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1. Different terms - Growing Awareness and growing awareness work Most of the characters that we talk about in these pages, work the same way and do the same things as they do in the world of growing awareness work. The main difference that you will notice is that the terms we use appear to help people to visualise what is going on. That seems to make it much easier to understand, because what we are talking about is then able to be related to images that are already familiar. I have explained (in a separate article) the somewhat more complex psychological reasons why this might work. But for the time being a brief explanation is that the easier it is to visualise something, the more likely that the inner protector characters and inner children find they can grasp we are talking about. The one exception to this is the "rational analytical mind", who of course is used to processing abstract information. But the mind just happens to be the one inner character who has the greatest difficulty connecting to our feelings and emotions. And since most of the deepest problems we are dealing with are emotionally based, talking to the mind about issues like for example, "vulnerability" doesn’t seem too help the rest of the selves to deal with feelings of vulnerability. Whenever we are dealing with what is going on emotionally inside us we need to talk to the characters inside who are most closely connected to those feelings. The less abstract and the easier it is too visualise the way the emotion is being processed, the faster your inner protector characters (and your inner child) can understand, accept and agree with what you are trying to explain to them. And it's only after you get agreement from the inner protector characters and the inner child, that anything significant really seems to happen, in terms of making changes in a person's life that really amount to something. My experience over the last 18 months is that both the person you are working with, their Inner child and their most active inner protector characters find they can use what they have learned from dialogue a great deal faster than they could when I explained things using growing awareness work terms. Here if is a list of some of the "language" that we use in this alternative
storytelling approach |
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Abstract terms |
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The inner protector characters (as a group) |
"inner protector characters" | |
| Inner self | inner villager - any character who lives or works in the inner village | |
| Primary self | Active villager - a character who lives in the inner village who is very active or plays a significant role in the village. Also known as a Type A (for Active) | |
| Operating ego | the Old Village - the older part of the inner village. Where they often say "That's the way we've always done it." | |
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inner child If you wanted to talk to one of your own children about something that was worrying them, you would get a better response if you used their name, rather than calling them "my child". |
(first name) of inner
child - It
is much easier to visualise our inner child when
we use his or her first name. And this in turn makes much easier to dialogue directly with this important member of the inner village. |
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| vulnerability | visualised as a bog or swamp with very slippery edges, somewhere in the village. It is all too easy to fall in and much harder to get out again. It's a place of powerlessness and feelings of devastation. Most of the main characters in the Inner Village play some part in trying to stop each other and the inner child from falling into the swamp. And a number of them are closely connected with helping rescue those who do fall in. | |
| disowned self | Discredited or expelled villager - one who has been exiled or expelled from the village and who wanders, lost somewhere in the deep dark forest nearby | |
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Voice dialogue
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a conversation, discussion or meeting with any character who lives in the inner village, including the inner child | |
| Facilitator | the person having a friendly chat with an inner villager and talking about life in the village - interviewer | |
| Separation | each time someone goes up on awareness hill behind the village and looks at the view below they get a little more clarity about what is going on inside them. They can then see that each villager inside them is a separate character. They can also separate what one villager thinks, says, does or feels from other villagers and even more importantly separate that villager from their aware adult (the part of them that can look at things from up on the hill or outside the village ) | |
| another person's operating ego | someone else's inner village | |
| inner patriarch | Village patriarch - who lives in the inner village. A very significant character. Often still described as the inner patriarch | |
| inner matriarch | Village matriarch - another very important character found in the Inner Village. Often still described as the inner matriarch | |
| inner mother | ideal or Magic Mother | |
| inner father | Ideal or Magic father | |
| 2. Additional Village Characters not found in growing awareness work | |
| The aware ego and awareness
The nature of the aware ego is such that I doubt that it is possible to come up with a visual metaphor. As far as I know no one has ever visualised an aware ego anyway, nor do they need to. Visualising Growing Awareness On the other hand it does help newcomers to this work if they create a visual image of a place on the hill, a place where they can observe things going on that are similar to what happens when a person is operating in their grown-up aware ego state. (Balanced opposites, integration, teamwork, reconnecting to disowned energies and so on) There is certainly a point where a person doing this work notices that their attitude to solving their problems is changing and they making significant changes in their life. You can visualise this as being closely connected with the creation in their mind of a new village built higher up on the hill. Let's call it "Awareness Village". It's certainly nowhere near the aware ego in voice dialogue but, once people create a clear visual image of Awareness Village on their own hill it does seem to help them get one step closer to the energetic concept of the so very difficult to define, explain or visualise "aware ego".
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Other places in the Inner Village The Safe Place (new pages to come on this) The marketplace (new pages to come on this)
The Private or Walled Off Section (new pages to come
on this)
Other linked pages ..... Why tell stories rather than talk psychology? A search for a way to speed up the changes and to make them last longer Guidelines to working with inner protector characters A fable about Inner Protector Characters Carried villagers - "refugees" from someone else's village
Because the dream did not come to reality in the way he expected, he
rejected the dream. A new and
more detailed explanation of Self Awareness work and the Inner Child.
Which comes first? Understanding your Inner Child
or
Helping your inner child understand you? |
Feedback - please e-mail me John Bligh Nutting - at bligh777@gmail.com
Copyright © John Nutting 1996- - 2012 and © GROWING AWARENESS 1996- 2012 All rights reserved World Wide LAST UPDATE Friday, 13 April 2012 09:13
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