Hal Stone > Quotes

“Our judgments always have behind them a quality of righteousness.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset

“f the lion in us wishes to roar but the goat bleats instead, we must pay for this substitution in one way or another. Payment will vary: For some, it will be experienced as depression, a loss of energy and enthusiasm, or a growing unconsciousness. For others, it can be uncontrollable, seemingly irrational behavior, during which life, fortune, profession, or marriage may be risked. In its most extreme form, the price may be a physical breakdown that can lead to illness or even death.”
― Hal Stone, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“Often we allow our lives to be run by our Rule Makers, Inner Critics, Pushers, Perfectionists, Pleasers, Responsible Parents, and other selves. When we do, no real choices are available to us. We must continue to live our lives by their rules. We call this collection of primary selves our Operating Ego. When this Operating Ego is in charge, we are not driving our own psychological cars. Instead, they are driven by whichever of our primary selves is the strongest at the moment. Our disowned selves, such as our Boundary Setters, our Fun Lovers, our Daydreamers, our Self-Indulgent Princesses, our Warriors, our Incompetent Oafs, and our Irresponsible Children, are locked securely in the trunk.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset

“Instead, it is a group of subpersonalities, watched over by the protector/controller, that determines our feelings and behavior. Thus, we always have a vague fear that if the other person really knew what we were like, he or she would abandon us (even though we ourselves do not know what this mysterious “real” person is actually like).”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“She discovered she had disowned her anger so totally that when she was deeply irritated by her husband, she experienced not anger but overwhelming desire to go to sleep. When she learned her drowsiness was a substitute for natural aggression, she began to search for the anger concealed by her overwhelming fatigue. As soon as she became aware of her anger voice and learned what it wanted, the drowsiness disappeared.”
― Hal Stone, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The Inner Critic really wants you to be okay. It really wants you to make it in the world, to have a good job, to make enough money. It really wants you to be loved, to be successful, to be accepted, to have a family. It developed in your early years to protect your vulnerability by helping you to adapt to the world around you and to meet its requirements, whatever they might be. In order to do its job properly, it needed to curb your natural inclinations and to make you acceptable to others by criticizing and correcting your behavior before other people could criticize or reject you. In this way, it reasoned, it could earn love and protection for you as well as save you much shame and hurt. However, the Inner Critic often does not know when to stop. It does not know when enough is enough. It has a tendency to grow until it is out of control and begins to undermine us and to do real damage. Its original intent gets lost in the sands of time. Like a well-trained CIA agent, the Inner Critic has learned how to infiltrate every portion of your life, checking you out in minute detail for weakness and imperfections. Since its main job is to protect you from being too vulnerable in the world, it must know everything about you that might be open to attack from the outside. But, like a renegade CIA agent, at some point the Critic oversteps its bounds, takes matters into its own hands, and begins to operate on its own agenda. The information, which was originally supposed to be for your overall defense and to promote your general well-being, is now being used against you, the very person it was meant to protect. With the Critic’s original aims and purposes forgotten, all that is left for it is the excitement of the chase and the wonderfully triumphant feeling of conquest, as it operates secretly and independently of any outside control. When the Critic starts to outgrow its initial usefulness in this way, there is real trouble. At this point, the Inner Critic makes you feel dreadful about yourself. With your Inner Critic watching your every move, you become self-conscious, awkward, and ever more fearful about making a mistake. You may even stop trying because the Critic tells you that you are going about things all wrong and will undoubtedly fail. Although, underneath all of this, the Critic may want you to be so perfect that you will not fail, its effect is to block any attempts you might make. The Inner Critic kills your creativity. How can you possibly try anything new or different when you know that you will do something wrong?”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset

“Consciousness evolves on three distinctly different levels. The first is the level of awareness. The second level is the experience of the different selves, subpersonalities, or energy patterns. The third level is the development of an aware ego.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“In an attempt to eradicate these rejected selves, we make them much stronger by driving them into the unconscious where they are free to operate beyond our control.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“We humans are a most delightful mélange of energy patterns or selves.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“one of the primary issues in the evolution of consciousness is the discovery of these subpersonalities and how they operate within us.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“The traits in this person that irritate you reflect an energy pattern within you that you do not wish to integrate into your life under any circumstances.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“When we link energetically with choice and awareness, a soul connection is made. We begin to develop a new kind of sensing in which the visible and invisible worlds become as one. The world of spirit begins to open to us through the path of relationship.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“We have discovered, however, that there is remarkably little choice in the world. Unless we awaken to the consciousness process, the vast majority of us are run by the energy patterns with which we are identified or by those which we have disowned.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“The basic theme in all ten challenges is the underlying challenge to main the connection in your primary relationship. What must you do on a day-to-day basis to maintain the connection to your partner? First, you must make your relationship—and this connection—a priority. Second, when you feel uncomfortable with your partner or the relationship, or when you sense your connection weakening, don't ignore your feelings. Third, and perhaps the most important, ingredient in the recipe for a healthy, intimate, and loving relationship is time. The best way to meet all the challenges to relationship is to take time for one another and for your relationship.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“Sexuality without energetic linkage, or intimacy, is ultimately unsatisfying...Linkage carries the juice of the relationship and when it disappears, there is always something missing in the sexual connection.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“فكرة أننا تمتلك عدة أصولت مختلفة او ما يمكن أن نسميه "الأنفي الأولية" في داخلنا لم يكن بالأمر الجديد بالنسبة لي”
― Hal Stone

“The consequences of this definition are far-reaching, for if we accept this hypothesis, there will be no reason to feel bad or guilty about the way we are. Each self will be fully honored;”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“If the lion in us wishes to roar but the goat bleats instead, we must pay for this substitution in one way or another. Payment will vary: For some, it will be experienced as depression, a loss of energy and enthusiasm, or a growing unconsciousness. For others, it can be uncontrollable, seemingly irrational behavior, during which life, fortune, profession, or marriage may be risked. In its most extreme form, the price may be a physical breakdown that can lead to illness or even death.”
― Hal Stone, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The key here is that each of us must learn to feel our own vulnerability so that we can feel the vulnerability of our partners. This deepens connections. Embracing our vulnerability is a very threatening thing to do in relationship because it means meeting the other person without defenses.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“Unfortunately, having read about disowned selves, you cannot bask in the sunshine of moral superiority for too long.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“The first principle of partnership, you must have both love and a commitment to the mutual exploration of consciousness in order to convert your relationship to a partnering model.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“The idea of surrender in relationship is not to another person but to the process of relationship itself.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“When most people use the word “I,” they are in fact referring to their protector/controller.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“Susan was at a party with her husband, and she was feeling very jealous because he was showing a great deal of attention to another woman there. Susan’s strong spiritual training, however, had taught her that feelings such as anger and. jealousy can and should be transmuted. She had learned how to do this by meditating, so she meditated until she felt detached from the situation. Soon, she was no longer feeling jealousy; she was feeling love.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“Awareness is the capacity to witness life in all its aspects without evaluating or judging the energy patterns being witnessed, and without needing to control the outcome of an event.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“Your Aware Ego will not remain with you at all times because it disappears each time your primary selves take over.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset

“We must also be willing to take time to nourish connection that exists between our partners and ourselves.”
― Hal Stone, Partnering: A New Kind of Relationship

“His “psychological car” was driven at various times by his inner pusher, his pleaser, his frightened child, and his inner critic, who was always willing to let him know how inadequate he really was.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual

“we start with the basic idea that consciousness is not an entity—it is a process.”
― Hal Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual