Four Levels of Self-awareness and

Self-empowerment

Level One - Basic self-awareness -

Basic self-awareness skills develop quite quickly during your first hands-on practice sessions. At first you will be the interviewee or client. However as your confidence grows you discover its almost the same when you are the interviewer and talk to someone else and their inner protector characters.

Many people find they can reach level one almost immediately.

Separating

During these early sessions you’ll notice that you are beginning to separate one inner protector character from another. When you do this you soon realise that obviously there is another part of you, the part that is aware of the characters, is observing them and talking about them yet it is not actually one of them.

Your grown-up part

This is your “aware adult” often referred to as your grown-up part. It is also the part that is doing the separating and the part out of which your future self-awareness and self -empowerment will grow.

As you become more aware of your grown-up part you can start creating a safe environment for self-awareness work and gaining an overall understanding of what self-awareness and self-empowerment can do for you.  

From there you can expect to progress quite quickly to Level two.

Level Two - Advanced self-awareness -

This is one of the most important steps you take in  self-awareness. At this stage you discover how to:

1.  Identify some of your own inner protector characters (inner selves) as pairs. Each one is the energetic opposite of its other pair

2.   Separate yourself from any pair of opposite characters, then sit between them and adjust their energies to bring them into balance.

From this point on you can start making changes in your life. This can start as soon as you have learned to work with one or more pairs of opposite selves and feel reasonably confident about balancing or adjusting opposing energies.

Level Two includes learning basic techniques for talking or dialoguing with your own Inner Child, increasing your awareness of vulnerability as a natural state, rather than something to be worried about.

You can also start to appreciate why in the past you needed your old negative based protection system because when you were vulnerable that was all you had at that time.

As your understanding about your underlying vulnerability increases so will your ability to protect your own inner child  (Remember to use its name when you talk about it not to call it “my inner child”)

To help protect your inner child (name) you will begin work creating a new positive place located inside you, a place peopled by new and different characters who are better at protecting your vulnerable inner child than the ones from you have been using until now.

As you compare the differences between the old negative based vulnerability-protection system and the new more positive ways of dealing with your vulnerability, you will notice that you are becoming more self-empowered.

Watch what your older characters do when they are on the stage

One of the things you may notice is how much time and energy some of your characters spend trying to get love, liking, trust, appreciation or any other kind of positive reaction from their “audience” (that is other people around you). Later on you will discover that this characteristic of trying to get a positive reaction from other people is a very significant pointer to some of the deeper issues that restrict self empowerment.

The more we try to get these things from other people the more we disempower ourselves and the more we are handing our power over them.

Developing your interviewing skills

While you are doing all this at level two you will be developing your hands-on skill as an interviewer or facilitator.  Interviewing someone else is one of the best ways of coming to understand more about what has been happening inside you until now.

Keeping your profile up to date

Meanwhile you will  need to keep track of the names and classifications of your own cast of inner protector characters (inner selves) what they are doing for you and how each of them acts when they are “on stage”.

Keep in mind that some opposites that look as though they have completely disappeared have actually been exiled,  disowned or sent out into the forest. That means they are still around and they need to be included on your profile sheet

All this when you look at it together provides you with a clearer picture of what it’s like in your inner village at the present time. Meanwhile  your self-awareness is growing so you are ready to move on to level three.

Level Three - Basic self-empowerment  - 

To increase your self empowerment you need to be aware of what it is that reduces your empowerment.

Bringing your exiled characters back

 For example you can discover and reconnect with some of your disowned or exiled characters (selves). Just because they will sent away doesn’t mean they were  a real problem. Quite often you’ll discover that they are in fact the source of your authentic personality and your real empowerment. It’s just that when you were small they got you into trouble and it was necessary at that time for them to be hidden. Now it’s time to bring them back again.

You can identify and then balance one of more of your Negative Core beliefs.

You will discover some new and deeper skills such as balancing your personal and impersonal energies.

Releasing clamps and blockages

As you continue in level three you will find it possible to look more closely at other characters in your village, including the complex characters, the ones who have two or more different goals, the dis-empowering characters who still believe they can best protect you by clamping or blocking you from making the changes you want to make in your life.

Recognizing refugees

You may find yourself having to deal with some of the refugee characters who come from other people’s villages and who can be the cause of many disruptions in your village. In particular this last group will include your Inner Patriarch in Inner Matriarch.

Re-discovering your authentic (true) self

As your sense of self-empowerment grows  you can reconnect with more and more of those wonderful, powerful and positive parts of your personality that were exiled early in your life. As these characters  come back into your life their return will bring you great joy and strength, because they were parts of the authentic person you were really meant to be. You reconnecting with the healthy, self-empowered and positive sides of your personality. You are becoming the person you always meant to be.

Parenting your inner child

You will find you are now able to talk  freely with your own vulnerable inner child and find out more about how she or he is feeling.

Remember, when you talking with other (safe) people about your inner child to use your inner child’s name. It is not appropriate to describe this wonderful little person as a nameless character such as “my inner child”.

Once you have identified and balanced at least one or more of your negative core beliefs, and reconnected to at least one of your exiled characters, you can be confident that you are progressing well at this level (3) of awareness.

Your inner child settles down

By now your inner child (name) has started to settle down and to tell you he or she feels safer and more protected and less  driven by a sense that he or she alone (with the help of a few of the old inner self characters) are stuck with the task of protecting themselves from life’s dangers. This is one of the strongest indicators confirming that you are moving well along in level three.

Creating and inducting new characters

It’s time to start using some new processes to create a new and different world a world where you are able to make the changes that you want on my in your life, a world full of choices and options and opportunities.  It’s well-known that one of the best ways to make changes like this is to harness the immense power of visualisation.

The new village at the top of the hill

Rather than spend more time trying to fix things in the old village it’s better to visualise a new village high up the hill. Life will be very different from the characters who move  to the top of the hill.

Visualising a new village high on Awareness Hill is a departure from classic voice dialogue, but it seems to work well in Australia.

Visualising Growing Awareness - Going up on the Hill behind the Village

So, now is the time to create a visual image of a place on Awareness Hill, a place where you can observe things going on from a position of greater awareness.

There is a point where a person doing this work notices that their attitude to solving their problems is changing and they are making significant changes in their life. You can visualise this as one of the outcomes that follows once they have a clear picture in their mind of a new village built higher up on the hill. You might call this call it "Awareness Village". 

Aware ego and awareness 

Populating your new village with balanced and integrated characters may have little similarity with that state of awareness  referred to in Classic Voice Dialogue as the Aware Ego 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 that so very difficult to define, explain or visualise "aware ego".

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.

All we need to know is that a wider range of  growth and understanding is possible in the new village and the view is better too.

Inducting new characters

Another quite amazing and empowering experience, again using visualisation, is to create or induct  some totally new characters to help enhance your new inner team working together in your new Awareness village.

Newly inducted characters such as a Magic Father or Inner Mother, go straight to the new village. Some of the protector characters from the old village usually the side to make the climb as well.  All is really takes his their agreement to work in balanced and integrated partnerships, rather than as polar opposites as they did in the old village.

Level Four - Advanced self-empowerment -

Level 4 is where you start to make full use of your self awareness and self-empowerment to create really significant and positive changes in your life - changes that make a real difference, and you will be celebrating the sense of exhilaration that comes each time you make one of these changes.

You will be starting to enjoy the positive energy that comes with your growing sense of self empowerment combined with your growing sense of self-awareness. 

You will be more aware of the differences between the authentic person that you were meant to be compared with the adapted person that you had to become to “fit in” with other people and you will now feel  more ready to reconnect with your real and original personality.

Still more work ahead

You will also be more aware of the parts of your life where you are still facing blockages and barriers.

As your awareness grows in level four you will be able to see and talk about protector characters (inner selves) who could still could be disempowering you or blocking you  from making the changes you want to make or who still leave you still feeling disempowered (and aware that there is still much work ahead of you!)

You will now be more aware of how and why all this is going on inside you.

Often you will find you are able to do this from the aware position without actually having to go into a dialogue session every time.

You will be more aware of your old fears, pain, guilt, shame and vulnerability and can identify characters (selves) who still want to take over to help deal in the old way with whatever these negative feelings are doing to your life.

You will be reasonably comfortable sharing your self-awareness with other advanced group members. 

You will be comfortable about giving and receiving feedback from other advanced group members

Your bottom line issues

Everyone has bottom line issues, usually six or more. No one ever gets rid of them, even at level 4 that you  will find it hard to become fully aware of them.  Even when you are aware of you will continue to work on them  for the rest of your life.

Bottom line or key life issues for most people include::

·          self-esteem issues,

·            boundary issues,

·            balancing or moderation issues,

·          reality issues,

·          power and control issues,

·            positive self-nurturing issues