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THE BASIC ELEMENTS Of
VOICE DIALOGUE, RELATIONSHIP AND
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELVES
THEIR ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT
By
HAL STONE, Ph.D. AND SIDRA STONE, Ph.D.
THE SIXTH ELEMENT
THE ENERGETICS OF VOICE DIALOGUE
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 both at home
and, perhaps even more important, on our 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. Different selves had different
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 - in full impersonal energy - was immersed in the
ideas they were discussing. Sidra stopped walking and, with a smile,
asked Hal: “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 created this diminished perception, but impersonal energy
was certainly a good part of it. Hal's basic primary selves were
impersonal and he just didn't 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 repeatedly. 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 parent meets someone she/he loves, there
is as wrenching disconnect from the son or daughter who had carried
the primary linkage before the arrival of the 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.
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Contents
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