Issue 20 November 2005

1.  Question From Australia:

Is  the Aware Ego the same as the Higher-Self

or  the “I AM”  used in other new-age modalities?

Answer:

From  Hal Stone and Sidra Stone

November 2005 

The  Aware Ego is not a thing. It is a process that is always changing and in flux.  It is best explained by example.

Imagine that you come to see us because you have headaches.  I interview you and discover that you are a very responsible person. You do things for everyone  and have very little ability to say no.   Having made this observation  and talked about it with you, it is time to do some work to clarify the place  of responsibility in your life.

We  ask you to move your chair to another place where sits the voice of responsibility.    We then begin to talk with this voice or self in you and learn about  its place in your personality.   We discover when it started to get strong  in you and how it affects your decision making process and many other things.  Having completed this discussion, Iwe now ask you to move back to the place  where you were sitting before we started the work.

As  you move back to this central position you are very surprised to realize that  you have been identified with this Voice of Responsibility and that it has run  your life. You now have an Aware Ego Process happening in relationship to the  Voice of Responsibility.   It most certainly will require additional sessions  to help you to make the separation from this powerful self system but over time  the Aware Ego Process becomes stronger and you begin to have the ability to  say yes or no to people when they ask things of you.

In  another session we might work the disowned self since we have already begun  the separation from the primary self   (Responsibility).   In this  case we might ask you to move to the other side of center and then we would  talk to the selfish side of yourself that doesn’t want to always do things for  others but wants you to do more for yourself. After the work you would come  back to the center position and now you have an Aware Ego Process in relationship  to the Selfish part of you.   It is in the Aware Ego Process that we learn  to stand between opposites and learn how to appreciate and began to use both  of them.

From  the perspective of the Psychology of the Aware Ego, the higher self is a group  of selves, a system of different energies that are clustered together and to  which we refer to as the higher self.    To learn about the higher  self, we would ask you to move and we would spend time with this self system.    Some of our contact might be verbal, but some might be might also be  purely energetic.   No one knows what you mean by higher self until we  spend time with it. Afterwards we would ask you to return to the center place  and you now have an Aware Ego in relationship to the higher self.

The  opposite of the higher self would be the ordinary self, or the self that just  rejects spirituality or consciousness work.   In relationship it is often  the case that this disowned self is carried by one’s partner.

Let  us imagine that you are meditating and you have an epiphany.   You feel  Gods presence; you feel the angels of heaven; you feel the presence of the Great  Mother and you are really totally in this other realm. You have lost your personal  identity for the moment and you are totally merged with the energies of the  higher self.

So  long as you are in a body you will ultimately leave this state and open your  eyes and now you are back in your body and the world in which you live. Just  then your wife knocks on the door and says -” Milton – would you take out the  garbage. This house stinks – and remember that you have to drive the children  to soccer practice. They have to be there in 20 minutes!”   Your trip to  paradise has suddenly ended.

If  you are identified with the higher self you will have no way to deal with this  situation because you don’t have a proper relationship to the everyday life  of the family. Running the house becomes the wife’s burden and she resents your  spirituality and the way it takes you away from what she sees as the realities  of living.

It  is the Aware Ego process that has the possibility of relating  to the divinity of the experience and also to the demands of marriage and children  and everything else that is required of us when we live in a body.   The  degree to which you are identified with the higher self and have no Aware Ego  process is exactly the degree the people around you will attack you and judge  you and oftentimes be totally unappreciative of your whole spiritual path because  they never feel honored in this kind of situation.

Our  job in life is to learn to become aware of and to experience all of the selves. Once we learn to stand between this amazing array of opposites, the higher  self being but one of these, then the unconscious has a chance to bring to us  an amazing enrichment through our dreams and our general insight process.    We refer to this as a psycho-spiritual path and it is a very different way to  move in the world.

Issue 19 September 2005

Disowned  Selves and Pathology

by  

Hal  Stone PhD & Sidra L. Stone PhD

  

John  Coroneos asked for questions you might like us to address in these Voice Dialogue  tips. We’ve chosen the following question about disowned selves and pathology  to answer.

Question

My  question relates to the following comments regarding disowned selves. “Whatever  you judge is a disowned self! Whatever you hate is a disowned self! Whatever  drives you crazy about your partner is a disowned self! On the other side, whatever  you yearn for and overvalue is also a disowned self.”

I  am married to someone who has Asperger’s Disorder. It is difficult for me to  accept that the various aspects associated with Asperger’s are my disowned selves.  (i.e. the need to question and research and investigate everything to the point  of non-action, difficulty in social situations which require being able to interpret  social cues, unable to sleep for 24 to 32 hours at a time because of difficulty  with boundaries, difficulty going to bed because not all the deep philosophical  issues or even personal issues have not been resolved, etc).

I  have tried very hard to understand how they can be my disowned selves and what  to do with it because in my mind some of the above behaviors are not healthy  or normal. I have the same question regarding the “disowned selves”  associated with psychotic mental illnesses in the other person one has a relationship  with. Please comment on the above. (Both my husband and I are in individual  therapy and I have done some voice dialogue in therapy as well as in journaling).

Thank  you,

M

Answer from  Hal and Sidra

Dear  M,

Your  question is a good one! It’s a question that has been of interest to many people.

It  can be very difficult to think in terms of disowned selves when you are dealing  with mental illness or other kinds of non-normal behavior. The behavior of the  other person is so out of the ordinary that it is hard to believe that there  might be something to learn or to integrate. It just sounds too frightening.

For  instance, ” Warren ” whose mother was psychotic, was so afraid of  becoming psychotic that he identified with a Rational Mind and Control as primary  selves and disowned all emotions because emotions seemed dangerous and he feared  that they might lead to psychosis. Because his mother’s erratic behavior caused  him shame, he also developed a strong “What will people think?” primary  self and disowned his own spontaneity.

Primary  selves like the Rational Mind, Control, “What will people think?”  or the Psychological Knower can be wonderful adaptations to growing up in a  household with a psychotic parent. In fact, they often save one’s life or one’s  sanity. At the very least, they bring some measure of stability and reasonableness  to an otherwise chaotic and disturbing situation. But even though these selves  might be absolutely necessary early in life, they have some limitations as time  goes on. They do not allow for feelings or spontaneity – emotional reality is  just not part of the equation. This puts serious limitations on the depth and  excitement of relationship.

So  when Warren ran into some difficulties with his relationship, he felt that it  was time to do something new. He now had enough stability in his life to make  him feel safe and he was motivated to change in order to keep this relationship.  He went into counseling and separated from the primary selves (Rational Mind  and Control) that had saved his life and he began – gently and gradually – to  integrate his feeling side, his emotions. This made his life richer and more  textured and it led to a greater degree of intimacy in his relationship.

In  looking for disowned selves (as in Warren ‘s mother), it is important not to  be too literal in our thinking. Please remember that we never talk about becoming   the disowned self, just about separating from the primary self  and embracing a very small amount of what it is that the other person carries.  We are not talking about becoming like the other person.  We are not suggesting that Warren should become psychotic or irrational like  his mother, just that he embrace a fraction of the energies that might be useful  – we call it a homeopathic dose.

There  are many different ways to describe this process. One that is helpful to many  people is the following: Pretend that you are able to distill the essence of  the other person and can take just a tiny drop of that essence under your tongue  every morning. What would it give you? Well, if you are thinking about someone  who is psychotic, that can sound pretty frightening. So, instead of thinking  about the big picture, think of some of the qualities of the person.

For  instance, Warren ‘s mother did not worry about what other people thought about  her, she was only interested in her own ideas.   She was also very emotional  and creative in her approach to life. So with Warren, a very, very dilute homeopathic  dose might bring with it the ability to be less concerned about “what other  people think” and be more concerned with his own process. It also might  bring more feelings into his life, more spontaneity, or more creativity.

When  we work with people, we think in terms of balancing opposites – and we work  with opposites. Warren , because of his mother’s illness, has developed a personality  over-weighted on the rational and controlled side. This “homeopathic dose”  of feeling and spontaneity would bring in missing energies and could help to  create more balance in his life.

If  we look at you and your husband in this way, we are not suggesting that you  become like him. But there might possibly be something to learn from him. There  might even be something about the aspects of the Asperger’s  Disorder  that you mentioned that could represent a disowned self. Following  our way of looking at relationship, we would first have to determine what your  primary selves are. Let us say that you are a feeling person who is more interested  in people than in ideas. If that were the case, then his preoccupation with  ideas and a resulting lack of emotional connection would represent a disowned  self. A homeopathic dose of his energy might bring you your own impersonal energies  or your own Rational Mind and its fascination with ideas.

If  your primary self is decisive (or impulsive), needs action and can’t bear to  wait for a process to work its way through, then just a bit of his energies  might bring you the ability to slow down, to consider alternatives, and to wait  before you act. We are not suggesting that you need to integrate non-action  to the extent of losing your ability to make a decision. If we look at what  you said about his inability to interpret social cues, it might possibly be  that you are particularly sensitive to these – that you care very much what  people think or that your primary self is a Pleaser. If any of this is true,  then just a little less sensitivity would be the integration of a disowned energy  that is needed to give you more choice and balance in your life.

This  is not to discount the need to view pathology as pathology. A situation  involving pathology needs to be dealt with appropriately. And the more information  you have about the particular disorder of the other person, the better. That  way you know what is the illness and what is more personal. You know what to  expect and what it is unrealistic to expect. You are less vulnerable and less  judgmental. You can deal with a situation – and the other person – more creatively  and with more understanding. You will know how – and when – you need to protect  yourself and your own vulnerabilities.

When  you are in relationship with someone who is suffering from some disorder, it  is important to gather information. There are many excellent books written these  days that give clear descriptions of what to look for and even, in some instances,  what you can do to mitigate matters. Support in the form of therapy or support  groups is available. Let’s see what this might look like.

“Terese’s”  mother was very abusive. She was charming, beautiful, and clever; she looked  great in public. But when she was home alone with her children she was both  emotionally and physically abusive. Living with her was like living in a nightmare,  a nightmare that nobody else suspected. To the rest of the world their mother  looked great and their complaints would sound unrealistic – maybe even disturbed.

The  children were terrified of their mother and vowed never to be like her when  they grew up. They would never be abusers. They would not hurt others as she  had hurt them. They would never put their needs first and ignore everyone else’s.  They would be extraordinarily sensitive to the feelings of others and be sure  to honor them.

So  Terese grew up to be a very responsible, loving, understanding human being.  She was identified with her feelings and was very empathic. She disowned any  parts of her that might even remotely resemble her mother. She disowned her  aggression. She would not allow herself to feel even the slightest annoyance  with another person and she would never allow herself to react in a way that  might possibly be interpreted as negative. She disowned her own coldness, her  ability to think rather than to feel. She disowned her own selfishness or narcissism  to such an extent that she couldn’t say no to anyone in the fear of hurting  them; she couldn’t set any kind of boundary to protect her own time and space.  Her feelings always came last.

When  Terese grew up she tried very hard to live an exemplary life. But occasionally  she would experience an outburst of anger that seemed to come out of nowhere.  She found this very distressing so she sought counseling. Her therapist helped  her to understand her own feelings and taught her about her mother’s pathology.  Terese’s mother was a borderline personality and, as such, was extremely difficult  to live with. Terese read books and got new ideas about how to deal with – and  how impossible it was to deal with – her mother.

Interestingly  enough, it was the selfishness, the “my needs first” quality of her  mother that Terese had disowned but she now needed to integrate before she was  able to deal with her mother more objectively and set the necessary boundaries.  Terese needed to separate from her nurturing, responsible and compassionate  primary selves in order to protect her own vulnerable child and to deal with  her mother more effectively. As she did this, as she developed an Aware Ego  process, she had more choice and made more creative decisions.

As  she became more aware of the situation and of her mother’s pathology, Terese  was better able to take care of herself. She learned to say no even though it  might hurt others. Her seemingly irrational outbursts of anger were no longer  a problem. She learned to deal with her mother more objectively and at a greater  distance rather than to continue her efforts to establish a compassionate, deep  and rewarding mother/daughter relationship. She was no longer operating in a  bonding pattern where her behavior was automatic.

Most  people live their relationships in bonding patterns. This can be particularly  painful when the other person is emotionally disturbed. In the positive bonding  pattern, the selves operating are usually a combination of responsible parent  and guilty child that deals with the pathology of the other; in the negative  bonding pattern, the selves are often a combination of the judgmental parent  (frequently armed with much psychological jargon)   and a betrayed or victim  child. Neither of these bonding patterns is particularly helpful.

When  dealing with people like Warren’s or Terese’s mothers, people need to move out  of these bonding patterns. They need choice in dealing with pathology. They  need the creativity, the flexibility, the objectivity, the power, and the vulnerability  and access to feelings that is available with the Aware Ego.   We can’t  talk about this in detail just now, but we wrote about bonding patterns in earlier  “tips”, and there is much information on them at the website http://www.voicedialogue.tv   

So,  in answer to your question, M, we have given this picture of how lessons can  be learned from disowned selves even when there is severe pathology involved.  Please do not take this to mean that one must remain in a relationship that  is destructive or toxic just to learn a life lesson. You, M, and your husband  are involved in therapy as partners and this is working well for you. There  may be others who read this who are in relationships that are too toxic and  must be handled differently. They do not have to remain victims in these relationships.

Each  person, each relationship, each life’s journey is unique and we honor them all!

Issue 18 July 2005

Judgement in Relationship and what to do about it
Part 2
by
Hal Stone PhD & Sidra L Stone PhD

WORKING WITH JUDGMENT

Now let us return to the four laws of the Psyche that we spoke about earlier and we will show you how to use your knowledge of these to work with – and benefit from – judgment.

Law # 1: All Judgment is Based on Our Disowned Selves

Whatever you judge is a disowned self! Whatever you hate is a disowned self! Whatever drives you crazy about your partner is a disowned self! On the other side, whatever you yearn for and overvalue is also a disowned self.

“My God.” you might say, “My step mother was the witch from hell. Do you mean to tell me that she is my disowned self? No way am I going to try and embrace her. No way am I ever going to try and be like her. She is pure evil!” So you say and so she may be, but it doesn’t change a thing. The intensity of your negative reaction lets us know with absolute clarity that your stepmother is your disowned self and that she has a very important kind of medicine that you need to complete yourself and become more completely who you are.

How does this happen? You grow up in a family system that is very painful to you. Your father remarries and his new wife is the opposite of your real mother. Your real mother is passive and loving and giving and much more easily taken advantage of. Your father separates from her when you are quite young and your stepmother enters the picture. She is everything your real mother isn’t. She is selfish, uncaring, sexual, cunning, manipulative and quite closed energetically. You push off from her and identify with your mother.

Because you are so hurt by the stepmother on so many occasions you turn off all positive feelings towards her and enter into primary allegiance to your own mother with whom you identify totally. So you become even more loving and caring person than you were before. You are wide open energetically and judge anyone who is cool, has strong boundaries, and behaves impersonally. That is, unless you fall in love with the person. You decide that you are never going to behave the way your stepmother does. Your primary selves are like your mother’s and, possibly, your father’s. It is your primary self system (or primary selves) that judges your stepmother. Aware Egos do not judge. Primary Selves do the judging.

Your first task is to unhook from your primary self system. This means separating from the nice self, the loving self, the serving self, the open self, and the giving self. This does not mean getting rid of these selves and becoming the wicked witch of the east. It means separating from them and learning to use them consciously and with choice.

The second step is recognizing that the wicked witch of the east is a part of you that you have buried. More accurately, it is a part of you that your primary selves have buried. In Voice Dialogue we ultimately allow these voices to speak so that you can become aware of, and experience, their absolute reality. Ultimately you will learn to use this wicked witch energy in a conscious way. The Aware Ego will then be able to spread its arms and embrace both the loving/ caring/ Christ energy on one side and the more selfish/ self-serving/ wicked witch energy on the other side.

The rewards of this are great. If you live in the light then you can only get along with people of the light. When dark energies come your way you are lost. By learning to use the stepmother’s energy you gain the power to deal with darkness.

So pay attention to your judgments. Start today. Start at this moment. Write down every judgment that you have in a small pad. Once you get the hang of it you will be amazed at how much more accelerated your own consciousness process will be. Remember that we are not advocating becoming the person that you judge. We are simply asking you to be reminded of the fact that the judgments are coming from your primary selves and that you have a method here for integrating your disowned selves. Living in constant judgment, whether you are the judge or the recipient of the judgment, is like living in a body of water that is very dirty. As you step out of the world of judgment you step into ever-cleaner water. Our world desperately needs people who can step out of these murky ponds and help themselves and others move towards clarity.

Many spiritual people judge judgment and try very hard to rid themselves of it. This simply means that – for them – judgment is a disowned self. You cannot get rid of judgment by trying to act loving. All you do is drive the judgments underground where they fester and do much damage in the shadows. Instead of trying to bury judgments, accept the spiritual task of embracing your judgments and learning how to use them as the teachers they can be.

 Law # 2: Vulnerability Lies Beneath Every Judgment

We have seen how every judgment is based on a disowned self. In addition to this, it is also the case that with every judgment there is an underlying vulnerability. Usually this is completely unconscious. Sometimes there is an awareness of the vulnerability but you feel ashamed of it, and cannot share it with anyone else. How does this work?

John gets very angry with Mary because she is always late when they go out together. He gets more and more judgmental and angry and she gets later and later. During one of their counseling sessions, we ask John what he feels underneath his anger. Can he reach his underlying feelings? He then says a surprising thing. He says that when Mary is late he feels that things are out of control and he starts to feel a panic reaction. The same thing happens to him when the house gets messy and he judges her for not being neat. We asked him to share with Mary what this felt like and the most remarkable conversation occurred. He described his childhood home as very chaotic. His siblings were running wild and his mother was constantly overwhelmed. His father was an alcoholic who avoided taking any kind of parental responsibility and control. Everything felt out of control all the time. So John stepped in and began to try and bring order to the chaos. He started to parent his brother and sister and his mother and father as well. He did everything he could to see that things went smoothly and stayed under control.

It was clear now why he judged Mary. Hearing his vulnerability was very different to her than feeling the sting of his constant judgments. It also became clear to John that Mary was carrying his disowned selves and that he had to eventually claim the parts of him that he had to bury as a young boy.

Let’s look at another example. Julie and Marie go to a party. Julie loves to flirt and flirt she does. Marie is very upset and very judgmental towards her when they get home. She tells Marie that she behaved badly and made fools of both of them.

What was the underlying vulnerability? Marie finally admitted that she was very jealous, that the flirting scared her and made her feel that she was going to be abandoned. The communication of vulnerability can do amazing things. More often than not, it brings people closer together and deepens their intimacy! And at the very least, it certainly beats judgment!! Marie’s next challenge was to deal with her disowned self – a very flirtatious Aphrodite energy. Marie had disowned her flirt years before in reaction to her mother who was very attractive, very flirtatious, and who also had many extramarital adventures that had seriously disrupted the family.

In our own personal relationship, understanding our vulnerability and our disowned selves in relation to our judgments has moved our process in extraordinary ways. Sadly enough, this kind of consciousness does deprive us of that delicious feeling of righteousness that we used to enjoy in the days when we could remain judgmental for prolonged periods of time, with each of us dancing in the “aren’t I superior? dance in the “it was really your fault” prison. Basically we have made the following decision: Judgment feels dreadful and the faster we can get out of it, the better we both feel.

Law # 3: Every Disowned Self Becomes One of God’s Little Heat Seeking Missiles

We first wrote these words in our book Embracing Our Selves more than 15 years ago. They were true then, and they seem even truer today. The intelligence of the universe has devised a remarkable way to force us to claim our disowned selves and relationship in it. We have seen how each of us is identified with a group of primary selves that determines who we think we are and that defines how most people see us. Whatever the primary selves that we are identified with, on the other side both equal and opposite, are the disowned selves that balance them.

In relationship we are constantly coming into contact with our disowned selves. We are either strongly attracted to them as they are embodied in someone else or we are strongly judgmental towards them or we have both reactions. The strength of our reaction is a function of the number and strength of the disowned selves involved and the strength of the underlying vulnerability that is present.

The point of all this is that there is no escaping our disowned selves. We will marry them or they will manifest in one or more of our children. We will unwittingly hire them to work for us or they will drop from the sky and appear at our doorstop. Our partners will have affairs with one of our disowned selves. We will live in the ongoing purgatory of our judgmental nature, judging others and feeling alone. Or we will be the victims of someone else’s judgments. A great deal of the pain of human existence occurs because of the disowned selves and the way they operate unconsciously in our lives.

Whatever you can do to discover which selves you are identified with and which selves you disown is important. The more you can live life embracing opposites, making real choices, and setting proper boundaries, the less judgmental and self-critical you (and the others around you) will be. We cannot over-emphasize how much this is going to change the quality of your life and your relationships.

Our judgments can act as a light to lead us directly to the nature of our disowned material. So remember the basic rules. It is your primary selves that carry the judgments. The Aware Ego does not judge although it can make discernments. Remember, too, that underneath every judgment is your underlying vulnerability. This is often difficult to grasp because vulnerability is usually disowned in this culture and many of us don’t even know what it looks like.

Law # 4:   The People We Judge Are the Teachers We Need

Once we recognize that our judgments come from our primary selves and that the person we are judging is carrying our disowned selves via the mechanism of projection, we are ready to make a remarkable discovery. We are ready to discover that the judged or hated object is the teacher we need – at this particular point in our lives – to help us to complete ourselves. We are always looking for teachers in white robes to teach us about spirituality. That is only one kind of teaching. So far as relationship is concerned, the best teachers are in your life right now at home and at work. They are the people that you can’t stand, the ones that you incessantly judge and talk about. They don’t usually wear magical robes but, nonetheless. they do have the medicine you need.

This is really a very shocking idea because it requires a total change in perspective. It means that rather than feel the righteousness of our own judgments we look at the other person and initially say, “Dear me, you don’t mean that Slob Sam is a teacher for me! He acts like he lives in a pig pen.” Once you get over your nausea and shock and possible fainting spell you are ready for the next step. “If I am so totally negative towards Slob Sam, then I must be identified with being too proper. I must have gotten rid of my own slob nature in growing up in my own family system.”

Now you begin to establish connections and deepen your understanding of what is happening. You say to yourself, “I remember now how my mother was always berating my father for being a slob. I became identified with my mother and I couldn’t stand my father. He was an earthy guy with no manners – very real but not educated and not proper. I can see, too, how my younger brother went the other way. He identified with my father and joined the slobs of the world.”

Finally you begin to appreciate how much Slob Sam is a teacher for you. You don’t need to understand the dynamics of the entire process. You just need to begin to appreciate that Slob Sam has something for you. He has a medicine that you need, he has your disowned self. As this consciousness begins to settle in, another very remarkable thing begins to happen. Your dreams begin to change. For many of you, the change in attitude towards your former enemies impacts your unconscious and new kinds of dreams begin to emerge, dreams which will help you to integrate your newfound selves, and act as your own inner teacher and guide.

IN SUMMARY  

Our world is full of hatred and judgment. In many places judgment has become such a primary self that no one stops to even consider the amount of damage that is done to other people. In the political arena it has been raised to a fine art. We remember attending a meeting of the Victorian State legislature when we were in Australia and the mutual attacks of the political antagonists were absolutely wild! They looked as though they’d kill each other if given the opportunity. We hear New Yorkers judging Californians for being too loose, too free and touchy-feely while Californians judge New Yorkers for being overly rational, uptight, and concerned with appearing sophisticated. All these judgments are based on disowned selves. It is all around us and inside of us.

We carry our precious judgments for decades. We judge our fathers, our mothers, our stepparents and our stepchildren. We hate political parties and the political process, political candidates, actors, and actresses without even realizing that we are living in constant judgment. We have gone on long enough with this unconscious worship of judgment and criticism. It is time to stop this nonsense and learn how to use judgement as a vehicle for consciousness and healing. It is time for each of us to accept this challenge, to examine all of our relationships, and to see where it is that we continue to remain stuck in the quicksand of judgment. The rewards of this work are great and well worth the effort.

Issue 17 June 2005

Judgment in Relationships

– and what to do about it

Part 1

by

Hal Stone PhD & Sidra L. Stone PhD

Introduction

This article is about judgment and its effect on relationship. There are few things in relationship that are more painful than out-of-control judgment. Without question, relentless judgment damages relationship, sometimes irreparably.

When we look at family systems, we usually find one or more persons in a family carries judgment while other family members are on the receiving end. These judgments can be silent or they can be overtly expressed. In any case, when allowed to continue unchecked, judgment will do its damage and relationships suffer and deteriorate accordingly.

Many people don’t even know that they carry judgments. They have been judgmental for so long that they are totally identified with their judgments and consider them as a natural and necessary part of their personalities. These people don’t see their judgments as separate from themselves in any way. In the early days of psychology, psychologists referred to this identification with a thought or feeling as being egosyntonic.

Conversely, some people are raised in family systems where they are judged constantly. As they move into adulthood, they are so accustomed to being judged that they don’t even notice what is happening. They don’t realize that they are being beaten up constantly by other peoples’ judgments and by their own internal judgments (via their inner critics and inner patriarchs).

The Laws of the Psyche

In considering the meaning of judgment in relationship, there are four fundamental psychological laws that we will be discussing in this article.

Law #1: Whomever we judge or whatever we judge is an expression of one or more of our disowned selves.

Law #2: In addition to the disowned selves, underlying every judgment is an underlying vulnerability of which we are unconscious and/or unable to communicate.

Law #3: So long as these disowned selves remain in existence in the personality they will return to haunt us over and over again in one or more of our relationships. Relationship is the playground of the intelligence of the universe that ultimately forces us to embrace all of our selves.

Law #4: As a corollary to all of the above laws, we can say that the people or things or objects or ideas that we judge or hate the most have the possibility of becoming our most important teachers once we know how to work with our judgments.

Definitions

Before we continue our discussion of judgment we would like to present some basic definitions for those readers who are new to the work on the Psychology of Selves. For those of you who are familiar with our work, they may clarify some points or answer some of your questions.

Primary Selves

In the growing up process all of us are creatures of conditioning and the personality that we develop is a function of this conditioning. We either identify with the ideas, emotional responses and psychological training that are given to us or we rebel against them. All of us are identified with our primary selves until we begin the process of separating from them. There is no escaping this reality, not for any of us. In Jungian terminology, the primary selves would determine the nature of the persona.

Disowned Selves

When we grow up in a family we identify with certain selves. This means that automatically we reject the opposite selves. Thus if a woman grows up identified with being a more giving and maternal kind of woman, then her disowned self will be the opposite energy, her more selfish and self serving interests. Disowned selves carry our repressed psychological and emotional content. They are the equal and opposite of our primary selves.

In Jungian terminology, the shadow would be the equivalent of the disowned selves, so long as it is understood that shadow refers to repressed content that can be either “light” or “dark”.

Projection

Unconscious contents in us are constantly jumping out of us and landing on other people, objects and ideas. You walk by a store that carries crystals. You see a magnificent crystal and you feel that you must have it, that it belongs to you, no matter how expensive it may be. You are filled with all kinds of new feelings as you gaze at it. You have projected an aspect of your own spiritual nature onto it. It may be a truly beautiful crystal, but the magic that you give it is the magic of your own unrealized spiritual/creative nature.

A very busy businessman buys a World War II Jeep and spends a fortune fixing it up. It drives terribly and is always breaking down and he has a love/hate relationship to it. What has compelled him to buy this jeep and spend a fortune trying to make it work for him? He has projected onto this jeep his disowned adventurer and his own playful child. His primary selves are the Pusher and all its allies. The jeep is no longer a jeep. It is, instead, a playground for the neglected playful and adventurous parts of   himself that have been buried for a good many years and that he is trying to contact by owning this Jeep. The problem is that it is still a World War II Jeep and not a playground and what he yearns for continues to live in projected form, outside of   himself.

A man falls in love with a spiritual woman who is a disciple of a well-known guru. He judges her constantly for her spirituality. She finally leaves and is bereft. He yearns for her. After a few months he enters into a new relationship with a woman who is part of the same spiritual community as his first partner. He is projecting his own disowned spiritual nature onto the women and he finds this irresistible, that is, until he begins to judge it. He will continue to do this until he is able to begin to integrate his own spiritual nature. Until then, the judgments will continue along with the intense attractions. Such projections are one of the key elements in keeping psychotherapists in business. With therapists, one projects positive emotional, intellectual and spiritual contents onto the therapist in the hope that ultimately these qualities will become a part of your own nature.

Projection is akin to a bridge that reaches from us to the other person or object. We are able to walk across this bridge and once we are on the other side we find not just the other person, but we also discover, often for the first time, our very own disowned selves.

Judgment

Judgment is a reaction to someone or something that has a negative valence. When we judge, we feel that there is something wrong with the other person or thing. Judgments are connected to the autonomic nervous system and if you tune into your body, you can feel the level of emotionality that underlies the judgment. Judgments are always a function of the primary selves reacting against the threat of the disowned selves.

Discernment

Discernment is an objective evaluation of someone or something that is not based on a disowned self. There is no negative valence to the evaluation or reaction. Judgments can be transformed into discernments by the procedures described in this article.

The Ego

The ego is the term developed at the turn of the century, primarily through psychoanalytical theory. It was originally described as the executive function of the psyche, the part of us that runs the ship. What we understand now with the psychology of selves is that the ego is simply the group of primary selves that is running the personality.

When spiritual seekers talk about “getting rid of the ego”, they are seeing the ego as essentially negative and they want to get rid of it because they feel it interferes with genuine spiritual development. In fact, the primary selves are very important to our well being and our ability to use power in the world. They have developed to help us to deal with life on this planet, and they do the best they can. The trick is to learn to not be identified with them. When you try to “get rid of the ego” you are in danger of becoming a victim and you may lose your ability to be effective in the world.

The Aware Ego

Whenever we separate from a way of thinking or acting we are no longer identified with that particular primary self. We now have an Aware Ego in relationship to that primary self. The Aware Ego is a process that develops as we unhook from and become aware of, and experience, our disowned selves. The Aware Ego process is always shifting and can be eliminated if a strong primary self takes over for some reason.

It is the Aware Ego process that begins to serve increasingly as a coordinating agency to regulate the different selves. In particular, it is what enables us to embrace opposites and learn to work with them in our relationships.

The Operating Ego

As we separate from the primary self system (or primary selves) we develop the ability to use the primary selves without being under their control. We begin to be in charge of the horses that pull the chariot instead of them being in charge of us. As this new ability develops there are still elements of the primary self system that direct our lives, usually without our knowledge. We call these continuing primary selves the “operating ego”. Thus the operating ego is the group of primary selves that continues to operate in us as our Aware Ego develops. It grows smaller as the Aware Ego grows stronger.

Psychological Boundaries

Psychological Boundaries refer to the ability to say “no” and “yes” appropriately. Ask yourself the basic questions: (1) “What are you doing that you don’t want to do?” and (2) “What aren’t you doing that you do want to do?”

If you are a responsible type of person and are always giving up your own time to help others, then you will suffer from a loss of boundaries because you are not making a real choice about what you are doing. Instead, it is the primary “Giver Self” that is making the choice for you. When we lose our boundaries, a judgmental self often emerges which judges the person we perceive as invading our boundaries. A lack of boundaries also opens us up, leaves us defenseless, and actually encourages the judgmental self of another person. Clear boundaries and real choices reduce the need for judgmental reactions.

In the next tips we explain in detail how to work with – and benefit from – judgment

Issue 16 March 2005

ILLNESS AS TEACHER

by

Hal Stone

INTRODUCTION

There is one thing that is fairly sure in life and that is that we most likely will become ill in the course of our lives and that most surely we will all die at some point. Illness and our feelings about death affect us in varying degrees and in varying ways.   Catching a cold doesn’t tend to destabilize us too much. Developing cancer however is a major event and affects our life in major ways.

The Medical model was historically designed to help us get rid of our illness and it still operates in this way.   It is what has come to be known as the target approach to illness and to symptoms and it involves finding the correct drug or the correct treatment procedure that is designed to eliminate the symptom.

Having been ill a number of times in my life I have always appreciated this target approach and the help I have received from medical practitioners in helping to clear up both major and minor symptoms that have developed through the years.   I have learned however that getting rid of symptoms isn’t the whole story. Illness also provides us with a most amazing opportunity to look more deeply into ourselves.   If approached properly, illness of all kinds can become a major teacher to us as we move through life.

It seemed initially that alternative medicine or holistic medicine would shift away from this target approach but the reality is that the opposite is the case.   Most practitioners of alternative medicine remain quite focused on the idea of getting rid of illness.   Since I have had a well emplaced network of alternative practitioners working on my behalf for well over 35 years, I have been very grateful to them and to the multitude of healing modalities that have developed through their efforts and I most certainly have used both the traditional and alternative systems on many occasions.   Something major however is left out with this approach and that is what this article is about.

SERIOUS ILLNESS

When we become ill with a serious illness something very different happens to us and it generally tends to be a very upsetting experience.   We are faced with the possibility of death. We are faced with the reality of a loss of control of our bodies. We are faced with the possibility of being crippled or having to deal with chronic pain.

Most people take an aspirin when they have a headache.   I don’t blame them! When the headaches become chronic they may still always want aspirin because their focus remains locked onto the idea of getting rid of the symptom.

Other people however begin to ask questions.   “Why do I get these headaches so often?   They always seem to come after intense bouts of work and focused activity!   Am I pushing too hard?   My girlfriend tells me I’m too intense.”

Such people begin to step back from the symptom and begin to use the illness as something that has possible meaning.   They may still be trying to get rid of the symptom.   The two approaches are not at all mutually exclusive.   More and more however their focus moves towards the meaning of illness.   They begin to look for the teaching and meaning of the symptoms.

Throughout the 1970s I was the founder and director of the Center for the Healing Arts in Los Angeles.   We were an educational and research center in holistic medicine.   Jeanne was a 50 year old woman who came to the center for help. We insisted that all clients at the center be under total medical care for their condition and we were available to work with them in diverse ways if they wished to explore the meaning of the cancer experience in their lives. Her cancer took the form of a serious melanoma in the groin area that was growing quite rapidly before she had it surgically removed.   She began to explore her life in a very different way after the surgery and though she continued all of her medical and alternative work to heal the cancer, the idea of her illness as a teacher to her became increasingly her primary focus.

After three or four months she had the following dream:

“I’m climbing a very steep mountain with other members of my cancer group. We come to a narrow ledge on which there is a tree growing and the tree has a large unnatural growth about a third of the way up its trunk.   It reminds me of my cancer before surgery. I grab hold of the unnatural growth and use it to pull myself up to the ledge so I can begin to climb again on the next phase of our journey together. ”

This is a remarkable dream that illustrates so well the principle of illness as teacher.   She is on a journey with other people from her group at the Center.   She uses the “unnatural growth” to help herself climb onto the ledge so that she can continue her journey.   It was a few months later that Jeanne asked to talk with me privately. When we met she thanked me for my efforts on her behalf. She also told me that she was glad that she had developed cancer.   “Nothing else could have broken me out of my frozen life pattern but an illness of this magnitude.   I’m not afraid of living any longer and I’m not afraid of dying.”   Jeanne did indeed die six months later, but her death was a thing of beauty as it became a natural part of her process.

When we turn towards the meaning of illness the dream process is often of great help to us as we begin our psycho-spiritual exploration.

AN EXAMPLE OF WORKING WITH SELVES  

Voice Dialogue is often a remarkable way of approaching illness.   In the early seventies I was approached by Sara, a woman in her forties, who had suffered from stomach pains for over three years.   She was quite wealthy and she been completely evaluated by many medical groups, hospitals and individuals but nothing had helped her.   She led a very busy life and I suspected that she had a strong Pusher energy operating in her. So in the first session I worked with her Pusher and made an initial separation so that an Aware Ego process had started and she had some beginning sense of how driven she was.   In this voice her stomach pains were still present and intense.

After we talked for a few minutes in the Aware Ego I asked Sara to move to the other side to “being” energy.   She moved over and sat silently for a few minutes.   It was the first time in her life that she ever remembered just sitting and being with someone without words or planning or work.   She began to talk about how she was feeling, which was different than anything she had ever known.   At a certain point I asked her how her stomach was feeling and she reported no pain at all. She really couldn’t quite believe it.   I moved her back to the Pusher and the pain returned. I then moved her again to “being” energy and the pain disappeared.   I’m not sure who was more shocked, the client or myself!

Within a few short minutes she had moved from a victim mentality in which “her body was constantly betraying her” to a totally new kind of exploration of a number of major disowned self systems that included her introversion and her “being” energy, ways of being that had been totally negated growing up in her family system.

YOU CAUSED YOUR ILLNESS  

One of the more damaging ideas that came out of the holistic movement of the seventies and that continues today to some extent goes something like this:   “You caused your illness! Since you caused it and are responsible for it you have the power to make yourself well!”

The statement is generally well intentioned .   We know that many illnesses are caused by the negation of disowned selves. If you suffer from headaches and someone convinces you that you are causing those headaches and that if you can discover the root cause then you have the power to cure the headaches.

The damage of this way of thinking and this kind of advice occurs in two ways.   First of all, it is the Inner Critic that   generally   takes in the statement.   Inner Critics are giants in the psyche of most people.   When the Inner Critic gets hold of this kind of idea it can be only bad news in the psyche.

The other consideration has to do with the fact that such thinking is also applied to catastrophic illnesses such as cancer. Imagine some friend saying to you: “You caused your cancer. Since you are responsible for having developed cancer, you have the power to cure it.”   Truly, with friends like this who needs enemies?   Yet I have   watched a multitude of patients die the most distressing deaths because they had been given this advice and their Inner Critics had taken it in and then their Pusher has gone crazy trying to rectify the damage they have done by driving themselves harder and harder to heal their wrong doing.

LIFE AND ILLNESS AS A PATH

We don’t know what causes cancer.   We know psycho-spiritual factors may be involved in certain patients, but there are also genetic and environmental issues and a host of unknown factors that are also involved.   How much more healing, how much more elegant to say to someone. “Continue your efforts to heal your cancer. While you are doing this however, let’s consider the meaning of this illness in your life.   Let’s think about your cancer as a teacher.   What has it opened up for you?   What are your dreams saying?   Let’s talk about your vulnerability and what you do with this in your life and with your family.   We can’t promise to cure you. We don’t know how to do that but we can join with you in the search for meaning that this illness can open up for you.”   How much more elegant a way of being a friend than feeding the Inner Critic streak and eggs and potatoes and toast with peanut butter and jelly every morning.

For Sidra and myself the paradigm of Illness as Teacher can be applied to all life experiences.   Life has so many ways of destabilizing us.   We can so easily fall victim to these ongoing events or we can recognize that every destabilization is an opportunity for new discovery or, as Sidra so aptly expresses it, to move out of the pot bound mentality of our primary self system.   Illness gives us a chance to allow the pot to crack gracefully rather than trying throughout our lives to constantly attempt to repair the cracks that inevitably get bigger over time.