challenges in the course of our lives and travels.

 

It was only after we met that we began to consider the world of healing as it applies to personal relationship. Early on in our explorations together, we began to notice that different selves actually felt different from other selves. Being with a vulnerable child or a loving parent felt like being in the room with an energy machine that gave off a warm glow that could be sensed and that made a palpable connection. We called that “personal energy”. Facilitating the mind was totally different. The mind generally gave off no energy and we did not feel a connection. We called that “impersonal energy”. One was warm and connected, the other cool with clear, crisp boundaries. These are two very different ways of meeting the world.

 

We paid more and more attention to what we began to call “the energetics” of Voice Dialogue. Other selves had other energies connected to them. If we were facilitating sensual energy (which we called Aphrodite energy) we could sense a tingling in the skin of our whole body. If we were facilitating the higher self we could feel a powerful sensation in the top of our head, the crown energy. Though Hal had learned about energetic reality through the work at the Center, Sidra seemed to have a totally natural connection to it. We began to see that some of the difficulties of our interactions were based on energetic realities we hadn’t previously known. Sidra’s primary self was personal in those early years and Hal’s primary self was impersonal.

 

We began to recognize that some of our most impassioned judgments towards each other were based on this difference. When we first starting teaching together this was a real problem. Sidra said of Hal that if someone in the front row of the audience fainted and fell to the floor, Hal wouldn’t notice it. Hal said of Sidra that if someone in the last row of the audience got up to go to the bathroom, Sidra would be upset because she felt abandoned or judged.

 

One time we were teaching and at the end of the first hour at the break Sidra asked Hal if he had seen the couple in the front row right in front of him. Hal didn’t know what she was talking about. She then pointed them out to him and it was a couple that was apparently involved in S&M practices. The girl was wearing a very large metal collar around her neck and metal bands around her ankles embedded with metal rings for bondage. Hal was quite sure that he was the only one in the room that had missed seeing that.

 

Another time Sidra and Hal were walking on the beach near Santa Barbara and Hal was very immersed in the ideas they were addressing in full impersonal energy. Sidra stopped walking and asked Hal to stop and said to him: “Hal, would you mind looking around and seeing where you are?” To his great astonishment he discovered that they were in the middle of a nude beach and that all around him there were naked sun worshippers. It was not only impersonal energy that creates this diminished perception, but impersonal was certainly a good part of it. His basic primary selves were impersonal and he did not make an energetic connection with the world around him.

 

In more recent years, we have begun to use the word “linkage” or “energetic linkage” when talking about this energetic connection. When we got into negative bonding patterns, when judgments took over, we lost our linkage. Things felt hopeless between us. Then we did our work with each other. Maybe Hal discovered he had been holding back his reactions. Maybe Sidra discovered she was pushing too hard. Whatever the case, by doing our work with each other we got back our linkage. We would feel energetically connected again. We felt like newlyweds. This happened over and over again. We were beginning to see with absolute clarity that it wasn’t marriage that destroyed love and intimacy. It was the development of negative bonding patterns and the ensuing loss of linkage.

 

This happened over and over again. Hal’s feelings would get hurt. Maybe he was jealous of Sidra at a party when she was energetically connecting with other men. If he didn’t share his jealousy, his vulnerability – whatever forms that sharing took – his inner child disappeared from view. He used to joke about it disappearing into the universe about a hundred light years away when this happened. What we realized was that linkage ended at that moment. Linkage is real. When it is lacking it is very lonely and the relationship feels terrible. And – unless you know about what you have just lost – it is not so easy to get it back.

 

We began to examine the nature of peoples’ linkage. You can be linked to your dog or cat. You can be linked to a child. You can be linked to your work, or your computer, or your book, or your television set, or your secretary, or to money. Or to worry, or to your “to do” list. Or to alcohol, or to drugs, or to food, or to exercise. You can even be linked to your spiritual practices or to your consciousness process.

 

In relationship work we began to see that if the primary linkage wasn’t between the two people in the relationship, then there were problems. The primary linkage might go to one of the children, creating a kind of psychological marriage between the parent and that child. This happens with great frequency and then, if the marriage breaks up and the mother meets someone she loves, there is as wrenching disconnect between her and the son or daughter who had carried the primary linkage before she met her new partner. This awareness of linkage introduced a new dimension to our considerations of family relationships and led us to a deeper understanding of the intense pain involved in step parenting and the introduction of a new partner into a family system.

 

Our work with energetics was in two basic areas. First, there was the fact that every self could be experienced energetically and that the awareness of this was of utmost importance. We saw clearly that the effectiveness of the facilitator was dependent upon the recognition of the energy and the ability to hold this. We realized that the best facilitators worked at an energetic – rather than verbal – level. They paid more attention to maintaining the energetic integrity of a self than to asking it the “proper” questions.

 

There is another aspect to the facilitator’s sensitivity to energetics. If the facilitator was able to use energetics, then he or she could often help a self to emerge by a process of energetic induction. This works like a tuning fork – you strike the tuning fork and set it down on a sounding board. The sounding board then vibrates at the same frequency – giving off the same note. The facilitator operates like a tuning fork, calling up a specific energy within himself or herself and the subject responds with the same. In this way, and when appropriate, the facilitator can help to induct a sought-after energy. This is particularly helpful when helping people to learn how to utilize personal and impersonal energies.

 

This was a whole new world to explore. We also began to teach the Aware Ego how to bring into itself, or channel, the different energies and, here again, it was the awakening of a whole new world. We literally taught people how to “play their own instruments”, how to affect their own energy fields. This work was particularly important because it was a way of strengthening the Aware Ego Process and empowering the individual.

 

The second area of work with energetics was our exploration and experimentation with linkage. We looked at linkage as it related to bonding patterns and saw how it led to an increased understanding of the dynamics of family systems.

 

Hal has one strong memory here of an experience with Sidra that catapulted him to a new understanding and appreciation of linkage. A good many of the negative bonding patterns he got into with Sidra had to do with feeling left out when she was with her children. Since her basic energies were personal, the linkage with her daughters was very strong. One day they were alone in their home in Southern California; it was the first day that all of the children were away. They were sitting on the two ends of the couch and there was a very strong energetic linkage – they could feel a buzz between their hearts. Hal was a very happy man. This process went on for five minutes or so and suddenly stopped completely.

 

Hal asked Sidra what had happened. Sidra then said something that was truly remarkable for Hal. She said that she was doing an experiment. She wanted to see what would happen if she visualized her daughter in the next room. When she did that, the linkage between them ended totally and her energies automatically (or unconsciously) went to her daughter.

 

Hal had been working on his judgments about Sidra’s mothering for a long time. Suddenly he understood at a very deep level how this process works. If a mother has children, and if one or more of those children is near her, then her primary linkage is going to shift to the child. We don’t mean every time but we do mean most of the time. What Hal saw is that the mother is hard wired to link with her child. This is not a conscious choice so if we want to be very clear, we call it “unconscious linkage”.

 

If Hal wanted quality time with Sidra away from the children, he had to learn how to go to her with his own intimacy needs and make them clear to her without sounding either like a whiny victim child or a killer judgmental father (he had an advanced black belt in both, but they were not very useful). She then was able to become aware of where her energies were and was able to handle them in a more conscious way. She could reinstate her linkage with Hal – and she could even maintain her connection to a child at the same time. We call that “conscious linkage”.

 

This was a turning point in Hal’s life and interestingly enough, as we might well expect in this kind of process relationship, Sidra was able to more effectively look at her own linkage issues with her children. Because she now knew what was happening, she finally had some choice and she was able to begin to control where her energies went.

 

Everything changed in the work and in the theory with these kinds of experiences. For the newer person, Voice Dialogue may well look like a simple technique; just ask the right questions and you’ll get to the self. For anyone who senses into the underlying energetics of the work, it becomes something quite different. Experienced facilitators are able to work at deeper and deeper levels as they become more at home with the energetic realities that are in us and that determine so much of what happens in our lives and in our relationships.

 

And so it was that we began the practice of helping people to develop mastery in the world of energy. Sidra describes this process as teaching people how to play their own instruments so as to be able to meet the world within and the world outside with ever increasing levels of subtlety and imagination. And, as we age, we find this ability to dance with the energies is truly one of the loveliest gifts imaginable.

 

Recently Sidra had a dream in which three women in their mid 90s came to our home to teach us about aging. What they basically taught is that as we get older our relationship to energetics becomes more and more important. We had to learn at ever deepening levels how to run our own energies, how to call up the necessary energies to do whatever it is that we needed to do.

 

Thus it is that learning to play our energetic instrument becomes an integral part of Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves.

Issue 32 – Febuary 2008

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AWARE EGO

by

Drs Hal & Sidra Stone

With the theory of bonding patterns in place and the re-defining of consciousness providing us with a model that seemed effective over time, we began to think about actually changing the title of our work to the Psychology of the Aware Ego. We realized more and more that the core work was not about talking to selves. This was important but not as much as the development of an Aware Ego process. This was really the key to the kind of changes we were looking for.

We saw that people could work forever with selves but until there was a true separation and dis-identification from the primary self, changes were easily lost. We saw that, without an Aware Ego process, the primary self would automatically regain control. This Aware Ego process evolves between any pair of opposites. Some common opposite sets of selves are power and vulnerability, pusher and beach bum, thinking and feeling, control and release.

There are many sets of opposites and the Aware Ego process emerges from one set at a time. Clarity in one area does not mean clarity in all areas. For instance, we find the someone develops an Aware Ego process that is capable of holding the tension of opposites between the mental and the feeling selves but – at the same time – has no Aware Ego process when it comes to spirituality. This same individual who does such a good job of embracing both feelings and thinking, still might be totally identified with spirituality and reject selves that are ordinary or instinctual.

For a spiritually identified person to develop an Aware Ego process in relationship to spirituality, he or she would have to do work that separates him/her from the spiritual self so that there is an Aware Ego process that can see it and experience it but not be identified with it. This separation can be very difficult but we have discovered a truly fascinating self we call the “spiritual pusher” that runs the life of many a spiritual seeker. After the separation from this spiritual self (or the spiritual seeker) there would be the challenge to discover and integrate the spiritual sloth, the “ordinary” self, and the instinctual.

Conversely, someone who rejects spirituality from a primary self that is rational and mental must learn to unhook from the rational mind so that the Aware Ego can begin to see the rational mind as a separate self/energy system. This makes a space for the spiritual selves to emerge and be properly embraced. At this point, we have an Aware Ego standing between the more earthbound rules and experiences of the mind and the numinous realms and experiences of the world of the spirit.

At times it has felt to us as though we were running a divorce court. In this framework we help people to learn how to get a divorce from their primary selves. Once a person is divorced from a primary self, the Aware Ego can learn how to use that energy in a conscious way. Nothing is lost. The primary self simply begins to operate under the aegis of an Aware Ego that has all the information and input from that primary self but, in addition to this, has the complementary information and input from the opposite self or selves.

We have tried to give you a feeling of the ongoing process we have been in as our work has developed. The focus on the Aware Ego changes the nature of the Voice Dialogue process and we know that the expression “Aware Ego” or “Aware Ego Process” might be too awkward for some.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AWARE EGO PROCESS

Our hope is that all the facilitators and teachers will have a basic understanding of the Aware Ego Process. If this understanding is there, then the applications of the Psychology of Selves and the actual use of Voice Dialogue will be much more effective. Deliberately activating a self or energy system is a very exciting use of the Psychology of Selves. But we do not see this as Voice Dialogue. For us, Voice Dialogue – in addition to the direct work with selves – includes an experience of opposites and an Aware Ego process.

We finally decided not to officially change the name of the work to the Psychology of the Aware Ego a number of years ago. Voice Dialogue, Relationship and the Psychology of Selves has achieved such a strong name recognition that we decided to let it rest there. Our sense is that there is a gradual increased use of the terms “Aware Ego Process or Psychology of the Aware Ego” amongst practitioners and teachers and eventually this shift in name may well take place.

 THE AWARE EGO AND SPIRITUALITY

We are often asked: “What is the relationship of the Aware Ego to spirituality?” or “How does the Voice Dialogue process address the issue of spirituality?” We would like to take this opportunity to address these questions.

For us, it is important to understand that spirituality has two different components that have to be considered separately. One component of spirituality has to do with the rules. The second component has to do with transcendent experiences – the experience of God, of the Higher Intelligence, of the Transpersonal or whatever name best expresses an experience that goes beyond ordinary consciousness and the words that can describe it.

Generally in the development of religious institutions there is first the transcendent experience and then a body of rules develops to support this experience and bring it to others. These rules usually become more numerous and powerful as time passes and eventually they may well cover over the original experience.

For us, the transcendent experience is a very real and glorious gift. Who in us receives this gift and what is done with this gift can vary. When a self receives this gift – let us assume that it is a spiritual self – then that self usually develops a series of rules and expectations about this experience. And that self judges other selves that are different and polarizes against anything or anyone that does not fit in with its expectations and follow its rules.

We see this as the way in which many spiritual or religious institutions evolve. The original experience is taken up by a primary self (or the primary self of the group) that guards it and keeps out anything that might destroy it. Only the energy of that particular self is considered good and it is to that self and its rules that one must surrender. We know that much can be gained by this kind of surrender; this is the basic premise of the Guru/disciple relationship. The disciple surrenders to the Guru and – in doing so – can receive the gift of the transcendent experience.

In contrast, the Aware Ego surrenders to all energies or selves. This is quite different from surrendering only to the spiritual energies. This means very simply that the Aware Ego is committed to hearing, seeing and feeling all the different selves. It excludes none. When one self starts to dominate, it is the job of the Aware Ego to find the opposites on the other side and to consider their input as well. In this sense the Aware Ego is like an orchestra conductor who welcomes all the instruments and then uses their individual contributions to sing the song of the soul.

Learning to surrender to all of the selves requires constant work with our negative judgments towards people (and things) to help the Aware Ego in its constant evolution towards clarity. Whenever we feel judgments towards someone or something, we know that we are in a primary self because the judgments come from the selves, not the Aware Ego.

You may well ask “But how do you know when you are in an Aware Ego? How do you know that it is an Aware Ego that is doing the surrendering at any moment? Might you not be fooled by the Mind that loves to act as though it were God or any other primary self for that matter?”

The answer is that we don’t. We don’t know when we are in an Aware Ego except for brief moments of time. If your responsible self has just been facilitated and you can feel your separation from it, the most you can say is that at this moment of time you have an Aware Ego process operating in relationship to responsibility; at this moment you have a certain level of understanding of this responsible self and a certain separation from it.

A second answer is that when we are convinced we are operating from an Aware Ego, we are not. We are most probably identified with a spiritual self, a rational mind or a control self. All of these have a sense of certainty to them, and they like to masquerade as the Aware Ego.

So as the Aware Ego bows down to the different gods and goddesses of the light and the dark, of heaven and earth, of good and bad, of body and spirit, of knowing and not knowing, it is embracing both of the opposites. It is the “and” rather than the “either/or”. It truly represents the Middle Way.

We see the Aware Ego as surrendered to the Intelligence of the Universe. This intelligence can manifest in many different ways. It is not personal in any sense, though for some of us it may manifest through our personal relationships. Others can see it with utmost clarity in the dream process. For still others it may manifest in meditation or spiritual practice. For many scientists it manifests in the organizing principle at work in the galaxies they study or of matter itself. Whatever the case, the Aware Ego must be surrendered to the reality of this higher intelligence and how it can be perceived operating in his or her personal universe.

For us, the Aware Ego must also be surrendered to the way this higher intelligence operates in human relationship. It must be surrendered to the idea that everyone in our life is potentially a teacher for us. We understand that peoples’ reactions to us must be taken seriously. And we learn to use our own negative judgments of people as a teaching device to discover our own disowned selves.

The Aware Ego is an expression of a psycho-spiritual consciousness process. The Aware Ego has the job of embracing the world of Spirit in all of its glory and, on the other side, the world of physical matter, of emotion, of passion, and of psychological and mental realities.

For us, it is important to not confuse spirituality with consciousness. A consciousness process encompasses spirituality. Spirituality does not necessarily encompass a consciousness process. Spirituality does not encompass matter or instinctual energies. That is why so many people in the spiritual tradition lose the connection to their bodies and their instincts. An Aware Ego process requires us to do the work of spirit and the work of relationship and the physical world. For ourselves, we must say what a delight it has been, and what a delight in continues to be, to spend our lives in these kinds of explorations.

MOVING INTO MANY WORLDS

People use Voice Dialogue and the Aware Ego process in many different settings and with many different kinds of clients. Management consultants have found a way to use the Voice Dialogue technique and the concepts of the Psychology of Selves and bonding patterns in a business setting with individuals who are not at all interested in consciousness issues. They have translated the language we use here to make it work within a different frame of reference and for a different set of primary selves.

People working as a coaches or a management consultants might, for example, speak of “traditional habits” or “familiar strategies” versus “unexplored creative potential” rather than talk of primary versus disowned selves. They might not use a term like” Aware Ego” because this kind of language might not be acceptable in a business setting. So they improvise – some quite brilliantly – and many have experienced great success.

Another teacher keeps a focus on what we call “being” energy because she feels that is extremely important. Others use this “being” energy as a vehicle for igniting the spiritual energies.

Other teachers are specializing in working with the selves involved in addiction. Still others are interested in the neurological aspects of consciousness and the selves. This work has proven extremely valuable in training actors. There is even an internationally acclaimed Tango coach who uses the energetics of this work in his training of competitive dancers. There are a myriad of ways to work with the selves and we are delighted to see the creativity and the diversity of these new developments.

BODY DIALOGUE: The Work of Judith Stone

This is a perfect place to introduce the innovations of Judith Stone, Hal’s daughter, who has added an entirely new dimension to this work. In her early twenties Judith was working at Blue Cross and very much committed to a career in business. Her plans were interrupted when she developed a debilitating medical condition that was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis. Her symptoms were so severe that she had to abandon her professional plans and devote herself to her own healing process.

Judith made a choice at that time to not follow the orthodox medical model that is generally prescribed for these kinds of arthritic conditions. She found an MD who was open to the idea of her trying different treatment modalities and this began a remarkable journey of exploration and healing that lasted five years in its more active phase but in reality has continued to this day.

Judith opened herself to ongoing psychotherapy, to many different forms of complementary medicine, and to certain aspects of traditional Western medicine. She took all of us along with her on her journey. Hal, in particular, has been delighted to work with many of the people Judith discovered in her own explorations. Without the constant health-oriented input and recommendations Judith has given to Hal through the years, it is quite possible that he would not be here today.

Very gradually, out of this profound experience that she was going through with her own healing process, Judith began to develop a very special and different kind of connection to her body. It became much more real to her than it is to most of us who don’t spend much time sensing into the body. She began to shift her overall professional identification to psychology and she used the Voice Dialogue work as one of the central healing modalities of her own healing journey. Over the years she has become one of the senior teachers of our work.

What also began to evolve was an entirely new and different aspect of the Voice Dialogue work that Judith called Body Dialogue. What she realized, from her own experience, was that the body had a voice that could speak for it. She also discovered that many of the individual parts of the body were able to speak and to give specifically targeted information and guidance.

Even more significantly, Judith began to tune in to the fact that the physical body carried an intelligence and that one could activate this “intelligence of the body” and from it receive remarkable information and guidance. The process of working with the body in this way began slowly and through the years has developed into what we consider a major contribution to Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves.

Issue 31 – January 2008

THE THEORY OF BONDING PATTERNS

The Selves and Relationship

We are giving a very short version of our theoretical structure. This material is available in detailed form in our books, CDs and Video Series. In this article we are attempting to give you a more sweeping view of where we have come from. Someone who worked with us in the late 1970’s or 1980’s cannot help but have a very limited idea of what we are doing today. We do not enjoy stagnation and neither does our unconscious. When some new idea emerged or methodology changed then we let it change. Sometimes we weren’t even aware of a change, it evolved so naturally. It is confusing to many people to watch this happen. For us, it is very exciting to see the work evolve and to bring everyone along as a part of this process.

We met in 1972 and we were married in 1977. This article is not about our personal life. We raised five children between us and the personal work we were doing with each other helped us enormously in understanding our parental role. These were also the years when Sidra was the Executive Director of Hamburger Home, a residential treatment center for adolescent girls and Hal was the Director of the Center for the Healing Arts. Our professional lives were completely separate, but our work together and the evolution of our thinking were central aspects of our lives.

Those five years of work clarified our relationship and made marriage possible. We were using Voice Dialogue in our respective practices and Hal had started to do some teaching of the process at the Center. It was becoming increasingly clear to us that in relationship the selves were constantly interacting with the selves of the other person.

With our marriage, however, some of the interactions between us were turning quite sour. Old patterns suddenly emerged but with a new partner – a partner who was totally different from the previous one. We called one another by the names of our former spouses . We found ourselves judging each other – often for the same qualities that had attracted us to one another in the first place. We literally became other people – judgmental, closed, and humorless. Underneath it all there was a vague feeling of betrayal, helplessness and desperation.

What was happening? Was marriage necessarily the end of love? There had to be a way of understanding these painfully divisive interactions, of bringing them under some kind of control. We wanted our relationship back. We knew that the selves we had worked with over the previous years had something to do with this. It was obvious to us that a set of selves had taken charge of our relationship. There was no more “us”, there was no more connection, and the vulnerable children that were a part of our relationship from the very beginning were nowhere to be found.

This was the start of a remarkable three months of a new kind of exploration. We looked at the selves that had taken over our relationship and tried to figure out what was really going on. We wrote down and diagrammed out every negative interaction that we had. We did this over and over and over again until a pattern began to emerge. We began to see how these negative interactions followed a basically simple pattern that repeated itself.

Hal would get angry with Sidra and suddenly he was no longer Hal, he was a cold judgmental father talking to her. She became a victim/defensive daughter and argued back. Then, in the blink of an eye, she became a judgmental mother – withdrawn, critical and cold – and although Hal became a hurt and vulnerable son to this cruel mother, still his judgmental father attacked. There were always four selves (or sets of selves) involved. We replayed this scenario over and over again but now we were beginning to see the pattern. We looked for all the selves involved in these interactions. Some were more apparent than others. But they were always all there.

We named this pattern a “bonding pattern” in recognition that it was basically a set of parent/child interactions. We also felt that this was a way to honor it as a normal way of relating as contrasted to a pathological one. In those years, we looked at these patterns as basically an interaction between power selves and disempowered selves. As time went on, our views of this have clarified and the parent/child nature of the interaction has become ever more apparent and we have come to see the bonding pattern as the basic default pattern in all relationships.

We discovered other constants in these interactions. All bonding patterns grew out of the negation or disowning of vulnerability. This took many forms, but it was always present. When our interactions became negative we could always trace back to a time when we lost contact with our core vulnerability (or what we called our Inner Child). Something had happened to hurt it, to frighten it off and we had ignored this, instead we had reacted in a more seemingly adult fashion. We had basically disowned our vulnerable child. If we could hold on to the child, (or to our vulnerability) and took care of this directly, these negative patterns lost their power; they didn’t need to play themselves out.

The other constant we discovered was a truism that we had recognized from our early dealings with selves. Whatever you judge is a disowned self of your own. In these negative interactions, or bonding patterns, our judgments would flare up and assume center stage. We looked carefully at this. Gradually it became clear to us that as we reacted to each other negatively we were, in fact, being given pictures of our own disowned selves. If we recognized this, we could use it as a teaching in our own relationship – and we could help others see this in theirs.

This was almost painful to realize. We had hoped we were beyond this. Besides, our judgments were so much fun. It was such a wonderful feeling to pin the other up against the wall with brilliant and self-righteous criticisms. It was so wonderful to be unquestionably right.

If, however, our judgments are reflections of our disowned selves, then where’s the fun? How can one feel righteous in the middle of a “righteous dance” in full knowledge of the fact that you are basically attacking your own disowned self or selves?

We had some wild and (in retrospect) funny interchanges as we closed in on the bonding pattern theory. One evening we were still arguing over a particular bonding pattern at 11:00 PM and Sidra finally said that she was exhausted and going to bed. Hal continued to work on the pattern, simmering in the heat of his judgments and furious at Sidra’s comment that he wasn’t in his Aware Ego. After about 10 minutes Hal stormed into the bedroom and with great grace and dignity yelled at her: “I am too in an Aware Ego.” We both laughed and that was the end of that one. Such is the snake-like path of the co-exploration of consciousness.

Our excitement at this time was enormous. What was emerging was something quite new. It was something that worked for us in everyday life. It was a simple, precise and elegant way of looking at relationships that had a sense of a mathematical certainty and balance. Later we came to think of it as a kind of technology of relationship.

Our excitement about all of this was magnified as we realized that the theory of bonding patterns gave us a very creative (and non-pathologizing) way to look at the transference. The same principles were operating. The only difference is that we refer to it as transference if we get paid and bonding patterns if we don’t. We’ve come to call this “The Psychology of the Transference”.

There was immediate gratification from our discovery of bonding patterns. We felt better. Feelings of love and intimacy returned. Of course, we had to accustom ourselves to the loss of self-righteousness (that deliciously seductive feeling) but we were a lot happier with each other.

There’s something wonderfully freeing about escaping from a negative bonding pattern. And it totally changed the nature of working with couples, making it a joy rather than a nightmare. Teaching people about the bonding patterns and then working with the selves created a wonderful path to change and we used it ourselves with increasing effectiveness.

It was much later that we began to attend to the positive bonding patterns and to realize how often these set the stage for the appearance of negative ones.