Parts is Parts

 So I'm wondering about Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.  And I get how Robert Falconer or his father figure Dick Schwartz likes to engage the parts which supposedly comprise a "self".  And I get how he believes this was a break from traditional therapy where the client was not asked to interact with the so called "voices" in his or her head because they were fictitious or something.  I get all of  that.  And I get how they deal with so called "unattached" burdens, or voices which apparently originate outside the self by moving the voices to elemental energies, fire, water, air, etc.

But there is something not quite right with this.  I think it goes back to my experience a couple of weeks ago that the energy or sensation behind so called "dreams" is the same kind of energy behind our so called "thoughts".  And how, as a mediation practice, I sought to experience reality not from this dream/thought  energy world, but something from the outside in, a phenomenological experience.  And experience from the the "outside" in so to speak as opposed to the inside out (or dreams/thoughts) becoming our reality.

I am not convinced that these parts or voices are the same type of energy as the dream/thought world that for better or worse I'm not focusing on because of their ephemeral nature.  I suppose this puts me on the side of traditional therapy that poo poos the voices inside your head if Falconer's version of "traditional" therapy is accurate.  

What is interesting though is this elemental energy business that the unattached burdens are directed to.  There is some resonance I feel in my focus on the outside-in or real would phenomena and these elemental beings or energies.  In some ways, that is what my practice is focused on or trying to interact with.  This is the real outside in so to speak.

One part elemental, one part energy.  Both making their way through the portal.