Sense of Soul - Connecting to the Ark Within Using Voice Dialogue

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Today on Sense of Soul I have Adelheid Oesch, she is a counselor, teacher, and writer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. A mother of four, Adelheid spent the first part of her adult life raising her family and developing her career as a partner in the family art and antiques business. She later developed a second career as the founder of 'L'Atelier du Dialogue Intérieur' (Voice Dialogue Workshop), where she has been teaching ‘Voice Dialogue' and guiding people on their path of self-discovery and spiritual growth since 1993. Adel­heid's expertise in ‘Voice Di­a­logue’ has been cul­ti­vat­ed through years of ded­i­cat­ed study and collaboration with some of the most influential figures in the field. She has worked close­ly with Dr. Hal Stone and Dr. Sidra Stone, the cre­ators and de­vel­op­ers of ‘Voice Di­a­logue, of the theory and practice of the Psychol­o­gy of selves and of the Aware Self’. Her book The Ark Within is a poetic yet pragmatic book guides you to rediscover yourself as a living Noah's Ark—a three-dimensional volume of conscious presence, stable and vast enough to actively embrace and support each facet of your being. She masterfully weaves together the spiritual wisdom of the world with the ground-breaking insights of 'Voice Dialogue' psychology. Continue Your Initiatory Journey with the Exercise Manual for The Ark Within- This practical companion guide helps you anchor the profound insights of Adelheid Oesch's groundbreaking book, The Ark Within, into tangible, life-changing practices. Both books are available on Amazon! https://www.dialogueinterieur.com www.senseofsoulpodcast.com www.newrealitytv.com

Hey Soul Seekers, it's Shanna. Journey with me to discover how people around the world awaken to their true sense of soul. Now go grab your coffee and open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Hey listeners, I wanted to tell you that you can now watch Sense of Soul on a new platform called New Reality TV, a platform of like-minded podcasts where we all desire to raise the consciousness of humanity. Go check it out, listen to one of my episodes,

and don't forget to follow me and share this with some of your friends or family or whoever you feel needs it. And today on Sense of Soul, I have Adelaide Osch. She's a counselor, teacher and writer based in Switzerland. She's a mother of four and spent the first part of her life adulting, raising her family and developing her career as a partner in the family business of art and antiques. her career as a partner in the family business of art and antiques. She later developed a second career as the founder of Voice Dialogue Workshop where she has been teaching voice dialogue and guiding people in their path of self-discovery and spiritual growth since 1993. She's joining us today to tell us about her book, The Ark Within, where she weaves together spiritual wisdom of the world

with the groundbreaking insights of voice dialogue psychology. So please welcome Adelaide. It's so nice to meet you. Well, I'm very happy too, because when I read about you a bit on the net, I felt many common points in our way to see life and things we aspire to. And so I wanted also to thank you for inviting me and thank you for what you do. I love this title, Sense of Soul, because it's what's

so much missing that every person could have a sense of a soul or his soul. Yeah, I agree. Another thing I saw that we had in common was I'm also a mother of four. Right, that's true. Yes. And that means an experience of everyday life, which is not so easy, but also wonderful. And a lot lots of experiences, but a bit of hard work too. Yeah, I'd say my kids have been one of my greatest teachers. Well, I would agree on this point, and it's not finished though. They are not very young anymore, my children, because I'm much older than you, but they are still teaching me things. Yeah. Now, do they live in Switzerland with you? but they are still teaching me things. So yeah. Now, do they live in Switzerland with you?

Well, they live in Switzerland. Yes. Nice. I've never been, but it's a place that I often hear is a wonderful place to live. It's very nice. It's calm. I mean, as long as you keep to the law, you feel safe and nobody bothers you. You are pretty much free, in fact, to live your own life in peace. Yes.

Yeah, I actually just looked up the safest places to live in the world and Switzerland was on the list. That might be true, I would say. Unless you live in a very far out place where there is no town or society and that might be different. Wow. Well, I envy you because it seems like we're in a time right now that so many people live in fear. Right. And you know that fear causes a lot of chaos. Right. And I mean the world when you listen to what happens, it's fearful because so many terrible things happen. Yeah. terrible things happen. At the same time, we have to keep up the light in our souls, hearts and minds. So yeah, that's what we can do at any moment.

Yeah, I've thought a lot about that lately. I've always been one of those people who, if I could, I would save every person I meet. But I realized that really my responsibility was to heal myself and heal myself. That changes everything around me. It's more of an individual journey, isn't it? Well, it is to at least to start to start it is an individual journey that can become a universal journey in time, but it's one has really to dive into oneself in one to one's own suffering and into one's own light also, so that we have access to the suffering in light of others and can help them to connect to both suffering and light and inner light. Yeah, I like how you said that. It reminds me of what I also feel is important is being able to be vulnerable and share your story with other people. And that also helps light up others and saying, I'm not alone. Yeah, quite. Because if we don't share about our own vulnerability and trials, we are somehow separated from from, and maybe they don't feel listened to,

and they might not listen on their side. So I must say in my own life, I learned a lot about through my trials, because it's by knowing my own suffering that I started to really understand the suffering of other people. And so, and as you said, it's a personal journey because there is no other starting location than ourselves. We live in our own world, a universal world, but a subjective world also. And so everything roots in us. And that's why our inner world has to be cleaned somehow and also invited and loved. love. I saw something that is in your book. Everyone has an inbuilt North Star and can hold

the world in his Ark within. Yes, that's my big faith in fact, and perhaps also an evidence somehow, and perhaps also an evidence somehow, because this question of the arc within, the French original is called the arc of the heart, but also seen as a sacred matrix for ourselves, but also for the world. but also for the world. Because although the body is small, this inner space can be totally useless, huge. And we can shelter in it. That's what I teach and what I experience. You can shelter in this inner realm, this inner womb, you can shelter your own personality, your trials, your sufferings, your beauty, but also the whole world or another person who needs it.

So that's what I've mainly in fact developed. Beautiful. It's very beautiful. You know, when I read the Bible with new eyes, you know, after I had kind of shed some of the conditions that I had been told, I realized that a lot of the Bible was allegorical. It was, you know, lessons that you could find within many stories. And even when I tell stories a lot, you know, to my children, if I'm trying to teach them something that I had gone through, you know, sometimes the story becomes like a metaphor in some way for things. And I love that you've used the arc as a metaphor or an allegorical story. And I'd love to know what inspired

you to find within you to share this story. Well, it's a long story because I'm already the very old lady. But I think it started in my childhood, in fact, because my main interest has always been in spirituality. My first link with spirituality has been the North American Plain Indians and the cosmic vision of the great spirit and of a spirit in every plant, every animal, every person. Also, I understood it when I was a child. And this taught me that everything is a person. Every energy, every animal, every plant, every even inanimate object, because if you relate to them in this way,

they share with you and respect is mutual, it changes completely the outlook. And that's one of the big things for me in voice dialogue that this can be developed in fact, that people can start to have access to their inner energies as inner persons and relate to them. What I would say about the gospels, I would say, I have gone through many spiritually deep spiritual traditions like Sufism, Buddhism, Christianism, of course, also, and even other tribal approaches.

And at one point I realized how I would say Jesus is the most relational to his divine father or to the people he is sort of interacting with. And so this taught me many things that relationship is what heals us. Loving relationship is what heals us in the sense of a true linkage with ourselves and other people. You know what I loved about Jesus? He was kind of defiant in many ways. And I have gone through my journey where sometimes I felt defiant against society or my family and their beliefs or even the school systems, just feeling defiant. And I saw it as such a negative thing. But in fact, now I mean, I've been raised as a Catholic, but my parents have left us really totally free and they were themselves interested in all kinds of spiritualities,

in fact. Yeah. But I like how he kind of was showing us to shake things up. Like we needed change. And he was really trying to teach people to see the kingdom within themselves. Right, completely, in fact. And of course, I've written another book, which is in French and is not translated. And the translation of the title is about and the translation of the title is about dreaming God in the first and the 21st century. That's the title. And it's a sort of a story where I live half at the time of Jesus and in relationship with events in the actual life I have lived now and putting

sort of the events into a parallel. And this was, I love to do that, to make things real, that things are not outside us. When you read something, some spiritual text, or parable, it's talking to you. It's about you. It's not about, it's not something that's outside ourselves. It's direct. And I think this is very important. Yeah. And you talk about in your book, in your practice, the voice dialogue. Can you tell me about that approach? So this approach was created, developed by two American psychologists called Dr. Hull and Sidra Stone, developed it in the 17s or perhaps a bit earlier together. They've written a number of books which are

very precise and insightful. And the proposition is that every energy or every feeling, every behavior, every sensation is in relation with an inner self. And that these selves bid what one calls the personality to start with a survival personality because you have different groups of selves. You have the inner child, which is the sensitive self that is at the source of your vulnerability, your sensitivity, but also I would say your innocence, your love, or to start with. But then as life is not so easy, even from the womb onwards, we develop other selves, which are protective selves,

called primary selves. And these are either survival strategies, self-protection, or resources that allow us to find our place in society. So the sensitive self-self are hidden before behind the primary self. Each primary self has a hidden or denied opposite. In fact, there's a polarization in our psyche

between what we choose to put forth and what we reject or leave dormant in ourselves. So in this, this is already a voice dialogue or at least the way I do it, which might differ on certain points from what Al and Sidra stones have taught over many times has passed. They also have evolved Sidra stone is still alive

and Hal died a few years ago. And the daughter of Hal Stone is now the person who will continue the work of Hal and Sidra in fact. continue the work of Harlan Sidra, in fact. So the other particularity, which is really unique to voice dialogue, I would say, is the development in the center. The cells are like a mandala in the psychic, in fact, where the primary cells, the vulnerable cells,

the denied cells are sort of rotating inside us. And the center point is what they call, one can call the process of an aware self. And this process is in the center of the mandala effect. It, it's not a self, it's not a sub personality. It's basically an empty space in which the contents of our own life and heart come and go, in fact. We identify with something and it appears in our mandala. We disidentify from it and it goes. So there is a spiritual work in this voice dialogue, where you learn to identify consciously with what inhabits you, separate it from you so that you can have a relationship to it without judgment, with compassion. And so you can sort of incarnate into your own energies

incarnate into your own energies consciously, really feeling things, then you go out of it, you look at this self and you start, you can start to relate to it. What it reminds me of, and I'm a visual person, so I'm visualizing the labyrinth, you know, going into, you know, walking into the labyrinth and walk out of the labyrinth. Right. And so going in, we learn compassion because we realize our suffering, we realize also our assets and our own beauty and our own life and our divine source. And when we dis-identify, we detach from inner contents. So there's somehow a Buddhist aspect in it

that you balance compassion in one hand and detachment in the other. And in the center, you develop this calm, open presence where you can, which is the womb of consciousness where you can relate to everything from your own center. It's so true. Adelaide, I can tell you that the practice of non-attachment and impermanence has always led me to compassion. And I never would have thought that. If someone would have told me that,

it wouldn't have made sense because how can know, how can you detach and find compassion? But that is where it always landed me. Well, I think you can, that's very true, and you can enter either way. You can enter through detachment or you can enter through compassion. But to be fully present, you have to keep both. It was one of the reasons, because I have been very deeply into Tibetan Buddhism, one of the reasons I saw straight away that voice dialogue, when I discovered it, would allow us to exercise these two aspects, deepen them, lift them, incarnate them. And so for me, it can be a psychological path, but it's

more a spiritual path and the path to universal love, starting with self-love, accepting, inviting our own selves into our own detachment and compassion. Because all these selves we shelter, in fact, they are the people that are, that populate the world, because everybody has them. So even the ones we don't want, like people who hurt others or do damage, they have to be invited into consciousness and into love. And by and by when practicing voice dialogue, you create a family or a tribe or even a whole world with which you can relate in peace. I remember hearing that story in a book I was reading. It might have been Brian Weiss, I think. He was talking about a boy who had been very abused and he had, you know, had no love from his parents and his mother died very young and he had no one to care

for him. Everyone in the crowd was so emotional about this little boy And at the end he said, and that boy's name was Hitler. And at the end of the speaking, a woman came up to the man and said, can I hug you? And when she did, her sleeve came back and she had the numbers of a concentration camp. And she said, you made me feel compassion for someone I never thought I could. But it was his little self, right? That little boy that had a lot of pain. Quite.

And at any moment when somebody, I would say, when you feel somebody is offensive or whatever else you would reject, if you start envisioning this person as a newborn child, opening her eyes, his eyes on the world and stretching out his arms to be loved and to love. This changes completely the vision you have of the other person, even if on the outside, it might be a very destructive person in time.

Yeah, because they didn't come here with that pain. It's a mystery somehow, but this can completely coexist. An inner divine core that is still pure and innocent and unharmed and an outside shell. I had used or put up a metaphor about this, which I call the three circles, through which you have to look more deeply. The first circle is the circle of the primary selves, of your resources, of your protections, your defense mechanisms, your capacities. And that's what we usually see of people. And to know the person better, understand her, you have to look through this circle. And behind you have the suffering circle.

The outside circle can be full of thorns. When you look through it, you see the suffering self. And then your rejection of the first circle somehow melts away, because you feel compassion when you see this suffering. But there's a second circle, the sensitive circle, and there is always suffering in it for a human being. And then you have to look through it also to see the luminous self, the self of light, the divine self, the innocent child, the source child somehow. And then something different happens, that seeing this light through two first circles, you open a window in your own heart and spirit that can help the person to see herself in the same light. You know, what's very interesting is that I had practiced something very similar in my own life

with my close relationships just by pausing and truly asking myself what this emotion is inside of me and giving myself space to react and seeing them in this way. What I discovered was in doing that, I was learning more about myself. I almost tricked myself because I was doing it for my relationships, but what happened was I was seeing that a lot of it was hidden inside of me. Right, because like, in fact, it's like Socrates said, it's sort of etched on the template Delphi. Know thyself and you will know the world and the gods.

So know thyself and you will know everything. It's happening. It's in the air. The time is now. We're all waking up. We're waking up. We're all waking up. It's all shifting. New vibrations. It's you. It's you. It's me. It's all of us. Together. A new time. A new day. A new energy. A new energy. New reality. Awaken with us. Awaken with us. Awaken with us. A new day, a new energy, a new energy, a new reality. Awaken with us. Awaken with us. Awaken with us. NewRealityTV.com. So this is really wonderful in many ways.

And when we practice voice dialogue, every different voice can be facilitated. It will leave, we will leave the center place, which is a place of the aware self process to take another place in the room, a different place for each subpersonality, each inner self. And each inner self will be facilitated as a person so that one can understand everything about this aspect of oneself and

see it with clarity, see it with compassion, and see it with detachment when we return to the center. So it's really a sort of staging of the mandala of the self and of the personality. Because in fact it's also a human, a wonderful human asset. I have a little kitten, I have always loved cats in fact. And she of course, she feels if she's hungry or sleepy or she wants to be stroked. She knows this very precisely, better than I do. In fact, sometimes I'm hungry, but I don't go to eat. But she cannot say she's called Ling. I, Ling, am hungry. She cannot be this witness to herself. She cannot hear and mirror her own

self. Or look at it in the right way. So that's what we are able to do and what you did, in fact, become your own mirroring consciousness. If you facilitate, for example, your inner critic who makes you guilty, who is never content with what you do, well, you realize after a while that it's a primary self which tries to protect you from doing something that would alienate the acceptance and the love of other people. In fact, so this inner critic is an anxious inner parent, in fact, that has monitored your whole life from the moment you were conceived in the womb to adapt you to a world so that you can survive at least in your identity, in your body, of course, to start with, but also in your identity later. And once you realize that it is a protector and a very anxious parent that is so afraid that you might not be a good person, might not succeed in life, might not find your own path

or just your place in the world, then you understand the hidden vulnerability of a primary self, in fact. And the moment, because primary cells are protectors, they look outside, in fact. If you compare this to an old castle, they are on the walls of the castle looking at the fields and at the enemies to protect the sensitive people in the castle.

So they don't look inside, in fact. And they are warriors and they are not aware of their own fragility because otherwise they cannot be warriors, they cannot be protectors. And it's the moment when the inner critic realizes his own fear and also his own love that he is so offensive because he wants to save the inner child. And once a critic understands this, that he has such fear and such desire that a child would feel good and be accepted, then he becomes a human being inside you. And not only an automatic protector, that's when the inner critic transforms and becomes an ally, a discerning energy, which is perhaps his original function, in fact. Wow. So this is the aware self.

The aware self will understand this, and understand that the critic, if the critic is speaking, hammering, it's because I'm not here to take care of myself, to step out of judgment, to step into compassion for the inner critic and for whatever I've done, that my work is to understand why, what am I protecting this way or what is the critic protecting in this way? And it's this understanding that will create, I would say a linkage with these inner selves because they are on automatic gear.

Firing off. inner selves because they are on automatic gear. Firing off. Yeah. If you compare this with the gear of the car, the aware self process is the neutral place from which you gear into this and into that, forward and backwards, slow, fast. And so this return to the neutral articulation is from where you can relate to the different selves. And by and by, in fact, this inner family, it's like you would pass

the talking stick they have in the tribes. And everybody listens, all the selves listen. And we turn around and the selves are facilitated and the others understand more about themselves, about others. And by and by you will have a peaceful inner tribe. The difference will remain, the functions remain, but there is a sort of consensus that we are part of it, we do it together, we are accepted, we have our home inside this person, we can relate to her, and there is a presence inside, we are not alone, because all these selves, these voices are alone. They speak automatically and they are alone. Like everybody in the world is alone somewhere. So this really is like building up a model inside us, but that can be sort of extended to everyone. Yeah, I always find that, that the smallest challenge and journey that I've overcome,

I could see it personally and I could see it sometimes in my household play out and then also how it could be healing outside of my house. You know talk, if you could talk on holy memory. Because I want to say that my daughter came into my youngest daughter came into this world. I mean, I remember six months old, her trying to put something together and couldn't and the frustration in her and how hard she was on herself to perfectly do this. And I never have ever required perfection from her. And now she's 12 and still has this. This isn't something I think she can find in her inner child because she came here with that. Well, you know, we don't come like blank pages because we have the heritage of our, well,

I mean, millenniums of ancestors who have lived all sorts of things. So of course, this is not all present, but we have certain things are more recent in our heritage, psychological heritage, in our own psyche or also in the body, in our cells, in our DNA. And so we come with certain trends already and also with like a big sack of little grains, you know, and some will be watered and will sort of sprout in our life and some others will just remain dormant but can develop at another time. So we come with a whole background. Now what I would say about your little daughter. Little stubborn bag. because our first duty is to survive. Because if we don't survive, there will be nothing.

And to survive, we have to develop assets and self-power, in fact. And powerlessness is what is most frightening because it resembles death. Powerlessness is the closest to death because for sure the day we die, we will not feel powerful. And so the child, the frustration you describe is how do I get out of the powerlessness to put these two things together?

So it can be little things like that, that are not life-menacing, but it can be also bigger things. And that's one of the things we have to learn, is to return to trust and to giving oneself over to trust when things go wrong, which is very, very difficult. Yeah. So that nature and nurture thing. And I have, you know, I'm sure you can relate. All of my kids are so different, even though they were raised by me and their dad. I am a different parent today than I was 20 years ago

with my older kids. I chose their religion before they were born. My older kids, my younger, I let her lead me, you know, what do you like? We could do what you like. With my older kids, I chose a lot of their likes, like you're going to play baseball. And so it's interesting to see now that I've done that. And now that I don't do that, how much my older kids have to undo to find their own and it's taking a

little longer for them to find, you to find their own likes because of that. Yeah, for sure. That's true. We know so little about relationships and raising children. We know nothing, in fact. It was never taught to us, was it? And the examples we had were not necessarily satisfactory. So, well, for sure, if I had known what I know today, I would have made things very differently. I would have made much less mistakes, but I didn't.

And then when I look at my life, I think, well, I learned mainly from my trials, in fact, and so will they have to learn from their own trials also. And it also, I believe really that we have inner work to do as parents, you and me as a mother, to undo our own fetters inside. And this will liberate our children also. And it will be more effective perhaps than trying to counsel them because they are not always open to that, are they? Yeah, because I want to bring them the ark. I want to bring them the ark so they never have to suffer. But realistically looking on my journey too, it is through the obstacles, the challenges, the suffering that I was able to grow. Yeah, quite, quite. And that has a wonderful side because our trials can be fertile instead of

be fertile instead of deadening. Because we can build from our understandings and experiences something different, something new. Yeah. Why did you use the arc as a metaphor? Like what does that mean to you? Well, it means a lot. I think this has changed one of the things that changed my life, in fact. I discovered voice dialogue only at 50. I had a first career. And in 1980, my youngest son was seven. Well, just a moment before, a few months before that, my neighbor that lived in the flat below mine, a woman who had several children and whom I liked very much. She was very friendly and open. And suddenly she had a very nasty

cancer. And I felt so sad about this with her young children and hoping that she would heal and survive. And it came to me when I was meditating in the early morning to put her inside myself, inside my own heart, sitting there and sort of feeling that I would provide her a moment of quiet peace, of love, of sheltering, of presence, of light, that was something I could do for her. This just came, that's the North Star somehow, that you don't know, you follow it, or you try to follow it, but the road has many turns, but still you follow the star, even if you don't know it. And a few months later, my youngest son had an accident, and he was lying in coma with a very thin perspective to survive. He was monitored for

breathing. He was, uh, uh, theorized bodily to, to be still. He had an inflammation of the brain. an inflammation of the brain. He had a head trauma in fact. And so of course you can surely imagine what this is like for a mother. And so I thought I'll do with him all I can do what I did so short while ago with my neighbor. And I sort of made it very small. I thought I have to put him into the womb again and we start afresh. I put him inside and I shelter him. I give him love and light and peace. And this, of course, I don't know. I have no proof that he dishelped him, although he came out of coma and healed his first time. But at least it was very great help for me, because I was thinking in this situation, he doesn't need an anxious mother, does he? And so being in a sort of active receptivity, in fact,

in a sort of active receptivity, in fact, because it's something that you just open your space and sort of put a person here, it was my son, but it can be aspects of yourself too, or some any kind of person, or even the whole world if you want. And so this made me look at the aware self process in this way. In fact, it was about 10 years later that I discovered voice dialogue. So much for your question about how this question of the arc. The arc within wasn't written yet. The French book came out in 99. That was almost 20 years after. 25 years? Yeah. I have a kid born in 99, so I know it's 25 years. Exactly. And so, in fact, but this shaped my way to consider my own body, my own self, my own psyche and what is my relationship, body, heart and mind? What can it be towards myself and towards the world? Oh, yeah. And there's probably a lot of trust in faith that goes along

with, you know, the power to be able to believe that I can, I can do this. I believe I have faith and trust. Quite and therefore because you can do it anytime. You need nothing to do that. Just your faith. And just doing it just sitting there or lying there, opening your heart it just sitting there or lying there, opening your heart and welcoming what this suffering inside and of course this faith is linked to a divine axis, in fact the axis of the self. You look at the cross, you have the axis of your rooting, of your verticality, of this link between heaven and earth, or God and yourself. And when you open your arms, in fact, you embrace the horizontal plane with compassion. So it's a marriage of these two lines, in fact. Oh my gosh, I love how you do that. You are a good storyteller to be able to bring a visual

of something that we can relate to. Yes, I think metaphors or examples, experiences illustrate this best. So it was about 10 years later after this event, this accident of my youngest son, that I participated in a four-year training and in the second year because it had been my dream from my adolescence at least onwards to do something to help people, do something, contribute to something positive in the world. And this training was mainly about rebuffing and relational skills. But then in the second year, it introduced voice dialogue.

And at the very first exercise, I instantly knew I had found my calling, my path, my tool. And so immediately I trained with Hal and Sidra Stone, partly in Europe, partly in the States. And after in 1993, I decided after about three years of intensive practice and training, especially in voice dialogue, I decided to leave the family business and open my own teaching and practice. So I switched completely from this first profession

to the second profession I'm still doing now. Well, we have another similarity because I left my family business as well. Yeah. So we are meant to share. This was quite totally new life. The children were just out of the nest. And so that's how I could do this training also leave the business because what I'm doing now wasn't as bringing as much income as what I did before. But one can wonder about what's the similarity between these two professions. For me, it's very clear. It's the quest for the treasure. As a child, I was questing the treasure in the woods. it was feathers, roots, stones, other things, which

seemed symbolic to me and I could relate to. And then I was questing the treasure in the works of art. And then now I'm questing the treasure in the persons, in fact, so that they become aware of their own spiritual treasure, their own spiritual love. And I'm amazed how many people don't love themselves. They hate themselves, in fact. And if you don't love yourself in a compassionate way, you cannot love others, can you? And so this is really crucial in many ways.

So the main work I do now is bring them to see their own beauty, their own depth. And I've developed several devices for reparenting the inner child from scratch, from even before the conceiving to the present day. This child is always present in us and is waiting for somebody who will love this child, inner child, unconditionally. Yeah. And there are only two persons who can do that or decide to do that. That's your own aware self can decide this. To love yourself unconditionally,

that doesn't mean that you will agree to whatever you do wrong, but leave out any judgment about it and replace judgment by understanding. And then there is God himself, because by definition I would say God is the person who could love you unconditionally. So these are the two persons, in fact, who can do so, because other people, they have conditions always, as everybody, as I have myself, in fact, also. When you talk about the ark, are we talking about Noah's ark? Are we talking about the ark of the covenant kind of ark? Well, I was more talking about Noah's arc.

Well, it could be the covenant's arc too. But as a simple metaphor, Noah's arc is a beautiful metaphor in many ways. Because you have the flood, well, our trials, the distraction, the fear also. Then building the arc is the flood, well, our trials, the destruction, the fear also. Then building the ark is the womb, is the ship, is the body, is the heart, why not the mind?

And you can shelter there for the trip through the flood. And so it's, I've used two main symbols, in fact, in the in the story of the Ark Within, which is, in fact, the story of my groundbreaking life experiences and spiritual experiences, not to tell my life, but just to show some energetic transformations. And so the other basic metaphor I've used is Robinson Crusoe, because I don't know if you've read that. I don't, no.

Robinson Crusoe was revolted against his family and his father and he decided to go into the world on a ship, but the ship suffered a shipwreck. He was the only survivor on an inhabited island with, of course, some material that had been washed to the beach from the shipwrecked ship. And then he builds a life here alone on the island and he has to compose with the trees, the plants and the nourish himself. So this story, it's the first book, real book, although I read it in the short form, I read when I was eight years old. And it seemed so much my own life, you know, having to survive, having to live alone on an island. And then at some point, some savage tribe who practice probably being men eaters.

Okay. Oh, cannibals. Yeah. Cannibals. Yes, right. Exactly. At one point in this story, and I use this in the Ark Within, Robinson Crusoe heard this tribe coming.

He heard their chants, their chanting and their savage cries. And he heard somebody running up towards him, up the hill. And so he went to meet this person, understanding that she was flying from these savages. And it was a child. Well, in the story, the child, it's a child in my story. In the story, it's an adult, I think, or a young man called Friday. And so in the arc within, there is a story between Aurora, who represents me, and Friday, who is the inner child also. And so he saves this Friday Robinson Crusoe, and now he has his friend, a human friend on the island. And then are the stories of how he watches out for a boat that would sail by. How could I leave this island, perhaps return to my former life?

And so anyway, this metaphor also goes through the arc within. And you know, another similarity is I live in Aurora, Colorado. Oh, yeah. It's funny. It's amazing. I love that, you know, because it makes you well, first of all, being a mother of four, sometimes I'm like dreaming about being alone on an island. I understand.

However, physically, you might be able to do it, but it's actually mentally that I think would be the hardest. Exactly. And finding peace within and love within even if you are alone. So many people live alone in the world, I mean. if you are alone, so many people live alone in the world. I mean, and so building this inner family, this self love in a compassionate and open way is so precious because people are alone. It's not like in all the times, it was not easy, I'm sure, but people never lived alone because you couldn't survive and live alone, whereas today we can live alone and survive.

So for me, voice dialogue is an answer to this solitude, not the only answer, but one of the answers and certainly relating to other people, relating to nature, relating to the divine, whatever form you choose for this, it's this universal relating that will warm your heart. You have brought so much wisdom. I just thank you so much for coming on and sharing. You know, thank you for sharing and putting this book out in English, especially. Thank you. Well, it was really nice to share. I have loved to share with you. I was a bit afraid to have just to speak on my own, but I prefer much that we could share back and forth and rejoice in it, in

fact. And it was easy to speak English in this way, because of course I speak French every day, but I read quite a bit in English and in writing. I translated the book myself. I rewrote the Archduke. I rendered it in English 25 years later. So it was 25 years between the two books, the French initial books of 99 and the Arque within that just came out on September 11th. It took me all this time to... so it's enhanced,

I have added things and it's completely reformulated in English. It's not a translation, in fact, it's a rewriting directly in English. And there's an exercise manual. Yes, the Volume 2 is an exercise manual that links to certain chapters of Volume 1. And Volume 1, the chapters, because it's a very poetic and lyric and imaginative story, in fact, the chapters are there to induce already the energy to understand the exercise in Volume 2. And the exercise in Volume 2 has the same characters than those in volume one. So you get to know them very well. Yeah. So in volume two, you have always a little excerpt of the chapter in volume one,

and then the exercise, but they really belong together, in fact. It'll make you more active in receiving it. Completely, in fact. And I built it so that every reader could try it out by himself on his own. Can you tell me about the art on the front of your book? It reminds me a lot of what we've talked about. It's like this self inside of the heart. Yeah, well, it's in fact the the cover of the book, it's a painting in France in a museum.

And in fact, it represents the Jesus child. So it represents for me the arc within, because somehow in the work I do, reparenting the inner child is done in a very, very practical way, in an energetic way. It's relating and active relating to the child. So it's speaking to the child, mirroring the child, looking at the child, holding the child, doing things together with the child. So there's a whole process to change the bodily memory

of early traumas and solitude in the children we were, which has never been taken up again. And so reconnect inside this lost thread and relate actively to the child so that the experience in your own feelings and sensations becomes the child starts to feel, oh, instead of nobody there is somebody. Instead of silence, there are words of love. Instead of complete solitude, there is a tender touch. And this changes the memory of the inner child, in the sensations, the body memory, which is the strongest memory we have, because the mind memory vanishes many times, but something that inscribes into the physical experience of relating, that's why the trauma lies when it's lacking or when it's not done in a loving way. But if you do it in the loving way to touch the child, speak to the child, reflect the child, This will change the experience

inside. The child is a person here and now, just the events are in the past, but the energetic child is here now. And I think that when you do this work, you are healing generations. generations? Well, I trust so. Yes. This demands a lot of awareness. And as you said, being aware of what is on the move inside us, and to become aware when we are in our ego automatics reflexes and see that and step out. Not to reject ego, but to see it and relate to the humanity of the ego. Then you can see that diversity is beautiful, the compassion for someone else. The ego will stay because we need it in this world, but it will become much more appeased in a

peace steps in and in our interaction in relating. That's really wonderful. In fact, yeah, that would, that would be very wonderful. And the world needs a lot of this. So where can you find your book? They need your book. They need your exercise book. Cause you know, if they were able to really connect with that, it could change the world. Sure. And it has changed. I mean, voice dialogue, I could, I have seen it has changed. I'm doing this for 40 more than 30 years now that it can change the life of somebody. It does. And many of these writings will be translated, the text and put on Amazon for a little price or even for free for the smaller text. Well, it has been an complete honor to have you. Well, I'm honored too. And so happy we could share so well.

Yeah, me too. Thank you very much for it. Thank you for what you are doing, putting light and spirituality into into everyday life, for one thing, your own life and the life of other people and into the world, because that's what we need. Well, same. Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a beautiful day. Yeah, thank you. Well, it will be night now. It's night. Oh, we'll go to bed.

It's 730 p.m. Oh, well, enjoy the rest of your night. Have a blessed day, Shana. Thank you very much. very much.