Discovering My True Self Changed Everything for me.

A Tribute to Miriam Dyak, Voice Dialogue Teacher

Miriam Dyak 1946 to 2022, photo by Cassandra Cosme De Pree

"We are,, in the most profound way, whole, complete, and perfect beingsalready. In that belief...we then create the foundationforn mastering any and all of life'schallenges.... .When we feel most disintegrated, it is exactly when we most need to connect to the power and energizing belief that our essential selves are divinely perfect and complete." Oprah Winfrey

I was hoping to take a Voice Dialogue course with Miriam Dyak nextyear. She, unfortunately, passed in July2022.

In our very brief email exchanges, her spirit and compassion resonated greatly withme. Upon being informed of her crossing over, I re-read my email correspondence with her and was inspired to pay tribute to her—with only a few minutes of her time, she was able to inspire me to continue to focus on helping others and myself to lead a life from our TrueSelf.

Below are extracts of our correspondence that focus on why we both believe the TrueSelf,f or the Aware Ego Process, as Miriam calls it, is the most important part of the healingprocess. Miriam pointed out that it is not enough to only be aware of the TrueSelf;, we must learn how to lead our lives from our True Self.

Mariam to Mark: In comparing Voice Dialogue to IFS

Monday., May 2,2022, at, 00:1, Miriam Dyak, wrote (notice the magical number):

Hi Mark,

What follows is the briefest of explanations based on my understanding and experience (39 years with Voice Dialogue vs. a couple of IFS sessions, watching videos, and reading), so please don't take this as definitive.

Voice Dialogue is a consciousness-based andrelationally basedd practice that can be used intherapy, coaching,g or the arts. The goal is to become aware of which selves are dominant and which are disowned and learn how to make choices that are informed by theseparts but not determined by them. The focus of the work could include trauma, and it could also be about any and all other aspects of lived experience. The selves are not necessarily pre-named and could be involved in any part of the client's life.

Essential to the process is that the client moves physically to become a particular inner self, the facilitator has a conversation with that self, and then the client moves back to the place where they started in order to separate from theself. .This means that for most of the time in thesession,n the facilitator is talking to a part or self that is not a person who has agreed to do therapy withthem— this requires a different set of assumptions and a different set of good manners on the part of the facilitator for the process to work well. The main goal of Voice Dialogue work is to establish an "Aware Ego process," which involves holding the tension between opposites, being able to feel them and understand them,seeinge beyond what they can see, and notbeinge compelled to be them.

I do hope this ishelpful.,
Miriam

Miriam to Mark: Becoming aware of the inner selvess is not enough to create an entirely new consciousness

“So glad to hear what I sent you proved helpful. I'll just add one morething— that Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone evolved Voice Dialogue over many years and came to understand that the Aware Ego process was and is the most essential part of the work. Separating out fromourselvess is useful in helping the client learn to hold center between opposite parts of themselves, which is what the Aware Ego is and does. Becoming aware of inner selves is not on its own enough to create an entirely new consciousness and new position from which to act.”

Mark to Miriam: The true self is the biggest part of transformational healing.

“Thankyouu so much,Miriam…. .I 100% agree that the Aware Ego Process, or as I call it, "The TrueSelf,f" is the biggest part of transformationhealing. I would really likeyou tou understand that I can tell I would be able to learn a lot from you about connecting and enhancing this area.

Here are my thoughts from a section of a draft of my workbook where I am comparing and pointing out that in virtually all other healing modalities, theselff is front and center to the healing process.”

SELF

Perhaps the most important integration is the separation of ourtrue selff from our thinking mind (ego) or falseself. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT Therapy), this separation is positioned as two different perspectives: the conceptualized mind perspective and the observer mindperspective.

Many of us do not recognize this separation until later inlife,e and the day I recognized the separation is the day that I often refer to as becomingconscious—II noticed the realme,e or mytrue self. Gabor Mate often notes that the true trauma of developmental trauma is when we lose the perspective of ourtrue selves. This is when we believe our thinking mind is also ourtrue selves,s and this is called cognitive fusion inACT—thee fusion of our thinking mind and our observer mindtrue selff.

When we are fused, we are often led by apartt of our thinking mind or ego/conceptualized e.g.,. ourcontrollerr orstickerr) versus beingself-led. Ourpartt controls automatically what we do versus having the perspective of understanding this is only one option or way of seeing the event and choosing our reaction.

Many exercises have been created to help you understand more about the observer perspective and some of the characteristics of the observer mind and the thinking mind (see Cognitive for moreinformation). Awareness or mindfulness (see Attention for more information) is one of the most important properties of the TrueSelf.

The thinkingmind,d on the otherhand,d often is caught up in cognitive errors, old-programmed beliefs, evaluating, avoidance of emotions and hurtful reminders, andreason-giving. When combined with fusion, the thinking mind operates based on what Steven Hayes (founder of ACT) callsF.E.A.R.R = Fusion, Evaluating,Avoidance, and, Reason Giving.

The true self is fundamental in most therapies,spiritual traditions, and self-development

From my studies of the original works of many of the best psychological therapies today, there is a common theme that the "client" starts becoming better when they become aware (conscious) of theirtrue self.

True Self in Internal Family Systems

I first came across this in Internal Family Systems (IFS) when Richard Swartz, the founder of IFS, noticed that his clients would start to really get better when they began calling one of thepartss theirtrue self. In IFS, one of the assumptions is that humans have a multiplicity ofminds. One of these minds that is in control of all the other minds is the mind we call the TrueSelf. In IFS, the True Self is not only a psyche mind but is also aspiritually basedd concept.

True Self in ACT

When I read StevenHayese's first books on ACT, it was the first mainstream accepted psychological therapy that acknowledged the True Self and its foundationalprinciples. However, in ACT,selff-ascontext,t or the observerself,f is differentiated from the conceptualizedself. Same concepts, different terms.

True Self in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Incognitive behavioral therapyy, the founder of CBT, AronBeck,k also came close to the concept of thetrue selffimplicitly. The story goes thatone dayy Beck asked his client what she wasthinking. Beck was assuming she had somesexually relateddFreudiandthinking. She replied that she was thinking about what Beck thought ofher. This led Beck to “discover” that people had thoughts,s" and if he could be aware of those thoughts, then he could understand what they werethinking.

He saw this as an additional tool in psychodynamic therapy (think couch therapy), but the traditional psychiatrists at the time would not allow him to consider this as part of their psychodynamic therapy, so Beck had to name his therapy somethingelse,e and he came up withcognitive therapyy,which,h when added tobehavior therapyy (thinkPavlov'svdogs),) becamecognitive behavioral therapy.

The interesting thing about Beck was that he created an exercise of mindfulness i.e.,. rediscoveringit). He would set a time and write down what he was thinkingabout,t say everyhour. He was essentially watching his cognitivemind,d or conceptualizedmind,d using his observer self i.e.,. who was watching hismind?). However, Beck did not concentrate on the observerself. Beck concentrated on whatthe thoughts were.

However, implicit in practicing watching your thoughts is the observer who is watching yourthoughts,s and in order to increase theabilitys to watch your thoughts, Beck gave exercises that are very similar to mindfulness-basedpractices. When you read Cognitive Therapy andPersonality Disordersr, you begin to recognize that Beck was able to trace most pathologies to erroneous beliefss” orschemas. So inCBT,T concentrating on changing how the mind thinks is the primary goal.

True Self in Dialectic Behavior Therapy

Similarly, in Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT), founder Marsha Linehan was a practicing Zen Buddhist and found that patients benefited from mindfulnesspractices. Therefore, mindfulness is one of the 4 foundational skills of any DBT therapy. Mindfulness implicitly has theselff,awarenesss, and the thinking mind as 3 components in order to practice mindfulness.

True Self in Buddhism and Christianity

In Buddhism, the "no-self" is equivalent to the True Self or observerself. So in all 3 mainstream psychotherapies today, the True Self being aware of the thinking mind (monkey mind sometimes thought in meditation) is a centralconcept. In Buddhism, it isno-self. In Christianity, it is sometimes referred to as the "soul" or "spiri.".

True Self inOtherr Modalities: PQ, RIM, Clear Beliefs, Canfield

In Positive Intelligence(PQ),) which is a mental fitness program,self-commandd is central to thetheme,e with PQ reps (mindfulness practice) andsaboteurss (breakdown of the top thinking mind issues)beinge central to the overallprogram.

In Clear Beliefs the observer self is the True Self; with Gabor Mate's CompassionateInquiry,y the observer is the True Self; in Dr. Deborah Sandella's Regenerating Images in Memory(RIM),) the observer self is called presence,e"or,r from her book Goodbye Hurt and Pain, the "human spirit, the intelligence of life itself that expresses as pure awareness and senses there is more to you than merehumanity."

JackCanfield,d in his successprinciples,s promotes the concept of 100%Responsibility—whenn you are 100% Responsible, you need to be able to observe your thoughts, feelings, sensations, andbehaviors—whichh is similar to the Self-Command concept in PQ, which is a form of the TrueSelf—thee one doing theobserving. In Somatic Experiencing, the True Self is often referred to as the "Felt Sens.".

Qualities of the True Self

My thoughts about the True Self are a combination of the ACTobserver,d the IFS TrueSelf,f andspirituality. While I am in agreement with Steven Hayes and the secular concepts of the Observer Self, I believe much more in the IFS, Clear Beliefs, RIM, Compassionate Inquiry, and spiritual sense of the True Self being connected and part of the big universal energy ofwholeness.

I believe that ourtrue selvess are innately divine, whole, andperfect. Assuch,h our personal evolution is to chip away at the plaster that has hidden ordisconnectedt us from being ourtrue selves. It's like the true story of the Golden Buddha at Wat Traimit(Bangkok),) which was covered in plaster to hide it from invaders for centuries and treated as an ordinary statue until one day it was dropped and a broken plaster revealed that under all the plaster was a5,500-kilograms real goldBuddhaa.

Because our True Selves are pure and complete and connected to universal source energy, our True Self's innate qualities are best described by IFS asthe 8e C's and 5 P's, though we are not limited by just these aspects. The 8 C's are curiosity, compassion, clarity (wisdom), connectedness, creativity, confidence, and calm. The 5 P's are patience, presence, persistence, perspective, and playfulness.

The more we become our true selves, the more we are able to act from these innate qualities. Our true selves are already compassionate or playful. We don't need to learn those qualities; we just need to become more of our true selves, and we become more compassionate and more playful.

Warmly,

Mark