This is a transcript of a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GYzUTCGW6U) in which Hal Stone, co-author (together with Sidra Stone) of the method of Voice Dialogue, talks about goals and process of Voice Dialogue. --- – Voice Dialogue is the method that applies to the theory of the Psychology of the Selves. The goal of the work is threefold. Number one, the development of the Aware Ego. In order to do this, we must learn how to separate from those selves with which we are identified and embrace the parts of us that we've rejected in the course of growing up. Once we do this, we stand between opposites and the Aware Ego is in process. Secondly, once we are able to stand between opposites and make choices in this Aware Ego process, the dreams begin to change and the Inner Teacher, that is waiting to be triggered in all of us, begins to make its appearance. Our dream process literally becomes a teaching process and we begin to withdraw those feelings and projections that we have onto outer teachers and outer therapists, and the teaching starts to go where it really belongs, on an inner level. Once this Aware Ego process reaches this point where the Inner Teacher is constellated, we then begin an unpeeling of personality. – So we will take this one at a time. First thing that Voice Dialogue gives a person is awareness of the selves. – Exactly. – What are the selves? – The Selves are groupings of thoughts, feelings and behavior that are built into the human psyche. We come into this life in a certain family system and we are conditioned by that family to behave and think and act in certain ways. The selves are the actual parts of us that develop because of this conditioning process. – So, once a person has become aware of these selves, these conditioned behaviors and so on, what is the next thing that they get? – The problem is that becoming aware of these selves is difficult, because we generally identify with one, or two, or three of them. Whenever we are completely identified with certain selves, we don't know about the rest of the selves. So the first task is to become aware of these Primary Selves, that govern our life, so we then can separate from them and literally learn how to embrace all of the selves. – So, what is the second goal? – The second goal is more difficult to understand because a lot of people may have not experienced it. Once we have this clarification of selves and are able to recognize different points of view, different ways of behaving and feeling and thinking, our dream process begins to change. We begin to get dreams that are clarifying in nature. Sometimes we get dreams in which a voice speaks to us and gives us information, but the general name we give to this process is the birth of the Inner Teacher. – So, an Inner Teacher can arise within once own psyche and literally advise us, guide us, cause us to react in different ways? – Exactly, and the dreams come in and begin to balance our life in very significant ways. You know how an ocean liner at sea has the ability to stabilize itself. If the ship tilts to the right, the stabilizer goes to the right and forces the ship to the left, when it goes to the left, stabilizer comes out and forces it back to the right. It's this side ward action on a ship that really makes us sick. When the Unconscious begins to function as teacher, it begins to function as the role stabilizer system on an ocean liner and literally balances where we are. If we are too much identified with the mind, it will show us that, or it will bring up feeling in some way. If we are too identified with the responsibility, it will bring up the parts of us that are not responsible. It is always helping us to balance whatever it is that we are identified with. – So, it seems to be a higher intelligence almost within us. – It is in fact a higher intelligence, an organized higher intelligence that knows exactly where it wants us to go. In the old days they called it entelechy, that was Jungs' term, a very purposive, directed intelligence that wants us literally to embrace all the selves and become all we can possibly be. – Some of these selves obviously aren't at the surface of our minds, some of these behaviors, let's call them, subpersonalities. Where do the others go? – The general term that we use is for where they go is the Unconscious. All of these selves that have been forced underground in our early upbringing don't disappear. No self ever disappears, no matter how hard we try to make it disappear. So, as the Primary Selves develop, say the responsibility side, it tries to get rid of the parts of the person that are not responsible. So the non-responsible, irresponsible selfish parts go into the Unconscious. There you will find them in dreams, they will break out in many different ways, and they have an amazing consequence in behavior. Because whatever it is that you try to get rid of, that you force into the Unconscious, is going to manifest in your life in relationship. You are going to be either strongly, strongly judgmental towards somebody who is not responsible, or you'are going to be unbelievably attracted to somebody who is irresponsible, or as it's often the case, you'll first be attracted and then repelled, or repelled and then attracted. So you get this kind of love-hate thing. That's known as a marriage. – So what is the third goal of Voice Dialogue? – The third goal is the kind of clarification that happens as you begin to unhook from the various systems of selves that comprise the personality level. So, for example, one time someone had a dream of a ball of twine that was all mashed together and they were peeling off the layers of twine to get to the insight core. The inside core is that very vulnerable, essential energy that we come into the world with. That energy can't stay with us as we develop a personality, because if we remain identified with that energy, you get killed in the world and you become a victim. – By killed what you mean? – Well, it's buried very, very, very deeply, because if it's there, it's so painful, you are disfunctional. So almost everyone has to really get rid of that kind of energy, but at some age we have to get it back, because that energy gives us... it's almost like an essential frequency that defines who we are. So what happens in the course of the transformational work as this Aware Ego process develops, we seperate from the personality level and we begin to get in touch again with this primary frequency that we were born with. The other thing that happens is, that as we seperate from the personality level, we also become more open to energies that we call transpersonal, namely experiences that are not part of our personal experience. We become open to the mythic and archetypial nature of the psyche. That's the part of our psychology that is not a function of our personal upbringing. There are parts of our Unconsious that are built into the system, they are not learnt behaviors. – So what would you say is the actual power of Voice Dialogue? – The seperation of Primary Selves and the discovery of disowned Selves creates such a revolution in consciousness it can hardly be imagined and people feel like they are out of prison. They feel literally like they've gotten out of prison. You do a session with the Inner Critic and they say "Do you mean to tell me that's a voice? When I thought for the last fifty years that it was me?" They are going out of prison. So, it's like an amazing discovery of a totally new land that they've discovered in which freedom is possible. They don't have total freedom right away, but they begin to have a map of how to get out of this prison that they have been in. The prison of being identified with selves. – The prison of conditioning. – The prison of conditioning. --- <small>published #2019-04</small>