[Neurons] Meta Reflection #40

[meta]

L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections #40

September 2, 2007 





TRANSCENDING CULTURE #1



When you arrived in this world, your birth was inside a culture. As through the years, you were culturalized. Eventually, when the enculturalization is complete, culture is inside you. And at that stage, you take your culture everywhere you go. You never leave home without it.

Now while all of this is normal and inevitable, it is also one of the great leashes that hold you back from full self-actualization. Enculturalization holds you back from your fullest expression as a human being and from unleashing your highest potentials. In this, culture plays a double-role and one that is both a blessings and a curse. "Culture" is both a great contributor to human development as well as a great limitation and inhibitor of human development. How can it be both? Well, it operates in both ways at different times in our development.

In the first stages of our development, culture is essential and tremendously contributes and usually in a very positive way. In fact, without it we would not become human at all. Children who are taken out of human culture and are raised in the wilderness by animals (feral children) never become human. If they miss the language imprint period, they never learn to talk. And as they miss the symbolization period of cognitive development, they also never learn how to enter into the human dimension of symbols of which culture exists.

Our first exposure to "culture" occurs in our homes-the home environment created for us by our parents. Here they cultivate our mind, emotions, speech, and behaviors as they plant their cultural seeds of meaning within us and shape and condition us to respond as they do to the cultural frames of their own enculturalization.

How have you been enculturalized? In and by what culture? What culture or cultures were you born inside of? If you don't know it, your culture is your Matrix-a set of frames pulled down over your eyes to hide you from the truth (from what is real) and to create a man-made reality for your mind. You were born in the Matrix of your culture and to the extent that you think it is real and true and right - to that extent you have been throughly enculturalized and to that extent, the Matrix has you.

Now to escape that Matrix, you have to take the red pill. And why escape your culture and enculturalization? Because it limits you. It puts a leash on your possibilities. It prevents you from even seeing and experiencing the full range of human possibilities.

In Neuro-Semantics, we recognize that culture is one of the logical levels. It does not exist "out there" in the empirical see-hear-feel reality. We never walk down the sidewalk and stumble over a hunk of culture. Culture exists in the minds of those who have been cultivated to see certain things, value certain things, have in certain ways, recognize certain rituals as meaningful, etc. In fact, culture which sounds like a thing is an invisible nominalization referring to a high level set of invisible frames in our minds that are for the most part outside-of-our-awareness (i.e., unconscious). We mostly become aware of our culture when we meet other cultures.

Now when Abraham Maslow was modeling the characteristics of self-actualizing people, one of the distinctions he recognized was that the self-actualizers "resisted enculturalization" so that they do not live conventional lives. They are not within the statistical norm of "the average" of their group. Instead, they are free enough inside themselves to find and value their own uniqueness, to live from within their own reference system. And yet they are not rebels, but typically wear the conventionality of their culture "lightly on their shoulders" able to dispense it easily and quickly.

He also noticed something else about them. They not only resisted enculturalization, but they also transcended their cultures. They lived at a level above and beyond whatever culture or cultures that they had been raised in. As a consequence, they are "deeply democratic" in the true sense of the word. They see people as people and not through stereotype descriptions as belonging to this or that culture.

When I first read this, I was reminded of the way Alfred Korzbyski talked about "racial" qualities. He used the term "racial" constantly in his writings and it took me awhile to figure out what he was referring to. At first, I really didn't know what he was referring to. "Racial" to me had always meant the other races. But eventually I realized that he was talking about the human condition. Then it dawned on me; there are no "other races." On planet earth there is only one race-the human race. We all belong to the same species, there are no others.

I say that it "dawned" on me. If that sounds like an immediate insight that struck me out of the blue and totally changed my thinking and feeling in one swell swoop, well, it was not exactly like that. The transformation was much slower. Slowly I became aware that what we call the different "races" are but different families. Different family distinctions.

In this, the differences between the different groups, nationalities, and peoples are actually hardly important or significant-color of skin, shape of mouth, nose, eyes, etc. We all say of newborn babies, "She's got her mother's eyes" or "He's got his grandfather's nose." In a similar fashion to these family traits, what we have called "racial" distinctions are but family traits that large families carry on. Nothing more. They are not actually "racial" differences since we are all part of the same race-the human race.

Yet though we are all one race, we are raised in different cultures which explains how our minds-and-emotions and our talk and actions can be cultivated to think, feel, speak, and behave so differently. Culture speaks about the cultivation of our inner games. And given that every culture is limited and limiting- the challenge for all of us is to rise above our cultures- to transcend them. And we will continue this subject in the next Meta Reflections.

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Coming soon --- Meta-Coaching Modules --- Sydney Australia
---  Oct. 23-25, 2007  --- Module II:  Coaching Genius (or APG)
--- Oct. 27- Nov. 3, 2007 --- Module III: Coaching Mastery
     Contact Colleen or Michelle ...  cshephard at equilibrio.com.au  or michelle at equilibrio.com.au

    http://www.meta-coaching.org/expert_coaches.asp
    www.equilibrio.com.au

    http://www.meta-coaching.org/AustraliaOct2007Facts.asp


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The Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop: Unleashing Potentials for Peak Performance is the newest Neuro-Semantic Training . We launched it in Portland Oregon with Rich Aanrich and Cat Wilson of Apositiva and the second training of it has just finished in Gold Coast Australia with Martin Urban of Inspired Focus. 

2007 Schedule 

5) Sept. 7-11, Mexico City. Omar Salom of Salom Change Dynamics and Jose Merino (Pepe) of Reencuadre. Omar at salomchd.com 566 22661 or 566 20257.

6) Sept. 14-16, Monterrey, Mexico. Maria Luisa Rodrigues. Instituito de PNL de Monterrey. Phone numbers: (81) 8333 0030, (81) 8346 8011. www.pnl.com.mx 

7) Oct. 1-6, 2007. Geneva, Switzerland sponsored by Brief'r Formations (Info at pnlcoach.com www.pnlcoach.com). 2 day training. 

8) Nov. 20-22, Lisbon, Portugal. EvoluiTech Formacao e consultoria. Amalia Duarte, aduarte at evoluitech.pt 

9) Nov. 23-24, London, England, NLP Conference. Jo Hogg, Director, jo at nlpconference.co.uk. Three hour workshop: Actualizing Your Highest and Best.

10) Nov. 30 - Dec. 3, 2007. Avignon, France sponsored by Formation Evolution et Synergie and Gilles Roy, Neuro-Semantic and NLP Trainer. gilles.roy2 at orange.fr www.coaching-pnl.com 33 (0) 4 90 16 04 16. 

11) Dec. 7, 8, and 9, 2007. Italy, Bologna. Sponsored by an Institute of Neuro-Semantics and Lucia Guiovannini and Nicola Riva. lucia at blessyouitalia.eu nicola at blessyouitalia.eu www.blessyouitalia.eu +39 348 229 2562.





If you or your organization would like to sponsor the Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop, contact me. I'm looking to present it as far and wide as possible.

2008

1) April 4-7, Portland OR. sponsored by Apositiva, Rich Aanrich and Cat Wilson (www.apositivechange.com rich at apositivechange.com). (503) 525-0595. 

2) May 17-19. ID Com. International, Montreal Canada. Isabell David. Phone: 450-224-5398 / 514-815-5457. idcom at cgocable.ca / idcom at idcominter.com

Web: www.idcominter.com 

This training will be delivered in English and simultaneously translated to French. 80% of the participants in 2007 spoke both English and French; with 20% speaking only French and 10% speaking only English. Come and enjoy a taste and feel of Europe in Montreal as you self-actualize.




L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Ltd., Executive Director
ISNS - International Society of Neuro-Semantics
P.O. Box 8
Clifton, Colorado, 81520 USA
www.neurosemantics.com 
www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 
www.meta-coaching.org
www.metacoachfoundation.org 
www.self-actualizing.org 

Email: meta @onlinecol.com @acsol.net @mindfocus.co.za
(970) 523-7877
(970) 523-5790 FAX
(877) 686-2867 toll free in the USA only
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