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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 SEVENTH ELEMENT
PARTNERING
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, creativity, and intimacy 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.
THE EIGHTH ELEMENT
DREAMS, DAYDREAMS AND
THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
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 from the visualizations of guided imagery.
These are not deliberately sought after like visualizations; instead,
they are going on much of the time even though many people have
no awareness at all that they are, in fact, daydreaming. These
daydreams 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 a long period 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 a 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. Instead, it
is an ongoing process that seems to clarify and deepen the Aware
Ego. 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 80th
birthday and Sidra approaches her 70th 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 their 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 and the infinite richness 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.
© HAL & SIDRA STONE, 2007
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