Reflection about the relationship

REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP, IN VOICE DIALOGUE, BETWEEN THE AWARE EGO AND THE VOICES, BETWEEN THE WHOLE AND THE PARTS, OURSELVES AND OUR NEIGHBOURS

Today science brings evidence that man is in himself a universe. Even more, that every single cell contains a universe. Physicists propose that an implicate order gives sense and direction to elements, that unfold and enfold, that divide and join up into constantly renewed and significant shapes and stuctures (1). The process of consciousness also evolves through separating and connecting, like cells do. We can experience this directly through the Voice Dialogue process, which separates different inner Selves, recognizes them by means of an Aware ego, and so leads us into developing a more significant and conscious Self.

What is relationship to oneself ?

I experienced this "more aware self" as a becoming more alive, more flexible, in a flowing organic whole, based on the relationship between my Aware ego and my Selves. This inner relationship system and relationship as such, is, for me, the very dynamic that makes personal evolution, and the evolution of consciousness itself, possible.

Relationship is only complete when it brings two, or more, separate, different people, face to face. As long as the child is in the womb, in a fusional state, identified with the mother, the two of them do not yet have a relationship in its fullest mature sense. Likewise, this will also be true of fusional love in primary relationship, or of a person still identified with his/her inner Voices or subpersonalities. The child's identity and individuation builds up along with a progressive separation from the mother, father and surrounding world, from being almost one in the womb, to becoming a mature, self-reliant adult. Separation is a must, if one means to grow, starting with birth. Relationship is the growth process itself.

Observation of babies, cared for by a new different person every day, corroborates that these don't prosper and are in danger of ill health or of being psychically damaged, if not provided with a caretaker to whom they can relate, who can love and mirror them, in a continuum.

So also, our aliveness dies, our problems increase, when we just stay identified with a selected set of primary Selves. Identification makes face to face relationship impossible. We cannot see, mirror or care for our inner Selves, if identified with them, nor set them free, if unaware of them.

Developing an Aware ego, through separating our different Voices, Selves, Energies from it, and so becoming a witness to them, generates a caring, and yet independent, relatedness to these inner Selves, as well as access to the enriching multiplicity of our many Voices, primary, vulnerable and disowned.

A Voice is a person

Working with Voice Dialogue makes one wonder at how intensely a Voice, although only a part, manifests, in the process of facilitation, as a real and total being. This Voice/person has an age, a sex, an identity, a date of birth, a name, an own world of emotions and feelings, an own mind, and a distinct energetic body. This Voice/person, has private hopes and fears, has a life purpose, personal relationships with their joys and pains and full potential for evolution, which will manifest from the moment the Aware ego and this particular Voice recognize each other and start to relate.

Time and time again, when faciliting, I have felt moved to love and presence, to "being quality", by this evidence: this "Voice" is in full measure a person to be respected, loved, to learn from, to relate to. What I discovered in facilitating others, became also true of what is happening between my own Aware ego and Voices.

Each part contains the whole

How can a Voice, which is only a facet among many others, at the same time encompass the whole range of humaneness ? This brought me to reflect once again upon a very old question, an old mystery. How could it be, that though - reasonably - we may only consider ourselves as fragments of the divine, great mystics, of different religions, have this same cry of inner evidence :
"God is me" ? A cry born out of the intimate experience of total oneness with God. I think here, for example, of the great Sufi al-Hallâdij ibn Mansûr, who was put to death (year 922) for having said : "Ana al Haqq" (My I is God) (2). 1 think of Christ, who claimed "I am He" and was crucified (3).
How does this relate to the wondrous alchemy of our bodies, where each of our cells, though only a microscopic particle, holds, in its genetic code, the total information, the total potential of our
being ?

Easy to explain how the whole contains the parts, more mysterious and exiting to discover that, maybe, each part contains also the whole. This, by the way, might answer very well this other question : why is it that Voice Dialogue and the psychology of Selves and subpersonalities doesn't lead to, or enhance, the fragmentation of the psyche ? (4) Leading, on the contrary, to perceiving oneself as a balanced organic whole.

Voice Dialogue, a new and yet ancient model of deep relationship

This mirroring between the parts and the whole also opens up an audacious perspective in which hightened awareness and consciousness bring us to experience a new way to relate to ourselves, to others, to nature , I mean the deep understanding, that we contain every other and that every other contains us. Discovering this, in my own flesh and energy, as the inner truth of my family of Voices, encourages me to believe that it may become true, outside, in relationship to my neighbours.

This outlook is not new. In the Gospel of Mathew 25.(34), we read that on the day of Judgement, speaking to the Just, Christ says :

"For I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was ill and you cared for me,
I was in prison and you visited me
." To this the Just remark :

"Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed you ? Thirsty and gave you drink, stranger and welcomed you, or naked and clothed you, ill and looked after you, in prison and visited you ?"

The Lord answers thus :

"I tell you truly, in so far as you did it to one of my brothers, even to the least of them, you did it to me."

Recognizing sacred, universal wholeness in every being, whatever our religious background, faith or atheism, can begin through the process of Voice Dialogue. There, we can recognize each of our Selves, in its full meaning, even those disowned ones, sitting in inner prison. We can begin to feed them, care for them, relate to them, set them free.

And then, we might succeed in expanding this model of recognition, this nonjudgemental awareness, this love, this relationship, outside. "Love thy neighbour as thyself", says the second commandment.

To be a stranger no more, an enemy no more to oneself, to befriend oneself, may lead to brotherhood and tolerance, to sharing with others all of who we are, with our disharmonies, opposites and contradictions. may demonstrate that we can be, each of us, uniquely ourselves, and yet enclose every other. Meeting our disowned energies, is also meeting our neighbour where she/he is different. It means peace, based on respect, rather than on repression.

The hologram, as consciousness model

It is not only the Bible that invites us to such reflexions, modern science also uncovers more and more holistic models. The holographic photograph is one of them and illustrates strikingly this relationship between the whole and its parts and, why not, between the Aware ego and the Selves.

The hologram, or three dimensional photograph, discovered in the fourties by the mathematician Dennis Gabor, is obtained by dividing a laser beam, so that it will interact from several angles of reflection, by means of a half silvered mirror, with the photographed object. (Exactly what Voice Dialogue does).

These different "view points", when superposed, form a model of interference which will then be imprinted on a photographic plate. Illumination of this plate results in an image in three dimensions (relief). But more, these three dimensions are not just simulated for the eye (like movie pictures), they have the required spacial characteristics : the picture will modify as the observer moves, and so changes his position in relation to the photographed object. One can also study a holographic picture, of a flower for example, through a microscope and in adjusting it, observe its cellular structure ! (5)

There is more to it. It is a most surprising fact that, if you break a hologram, each of the broken off fragments still restitutes the whole image, the whole information. This is evidence of a dispersed and enlarged, total memory, stored in every part, a memory that doesn't get impaired when the parts get separated from each other. (6)

This gives us challenging lines of exploration in Voice Dialogue. Could it be that each Voice, in the VD process, is not only to follow up for itself, but also has knowledge concerning all other Voices, known, or yet unknown to the Aware ego? Could it be that, each of our Selves, contains and has access to all other Selves mine and yours, and to our Aware ego, in a reciprocity, that brings us back to the hypothesis of a holographic universe ?

I would like to share my anticipation, generated by these insights; share the hope that, if more and more people live evidence, in the Voice Dialogue process, that our innate completeness mirrors and opens us, not only towards being fully ourselves, but also to an innate understanding of all Voices/Selves in our fellow-beings, we will awaken to the sense of universal oneness. We will "feel out" that, what is true of our inner family, is true of the outer world, that we embody all other human beings, with their light and their shadow and vice versa, that every other being houses us.

I see there the model of an awareness and acceptation that could underlie our differences, and unfold into peace.

Voice Dialogue bibliography

Hal and Sidra Stone

"Embracing Our Selves"
"Embracing Each-Other", New World Library CA
"Embracing Your Inner Critic", Harper and Row SF
"The Shadow King, (The Invisible Force That Holds women Back)",
New World Library CA (Sidra Stone)

"Partnering, (A new kind of relationship)", New World Library CA

Adelheid Oesch :
"L'Arche du Coeur, la multiplication par l'Un" Ed. Le Souffle d'Or 1999

Tome I : Du "Dialogue Intérieur" au silence intérieur. Conte initiatique
Tome II : Manuel d'Exercices, le "Dialogue Intérieur", clé d'une conscience unifiée