By Hal Stone, Ph.D., and Sidra Stone, Ph.D.. Reproduced with permission.
Hal and Sidra Stone: their work and the complete article library · Further Reading
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The First LetterA Personal Journey 9/11by Hal Stone, PhD & Sidra Stone, PhDDear Friends,We have not been able to be in touch with you earlier than this because we have beenvery much “in” the events. Since September 11th we, like others, have been feeling thevulnerabilities, the conflicting selves, the moments of awareness and the hummingbird-like hovering between opposites - many opposites - as we’ve looked at the changed worldin which we all now live.We flew back East to Philadelphia to attend a wedding on Sunday, Sept. 9th. Then wedrove Washington, DC on September 10th and woke up to the bombing reports on the11th. Our first reaction in Washington was disbelief and then the vulnerability of notknowing what was coming next. We were clearly in one of the target zones. Ourimmediate need was to make sure the grandchildren were safe at home and that Sidra’sdaughter and son in law were safe at work. both of them work in places that could bevulnerable. We remained in D.C. until Sunday and then we drove to New York City.On the Wednesday evening immediately after the bombing, we were scheduled for athree-hour relationship presentation in Bethesda sponsored by Francine Pinto. We hadjust a few cancellations and quite a few more people signed up at the last minute so weended up with a group of well over a hundred people. It was a remarkable evening for usall and we were very moved by the entire event. It felt so very good to be dealing withissues of consciousness that we all could sink our teeth into, particularly at that time ofintense vulnerability and not knowing. And it was a beautifully open evening in terms ofsharing!We entered Manhattan through the Lincoln tunnel. There is a loop as you approach thetunnel where traffic was stopped and from here, for about half an hour, we looked acrossat the New York skyline. For Sidra this was a very powerful experience since she is anative New Yorker. To see the gaping hole in the skyline and the smoke rising from theplace where the twin towers had been was indeed a strange and sad experience. It waslike looking at a face you know and love and finding some important piece of it missing.When we arrived in New York we drove to the Waldorf Astoria (where we like to treatourselves with a free stay using our Hilton Honors points). The garage was closed andcars had to be handed over to attendants who inspected them thoroughly before parkingthem. We could only enter the hotel through one small door which was flanked byguards. When we finally entered the vast lobby of the hotel after going through a carefulinspection, which included photo ID, we found ourselves totally alone. There were threevery subdued employees behind the reception desk and absolutely nobody else. This wasa very eerie experience; it felt like a dream. This is a huge lobby that is usually crowdedwith hundreds of people all bustling about with a sense of excitement and it was empty,totally empty. The second image that has stayed with us is our walk through the outer,
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very large, lobby where a woman seated up on a balcony was playing the piano andsinging to a room that was totally empty. She usually plays to a room filled with chattingpeople enjoying cocktails or afternoon tea.One of the most powerful sights in New York were the hundreds upon hundreds ofcomputer generated 8 by 11 announcements with pictures of missing loved ones, adescription of where they had been in the World Trade Center, and a plea forinformation. The pictures were of men and women of all races and ages – they truly gavethe feeling of the US as a great melting pot, a poignant picture of our great diversity.These poster-like announcements were plastered all over the city but were morenumerous in lower Manhattan where we saw them on the walls of buildings, onadvertising posters, in front of the fire stations and hospitals, and on the bus stops. Atnight they were lit by hundreds of burning candles. There were corners in GreenwichVillage that were set up as shrines to the dead and missing with these posters, flowers andcandles. At first, we stopped to read them; we wanted to honor the people by readingthem all. But, in the end, we had to stop because the sadness was too great and thevulnerability was too deep.Our October Denver training which had been scheduled for the following weekend wascancelled. We rescheduled this program for May 3-5 of 2002. This proved to be ablessing for us because it gave us the chance to drive home. We no longer had planetickets. We couldn’t even reach the airlines by phone and flights were being cancelled atthe last minute whenever a new threat was discovered. There was no way we could besure of getting back home for our Thera training on September 30th if we relied on theairlines.Sidra, whose blood carries a very high volume of gypsy red and white cells according toHal, suggested we drive home. National Car Rental was totally cooperative (they madespecial arrangements for anyone who had rented a car before the 11th and was strandedby the attacks). So we left on Wednesday the 19th and arrived home the followingWednesday. Our September training began the following Sunday and ended on October6th.This week we have been playing “catch-up” and we leave for Calgary on Sunday wherewe will be doing a full weekend relationship training. We are then home untilThanksgiving week when we return to D.C for the holidays and then back here for ourDecember training. We are both feeling well. Marilou has kept things under wonderfulcontrol here even while rehearsing for and performing in the local production of StephenSondheim’s “A Little Night Music” where she was, indeed, a real star.The Journey and the PeopleOur pilgrimage across the US touched us deeply. It has been 50 years or more sinceeither of us drove across this complex and achingly beautiful land. And we are more inlove with it than ever before. Although we have spent time in the East and the West, andeven in Florida, we had forgotten the magnificence and sweep of the entire country as we
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felt it driving from “sea to shining sea”. Each part of the country has a special delight, aspecial energy to contribute to the whole, much like all the selves contribute to an AwareEgo process. And this land that we have been blessed with is precious, unbelievablyprecious.We felt surprising feelings of pride and patriotism towards our country and our fellowcitizens. We were deeply moved by what we saw and - equally - by what we did not seeor hear. We heard people singing “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America”rather than the “Star Spangled Banner”. They were drawn to songs of the heart and spirit,rather than our more war-like national anthem. We felt a stirring of pride and patriotismthat we haven’t felt since WW II. But, on the other hand, we know well the blindness andpotential destructiveness of patriotism when there is no responsible, questioning voice tobalance it and so we have another self that fears the stirrings of nationalism. Each sideexerts a powerful pull and we find ourselves holding the tension of these opposites.Everywhere we went, there was an outpouring of love, a sense of unity, caring, andgenerosity. The first, of course, were in New York. We had been jarred by the “businessas usual” look of store windows, of billboards, and other advertisements with happy,smiling, consumers. But the grand old stores - Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord and Taylor,Bergdorf Goodman’s, and, later, Macy’s - removed their window displays and replacedthem with either flags or expressions of condolence. Human values took precedence overconsumerism and sales. At least for a while. It would be wonderful if this kind of self-monitoring could presage a change in consciousness and the opposites of self-interest andconcern for others could be held simultaneously.There were dozens of ways that people were raising money for relief funds. There werethe usual appeals for the frontline agencies that deal with disaster, like the United Way’sSeptember 11th Fund and the Red Cross. There were individuals and groups collectingmoney - and, of course, blood. A coffee shop in Utah was raising money for the familiesof the restaurant workers who were killed in the Windows on the World. Firemen wereraising money for the families of the firemen. Each hotel we stayed at had a signexpressing regret, often with specific notes put up by individual employees. And mostwere collecting money for the September 11th victims. When we returned home, ourlocal fire department and our restaurants were also holding fundraisers. This generositymoved us deeply.In over 3000 miles, we saw only one overt sign of hatred and call to violence. It was ahand-lettered banner hanging from a freeway overpass in New Jersey with a crude pictureof Bin Laden’s head and the words: “Behead Bin Laden”. We are not innocents. Weknew that there was a groundswell of distrust of Middle Easterners and that many dark-skinned people were harassed, perhaps even killed.But we did not hear hatred and polarization as we crossed the US. Nor have we heard itsince we returned home. These were on the call-in shows that encourage polarization andhatred. But on the streets, instead of hatred and polarization, we heard ordinary
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Americans questioning of why this had happened, what it meant, and what might best bedone. These questions were heard in every state we visited on the radio, on TV, and in thenewspapers. We overheard them discussed in conversations in the streets, in coffee shopsand in restaurants.We did not experience a rush to judgment, but, instead, felt a space in which newlearning could occur. Wherever people met, they were wondering about the meaning ofall this and how it could be addressed. Of course, each answered in terms of primaryselves, but it seemed as though many different primary selves were given the chance toair their views.The Many Views of the AttacksThere have been hundreds of Emails circulating that discuss the bombing from amultitude of viewpoints. They have been fascinating, exhilarating, and also depressing.We personally have learned a great deal from many of them. Many of these present uswith a new voice or new information that needs to become a part of our new and -expanded - reality. With so many viewpoints represented, it is certainly clear that weneed an Aware Ego process. It is only an Aware Ego process that can allow us toembrace the multitude of ideas, recommendations, facts, and judgments that we have allbeen reading during the past month.In looking over the Emails we received, we saw some of the following primary selves:First, the political primary self. These letters varied widely from the simply political tothe strongly polemic. They dealt with the long term negative aspects of our foreignpolicy. Some of these have been truly comprehensive and remarkable and we want tothank all of the people who have been devoting themselves to finding the best articles tosend out to their Email lists. It has been a real service and a real education. It is sad tothink of the mischief we have done and continue to do; but this is a reality that must befaced and integrated.Then, there was the economically-oriented political self. These were the letters thatexplained how globalization and the increasing power of the multi-national corporationshave gone too far and that it is this economic inequality that has resulted in thebreakdown of the system and the enmity of oppressed peoples. They see the only cure forthis as the destruction of the multi-national corporations and an end to globalization.In contrast to these primary selves, we received many Emails that were totally a-political.These were from people with spiritual primary selves who reacted to the tragedy in theirparticular way. In their letters, they say that we must pray, we must meditate, and wemust surrender to God. This, they feel, is the only way to deal with the current situation.There are anti-war primary selves that see no possible reason for armed conflict, nomatter what the situation. They deeply believe that conflict begets conflict and can neversolve anything. Their opposites are the “eye for an eye” primary selves. This self is not
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prevalent in the Email of the consciousness groups but can be heard in more conservativegroups and on radio talk shows.Some religious/historically oriented primary selves focus upon this as a holy war and citethat as the basic cause for conflict. These people send letters dealing with the historicalnature of the current conflict as a holy war, some tracing it back to the Crusades. Theother major issue discussed by this group is the very major one of Fundamentalism versusmodernity, a polarization that is extremely intense in many parts of the world, includingthe US.Then there were the spiritual selves that believe in love and in the mastery over negativethoughts. This idea says that anyone who has a negative thought is contributing to thenegativity of the world and to this particular crisis situation. They believe that we mustlearn to love full time. It is a fairly classic spiritual idea that unfortunately leaves out theconsequence of always tryingto be loving. As any psycho-spiritual therapist or teacherwill tell you, there is no faster way to build a psychic garbage dump than in trying to stuffyour negativity and judgments into a bag called love.Each of you will address the political and economic issues in your own way. Your levelof activism depends upon your own inclinations. The impact that it has is beyond yourimmediate control, but this need not discourage you. Much has been gained in the past bypolitical activism. But, if you do, having an Aware Ego process -especially as an activist -should be a great asset just as it is in any other arena of life.Ultimately, however, we are not the ones who make the political decisions and, for mostof us, the large arena is out of our control. What isin our control at some level is our ownpsycho-spiritual process and how we interact with the people in our lives.Psycho-Spiritual RealityPsycho-spiritual reality refers to a process of transformation that is inclusive of all of ourselves or energy systems. It means learning to embrace our psychological nature and ourspiritual nature. It means learning to embrace our mind and our imagination. It meanslearning to embrace the reality of our physical body as well as the totality of our psychicmakeup. It means learning how to embrace the light and the dark.We have seen how this psycho-spiritual consciousness process can impact our personaland business relationships. We very much believe that, with time, it can impact ourcountry and our country’s relationship to the world. Each one of you is involved in thisprocess at some level. In the months to come we will be speaking about many of theconsciousness issues that we feel are central to our collective situation. We want you tospeak to them also. We have our forum for you to send things to. We have our dreamroom. We would like to see a great deal of energy go into the dream process so that theunconscious of each of us can go into high gear and bring us its collective wisdom andpower.
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We want to thank so many of you for sending us your very caring words during the lastmonth. In these troubled and very vulnerable times we are aware of how much we needthe contact with you as well as with our personal families, friends, and acquaintances.Because this has been, and continues to be, such a vulnerable time, the one Psychology ofthe Aware Ego area that we want to deal with in this letter is the vulnerability that is socentral to all of us.VulnerabilityThe citizens of the United States have had their first taste of vulnerability. The attackswere brilliantly devised to strike at our primary selves, the centers of power. They struckat our financial power and our military power. We have been the undisputed super powerin both of these arenas. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the icons for thispower as well as its nerve centers. Our money and our military as primary selves wereshown to lack ultimate power. We need now to move past these to something new; tocare for our vulnerability as a nation in a new way.They struck at these “primary selves” with our own people in our ordinary passengerplanes. Interestingly enough, the freedom to travel and to explore new frontiers withoutfear or impediments is also very precious to us as a nation. Being able to travel freelywithout fear has been part of the American dream. Our movies and our literature are fullof images of people leaving where they are and going off hopefully - not as refugees, butas visionaries - to a new and better place. Suddenly, the nation’s airways, roads, tunnels,and bridges seem vulnerable. Our primary self of “the free person who moves on” is nolonger quite as easily accessed.Terrorism is meant to produce vulnerability and the more brilliant, passionate, devoted,and disciplined the terrorist, the greater the vulnerability he or she can produce. We havegotten our first tastes of this. As we said earlier, many nations have known thisvulnerability for many years. And we are challenged to meet this vulnerability in totallynew ways because our old primary selves will not work in this situation. Our primaryselves are suited to the old kinds of war, not to combating terrorism.While in New York, before he had begun to deal seriously with his own vulnerability,Hal had the following dream:“I am going through a highly accelerated consciousness process, like nothing I have everknown or could imagine. Then it stops and the dream presence says the following to me –You (meaning me and all of us) must learn to fully experience your vulnerability withouthaving it rule you. When you have done this then this kind of accelerated process can beavailable to you (us)! “Vulnerability brings us closer to our soul reality and to God. We don’t know whatdivinity has up its sleeve for all of us, but we believe that this is a collective dream and itshows the basic task we all have in common right now. We want you to know that we arefeeling very good and that we are very highly motivated to teach, to write, and to support
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the consciousness process on this planet to the fullest of our abilities. We believe thatthis kind of accelerated process is possible and when it happens to enough of us thingswill change.We are not sure yet of the exact form our effort will take but it is job we will do, all of us,together. During the early and very dark days of World War I, President Roosevelt madethe oft-quoted comment that “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” To live with ourvulnerability and yet not live in fear is part of everyone’s initial work. In times like these,we need to know how to surrender to God, how to surrender to the process of consciousrelationship, and how to surrender to the process of consciousness and transformationalwork in general. It is really the same as it always was, but now the heat has been turnedup, and the pot is cooking as it never cooked before.Reactions from Primary SelvesThe first reactions to a vulnerable situation are always from the primary selves. But, inthe case of these attacks, the old primary selves no longer worked. In fact, it was thesevery primary selves that were directly attacked. We could not retaliate militarily, eventhough we are a Super Power, because there was no single enemy. Military power is noteffective if there is no clear-cut enemy to vanquish.In the beginning, it was just too much and most people just went into a state of shock anddisbelief. It was unthinkable. What they saw was not in their consciousness and at firstcould not be comprehended. Later, the primary selves began to emerge.We saw the first reactions of many primary selves and, we must say, we felt many ofthem ourselves. The warriors wanted immediate vengeance. The spiritually identifiedbegan to meditate and pray and urged others to do the same. The responsible parentsvolunteered their time and gave money and blood. The rebel sons and daughters blamedeverything upon the government and big business and sided with the attackers. The astutebusinessmen began to make American flags. The victims felt victimized and helpless.The thinkers tried to figure things out. The feelers could not stop crying. The writerswrote and the singers sang.What You Disown, You MarryEach of us attracts people who carry our disowned selves. They are what we call “God’slittle heat-seeking missiles.” And they are the people who give us the most trouble in ourlives. The perfectionistic, totally dependable employer finds herself surrounded byincompetent employees. The responsible father has a do-nothing son. The tidy mother hasa slob for a daughter. The hippy parent raises an accountant or a lawyer.At a time like this, it is important to try to see what it is that we, as a nation, disown. Wewere fortunate to have people who were born in five different countries in our lasttraining group here at Thera and we all thought about this question together. Here aresome of the ideas that we came up with: We are strong; we disown our vulnerability. We
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preserve life at any cost, and we disown death. We are independent; we disown our needof others. We are the have’s; others are the have-not’s. We have been the good guys, thecowboys in the white hats who rescue others; we disown our bad guys, our terrorists. Wedo only good; others do evil. We are smart, we know all the answers; we don’t needothers to help us figure things out. We are identified with our minds; others are identifiedwith their souls. We believe in our individual freedom; we disown our fundamentalistswho carry the need for outside regulation of our behavior. We are innocent, eternaloptimists; we disown our sense of futility. We are young and self-impressed as a nation;we do not value the wisdom and experience of other, older nations. We know how togive; we do not know how to receive.Remember that disowning an energy doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means thatit operates unconsciously! And so it is that our disowned terrorists and fundamentalistsoperate beyond the boundaries of our awareness and beyond our conscious control. Wedo not know them, and we have not accepted responsibility for them.Our Previous “Marriages”History repeats itself and those who do not learn from it are doomed to repeat it. This istrue in interpersonal relationships and it is true in the relationships among nations.In our attempts to do what we thought was right - or was in our best interests which, bydefinition, was something we thought was right - we have chosen partners who carriedour disowned selves.Our nation “married” Pinochet, Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, and, to ourmost recent dismay, Osama Bin Laden. Let us hope that we exercise a bit more cautionwith our next partners. We are not political experts and we don’t know the answers, butwe do urge caution in the new alliances.Let us learn the lessons of history. As individuals, and as a nation. But again, we mustwalk between opposites. We must become aware of, and then embrace, our ownfundamentalists and our own terrorists before we can deal effectively with thefundamentalists and terrorists on the outside. We must clearly recognize our contributionto the current situation. But we must not assume total blame. Just as in relationshipsbetween two people, it is all a dance. Both sides contribute to the overall picture.A Current DangerIf we do not learn the lessons of the past and break our familiar patterns of behavior, wewill make the same mistakes. And these patterns have created increasingly destructivesituations! We don’t know how long this current struggle is going to last, but we pray thatit will not continue for hundreds of years as such polarizations have in the past.
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Perhaps if enough people think, feel, and do their own individual work, something willshift in a shorter time. Each of us can try to do our best to defuse polarization when wewitness it.We were heartened to see that our leaders seemed to be taking input from many sourcesand did not precipitously jump to action. Fortunately, our president cannot easily identifywith the hero archetype because a pure hero could be very polarizing at this time inhistory and could make poor decisions. Instead, he has risen to the occasion andintegrated a bit of the hero energy that is required of a leader in a time of crisis, but hestill carries its opposite, the ordinary guy. He has characteristically taken advice frommany others and tried to balance this advice.The early moves of the administration did not promote polarization. There was an attemptto balance the need for action with a respect for spirituality in the immediate arrangingfor prayer services that honored all religions. Military action was paired withhumanitarian aide. Direct action was paired with an attempt to stop the flow of money tothe terrorists.Let us hope that as our leader the president will continue to listen to both sides and makehis decisions from a position between opposites and that he will continue to carry his(early) awareness of the vulnerability of the nation. This would put him in the symbolicposition of the Aware Ego of our country.LinkageThere is something new on this planet and it is “energetic linkage”. All of us were movedby the responses of individuals and nations to the tragedy of September 11th and to oursudden vulnerability. It was not our personal tragedy; it was shared by much of the world.Indigenous people, mystics and spiritual teachers have always taught that we are onefamily. For the first time in history, the rest of us have felt this as a tangible reality. Themedia and the internet linked us instantly so that what happened in New York andWashington was felt all over the world with an immediacy never before experienced.(Our beloved friend, Lydia, awake at 3 AM in Sydney, knew of the World Trade Centerdisaster before we did and emailed her love to us immediately.) People were able tocontact their loved ones across continents and seas. And they did.The oneness of the planet was an unavoidable truth. The love and support could be felt allover the world after September 11th. And so could the hate and the wish to destroy.Much as our sense of ourselves shifted the first time we saw a picture of the Earth takenfrom space; the sense of our planet has shifted once more. We are all one. Now theoneness is not observed from the distance of outer space, but it is felt within each of ourhearts. Again, however, there are the opposites. We feel the closeness and oneness bothin our love and gratitude towards some and in our fears of others.The Hope
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We are not young and we feel deeply - and gratefully - the richness of our lives andexperiences. We remember Pearl Harbor, World War II, and the Marshall Plan. And weremember the McCarthy hearings and Viet Nam. We remember Cambodia, Cuba, Chile,Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, and more. We remember timeswhen we knew we were heroes and that our country could do no wrong and we remembertimes - later times - when we knew we were villains and feared that our country could dono right. These memories - these opposites - are held deep within each of us.This is a new century and a new millennium. In these past weeks, those of us here in theUS have joined the rest of humanity. We, too, now know what it feels like to be attackedwithout warning as we go about our daily lives. These are feelings that are all too familiarelsewhere on this planet. Now we, too, are vulnerable in our homeland. Now we, too, areneither heroes nor villains. Instead, we are a very disparate group of vulnerable humanbeings. And our nation is no longer special, but an ordinary member of the family ofnations. We are no longer the Super Power; we no longer have all the answers. Let ushope that we move forward with the appropriate humility and awe, and that we continueto look at the current situation from many viewpoints - including those that differ fromour dearly held beliefs - because much is at stake and what we do now has graveconsequences.We do not have the answers but the beauty of this time is that no single group can give usall the answers, just as no primary self can give us all the answers. What we do know isthat - just as in our personal lives - the more disparate the selves that are included in anydecision, the sounder that decision will be and the less likely we will be to regret it andthe less likely we will be to feel the slap. Just now, we desperately need our hearts, ourminds, and our spirits united within ourselves, whatever we do. And the more diversitywe, as a nation, can access, the better. This is no longer a good idea, it is an absolutenecessity. We need our spiritual selves and our pragmatists; our warriors and ourpeaceniks; our patriots and those who fear the evils of rampant nationalism; ourhumanitarians and our Machiavellis; our lovers of civil liberties and those of us who arewilling to sacrifice some portion of these liberties for safety’s sake; our planetary citizenswith their world views and our isolationists who see no further than our borders; ourhistorians who remind us what has gone before and our visionaries who can give uspictures of a better future; and more. We are basically a nation of optimists. Because weare a young country and have not suffered war with foreigners invading our homeland,we are like children who never suffered abuse at home; we still have a certain innocence,an attitude that we have resiources and that can do it if we can only figure out what “it”is. Let us keep this optimism and add to it a humble awareness of the complexity andawesome gravity of the current situation.For the two of us, the events of the past month create an opening to new possibilities.The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon blasted open a door. It standsopen; may we walk through it. This is a call for each of us to do our own particular work.As we continue our own journeys of consciousness, let us trust that the intelligence of theuniverse will work through each of us and guide us through our dreams and our intuitions
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to make our own particular contribution. These will be as different as we are differentfrom one another. Some of our contributions will be more obvious, and some will bemore subtle.You my never be aware of what it is you’ve done or who you’ve impacted. Perhaps themost widely read book to come out of World War II was the Diary of Anne Frank. Annenever lived to see that millions of people all over the world were impacted by the yearsshe spent hidden away from the world in an attic in Amsterdam. Yet they were. You maynever be aware of the outcome of your own private evolution and you may never knowwhose life you have touched, but we are all connected now more than ever and whateveryou put out in the world has its consequences.We believe that every bit of consciousness counts. We believe that the impact of anAware Ego process is powerful and that the gifts it brings are priceless. May we allcontinue to open to all of our selves, may we savor life each day, may we keep our songsand our souls alive, and may we move through the open door to the next level of humanconsciousness.
Original source and copyright: Hal Stone, Ph.D., and Sidra Stone, Ph.D.. Read the original at Voice Dialogue International.